Fiction in which the US has all the bombs?

May 30, 2007 10:54 AM

Is there an alternate history novel about the US as sole possessor of nucear weapons?

Over in the recent game theory thread BigSky says "I think one of the proposed game theory solutions to the cold war was to preemptively bomb the Soviet Union before they could catch up to us enough in nuclear weapons to really hurt us."

I find this an intriguingly appalling approach. Has anyone written alternate history fiction in which the US uses military power to ensure that nobody else develops nuclear weapons?

posted by L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg to media & arts (8 comments total)

Well ...

Yes.

TBOVerse

The material is frankly disturbingly jingoistic and uncomfortably free with the nuclear annihilation of people. However, I understand the author was partially responding against alternative histories written by people who thought the Nazis were swell and liked to write long stories in which Germany won WWII.
posted by Comrade_robot at 11:12 AM on May 30, 2007

You might want to read more about General Curtis Le May, whose philosophy was basically the one you describe.
posted by vacapinta at 11:18 AM on May 30, 2007

Heh, call me naive but it didn't occur to me that there would be people writing fiction in which it's a wonderful idea.
posted by L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg at 11:52 AM on May 30, 2007

Uchronia has a huge list of alternate histories. Looked through but can't see much along those lines.

I suppose it's not a particularly dramatic situation to write about...
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:13 PM on May 30, 2007

Heinlein's "Solution Unsatisfactory" is very much along these lines, though with radioactive dust rather than nuclear weapons proper (Heinlein was writing in 1940).
posted by Chrysostom at 12:46 PM on May 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

A Google Answer on whether Truman might have considered stopping the Soviet nuclear program.

Personally, I think there were some basic technological limitations, ranging from uncertain intelligence about Soviet facilities to the distance any attack force would have had to travel. The B-36, with its 6000 mi range, didn't come online until 1949, the year the USSR tested its first atom bomb. The B-52 didn't arrive for five more years, by which time the H-bomb was well under development. The first true ICBMs were not operational until the very late 1950s.

So personally, I think any alternate history would have to jigger some of the technological progress to accelerate the US or retard the Soviet advances. In many ways it then becomes a What If the US Had the Bomb in Time to Hit Berlin? A whole 'nother ball of wax.

There are, of course, a number of spec-fic works which examine the more generic situation of an empire or hegemony. The CoDominium of the Niven/Pournelle future history books probably fits, as well as the Second Empire of Man, in which human grief over the total devastation of Earth in a war brings an interstellar empire enforced by threatened ... total devastation of uncooperative colonies. Colonies recovering from the technological isolation of the war could only gain rights based on their own technological recovery level, e.g. self-government was only possible for planets with indigenous orbital launch capability.

This essay about nuclear war avoidance in sf (part of a more general bibliography about nuclear holocaust in sf) is probably relevant to your question in some ways. Here's an essay about the response of the early science fiction community to the realization that nuclear weapons were now real. And here's another group you may find interesting.

It is puzzling to contemplate why nobody at the time seemed to consider that there would be a period of hegemony by the US, or that the US should enforce such. The lessons of war may simply have been too close at hand.
posted by dhartung at 1:59 PM on May 30, 2007

Robert Heinlein wrote a short story describing basically that exact thing. I forget the name of it. Basically, after the first bombs were dropped on Japan, they took "atomic dust" and seeded it onto all the military bases and airfields of every major country and became the sole possessors of nuclear weapons and major technology.

It was a great read, but the name escapes me. I believe it was in the anthology "Worlds of Robert Heinlein."
posted by damiano99 at 2:24 PM on May 30, 2007

While it has superheroes in addition to an alternative history, the graphic novel The Watchmen deals with a world in which America has effectively neutralized the USSR's ability to strike the US with nuclear weapons. There is a heavy influence on how America's ability to operate with military impunity has affected US foreign relations as well as the spread of communism and the economies of various US enemies and allies.
posted by Benjy at 5:29 PM on May 30, 2007