User blog comment:Historygeek1/Continuation of Southern Victory/@comment-68.52.63.194-20140516175120/@comment-21519-20140516232436

I suspect the Rebs would not be particularly welcome in Mexico. If I'm a Mexican at that point in the timeline I'm pissed off that Featherston forced my country into another disastrous war and relieved that the US stopped at the Rio Grande. If the Rebs come to me and try to set up any significant operation, I'll either kill them or chase them back to Texas to avoid attracting unwanted attention from Philadelphia.

There are no "unaffected" Canadian provinces, the entire country was garrisoned and occupied from Breakthroughs on. The Russian scenario is madness. There was never much antagonism between Russia and the US, I can't remember reference to a single skirmish between the two. Germany wiped its ass with Russia in GWII and if the Russians have any stomach for further combat of any sort they'll direct whatever resources they can muster against their conquerors. There's no way they can carry out major operations in North America; Alaska's mostly empty, so they'd need to bring 'their "horde of troops" across the Bering Sea. The US would not tolerate a buildup in Alaska and its Pacific Fleet is in fine position to intercept troopships. Imagine the US Navy circa 1812 trying to land an army in the French Empire to fight alongside Napoleon. The Royal Navy would tear them to ribbons, and the same would happen here. And if not, the fact that both Alaska and the Northwest Territories are empty and far from the US proper means atomic weapons can be liberally deployed against an enemy army that did get through.

Now if you want to have Japan use Canadians to wage a proxy war, that's slightly more realistic. They'd be giving the Canadians material and possibly diplomatic support, but they couldn't land a "horde of troops" there either, and they'd also get nuked if they tried. But this Canadian project would still require them to redirect a lot of resources from the other ambitious projects they were taking on at the end of the series, and there's no real up side for them.

It certainly wouldn't be a Korean War analog, anyway. At most, maybe the Angolan Civil War? Except it would only be a proxy war on one side, that of whomever was supporting Canada. The US would have to do the heavy lifting on its own; if a credible Canadian government did start to gain traction, even if it were only a catspaw to a Pacific power, there are few pro-American Canadians who would fight against it, and fewer still if the US didn't show much commitment of its own. Quebecois soldiers would fight if the war were on the east coast, but they won't go west for it, not in large enough numbers to allow the US to disengage.

Now when you talk about a "Vietnam like insurgency," first of all I have no idea what that even means in the context of a unified nation. To force that parallelism, you'd need to roll back the clock to VO, have Taft win and call off the plebiscites, and then have Freedomite "Viet Cong" uprisings in the affected areas. If you simply mean "a long intractable rebellion," the result will be nothing like what you suggest. If Vietnam and the US shared a border and a long, antagonistic history as very dangerous adversaries, we never would have left. We'd either still be there or would have buried the country under WMD by now.

A nuclear free-for-all would indeed be environmentally destructive, but mutations would not be the primary reason. Most mutations would probably result in high instances of cancer and birth defects in affected areas. This could be my own misinterpretation--forgive me if it is--but from the way you wrote that I was left with visions of a zombie apocalypse or some such nonsense.

Speaking of nonsense:

"The Confederate scientist"--umm, name please? The only Confederate scientist I can think of is Henderson V FitzBelmont, and I know you're not suggesting that he become "this timeline's Werner von Braun." FitzBelmont was a nuclear physicist, von Braun an aerospace engineer.

"This timeline's Elie Wiesel," that makes even less sense. Especially considering that Wiesel didn't kill Hitler. That's what Cassius is going to be remembered for, not writing his memoirs or raising international support for a black nationalist state (which won't exist, more on that later).

O'Doull as "this timeline's medical research specialist"--what, each timeline only gets one? And if so, shouldn't its one medical research specialist be someone who, oh I don't know, specializes in medical research? O'Doull was an army doctor and a general practitioner in a small rural community. That's almost as far from medical research as nuclear physics is from aerospace engineering.

The suggestion of a Southern black diaspora is one I can take a bit more seriously, but it wouldn't happen either. As the only Southern community on good terms with the Federal government, they could expect Philadelphia to offer them every incentive to stay.