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Clearly, we need to go beyond mere Flat Earth and embrace the Great Ice Ball Earth Theory.

Easier to build an anaerobic digester than try to fit cattle with catheters. https://readynutrition.com/resources/how-to-build-a-simple-and-affordable-methane-digester_12102014/

Yeah, Hydrogen's a nightmare, and hydrogen embrittlement means you basically can't have any steel around it which... no steel is not an ideal situation. If it were used on ships, I imagine the first, best choice for using it would be to extract it from seawater and then immediately burn it so...

I was thinking more specifically on ship development, for story-writing reasons, than how it would affect things hundreds of years later in a potential industrial age, but that's still interesting.

So had a thought concerning alternate resources vs. history: presume that coal does not exist in useful quantities on Earth. Charcoal has to be produced laboriously by felling trees and carefully heating them, rather than digging coal from the ground. Charcoal also burns at a significantly...

Hmm, I'd have thought clothes were one of the few things that just aren't as good in the modern day as hand-stitched and custom fitted garments common to the past. Most people couldn't afford multiple garments but the ones who could had them custom-fitted, not off-the-rack. My thoughts are...

Hmm, I'd have thought clothes are one of the few things that just aren't as good in the modern-day as hand-stitched and custom-fitted garments common to that era. My thoughts were: Neolithic: Books of matches would be incomparable in value. Alcoholic drinks are likely to be valued depending...

So simple ISOT scenario, you're in some middlin' size town that's been suddenly transported into Earth's past. There appear to be no changes to the timeline before you showed up, however the town wound up right next to a fairly major kingdom and you need to make with the diplomacy and trade...

So, during the Banana Wars, the US invaded Honduras about six times, occupied Haiti for almost two decades and the Dominican Republic for over one, invaded Cuba, etc. Basically, a majority of the Caribbean and a decent chunk of South America were invaded and controlled by the US for the purpose...

Wouldn't John most likely fall down a stairway onto some swords in that case? I'm under the impression the Magna Carta happened because he basically pissed off everybody and signing it was the only way he was going to hold onto a shred of power or even his life. Playing with my Native...

I'm aware that early horses came from the Americas, but they went extinct in the Pleistocene. American horses, to my admittedly limited understanding, were rubbing shoulders with wooly mammoths and sabre-toothed cats when they went extinct, far too long ago to influence history and long enough...

Simplest I can think of: "The ancestors of the Native Americans brought cattle (and horses or other livestock if you want bonus points) with them to the new world." Having an animal that can be used as a beast of burden would dramatically improve agriculture and industry and allow a "tech up"...

Ah, that was actually exactly what I was personally thinking on for this Alt though. The Hittites were the first civilization to develop ironworking (maybe, it's not easy to be absolutely certain about anything that long ago) and we have fragments of iron tools in Hittite lands as early as...

The Battle of Kadesh alt-outcome. I know this one's slightly obscure so the setting: The Hittites and Egyptians were at war. Pharoah Ramses II brought 20,000 troops while King Muwatalli had 27,000, who were better trained, better organized, and better led than the Egyptians. Muwatalli sent...

... You know the famines were a couple hundred years before Moses in the days of Jacob right? And rats weren't the problem given that Jacob had piled up so much grain the Egyptians couldn't count it all anymore, the problem was nothing grew for seven years, and they had to live on Jacob's...

That was after Moses performed several miracles and showed that his divine backing was much stronger than Pharoah's high priests, such as turning his staff into a snake that then ate all the snakes the Egyptian priests were able to summon.

So here's a thought from Biblical history. Suppose Pharaoh was reasonable in Exodus? When Moses and Aaron first approached him, they didn't ask to go free but to be allowed to celebrate a festival in the wilderness. Instead of going god-complex, Pharaoh agrees provided they swear on their God...