Volga Germans / Wolgadeutsche

Wiki[link]

Settled over the centuries at the invatation of the Russian Tsars, the Germans were awarded their own autonomous republic
near Saratov in the Volga river region in 1924.
Stalin suspected them of treason in the face of the Nazi invasion and summarily deported all to Central Asia and Siberia.

The Volga Germans never returned to the Volga region. After the war, many settled in the Ural Mountains, Siberia,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

Today there are approximately 600.000 Germans in Russia (1.5 million including people partly of German ancestry)

Note that there is another version of this flag which you can find in this [link]

Sikkim

Wiki[link]

Landlocked and nestled in the Himalayas it is the smallest (in population) state of India.
It borders Nepal to the west, Tibet and China to the north and east, Bhutan to the southeast and West Bengal to its south.

Due to its location, the climate ranges from subtropical to high alpine.
It is a major tourist destination thanks to its culture, scenery and biodeversity.

The Namgyal dynasty ruled there since 1642.
It asked for the British protection to stave off the Nepalese invadres,
but the Nepalese immigrants, legal and not, overthrew the monarchy and joined India in 1975.

There are 11 official languages there with the Nepalese now the most important.
The predominant religions are Hinduism and Vajirayana Buddhism.

Gangtok is the capital and largest city.
Economy is mostly dependent on agriculture and tourism.
Area: 7.096 sq km
Pop : 608.000
Dominant political force is the Sikkim Democratic Front

Note that this flag has another version which you can find in this [link]

Kuril Islands / Кури́льские острова́ / 千島列島

Wiki[link]

The Kuril Islands (Chishina-retto) are part of the Russian Sakhalin Oblast.
It forms a volcanic archipelago that stretches about 1.300km northeast of Hokkaido to

Kamchatka Peninsula separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the North Pacific Ocean.
Area: 15.600 sq km
Pop : 19.000

All of the islands are under Russian jurisdiction since the Soviet Union occupied them at the end of WWII.
Japan claims the two southern most large islands Kunashir and Iturup and the islets of Shikotan and Habomai as part of its territory, which
has led to the ongoing Kuril Islands dispute disrupting Russo-Japanese relation.

Note that this flag has another version which you can find in this [link] this [link] and this [link]

Alternate flag for Bosnia and Herzegovina

asked me to do flag for Greater Finland so there it is. Pretty simple thought...

European Flag-Map with alternate flags. For a contest of #EuroHPG

Flags can found from gallery of the group: [link]

Ireland Shield 1

Based on the flag of Ireland

T shirt available here:
[link]

Austria Shield 1

Based on the coat of arms of Austria

T shirt available here: [link]

The Avro Vulcan entered service with the RAF in 1956 as part of the 'V-force' of Cold-War nuclear deterrent bombers which included the Valiant and Victor.

The earliest load for the Vulcan was the 10-kiloton Blue Danube nuclear gravity bomb, which was quickly replaced by the Violet Club and Yellow Sun Mk 1 and 2 all of which were 400-kiloton weapons.  

The Red Beard 25-Kiloton tactical bomb was also employed, but the largest and most specialised load was the Blue Steel stand-off missile which was fitted into modified Vulcans and had a range of 150 miles and a 1.1 megaton warhead.

As the deterrent force was handed to the Navy, the Vulcans were adapted to conventional bombing roles and the standard load was 21 x 1,000lb standard gravity bombs.  The only combat missions flown were in 1982 very near the end of the Vulcan's life, during the Falklands/Malvinas war.

This example is a B.2 of 44 Squadron RAF 1982.

The flag of the Third Concord, an alliance of human states during the War of the Third Concord. The seven-pointed star represents the seven continents, and the arrows represents humanity's destiny to expand through the Solar System.

Slightly influenced by this flag by MisterK91: [link]

Flag of the Coalition of Western Republics

Flag for a contest. It tied for first.

In this TL, a somewhat different set of wives for Henry VIII meant that an alternate daughter of Henry married a Catholic Habsburg prince and actually bore children: England remained in the Catholic camp, and by the end of the 16th century Protestantism was pretty much stamped flat. The huge, interweaving family of Habsburg-Tudor ended up owning most of Europe, and the Family Concord after the bloody French Wars kept peace in Europe for over a century. All good things come to an end, however, and a revolution of rising expectations took place in an HRE which hadn't suffered anything nearly as destructive as our worlds 30 years war ended in a shattering explosion...

(The Ottomans were driven out of Europe by a Habsburg military alliance over the course of a century, but they managed to rally at the end and held onto Constantinople: the last great siege was so epic that the City has become a byword for invincibility in Christian Europe).

A cooperative effort between QuantumBranching and CyberPhoenix001, who tells me the original spark for the idea of this TL came from an episode of the Colbert Report.

The Ottoman Empire succeeds in conquering southern Italy in 1481, taking Rome in the process. During the Ottoman invasion of Italy, the French take the opportunity to invade and annex Lombardy, Liguria and Piedmont, while the Ottomans take Sicily, Naples and the Papal states. During negotiations at the end, the Tuscan city states manage to negotiate their way to independence. Venice, out of geographic and economic necessity, is forced to become a de-facto Ottoman vassal in the aftermath of the invasion.

When the Ottomans take Rome, the Pope is forced to flee to Avignon and put himself under French protection, while the Ottomans set up a puppet to govern the many new Catholics in the Empire, and to curry favour with the local Italian princes, they make sure to stack the clerical leadership with local family nobles. This drastically alters the religious dynamic in Europe, as there are now two Popes, both under the yoke of a power that do not hesitate to manipulate them to further the causes of their own empires. An alt-reformation quickly gets under way, with a general shift towards centralization of the church within the state, with Kings declaring themselves leaders of their own Churches to avoid having to follow the edicts of a Pope subordinate to a foreign state. Meanwhile, Spain, Portugal and several other states try to recreate the own papacy within their own borders. The ultimate successes of these ventures vary.

This shifts the religious paradigm in the British Isles, and after the Fat Lady finishes her number, Ireland and Scotland are in the same religious club and Britain proper (somewhat screwed over by their Wars of Religion) is in a different one.

The Ottoman conquest of Italy brings in a large influx of wealth and naval experience into the empire, resulting in a shift of policy by the Empire, refocusing it as a more western-focused and more navy-centered system than OTL. With control over the Eastern Mediterranean secure (aside from the Mamluks, but they don't really pose much of a threat: they get conquered a bit later, in the 16th century) the Ottomans strengthen their grip on northern Africa and prop up Granada following its invasion by Spain. Isabella of Castille is killed by an assassin while visiting to boost the Spanish troops' morale, causing the Spanish offensive to collapse, leaving Granada as a vassal (and later province) of the Ottoman Empire, giving them an Atlantic port and access through the Strait of Gibraltar, a position strengthened by their later annexation of Morocco. In the end, Granada does not make it into the twenty-first century; the Ottomans Empire cannot be strong everywhere, and Granada finally falls to Spain while Russian and Hungarian distractions peak, but for a good long while the Ottoman foothold distracts Spain from American ventures.

Christopher Columbus still tries to get finances for his passage to India, but with the Reconquista rather unceremoniously halted and chaos in Spain over the assassination of the Queen, no one is in the mood to finance some mad scheme to travel around the world to India on the basis of some calculations of planetary circumference Eratosthenes would have found fishy. The America therefore go undiscovered a while longer, until the Portuguese make it to the coast of OTL Brazil by accident while on their way to India.

Before this happens, Askia the Great of the Songhai makes his hajj and makes quite an impression on the locals; the Sultan agrees to set up trade relations. With its enhanced naval focus, the Ottomans set out along the coast of West Africa in some new ocean-going vessels. This gives them experience navigating the open ocean and helps strengthen the Songhai, allowing them to weather the hardships that they would have faced in OTL (preempting the Moroccan invasion also helped). Also, the more westward-focused Ottomans never get around to finishing off Hungary, instead moving into Dalmatia to secure the Adriatic, and the canny heirs of Matthais Corvinus manage to establish a working détente with the Ottomans: this benefits both, since the Hungarians use the opportunity to strengthen their power base in Eastern Europe, seeing the HRE as more of a rival than an ally in the region, while the Ottomans have nearly a century free from eastern distractions to carry out their own colonial efforts in the Americas.

The Portuguese, having discovered the Americas (ATL named the Antilles), set up colonies in South America. The Ottomans take notice and set out an exploratory vessel which lands in the Caribbean. Spain, still in very poor shape, is in no position to stop them, and the Portuguese global empire is too thinly stretched to prevent poaching in “their” territories. The current Sultan decides to follow up and sends out a contingent that ends up making contact in Tenochtitlan. The Ottomans are less brutal in their conquest methods than the heirs of the Reconquista, and rudimentary smallpox vaccinations end up preserving a large amount of the Aztec population, along with speeding their conversion to Islam as a side effect. With the “necessity” of human sacrifice ended, the Flower Wars are ended as well. The Ottomans build up a power base in central Mexico from which they expand and a hybrid culture arises.

When other powers come a'knocking, the Ottomans are able to repel them. The colonization continues as a pet project of the Sultans, with Turks, Arabs, Jews, Italians and West Africans all coming aboard to the new land across the sea. With the capital located at a very great distance from the colonies themselves, a form of local authority is instituted allowing the colonies a degree of self-sufficiency from the Old World Empire. Eventually, Ottoman sovereignty becomes largely nominal.

Butterflies lead to Mary of Burgundy avoiding death in a horse-riding accident, and consequently the Burgundian Inheritance is much larger, strengthening the Low Countries region of the HRE. The Hapsburg power base shifts there as a native merchant class rises, backed by the Holy Roman Emperor. They will go on to unite most of Germany under their rule, although it takes a few centuries (and there are those who grumble that the job is still incomplete).

Scotland and Ireland both undergo serious alienation from England, the dynastic union between Scotland and England never takes place, and what in our world would be dismissed as the “Celtic Fringe” becomes what is known as “The United Kingdom” in this TL.

France, which avoids the very messy religious wars of OTL, is the Firstest With the Mostest into South America, and plunders the heck out of the Inca empire. It also (attempting to muscle in on the Dutch/Habsburg markets in Asia) seizes the South African cape and found a colony in the 1600s which expands steadily for some two and a half centuries. Sweden, meanwhile, takes OTL France’s place as colonizer in *Canada and Britain’s place in *New England, and with a relaxed attitude about where it gets settlers from (Norse, Danes, Scots, Irish, etc…) their colony grows like topsy.

French and Spanish relations go rather bad following the Ottoman invasion, given the Spanish view of the French as “jackals to the Ottoman lion”: this is not helped by the fact that each has their own Papacy that claims to be the legitimate leader of Christianity in Western Europe. This hostility extends to the colonial race, with each nation doing its bit to make the other's life difficult.

Russia, facing a stronger Ottoman empire and opposed by a strong Hungary and Sweden in efforts to expand at Polish expense, pushes eastward earlier than OTL, and establishes a permanent position in the Americas. In the 19th century, under an aggressively militarist and nationalist regime, Russia turns west, conquering Poland and Swedish Finland, and threatening Hungary and central Europe, only to be soundly whipped by the French and pushed eastwards again, kicking off two generations of political turmoil.

Poland avoids the “Deluge” of OTL, and when not jockeying for position with Hungary unites for a bit with Hungary in a mega-eastern-European state (which predictably falls apart again in a couple of centuries): it avoids partition, and does better at developing a national rather than a nobleman-based or purely ethnic identity, which allows it to re-emerge from a period of Russian rule with a larger territorial base than OTL.

Italians, unhappy with the choice of being French subjects or Ottoman subjects/puppets, grow enamored of the notion of their own land in the Antilles. Italians initially come to North Antillia aboard French and Ottoman expeditions: later, with funds raised by various groups back home, they form a separate colony in Florida. With North America a patchwork of colonial claims, there is nobody with a clear claim to the place, so they avoid the fate of OTL minor colonies wiped out by the British or Spanish. They then unite under a native constitutional monarchy, forming the Kingdom of Fiore (Italian for flower), with the capital of San Francesco: steady growth over the last two centuries has brought the kingdom’s status from “joke” to serious second-rank power.

South Antillia is colonised by multiple powers, as opposed to just the Spanish and Portuguese as in OTL, and as a result, the colonial race is much fiercer. Portugal obviously has a head start, but they soon come under fire from the other powers. Even the Songhai manage to get a piece of the pie, although their small wedge of territory was to some extent dependent on friendly relations with Portugal (up until they ran out of unconverted pagans to conquer, the Songhai were one of Portugal’s major suppliers of slaves).

Technology advances quicker, as does industrialization. The Italian Renaissance is continued under pro-Italian sultans interested in the new art and learning coming out of their western conquests, and what OTL would be scientific inquiry first gets underway under Ottoman rule. This leads to an Ottoman chemical revolution, followed by the discovery of rudimentary gas theory, with cross-fertilization taking place between east and west. Indeed, an Ottoman engineer even devises the first diesel-powered internal combustion engine around the same time Europeans develop the steam engine. After demonstrating it and extolling its potential capabilities, he receives government funding to develop the technology.

Islamic medical science, as well as personal hygiene, is adopted early on by the European nations, allowing for faster development of vaccines and medications. Unfortunately, chemical weapons are also invented earlier (and are used for longer), under the hideously ironic name “antibiotics”, meaning “anti-life” (biological warfare, on the other hand, is referred to as “pathogenic warfare”). Also, the Ottoman monopoly over the oil does a lot to spur development of alternative energy in the 20th century.

Working mechanical computers (not too dissimilar from the Babbage Engine of OTL, but on a smaller initial scale) are developed in Europe by the mid-19th century, and from there spread to the Ottoman state. The origin of the ideology of Technocracy is rooted in the arrival of these mechanical computers and other early “information tech” in the Ottoman state in the late 19th century. As it streamlined and revolutionized the bureaucracy managing the workings of the Empire, people began to foresee the day when human error could be entirely removed from the workings of government by the machine, and began making calls to replace the government with machines, or at least the people who operated the machines, namely scientists and engineers.

As the political clout of the scientists and engineers grew, so too did their criticisms of the current administration. If humanity is to truly form utopia, they said, it can only be at the hands of the wise, the intelligent, and above all properly trained and educated. This anti-democratic sentiment tied together fairly well with traditional Ottoman thinking about the people as a “flock” to be managed, and that of the “rightly guided” ruler – if there were objective means to determine who was best suited to rule, why should they not rule? After a particularly bad economic crash, the sultan capitulated and placed a board of scientists and engineers to run the day-to-day workings of government. The scientific oligarchy then decided that the sultan was superfluous to the government, and had him quietly removed, establishing the world's first Technocratic state, which then went on a serious forced-industrialization spree.

At the present day, there exists a Cold War (ITTL known as the Damocles Conflict or War) between the Humanists and the Technocracies. Instead of the economic conflict that characterized the Cold War in OTL, the Damocles War in TTL is characterized by different viewpoints regarding societal progress. The Humanists believe that social progress should be prioritized ahead of technological progress, and vice versa for the Technocrats (in a loose sense: both believe in a rising standard of living, for instance).

The Technates are led by the Ottoman Technate and the Technate of Zhongguo/China, which tends to be rather wackier and more autocratic than the Ottomans. They are run according to the mantra of efficiency and maximum productivity. The government pursues a policy of strengthening the state (inside and outside), the military and the economy. R&D funding is usually higher in terms of % GDP than OTL first-world industrial nations. In schools, practical science and technology is encouraged instead of classics and humanities. Technocratic propaganda is dispensed on a daily basis to the citizens, as well as other nations in an effort to promote Technocratic ideology internationally. However, they are surprisingly mobile societies; as long as you are intelligent and do your job well, you can make it up the ladder with speed.

Technocratic allies tend to be on the authoritarian side: like the US and USSR OTL, they are far from picky in choosing their allies as long as they claim to be “modernizing” and “scientific” in their dictatorial methods.

The Humanist powers, on the other hand, champion tolerance, free thought and sociological advancement. Cultural exportation is enthusiastically promoted, along with the arts and humanities. They still have a strong scientific streak (they have to, to keep up with the Technates), but they consider advancing society primary to technological growth. They enthusiastically promote historical culture to cultivate a sense of national identity. They are capitalist, but with a strong socialist streak; regulation is championed on the basis that the consumer is the most important actor in capitalism. Thus, the governments act to ensure that no corporation ever gets “too big to fail”. Infrastructure and education is heavily invested in to promote growth, and there is also a strong environmentalist streak, with cities featuring a lot of greenery.

The primary Humanist powers are New Sweden, the Ottoman portion of North Antillia, Cartierslande, Thailand, the UK empire, Nippon and Fiore. The Sikh Empire and most European states follow more centrist positions, but are still allied with the Humanists. Russia maintains an informal alliance with the Technocrats.

Owing to Humanist influence, many nations are undergoing cultural revivals, with the UK promoting their Celtic heritage, and the native descendants of the Aztecs in North Antillia putting out some very macabre literature and art (although nobody is advocating the return of human sacrifice).

The Technocratic and Humanist nations tend to be culturally and visually distinct, with rather different ideas on architecture, city planning, even clothing. This extends even to computer hardware. To this day, the Technocratic powers still mostly use mechanical computers, because the user interface is intuitive rather than visual, meaning that one has to be qualified by right of knowledge to operate them. Their use is heavily government regulated, but they have been successfully miniaturized and advanced via development of materials science to make the inner workings lighter, stronger and operate with less friction (the fact that they are immune to EMPs doesn't hurt either). The Humanists utilize the transistor in their computers (invented in the 1930s), which allowed for miniaturization and screen interfaces, supporting the core tenet of Humanism that free interaction and the sharing of various ideas forms the backbone of a prosperous society. Humanist nations have the Internet, while the Technocrats have massive centralized archives of all (government approved) knowledge.

A brief global survey:
New Sweden, including most of OTL Canada but only part of what would be the US, is less populous than our USA, but even richer, a vibrant social democracy dominating an economically unified north America (well, unified aside from the Russians and those wacky Comanches).

Former French South America is, like OTL Latin America, a somewhat backwards and politically troubled area.

India is politically diverse, no single foreign power having managed to call “dibs” the way the Britain did OTL. In the NW, a surviving Sikh empire is an important industrial power, while Portuguese Goa, forced to expand or perish in the face of Ottoman hostility, has become a fair-sized state increasingly independent from the mother country. The rest is divided up by foreign colonial powers into colonies and spheres of influence (increasingly moving towards federation and local rule) and some still-independent local states playing off the Powers against each other.

Japan has done a bit worse: butterflies meant that the unification of warfare-torn Japan under the Tokugawa Shogunate did not occur, and after a brief period of unity under less far-sighted rulers, the country fell apart in feudal warfare again. (On the positive side, this meant that Japan never “gave up the gun”, and foreigners refrained from poking the hornet’s nest). They only recently managed to pull back together (under the title of Nippon) as a result of backing from the Humanist powers, where they have formed a reasonably solid federation, and enthusiastic cultural exporter. One sour note is Hokkaido and Sakhalin: the Japanese settlement of the far north was delayed, the Ainu are more populous (having even briefly created a little tribal “empire” in Sakhalin and the Kurils), and the northern isles have a stormy relationship to Nippon somewhat akin to Ireland's relationship with Great Britain, pre-independence.

Thailand, which conquered and held Burma/Myanmar in the 18th century with the aid of imported European and Ottoman military talent, adapted quickly to European technology. It took the role of 20th century Japan as a great Asiatic economic power and exporter, but with the difference of a lack of militarism and greater self-sufficiency. What they cannot obtain locally, they obtain abroad through a vigorous trading network. They champion Hindu and Buddhist principles of peace and tolerance, having never taken part in a war abroad (although the Burmese and Khmer within the Empire might tell you different).

What OTL would be Indonesia, the Philippines, and Australia underwent something of a colonial “scramble”, with various powers contending for control. Combined with some low-key meddling in the Indian Ocean by the Ottomans, the Europeans worked harder and faster to build up their ports in Indonesia and fortify them against foreign powers, and more European nations than OTL participated. Of course, there were plenty of wars in the process: some colonies got swallowed up; others expanded at their detriment. With this came political and linguistic differentiation and Indonesia was left a network of independent nations each with a different sphere of influence. It can be divided overall, however, into a relatively democratic west dominated by the Humanist powers in an economic and defence union with Thailand as a hub, while the East is dominated by authoritarian dictatorships propped up by the Technocrats. *New Guinea was colonized by Spain, lead by the missionaries, who put a stop to the cannibalism and made good little Catholics out of them, at least in the more accessible regions (they're not doing so well as of late).

Australia is a mixed bag. Victoria, Tasmania and New Zealand have been colonized by the UK, with Victoria, following great economic boosts from the gold rush, becoming another sunny, rich California. The French took the Perth region, while the Dutch took coastal Queensland and New South Wales, establishing a plantation economy there, nowadays somewhat reminiscent of a racist version of Pinochet's Chile. The Portuguese, Spanish and Ottomans took the rest, with the resultant states at varying levels of unpleasantness.

The *Philippines, AKA the Federation of the Sulu Sea, were colonized by several powers, mainly the Portuguese: it is currently in a civil war between pro-Humanist and pro-Technocrat rebels.

China under the Technocrats, its cities even larger, dirtier, and more industrialized than OTL, with omnipresent video surveillance and a fondness for cybernetic modifications, has a seriously cyberpunk dystopia flavor about it, with the elaborate mechanical computing and control mechanisms giving it a touch of steampunk.

South Africa is pretty relaxed on the subject of race, although people of European descent still seem to have a somewhat disproportionate share of the total wealth. It has near-European (the non-nuked bits) standards of living and is a major industrial power: as a result of pressures from its darker-skinned citizens, it has been taking an increasingly anti-colonial attitude towards the European holdings in Africa, something in which it is generally supported by the New Swedes and the Nipponese, a disagreement that some fear risks a serious split in the Humanist block.

The most destabilizing element in Europe is the continued bad blood between France and Spain, which suffered a limited nuclear exchange some decades ago. While France, after a period of military emergency rule, has managed to struggle back to democracy, Spain has turned into a Christian North Korea, the Holy Spanish Republic working busily to purge the state of all corrupting influences and create a pure Catholic state (one with a lot of nukes). The Pyrenees are a heavily fortified border, and “unfortunate incidents” between French and Spanish border guards are all too frequent.

The general trend in this world has been towards federalism, with local governments only serving to implement federal ideas at the local level. There is little established secularism, but the world as a whole is less religious in the sense of worship; many describe themselves as only culturally religious. Religious extremism is looked upon with great suspicion on both sides of the ideological divide: local religious hard-liners tend to go for separation from the ungodly-and-no-doubt-soon-to-be-destroyed-by-a-wrathful-God state rather than political pressure, lacking potential partners in government. In this world, a social safety net is seen as a basic right; indeed, for a nation not to have one in place is seen as inhumane. The question of whether democracy is a necessity for human prosperity, however, remains very much unresolved.

Ok, this is an ASB [1] map scenario done in cooperation with Rognvald [link] on alternatehistory.com. It is a world, where, by some fantastic set of unlikely events, a huge number of nations that came and went OTL are still around in 2012, including a number that would logically seem, shall we say, unlikely, if the early history was so different. Carthage never fell, a Rome which stayed a Republic was mostly confined to the North shores of the Mediterranean, the Greeks remained democratic, the T'ang emperors took up Japan-style adoption and their dynasty never died out, etc. It is not meant to be taken seriously, but just for fun - it was enjoyable to make, if a lot of work. (Shan't start any maps _this_ big again for a bit).

In this world, the two major power blocks are the Grand Entente, led by the Francian Third Empire and (increasingly) the T'ang Chinese Empire, a block of conservative and authoritarian and in some cases downright totalitarian states: and the boringly named Alliance, a grouping of relatively liberal constitutional monarchies and republics (although Your Democracy May Vary) led, as much as anyone leads, by the United States of the Western Atlantic, which, by some fabulous coincidence has some eerily familiar state lines. (It also has a Hoboken: those Frisian colonists, you know). Generally, the ideological split is less severe than the OTL Communist-Capitalist Democracy split, but there's also a lot of good ol' national interest muscle-flexing (not having had any wars as bad as OTLs WWII, the locals are rather less alarmed by the idea of nationalist muscle-flexing than, say, our Europeans).

Religion is a bit different: most of Europe, North Africa and parts of the Middle East are Christian, but Scandinavia and Vinland in the new world follow a form of organized Paganism that has absorbed a lot of Christian elements (Ragarnok now has an ending, which if not happy, is at least guardedly hopefull), while Persia and various points east follow an evolved form of Zoroastrianism: China is more Buddhist and less Confucian than OTL. The Americas oustside Vinland are mostly Christianized, although some native American states still follow traditional religions. (Human Sacrifice, however, is Right Out). Arabia has it's own Abrahamic offshoot, an "Islam" that didn't travel too well, although it has spread by sea to East Africa.

Most of Christians below to either the Roman Orthodox or the Trojan Universal Orthodox churches: there is a rough religious overlap between the religions and the power blocks, with Alliance members trending heavily Trojan Universal Orthodox, while the Entente tends to be Roman Orthodox: there are also a number of minor sects and "protestant" groups, most numberous in tolerant places like Cascadia, the UWA, or the German states.

Aside from the Alliance-Entente standoff, there is also a strong "non-aligned" movement, headed by the Scandinavians and those grouchy old coot nations, the Mesopotamians. The rest of the world consists of nations influenced to a greater or lesser extent by one of the other blocks without being an actually official member: finlandized, slightlyn puppetized, "leaning" or "inclining..."

Nuclear war between the blocks remains a worry, with a great many sore spots between the blocks world-wide. An increasingly modern and pushy Mongol Khanate: revolts in Aenglish and Francian Africa: a possible new "reunification war" between Israel and Judah: Croatian desires for a sea coast: the spread of wacky revolutionary ideas from Northern California: chaos spreading from Comancheria: Aztec, Maya, and Inca expansionism: and the occasional flight of really fat birds in front of poorly tuned radar dishes. In a fragmented world, there are an alarming number of countries with nuclear weapons. And if that weren't enough to worry about, there's this talk of "global warming" lately...

Technology is variable, with different fields of endeavour varying from OTL mid-1980s to a bit ahead of what it is today in OTL. It's a world more in love with public arts - and more tolerant of public violence- than OTL. The local equivalent of the Olympics, the World Games, held every two years, includes stock car racing and dueling with swords and guns (blunted swords, rubber bullets, and protective gear, yes, but there are usually some pretty spectacular injuries, and occasional deaths, every time around). A few dueling scars are still considered Manly in many nations, and Maya self-mutilation has only grown more baroque with modern medicine and plastic surgery. Poetry is to be found in public spaces, on the radio, in cafes and on the streets, and having literary heavies with international appeal is another source of nationalist boasting. Skaldic duels in the Scandinavian lands are serious business, often leading to duels or suicides, and the Han-Lin Arts Academy in China is the terrifying overlord of every wannabe painter in mainlaind East Asia.

[1] Would require the aid of Alien Space Bats to actually happen

Some flags I made for an RP in our NS region a while ago.

State name: Mazowsze-Litwa Konfederacja / Mazovia-Lithuania Confederation
Agent no.: #4
Motto: Unia, Swoboda, Demokracja / Union, Freedom, Democracy
Government: Federal Sejm
Historical context: Mazovia is a former duchy based around Warsaw and a region of today's Poland. It is in a union with Lithuania.
Mission: Investigate potential of the presence of Polish-players-controlled nations in the Old World Union to create a list of potential Vorshka suspects for further investigation.
Mission status: Gradual deactivation
Mission result: Partial success


This is the flag of one of my Nationstates countries serving in the M.I.S.S. , the C.R.O.W.N. Military Intelligence Security Services. It has finished it's mission and it's usefulness has come to an end. I am unsure whether I will save it for another use or if I will let it die.

according to this design:

The national flag of the Republic of Rome (Res Pvblica Romana), the oldest continuing political entity of Europe and one of the most influential world powers. 

Hammer, axe and sword, to represent that good ol' Prussian militarism!

The flag of the Kingdom of Hawaii. SInce 1795, Hawaii is a monarchy ruled by the Kamehameha dynasty. When in 1849 a French invasion sacked the kingdom's capital of Honolulu, Kamehameha III. sought for aid on the American mainland and found it in the EMpire of Louisiana wich desperatley took every chance to weaken it's long-time european enemy, France, and put Hawaii under it's protection. The Kingdom has since then been a puppet state of Louisiana.

*description comes later*

Just a simple, self-explanatory flag

My entry for the 14th Flag Challenge at alternatehistory.com

A flag for a union between Serbia and Greece, with a little bit of Yugoslavia thrown in.

This is for my Resistance expanded map, where after the Chimera are defeated the Serbs and Greeks unite to rebuild. In their fervour they become authoritarian nationalists with
revanchist and expansionist goals, determined to contain Albania, strangle Turkey and vassalise Croatia and restore to glory Byzantium.

[link]

I've designed a flag for the Union State, it's for the timeline where the PRC and USA blow each other to hell and Russia starts working to become a superpower again.

The flag has a resemblance to the old Soviet Flag, but without the Communist symbols representing the aim of regaining all that was good about the USSR without any of the unpleasantness.

The three stars represent the three Russias, Little, White and Great, better known as Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

How Germany ends up after the events of War of the Worlds II.

Germany is a major world power with the world's third largest economy and the fifth largest military expenditure. Germany has a Dominant-party system, with politics utterly dominated by the National Union. Only the Centre Party, German National People's Party and Natural Party have any significant national support, and even so at it's lowest point the National Union had control of 82% of the seats and has dominated Germany since Georg Franke's rise to power in 1933.

Georg Franke was as instrumental in shaping modern Germany as Bismark was in creating the German Empire. Unhappy with Germany's loss of the Great War, in 1918 he vowed to make Germany great again, founding the National Union in 1919.

With the rise of Mussolini, Georg Franke came to see Fascism as a way to protect Germany from Communism and to unite Germany. Unlike Mussolini, Franke saw Fascism as a means to an end and never embraced it fully. With Martians and Soviets to worry about both men had worked together and achieved much, but after the war cracks started to show. Franke had always preferred to use peaceful methods of strengthening his nation when possible, negotiating with France and the UK to return Togoland, Tanganyika and Cameroon and exchanging large areas of conquered USSR to Poland for the return of Posen and Silesia.

Privately he disapproved of the conquest of Abyssinia and in 1956 when Mussolini proposed dividing Kenya and Uganda between them Franke had decided enough was enough and warned the UK about a possible attack. Mussolini was shocked at this betrayal and withdrew from the Pact of Iron along with Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Serbia, San Marino, Bulgaria and Romania. Not having to worry about the Tyrol issue anymore and with new friends across the North Sea, Franke annexed Austria after holding a plebiscite.

As well as mainland Germany the Reich also includes several external territoires, some carved out of the USSR. Leningrad was almost completely destroyed after a long siege ending with it being atom bombed. It was was rebuilt as Saint Petersberg and resettled mostly by Baltic Germans, Kola Bay too was annexed to create a German Gibraltar or Singapore in the North. Sevastopol and the surrounding area was also annexed to allow Germany to control the Black Sea and give the Reichsmarine easy access to the Mediterranean.

The Volga German ASSR was also annexed and renamed Volgaland, and has become one of the main bases for Germany's strategic bombers and also plays host to several Fallschirmjäger divisions, ready to respond to any territorial disputes in the Caucasus.

Far the the south are the German protectorates in Africa, unlike other colonial powers, there has been little German settlement in Africa, with the total African German population being only 1.2 million.
Polish desires for colonies, as payment for protecting the West from Communism (twice) and Poland believing it deserved a share of former German colonies, as it controlled lands formerly part of the German empire, was left unfulfilled, though Germany did allow and encourage Polish settlement of Tanganyika, with Poles becoming the second largest group of Europeans in the country, over 16,000 by 2011, far more than Anglo-Africans.

The Protectorates themselves are for the most part autonomous, and since 1965 all but one Chancellor and two Governors of the protectorates have been native Africans.

Many Germans have emigrated elsewhere in the world. After the war South America was left devastated, and Argentina invited Germans to resettle the Patagonia. South of the Rio Negro almost the entire population is German in origin and Argentina has been a staunch supporter of Germany.

Germany also has several other territories including one in Antarctica, though attempts in the 80's to establish a colony were unsuccessful, though Franz Josef Land has a population of almost 3000 permanent residents, a mix of Greenlandic and Siberian Inuit invited to settle the territory in the 50's along with some Russians and Germans.

Germany also have significant presence in space, with large Lunar bases including the vast Kepler radio telescope. Germany is also has several research bases on Venus that are slowly growing into colonies in their own right. Braun, the largest German city on Venus, has a population of 1,245 Germans, 183 Hungarians, 104 Poles, 60 Finns, 57 Greeks, 12 Spaniards and around 3,000 native Venusians.

After the 1970's when the old Dictators started to die and their regimes liberalize, relations have since warmed with the Italiosphere but tensions remain, especially with Syria, Egypt and Iraq because of German support for Turkey, Israel and Iran. German relations with the other Great powers, China, Japan, the UK, France, India and the USA are for the most part cordial, though many Germans still long for Alsace-Lorraine and this has caused tensions with France.

German Irredentism was always been a problem, Franke said about it "I have brought back Posen, Tanganyika, Togo and Kamerun, I have defeated Bolshevism and achieved hegemony over all of central Europe as Bismark intended. The German flag flies proudly over the Volga river, there are German outposts from the Arctic to Antarctica and still the nationalists cry out 'Oh what of Memel? What of the Sudetenland? When will you save Alsace-Lorraine?' I could conquer the stars and it would not be enough."

Flags of the nations of the world by 1953, set in my A Different Revolution ATL, also known as Our Revolution on althistory.wikia.com.

Check out my Different Revolution series in my gallery's alternate history folder

The American Age-->

Time For a little Back Story Children:

In this timeline America and France stand as the two most powerful nations on Earth, a fact that has remained as such since the World War (1919), and periodically since the Great American War (OTL War of 1812).

Germany has never been united, however with the formation of the Council of Germania, there is finally hope to end the centuries of warfare between the Germanic states of Prussia and Rhineland. Austria has recently joined the council as well, under the leadership of President and United Germania icon Alois Hitler.

In the Caucasus National Syndicalist leader Ioseb Stalin's reign is nearing its end, as the Man of Steel nears death's door. Many fear civil war will break out upon his end.

In America it is a time of National Pride not seen since the turn of the century. The Chaotic Years have come to an end and with the inauguration of President Rose Wilder Lane, the country has signaled that it is time for a change from the policies of the Roosevelt (Elanor) years.

In Asia, China has entered a renaissance of economic and cultural development. The two century alliance with the United States seems to have finally brought the country into the developed world, and with the decline of Japan and Russia, China stands as the soul power in Asia.

---United States of America---
Capitol: Alexandria, Virginia
Religion: Southern Baptism (33%) American Evangelism (55%), Atheist Kurzwellianism (12%)
Language: Virginian, Vulgar American
Population: 5.21 Million (368 LY)
Government: Autocracy
*President: Zachary Adams IX
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Since the fall of the United States of America, the American Continent has splintered into dozens of new Kingdoms, Empires, Hoods, States, Deserets, Commonwealths and Sheriffdoms; however on the Eastern Seaboard, based around the Potomac, lies the last remnant of the United States of America. Since its establishment by President Theodore Bryan III after the loss of the Middle United States in the 22nd Century, the Washingtonian Empire has progressively fought an endless string of wars all in the effort to try and reassert itself as a major power in the former United States. At its greatest Extent in the 25th Century, the Washingtonians controlled most of the Territory East of the Mississippi, and even had conquered territory in Mexico and South America. However, after countless insurrections, the Empire has since shrunk to a shell of its former self, based in Alexandria and controlling barely beyond the immediate area of the Potomac, with its furthest extent lying in South Jersey.

The Flags of the 30 States of the Earth Commonwealth of the United States of America as of 2075. (From the Map: [link])

Through war, changing coastlines and migrating populations on and off of Earth, the nature of how the US governs itself is quite different from today. While the overall population of the United States' territory on Earth has grown to 335 Million, populations have concentrated into tightly nit metroplexes, leaving large swaths of land uninhabited. This has forced a fundamental redrawing of the map of the United States, resulting in a number of new states forming on their own (usually due to a collective loss of territory due to climate change) or lines redrawn by the Commonwealth Government.

Timeline:
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2012: A Russian Natural Gas rig explodes during a routine day of drilling in Siberia. The explosion fractures the thinning permafrost dumping billions of tons of Greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere as the methane burns; sending climate change into overdrive.

2013: The Greenland Ice Sheet falls into the sea raising global Sea Levels by 20 Meters overall. Couples with a world wide drought the first wave of Climate Refugees begin to migrate to the few cities relatively unaffected

2014: US Troops are deployed to Northern Mexico after the Mexican government capitulates leaving the Grande Cartel in control of most of the country and American Refugees in danger.

2015: The States of Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi (whose populations are largely climate refugees dwelling in the remaining north portions of each state) form the State of Dixie. US Forces are deployed to the Gulf to protect American refugees.

2016: After state governments in the region collapse, climate refugees in the Appalachians form a new state named after their respective region.

2017: New Jersey agrees to cede itself to New York. New England forms a single State.

2019: Mexico is annexed by the United States.

2022: Start of the Famine of the 2020s as honey bee populations in Canada collapse and desalination leads to lowest catch rate on record for the global fishing industry.

2025: Quebec closes its borders to the rest of Canada to protect its own food supplies. The Canadian Civil War begins.

2026: Environmental Terrorists in British Columbia destroy the Alaskan oil and gas pipeline, the US intervenes in the Canadian Civil War.

2033: President McCain signs the Canadian Annexation Act, bringing Canada into the Union.

2035: Flood waters finally recede from the Patomic. A new state is created; Columbia.

2041: Sea Levels finally normalize after decades of work on a number of Geoengineering projects. Drought is still common in many areas of the world, but resalination of the oceans has resulted in a steady decline of the global water crisis.

2046: New Orleans is rebuilt. A new State of Louisiana is created.

2051: With Populations in the middle of the country so low, the Federal Government passes the Plains Act, which reorganizes a number of states and creates a series of vast new National Parks.

2063: Southern California successfully secedes from the state, forming the new State of Baja.

2073: The US becomes a Four Tier Republic, the Earth Commonwealth is formed from their terrestrial territory.