Alternate Timelines

Contemporary History

Scenarios from 1945 CE to present day

What If Detroit Had Avoided Bankruptcy Through Regional Cooperation?

Exploring how Detroit might have developed if it had established a regional revenue sharing and governance system in the 1990s, preventing its 2013 bankruptcy and creating a more equitable metropolitan region.

March 18, 2025 Read More →

What If Minneapolis Had Reimagined Public Safety a Decade Before 2020?

Exploring how Minneapolis might have developed if it had implemented comprehensive public safety reforms and community-led alternatives to traditional policing in 2010 rather than after the events of 2020.

March 15, 2025 Read More →

What If the Cuban Missile Crisis Escalated to Nuclear War?

Exploring the devastating consequences if the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis had escalated into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and Soviet Union.

March 11, 2025 Read More →

What If Tucson Had Pioneered Radical Water Conservation in the 1990s?

Exploring how Tucson, Arizona might have developed if it had implemented comprehensive water conservation and desert-adapted urban design decades before the Southwest water crisis became acute.

March 10, 2025 Read More →

What If India Adopted a Presidential System?

Exploring how India's governance, politics, and development trajectory might have evolved if the world's largest democracy had chosen a presidential system instead of the Westminster parliamentary model at independence.

March 5, 2025 Read More →

What If Pittsburgh Had Reinvented Its Steel Industry Instead of Pivoting to Tech and Healthcare?

Exploring how Pittsburgh might have developed if it had modernized and transformed its steel and manufacturing base in the 1980s rather than transitioning primarily to a knowledge economy.

March 5, 2025 Read More →