A Golden Island To The West — California ISOT from 2018 to 1850

[kaazmiz]

When that supercarrier shows up for a visit, Britain's going to basically have to just deal with the reality God shoved in their laps, much like Britain was mostly mum about OTL America's rise in the 1910s through 1930s.

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I think we established that Cali can ill afford doing a Perry?
And what does it gain them? A war they can't win, or a conflict so long and costly they might as well accept that embargo and not interact with anyone but those few states that would trade with them.

What are they going to do about damaged ships in case of a conflict? They can't call in a transport ship, or even a tug. They have no ports that can accept their warships due to sheer size.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

I think we established that Cali can ill afford doing a Perry?
And what does it gain them? A war they can't win, or a conflict so long and costly they might as well accept that embargo and not interact with anyone but those few states that would trade with them.

What are they going to do about damaged ships in case of a conflict? They can't call in a transport ship, or even a tug. They have no ports that can accept their warships due to sheer size.

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A super carrier could run over your average warship in the 1950s and not be damaged. Not that Britain would ever get close enough to be run over. Also, there are a number of ports that can accomodate all the forces California would need, especially since among the assets in California are groups with experience in preparing landing points.


However, If Britain say, decided to push things? You wouldn't even need a supercarrier, or LHA, or really much of anything beyond a very small force.
Said force to be:

1. A small support ship, a modified cargo ship with a flight deck, some 35mm cannon and a modified Hellfire launcher, which means it can comfortably kill anything on the seas long before coming into range.
2. Aboard said ship, four Apaches. Each apache can carry 16 hellfire missiles--which means that each apache can mission kill or outright sink sixteen british warships. They can do this in the middle of the night, when the British can't even see them. If you don't want to pay the cost of the Hellfires, that 30mm cannon will do the same job with a little more time.
So sure, fielding a supercarrier might stretch logistics a bit. good thing in a fight, California can destroy the British fleet around their isles and completely destroy Britain's ability to project power without ever needing to sail one out of San Diego harbor..

Meanwhile, a small amount of that single ships cargo bay, say 500 tons or so, will be used to provide the Irish with more than enough firepower to destroy the British colonies in Ireland, especially since any attempt to supply them ends in death-by-hellfire.

Don't forget, there is not a single nation in 1850 that doesn't have enemies, or doesn't have internal groups that would be very eager to secure their freedom. California doesn't need to deploy divisions of tanks--a few humvees with grenade launchers and towed 81mm mortars is going to utterly smash any downtime force you care to name, especially if they're working with local support.

The great powers of 1850 know this. They know it because they played the same game with many of their current colonies and were able to do so when the technological field is vastly more equal. They're not going to be even thinking of trying to play hardball with the most powerful nation in human history.

In a fight, California isn't so much a regular military, as they are George Pal's Martians--only without the whole "flu" issue.

 

[Jamie Roberts]

In a fight, California isn't so much a regular military, as they are George Pal's Martians--only without the whole "flu" issue.

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*Cough* smallpox *cough* anti-vaxers *cough*

Sorry, had a tickle in my throat. But yeah, nobody is going to look at California and think "I can take that." Or at least if they do, they will be rapidly disabused of the notion. England has Irish, Welsh, and Scots. Spain has Basques, Catalans, Andalusians, and Galicians. France has Bretons, Basques, and, lets be honest, to a certain extent everyone who isn't Parisian. The Austrians, Russians, and Turks all have too many examples to count. And all of this is just at home, I'm not even talking about anyone's colonial holdings.

 

[htgriffin]

Cali will be always bottle-necked on the East-West railroad for transporting its goods, to sell to Europe.

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Point of order, the cross-continental rail thing would be far more convenient, but shipping by sea the long way works well enough while deals with Mexico are worked out.

And Europe has the power to embargo Cali.
Which would result in a complete ban on selling their goods in most of the countries on Earth.

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This requires all of Europe acting in accord.

Unless CA openly tries to overthrow every extant government by force? This is not happening. London could theoretically blockade the continent until said continent convinces Sacramento to break the blockade, but it is the only power that can even contemplate forcing it's rivals to not trade with California and has little reason to do so.

 

[Guardian54]

your average warship in the 1950s

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Typo, it's 1850s

Also the heaviest ships could probably damage the bow when the carrier runs them over, especially the first ironclads.

This requires all of Europe acting in accord.

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A concept I find so absurd I couldn't find a way to respond to kaazmiz at the top of this page

*Cough* smallpox *cough* anti-vaxers *cough*

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That's single digit or less percentage vulnerable folks after California distributes the vaccine again. And after that it's just Darwin Awards for anti-vaxxers who don't give in. No real loss except for the unvaccinable folks they might infect.

 

[Alane1]

At the moment even the downtime US has better access to smallpox vaccine than California does at the moment even if it just one of the the older versions that's existed since the 18th century.(all modern samples are kept by the CDC(which has no locations in California and the Russians at the vector institute.)

Pretty much the entire population of California is not vaccinated against smallpox and other dangerous or deadly diseases that had been eliminated from the US or even the entire world but that is something they've likely taken into account and are looking to get samples for California's only vaccine company(at least all the companies I could find that produce vaccines in the US were all on the east coast except for one that was in redwood California).

Though on the food front something I just thought of is the livestock of California like pigs, cattle, sheep, goats and other even-toed ungulates aren't vaccinated against Rinderpest which has been declared eradicated in modern times but is highly infectious to livestock and can have mortality rates as high as 100 percent which when I come to think of it is something they now will have to look out for.

 

[Guardian54]

Pretty much the entire population of California is not vaccinated against smallpox

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Recent Chinese immigrants are, as far as I'm aware, still vaccinated.

Hell, I was born in 1994 and I got vaccinated against smallpox as a kid, still have the mark, though it's probably pretty expired by now the immune reaction is still likely to be better than someone completely naive to it...

And there's probably a few other countries with such paranoid public vaccination programs where those immigrants are probably the best-vaccinated folks California has. Sure, we tend to deride the flu vaccine as generally too mild a disease and too unreliable a vaccine to be worth our effort getting, but for actually serious stuff that has reasonably reliable vaccines we're on that stuff like piranhas on a dropped steak.

Rinderpest

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Ah hell that's going to be a problem...

 

[Fabius Maximus]

California's always been paranoid about agricultural and lifestock pests. Forget the war with Britain--they'll be pulling the CVN's out to just handle livestock and crop inspection on any ships coming . The good news, compared to California in 2018, there isn't a lot of stuff coming in.*

*A friend of mine works as an importer, and some of his clients have learned a very terrible lesson. Do not try to screw around with fruit or food imports.

 

[kaazmiz]

Also the heaviest ships could probably damage the bow when the carrier runs them over, especially the first ironclads.

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I'm sure that nobody will ever think of placing wooden mines that ships can't detect, and Cali can't field de-mining vessels that far from home. Or that nobody will try to do a reenactment of the Cole incident with gunpowder.
Or that they don't try to ram them at their top speeds to recreate what happened to Fitzgerald. Now way in hell would GBR use one of the few steam powered frigates that costs 65k pounds to build to cause crippling damage to a state of the art floating airfield. They can only travel twice as fast as the cargo ship did when the accident occurred after all.

#Wags eyebrows#
Cali is invincible and untouchable~

 

[Alane1]

California's always been paranoid about agricultural and lifestock pests. Forget the war with Britain--they'll be pulling the CVN's out to just handle livestock and crop inspection on any ships coming . The good news, compared to California in 2018, there isn't a lot of stuff coming in.*

*A friend of mine works as an importer, and some of his clients have learned a very terrible lesson. Do not try to screw around with fruit or food imports.

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Admitted though there is still a risk even if inspectors know what to look for when it comes to Rinderpest(which had been declared wiped out worldwide) as it can also be spread by deer and other wild even-toed ungulates as well which means even there is always the risk of downtime wildlife of inflicting water supplies or just by coming near as the stuff can spread not just by touch but by water and air as well.

It interesting fact is it apparently happens to be the disease that Measles emerged from to plague humanity.

 

[Guardian54]

I'm sure that nobody will ever think of placing wooden mines that ships can't detect, and Cali can't field de-mining vessels that far from home. Or that nobody will try to do a reenactment of the Cole incident with gunpowder.
Or that they don't try to ram them at their top speeds to recreate what happened to Fitzgerald. Now way in hell would GBR use one of the few steam powered frigates that costs 65k pounds to build to cause crippling damage to a state of the art floating airfield. They can only travel twice as fast as the cargo ship did when the accident occurred after all.

#Wags eyebrows#
Cali is invincible and untouchable~

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1. Because they're going to bring the carrier that close why? (Also, gunpowder does not do well underwater, you best have some pretty foolproof and long-lasting seals on your mines...)

2. Because they're going to bring the carrier that close why?

3. ^
3a. Also said carrier can trivially outrun any ship in any other country in 1850.

Trying to get all of Europe acting in concert and completely close off their coasts using mines is IMPOSSIBRU at this timeframe.

 

[Alane1]

Admittedly clipper ships could likely come closest to the top speed of a super carrier but they aren't remotely warships but very fast transports built for speed and transporting high value goods.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

I'm sure that nobody will ever think of placing wooden mines that ships can't detect, and Cali can't field de-mining vessels that far from home. Or that nobody will try to do a reenactment of the Cole incident with gunpowder.
Or that they don't try to ram them at their top speeds to recreate what happened to Fitzgerald. Now way in hell would GBR use one of the few steam powered frigates that costs 65k pounds to build to cause crippling damage to a state of the art floating airfield. They can only travel twice as fast as the cargo ship did when the accident occurred after all.

#Wags eyebrows#
Cali is invincible and untouchable~

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Mines in this era are purely harbor denial mines. Even as late as the civil war, they were very hit and miss, not to mention the nature of a gundpowder mine makes it far less effective than modern mines. So there is no realistic chance of mining against modern ships which will remain far away from any unsecured port.

British steam powered frigates of this era could make about 14 knots--best case. But ramming a ship doesn't work, because...

30mm bushmaster cannon can easily be mounted on any shipo (they are mounted on several navy ships), via non-deck penetrating systems, which allow the naval ship to deploy firepower sufficient to kill any British ship in existence at ranges of 5,100 meters. If you want some cheaper firepower, TOW missiles and 106MM recoilless rifles can be placed on the warship.

which will, mind you, see the British ship before the British ship is even aware of its presence.

None of which , prevents California from simply going kay, freedom for the Irish! and wiping the royal navy from the ocean.

Because again, the British are not stupid. They know, at this point, from the information California has made available and that their own agents have recovered, that the weapons of war in the future are vastly more destructive than they could imagine. That the peace was kept, not just by good will, but by the existence of weapons that could obliterate human civilization--that California has weapons that could wipe the city of London from the face of the earth in an instant.

All hurting California does is anger it, anger a power vastly mightier than anything Britain has. Because in parliament, when someone brings this up to the Honorable Lord John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (current PM) someone else will very likely ask: "And what if the Californian's should decide to retaliate by kindling a newborn sun in London?"

This is Europe, Europe in the 19th century, where the kind of retaliation that we would consider atrocities were actually pretty common--and would not, ultimately be discredited until the Second World War, and many of them will be assuming that behind California's polite facade is a willingness to engage in just such retaliation.

Besides, best case? You're in the position of a man who just managed to kill a police officer with your single shot, blackpowder pistol... Directly Outside of the LAPD Central Police station. This is not, to put it mildly, an escalation that works well for you.

 

[Midnighter13]

The North is well aware that if California wanted to break up the union it could do so at its leisure. So they're going to sit down and be quiet, hoping that California can persuade the South to not do anything stupid by simply existing.

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This seems unlikely. People who are used to being in charge of their own destiny, and who are locked in an ideological battle are rarely okay with a foreign group coming in and saying 'we are on your side, but you are amateurs, let us deal with this'. The Northerners may or may not appreciate Californian support (or get it) but they are not going to stop pursuing their own interests just because the Californians might be pursuing similar aims (and even that is debatable).

Remember that in the North there were two anti-slavery arguments. The bigger one was of course the religious argument based around slavery being unjust. This was mostly used by abolitionist movements, and those movements were dominated largely by women. The second argument was economic, and was put forth by early unions and Northern industrialists who were having issues competing with free labor from the south. This argument was more in favor of containing slavery than eliminating it, as they wanted the west to be individual farmsteads rather than new plantations. California clearly is coming at the issue of slavery as a moral issue, not an economic or cultural one. As such, many northern politicians and industrialists will not agree much with their positions, even if they are moving in roughly the same direction.

Cali will be always bottle-necked on the East-West railroad for transporting its goods, to sell to Europe.
Right now it might even be possible that New Granada will not give out a concession to build the canal at all, especially if European powers decide to support the revolt taking place (who support slavery/ or one of the numerous revolts that will take place soon after). If they get the CSA to support them as well, they will win blocking Cali from doing anything. And the conflicts that occur there can be exploited to stop the construction of the cross Panama railway that enabled them to build the canal in the first place.
And Europe has the power to embargo Cali.
Which would result in a complete ban on selling their goods in most of the countries on Earth.

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Theoretically, could a united Europe embargo California? Even in a best case they would only be able to stop California from shipping goods to European ports directly. But California would be able to trade with most of central and south america (and Mexico) regardless of such an embargo. Embargoes require the ability to secure ports and prevent smuggling of goods. That's just not happening in the Northern hemisphere.

Besides, California doesn't need the Atlantic trade routes just yet anyway. They will be busy opening trade routes with China, Japan, Thailand, Australia (which is currently dealing with some anti-British unrest) and other Pacific powers.

Here's the thing though. Europe will not be unified in trying to economically cripple the new super power in order to support slave holders in the southern US. That's just not how politics works. Each European country will be racing to get as much tech, future knowledge, and advanced material goods out of trade with California as soon as possible. They won't be embargoing California any more than modern Europe (a far more civilized and united place then it was in 1850) can or would embargo South Korea or Japan. The Europeans don't have a vested interest in creating bad relations with California, quite the opposite. They know that California is as militarily and technologically superior over them as they are over many of the African colonies. They have no interest in trying to poke the sleeping dragon when they could just trade for pieces of the dragon's hoard.

As for the Atlantic? There are plenty of potential ways to get goods to the Atlantic. If Mexico, the US, Panama, and none of the various central american countries are willing to build a rail network to connect the Atlantic and Pacific coasts (with Californian subsidies and tech incidentally) then worst case the Californians will be able to set up trade ports and ship directly to Europe with stops in Hawaii, Japan or Australia, and South Africa. If none of that worked, the Californians have enough aircraft to set up a rather expensive air trade route directly across the Atlantic. It would be low volume high cost goods and passengers, and hard to set up (especially the European airstrips) but the Marines know how to set up rough airbases anywhere in the world, and a military air-bridge can be used to kick off trade and diplomacy across Europe. At the end of the day, the Californians want to sell desperately, and the Europeans are even more desperate to buy. One way or another, trade will occur.

 

[kaazmiz]

snip

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To be perfectly honest I expect in universe powers to realize that Calis position is extremely weak, based on their import needs, and ability to wage a protracted war, and inability to maintain an effective occupation of inhabited land.
On the other hand they would understand perfectly, as you say, that Cali is so technologically superior to them, they could just do a second Mongol conquest. This time of the entire world, and very little could be done beyond giving them 'expensive' victories.
From another perspective, Cali can cause a second collapse of authoritarian governments.
I don't expect an embargo to be perfectly solid, I even expect a fair share of black market trading and behind the scene deals.

All said and done, its about weakening Cali, and giving more time for the other powers to catch up, and making them fell more in control of the situation.

 

[Accelerator]

To be perfectly honest I expect in universe powers to realize that Calis position is extremely weak, based on their import needs, and ability to wage a protracted war, and inability to maintain an effective occupation of inhabited land.
On the other hand they would understand perfectly, as you say, that Cali is so technologically superior to them, they could just do a second Mongol conquest. This time of the entire world, and very little could be done beyond giving them 'expensive' victories.
From another perspective, Cali can cause a second collapse of authoritarian governments.
I don't expect an embargo to be perfectly solid, I even expect a fair share of black market trading and behind the scene deals.

All said and done, its about weakening Cali, and giving more time for the other powers to catch up, and making them fell more in control of the situation.

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.... they can try.

I mean, its not like they would work together all the same.

 

[LHB]

To be perfectly honest I expect in universe powers to realize that Calis position is extremely weak, based on their import needs, and ability to wage a protracted war, and inability to maintain an effective occupation of inhabited land.
On the other hand they would understand perfectly, as you say, that Cali is so technologically superior to them, they could just do a second Mongol conquest. This time of the entire world, and very little could be done beyond giving them 'expensive' victories.
From another perspective, Cali can cause a second collapse of authoritarian governments.
I don't expect an embargo to be perfectly solid, I even expect a fair share of black market trading and behind the scene deals.

All said and done, its about weakening Cali, and giving more time for the other powers to catch up, and making them fell more in control of the situation.

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How would they realize any of that without having access to out of character knowledge? More to the point when does protracted warfare matter when California is more than capable of destroying pretty much any downtime military in less than a week in the most lopsided fashion possible?

They also won't be in a position to determine any sort of import weaknesses especially when Californian orders are, already, going to be distorting whole industries simply by having more demand than most of the industrialized world. Unless there's some sort of active effort to protect domestic production (which is reasonable) you aren't going to see private sector actors turning down a massive opportunity for profit.

 

[Midnighter13]

To be perfectly honest I expect in universe powers to realize that Calis position is extremely weak, based on their import needs, and ability to wage a protracted war, and inability to maintain an effective occupation of inhabited land.
On the other hand they would understand perfectly, as you say, that Cali is so technologically superior to them, they could just do a second Mongol conquest. This time of the entire world, and very little could be done beyond giving them 'expensive' victories.
From another perspective, Cali can cause a second collapse of authoritarian governments.
I don't expect an embargo to be perfectly solid, I even expect a fair share of black market trading and behind the scene deals.

All said and done, its about weakening Cali, and giving more time for the other powers to catch up, and making them fell more in control of the situation.

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Honestly not only are you overestimating the downtime intelligence agencies (such as they are) you are also overestimating their ability to properly analyze the information they do get. When California shows off a carrier, and they brag about how it only needs to refuel once every ten years, the Europeans won't automatically go looking for logistical weaknesses to it. Even if they did, between opsec and an inability to comprehend some of the technology which forms the underpinnings of California's logistics, they will find it impossible to get accurate analysis done.

Could California invade and occupy another country in the world? Yes and no. Yes they could invade, and no they couldn't occupy, at least not without local allies. Of course as mentioned earlier, most European powers of the day have both internal and external enemies who would be more than happy to fight California's theoretical enemies with AR variants and satellite coverage.

The Europeans understand how a numerically inferior, but technologically advanced power can conquer and occupy a numerically larger, but technologically inferior country. Its kind of their MO. The Spanish, French, Belgians, Dutch and British were all able to conquer vast territories by recruiting and arming locals. They are more than aware that California could probably do the same to them. For example, 100 Californian Marines with light vehicles, joined by thousands of rebel Irish fighters armed with uptime guns, could probably take most of the British Isles. The same is true of France and Spain.

The Europeans might be ignorant given the circumstances, but they are not stupid. European leaders do not want to fight the Californians, and that's fortunate, because the Californians (as far as they can tell) are not planning to invade and colonize Europe. They are more than happy for California's territorial ambitions (which the Europeans will assume they have) to be the American's problem. In the mean time, Europe can benefit from all those ludicrously lucrative trade deals.

Even if they knew California was vulnerable to economic warfare, they are not a direct threat to Europe, and could be a huge economic boon. They are not going to just throw that away on the off chance that California decides to become a threat in the decades to come.

 

[Alane1]

Underestimation and overestimation are both dangerous on either side.

But all this talk of foriegn war is rather immaterial given California still has to get its own economic and political house in order and deal with incoming natural disasters they know are coming in less than a decade.

 

[LordAlania]

What about Asia? Nowadays, the far east is the biggest market; and for most of history it had that potential. Cali knows this. Its imports, in the form of food, mineral, rare earth elements, etc... can be obtained from a far east that Cali is willing to develop instead of a Europe that is fearful for its hegemony. In-universe, Cali has already sent trade missions across the Pacific and even established an outpost in Hawaii while the British acknowledge de facto that Cali is the preeminent power in the Pacific.
Bluntly put, I believe California's foreign policy would be centered on Asia not Europe; American internal issues aside.
The real question is how Asia is reacting to California.

 

[LHB]

What about Asia? Nowadays, the far east is the biggest market; and for most of history it had that potential. Cali knows this. Its imports, in the form of food, mineral, rare earth elements, etc... can be obtained from a far east that Cali is willing to develop instead of a Europe that is fearful for its hegemony. In-universe, Cali has already sent trade missions across the Pacific and even established an outpost in Hawaii while the British acknowledge de facto that Cali is the preeminent power in the Pacific.
Bluntly put, I believe California's foreign policy would be centered on Asia not Europe; American internal issues aside.
The real question is how Asia is reacting to California.

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China, unfortunately, has just started the Taiping Revolt which was OTL the bloodiest civil war in history. Unless California intervenes in a genuinely beneficial fashion that also helps fix the problems that caused that mess in the first place China is going to be pretty tricky to deal with. Japan is a much better possibility but they aren't exactly a major source of resources at the moment. Indonesia and the Philippines are European colonies as is Australia. I don't know if Vietnam is under the French flag yet but Thailand is and will remain independent along with currently having a stable, secure indigenous government.

 

[Alane1]

There is also Korea that's currently independent but who's new King, Cheoljong was from a distant and improved branch of the royal family and unusual for a Korean monarch illiterate and uneducated.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

I can tell you one import European militaries are going to want.

Walkie-talkies. Seriously, they may not understand everything about uptime, but if you tell any downtime general that "oh yeah, this is a walkie talkie, has a range of about 10 miles (for high end versions) can be carried by a man, allows for real time communication in both directions." The first thign they'll ask is: do you take first born daughters.

Because the nightmare of every officer in this time is messangers getting lost or waylaid, or finding out that your left flank got garbled orders and is wondering off somehwere else and you have no way to get them back because you don't know where their HQ unit it. Effective radio coms utterly changes how things are done.

 

[Skywalker_T-65]

I feel like pointing out that even arguing Cali's logistics won't work. If the entire Royal Navy is sunk (and it would be) the Brits can't just wave a wand and replace it. Is it easier than it would be for Cali to replace a Burke? Yeah.

That doesn't mean a whole lot when you're looking at sunk-costs and all that.

EDIT: Autocorrect how I hate you

 

[LHB]

I feel like pointing out that even arguing Cali's logistics won't work. If the entire Royal Navy is sunk (and it would be) the Brits can't just wave a wand and replace it. Is it easier than it would be for Cali to replace a Burke? Yeah.

That doesn't mean a whole lot when you're looking at sunk-costs and all that.

EDIT: Autocorrect how I hate you

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Not to mention most of their fleet is still built, in the 1850s, from wood and it takes a long time to get that much lumber. There's a fun anecdote illustrating that point from the Napoleonic Wars when Nelson destroyed most of the Danish fleet at Copenhagen. The King immediately ordered new trees be planted so he could build a new fleet and that his ministers notify the crown the moment they were ready to be harvested.

That notice didn't arrive until the 1990s. Even with access to sources like Canadian lumber it will still take a lot longer, and at greater cost, for any downtime fleet in the current decade to be replaced than it would for California to replace one Burke.

Assuming the downtimers could even sink a modern warship by means that don't involve luck, sabotage and the crew drinking lead paint smoothies.