What If the Moon Didn't Exist?

Today on Far Future Horizons we present two video features that will allow us to glimpse an alternative evolutionary history of our planet. How would our world and the life on it have evolved if our planet was not accompanied by a natural satellite such as the Moon? How would have the evolutionary history of our planet have unfolded over the course of its four and half billion year history if the Moon didn't exist?

Without the moon, humans wouldn’t exist. Life, if it had started at all, would be in the earliest stages of evolution. Days would last four hours, winds would blow at hurricane force and there would be a dense and toxic atmosphere resembling that of Venus.

Luckily, fifty million years after the formation of the solar system, our proto-planet was hit by a celestial body more than twice the size of Mars, which formed the moon. In this one-hour special, viewers will learn what Earth was like before the moon and what Earth would be like if the moon disappeared.

Hitler’s Supercity

A model of the the Volkshalle (People's Hall)

Today on Far Future Horizons we take another foray in Alternate History and visit once again a world in which Hitler victoriously defeats the allies.


Hitler caused more death and destruction than anyone else in history. But he also had plans to build on a massive scale and wanted to build a German city, called Germania, on a par with the glories of ancient Greece and Rome. Germania was to be a city that celebrated the victory of Nazi Germany had Hitler been victorious.

Which Universe Are We In?

Today on Far Future Horizons we present another exciting installment from the acclaimed BBC series Horizon.

In this episode we explore the question ~ Which Universe Are We In?

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother" ~ George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four (1984)

With all the news wires abuzz over the past year and a half about the revelations concerning domestic spying in the United Kingdom and the United States  by Edward Snowden, the former technical contractor for the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) we at Far Future Horizons thought it only fitting that we present the most recent film adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984). The novel and film  illustrate the full magnitude of how our civil rights as citizens may eventually become eroded.

Snowden leaked details of top-secret U.S. and British government mass surveillance programs such as PRISM to the press. Has the Orwellian vision of the surveillance society become a reality?

X-Day: The Plan to Invade Japan

Today on Far Future Horizons we mark the seventieth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by taking another foray through an Alternate History of the Second World War with “X-Day: The Plan to Invade Japan”.

Let us suppose that the Trinity Test at Alamogordo, New Mexico had gone very badly and the Manhattan project, that involved the efforts of 130,000 people and cost nearly US$ 2 billion ($ 22 billion in present day value), rather than detonating the world’s first atomic bomb, had in fact produce a dud.

Japan’s Atomic Bomb

Today on Far Future Horizons we examine some intriguing evidence that the  Japanese developed their own atomic bomb and  detonated it days before they surrendered?

Since the end of the Second World War, conventional wisdom claimed that Imperial Japan was years away from building an atomic weapon. Today’s documentary feature shatters that view.

The World of ‘The Man in the High Castle'

Today on Far Future Horizons we will once again take a foray into alternate history and glimpse the world as portrayed in Philip K. Dick’s Hugo award-winning novel “The Man in the High Castle”.

“The Man in the High Castle' is classic in the genre of alternate history novels and inspired countless authors to write their own alternative history scenarios of a world dominated by a victorious Adolf Hitler.

Man Conquers Space Teaser Trailer 5

Today on Far Future Horizons we are pleased to announce the public release of  "Man Conquers Space" teaser trailer 5.

Man Conquers Space

Space Artist and author Ron Miller’s fabulous article “The Great 1952 Space Program That Almost Was” concerning what is referred to now as Collier’s “Space Program” inspired today’s blog post.

Moon Graffiti - What If the 1st Lunar Landing Had Failed?

Today on Far Future Horizons we present Moon Graffiti - What If the 1st Lunar Landing Had Failed?

History has the strange quality that it easily could have been otherwise. You can experience one conceivable "what if?" in Moon Graffiti, an excellently executed radio story that plays out what could have happened had the first moon landing gone awry.

America's War Plans Against the British Empire - Revealed

Long before the special relationship that exists between The United States of America and the United Kingdom of Britain and Northern Ireland there was War Plan Red – America’s Plan for war with the British Empire.

Today on Far Future Horizons we present a documentary which aired on Britain’s Channel 5 about War Plan Red, an American strategy to make war on Great Britain. 

Dixie Victorious - What if the Confederacy Won the Civil War?

Four score and seven years after the founding of our great nation, the United States of America found itself embroiled in a bloody civil war which pitted brother against brother and father against son.   History records that the Union won this bitter conflict thus preserving the integrity and unity of the American republic.

Today on Far Future Horizons  we take another foray into alternative history and explore the world of Dixie Victorious and visit an alternate timeline where the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.) won the American Civil War and the institution of slavery persists till this day.

Dark Green represents the CSA proper; light green represents its territories

Our point of diversion occurs when the imperial powers of Great Britain and France intervened on the side of the Dixie Republic resulting in the defeat of the Union forces at Gettysburg in 1863………

My Pet Dinosaur

What if the Cretaceous-Tertiary impact that ended the reign of the Dinosaurs never occurred? Would these magnificent creatures, which could only be described by superlatives, still be walking the Earth? Would these creatures have gone on to evolve intelligence and perhaps a technological civilization? It is perhaps the greatest question concerning an alternative evolutionary history of life on Earth. 

Today on Far Future Horizons we explore this alternative evolutionary history with the BBC Horizon documentary – My Pet Dinosaur.

It's a palaeontologist's dream: the chance to live in a world where dinosaurs are not something to be dug out of the ground but are living among us. It may sound far-fetched but dinosaurs were actually rather unlucky. The meteorite impact that doomed them to extinction was an event with a probability of millions to one. What if the meteorite had missed?

 In the early 1980s, paleontologist Dale Russell, curator of vertebrate fossils at the National Museums of Canada, in Ottowa, explored this possibility of Intelligent Dinosaurs.

Had dinosaurs survived, the world today would be very different. If humans managed to survive alongside them (very unlikely), we wouldn't have the company of most, if not all, of the mammals with which we are familiar today. Giraffes, elephants and other mammals wouldn't have had space to evolve.

1421: The Year When China Nearly Discovered America and the World

History tells us that the America continent was discovered by Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492. But, a nascent naval power had the ability to discover and colonize this new world some seventy years before.

The year 1421 could have been a pivotal year in world history and would make a magnificent point of divergence in many an alternate history novel. 1421 could have been the year when Ming dynasty China could have set into motion a series of events that would have led the Chinese to discovery the Americas some seventy years before Christopher Columbus, circumnavigate the globe and transform Imperial China from merely a regional power into a major naval superpower of global extent on which the Sun would never have set. Instead China chose to abrogate its appointment with destiny and retreated into a long period of isolationism. The conquest of the world and control of the oceans were left to the countries of a Europe just awaking from a long period of intellectual slumber. Eventually the new emerging maritime powers of Europe found their way to the shores of the Dragon’s lair and were in due course to carve the carcass of this impotent giant between themselves.

The Great Martian War

Today on Far Future Horizons we present the History Channel’s mock alternate history Sci-Fi documentary - The Great Martian War.

History meets science-fiction in the Canadian original film The Great Martian War. A unique allegorical tale of the horror of battle, The Great Martian War spectacularly re-imagines the years 1913-17, with humankind fighting a catastrophic war against a savage race of extraterrestrial invaders.

On its 100th anniversary, The Great Martian War tells the story of the catastrophic events and unimaginable horrors of 1913-17, when Humankind was pitted against a savage Alien invasion.

With powerful and detailed First World War parallels The Great Martian War fuses sci-fi fantasy with factual History  to explore the real-world tragedies and unique horror of World War One.

Hitler's Secret Science

Today on Far Future Horizons we take another voyage through Alternate History and explore the world of Hitler Victorious as a result of a powerful NAZI war machine backed by the most advanced weapons that science could devise. 

In the crucible of World War II, Germany’s most brilliant scientists race to create an arsenal of terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, even an atomic bomb.

Before the war is over, Germany will produce a series of technological firsts that remain the basis for many modern day air and spacecraft – from a stealth-like trans-Atlantic bomber, to the world’s first cruise missile. Now, seventy years later, secret Nazi files reveal the classified blueprints for these – and many other – devastating ‘Wonder Weapons’. 

Hitler's Plan to Atom Bomb New York

Sanger's  Silverbird (Silbervogel) Amerika Bomber

Today on Far Future Horizons we present - Hitler's Plan to Atom Bomb New York.

In 1944 in the final months of the Second World War, the Nazi top brass believed that a rudimentary nuclear weapon might soon be within their scientists' grasp.

Hitler in a desperate bid to turn the tide of war, devised a secret plan for an aircraft that would usher in the age of global terrorism -- the 'Amerika Bomber'. This would deliver the hoped-for 'wonder weapon' directly on to the biggest target of them all: New York City.

Hitler Victorious

It is perhaps one of the greatest “what ifs” and “might have beens” of history. What if Hitler succeeded in winning the Second World War in Europe? What if Hitler’s Luftwaffe had won the Battle of Britain in September, 1941 and over the succeeding weeks Britain fell under the Nazi jackboot?

 

Today on Far Future Horizons we take a voyage through Alternate History and explore the world of Hitler Victorious with our two full length video offerings.

In Search of Mermaids

Today on Far Future Horizons we present an alternate history of hominid evolution. What if early humans branched off into two major subdivisions? One branch adapting to an entirely terrestrial existence, the pedigree that gave rise to Homo sapiens, the other settling to an entirely aquatic existence, the lineage that eventually gave rise to aquatic humanoids (or Aquanoids), the mermaids of myth and legend. This was the main thrust of the mock documentary “Mermaids: The Body Found” which first aired in the United States on May 27^th, 2012.

As mock documentaries (or mockumentaries) go I rather liked “Mermaids: The Body Found” because the scenes depicting the early evolution of Mermaids from Aquatic Apes is very reminiscent of Elaine Morgan’s work in connection to the Aquatic Ape hypothesis. This mockumentary does an excellent job of presenting a plausible, even if doubtful, scientific hypothesis of how Aquatic humanoids could have evolved. No fossil evidence has yet come to light that supports the Aquatic Ape hypothesis . Nor has any evidence of aquatic humanoids ever been found.

A Voyage to Mars as Envisioned by Stephen Baxter

Stephen Baxter’s alternate-history novel “Voyage” envisions a possible manned mission to Mars employing Apollo–Skylab technology. Written back in 1996 Voyage is a wonderful novel outlining in detail a possible Post-Apollo Space Program that could have place people on Mars as early as 1986.

Baxter’s novel is epic in scope and spans a period of time from 1963 to 1986 interweaving real history with his alternate timeline. In this alternate history John F. Kennedy survives the assassin’s bullet in 1963 (although Jackie was killed) and steps down from office. Vice president Lyndon B. Johnson serves out the rest of Kennedy’s term of office and wins the 1964 presidential election and remains in office until 1968. On the day of the Apollo 11 Moon landing former president Kennedy sets into motion a series of events that will culminate with humans setting foot on Mars on March 28th, 1986.

Voyage is a thoroughly enjoyable novel and a very realistic depiction of a doable but very risky Mars mission scenario utilizing Apollo technology to its limits.