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When Angels Wept

208 statements
40 feature instances
4 referencing feature instances

When Angels Wept	type	TVTItem
When Angels Wept	label	When Angels Wept
When Angels Wept	page	WhenAngelsWept
When Angels Wept	comment	When Angels Wept: A What-If History of the Cuban Missile Crisis is a 2010 Alternate History novel written by Eric Swedin. It posits a simple question: what if the titular crisis had spun out of control?In 1961, following the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Fidel Castro feared an invasion by the U.S. was imminent. With the help of his new ally, the Soviet Union, they sneaked into Cuba strategic missiles tipped with nuclear warheads and Soviet troops armed with tactical nuclear weapons. However, an American U-2 spy plane flight would soon find the Soviet missile sites in October 1962, thus sparking the famous missile crisis. For thirteen terrifying days, the world watched nervously as the two superpowers moved toward escalation, holding the world’s fate in their hands. Finally, Nikita Khrushchev blinked. He agreed to withdraw the weapons from Cuba in return for John F. Kennedy’s pledge not to invade the island.In the novel, the fateful U-2 spy mission is delayed due to poor weather, leaving the Cubans and Soviets more time to build up their missile sites. The result is a far more dire situation, where Kennedy and his generals feel forced to act much swifter and more harshly, leading to a military invasion and, ultimately, a global nuclear exchange, referred to as "The Fire". Written from the perspective of an unnamed American-born Australian historian decades later, it details how these events happened, the aftermath and how the world can hopefully learn from them.
When Angels Wept	fetched	2023-07-24T06:43:48Z
When Angels Wept	parsed	2023-07-24T06:43:48Z
When Angels Wept	isPartOf	DBTropes
When Angels Wept / int_13a6b7ef	type	Gaia's Lament
When Angels Wept / int_13a6b7ef	comment	Gaia's Lament: The environment takes a serious beating during the Fire. The worst of the damage is actually in the stratosphere, where nitrous oxides in the smoke and debris damage the ozone layer, causing it to degrade by 52% in the Northern Hemisphere and 12% in the Southern. Greater exposure to UV rays cause rates of skin cancer in humans and animals to shoot up a thousand fold, and also makes it difficult for plants to grow. In the decades since, it's shown substantial recovery. While the world manages to recover, large areas of North America, Europe and Northern Asia are still too radioactive to be safely habitable for humans. Nature, on the other hand, recovers fairly quickly.
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When Angels Wept / int_18d15922	type	Title Drop
When Angels Wept / int_18d15922	comment	Title Drop: On the eve of the Fire, the writer recalls something his father said.
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When Angels Wept / int_1c445e86	type	Poor Communication Kills
When Angels Wept / int_1c445e86	comment	Poor Communication Kills: Quite literally in many cases, as Khruschev fails to notify the Warsaw Pact members or China that a nuclear war is underway until bombs start dropping on them.
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When Angels Wept / int_2206fd8c	type	Fallen States of America
When Angels Wept / int_2206fd8c	comment	Fallen States of America: Averted. While badly damaged by the Fire and a second civil war, the United States manages to survive as a political entity and recover, returning to its pre-Fire GDP by 1976 and population by 1984. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it's now become the world's sole superpower, and has dismantled its remaining nuclear stockpile.
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When Angels Wept / int_2a035a26	type	Allohistorical Allusion
When Angels Wept / int_2a035a26	comment	Allohistorical Allusion: The United States remains as the world's sole superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It just came decades earlier and took a nuclear war to occur.
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When Angels Wept / int_2e285a8b	type	Person as Verb
When Angels Wept / int_2e285a8b	comment	Person as Verb: After the Fire, "Kennedy" and "Khruschev" have both become expletives in their own right.
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When Angels Wept / int_32c082ae	type	Bury Your Disabled
When Angels Wept / int_32c082ae	comment	Bury Your Disabled: There's speculation that people in the former Soviet Union kill children with lower I.Q.'s because they're too much of a burden on their communities.
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When Angels Wept / int_3687d605	type	Rapid Aging
When Angels Wept / int_3687d605	comment	Rapid Aging: One of the unforeseen consequences of the Fire is a disease known as Accelerated Growth Syndrome (AGS), which causes people to prematurely age, reaching full maturity around age ten, also causing intellectual disability as the brain fails to fully develop. The results are people who are much Younger Than They Look with I.Q.'s around 60-70.
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When Angels Wept / int_372bc105	type	Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism
When Angels Wept / int_372bc105	comment	Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: While unflinching in its depictions of the horrors of a nuclear war and its aftermath, the story falls closer to the idealistic end, as the world recovers and humanity works together to ensure nothing like the Fire ever happens again.
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When Angels Wept / int_3bc88a7f	type	Foregone Conclusion
When Angels Wept / int_3bc88a7f	comment	Foregone Conclusion: It's made clear from the premise alone that nuclear war is going to happen. We can only learn the chain of events that lead up to it.
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When Angels Wept / int_3e7a80ee	type	Second American Civil War
When Angels Wept / int_3e7a80ee	comment	Second American Civil War: A brief one occurred a year after the Fire, where a highly reactionary New Confederacy emerged in opposition to the pre-Fire Civil Rights Movement. While the world worries the Neo-Confederates might get their hands on any remaining nukes, they're ultimately crushed within three years.
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When Angels Wept / int_40cc0c7e	type	Bittersweet Ending
When Angels Wept / int_40cc0c7e	comment	Bittersweet Ending: While hundreds of millions died in the Fire and the consequences are still being felt decades later, the Cold War is long over and the world is recovering.
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When Angels Wept / int_449584c	type	Giant Wall of Watery Doom
When Angels Wept / int_449584c	comment	Giant Wall of Watery Doom: The fate of Pearl Harbor when a Soviet submarine fires a nuclear torpedo at its entrance. This results in a tsunami with fifty-foot waves, not only destroying the harbor facilities but damaging shorelines across the coast for six miles in both directions. The resulting fallout also reaches into Honolulu and kills half the population within two months.
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When Angels Wept / int_63ee8101	type	Reclaimed by Nature
When Angels Wept / int_63ee8101	comment	Reclaimed by Nature: Ten years after the Fire, United Nations commissioned teams are sent to investigate the damage in the former Soviet Union. They find large areas of Europe and Northern Asia, while still radioactive, are teaming with plants and wildlife, including bears, fish, and new species of radiotrophic fungi. The writer gets to visit the ruins of Yekaterinburg and sees it overtaken by greenery, now home to moose and birds.
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When Angels Wept / int_6454966e	type	World War III
When Angels Wept / int_6454966e	comment	World War III: Natch.
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When Angels Wept / int_76933235	type	Depopulation Bomb
When Angels Wept / int_76933235	comment	Depopulation Bomb: The United States loses 31.5 million- 16.4% of its population- in the two years after the Fire. The Soviet population, meanwhile, drops from 218 million to 74 million- a loss of 66%- within five years. Globally, thanks to additional nuclear strikes, famine, disease, radiation sickness and the resulting nuclear cooling, it's estimated that nearly a billion people died.
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When Angels Wept / int_76f0d7a5	type	Historical Fiction
When Angels Wept / int_76f0d7a5	comment	Historical Fiction: How the story actually starts out, detailing the real history behind everything from Castro's takeover of Cuba to the early days of the Crisis. It's only in October 1962 that the story moves into Alternate History.
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When Angels Wept / int_7913833c	type	Balkanize Me
When Angels Wept / int_7913833c	comment	Balkanize Me: After the Fire, the Soviet Union's member states break away, while Russia itself fractures into Muscovy and the Siberian Federation. With the destruction of Beijing during the Fire, China splinters into a handful of warlord states. The Nationalists launch an invasion from Taiwan and reconquer the Fujian Province, but find themselves unable to press further. Inverted with South Korea, who manages to conquer the North after it's hit with 35 American bombs.
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When Angels Wept / int_79a60aec	type	For Want of a Nail
When Angels Wept / int_79a60aec	comment	For Want of a Nail: Due to bad weather, the U-2 mission that would've revealed the Cuban missile sites is launched a week late, on October 21.
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When Angels Wept / int_7c3dda61	type	Sliding Scale of Alternate History Plausibility
When Angels Wept / int_7c3dda61	comment	Sliding Scale of Alternate History Plausibility: A hard-as-diamond Type I. Swedin has said his work is closer to actual history than speculative fiction.
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When Angels Wept / int_7d5324cf	type	The Federation
When Angels Wept / int_7d5324cf	comment	The Federation: Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland unite as the Scandinavian Federation after the Fire.
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When Angels Wept / int_8e69fee0	type	Double-Blind What-If
When Angels Wept / int_8e69fee0	comment	Double-Blind What-If: The story ends with speculation about what would've happened if the U-2 mission had occurred as planned, and given more time for Kennedy's decision-making. The writer muses on whether the crisis could've been averted and maybe shocked the world away from nuclear war, though he remains skeptical of the idea that the Cold War could've ever ended peacefully. Nuclear winter, a term coined in our world in 1983, is an obscure concept and only discussed as a theoretical possibility should the arms race have continued and the war come later.
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When Angels Wept / int_91e894b4	type	Apocalypse How
When Angels Wept / int_91e894b4	comment	Apocalypse How: The Fire is a Class 0 for most of the Northern Hemisphere. The worst of the damage is in Russia, where it borders on Class 1: over 134 cities are nuked, the population is shrunken and starving, and their industrial base is utterly demolished.
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When Angels Wept / int_91e8ab37	type	Apocalypse Not
When Angels Wept / int_91e8ab37	comment	Apocalypse Not: As devastating as the Fire is, it doesn't prove to be the end of humanity or even civilization itself. Reconstruction takes place not long afterward, and many nations escape nuclear destruction entirely. Even cities like Chicago, which took several direct hits, are rebuilt and repopulated.
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When Angels Wept / int_9d67ad5c	type	Nuclear Mutant
When Angels Wept / int_9d67ad5c	comment	Nuclear Mutant: Referenced but ultimately averted. While there exist rumors of children born after the Fire with four legs or psychic powers, there's no evidence for it; fetuses with such severe mutations simply don't survive.
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When Angels Wept / int_b4eff8a8	type	Epic Fail
When Angels Wept / int_b4eff8a8	comment	Epic Fail: A note is made that, out of all the bombs fired at the U.S., only about 10% of them actually reached their targets.
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When Angels Wept / int_b53077b3	type	Take That!
When Angels Wept / int_b53077b3	comment	Take That!: The writer mentions how, after the Fire, conspiracy theorists have accused the United States of being the aggressor and attacking the Soviet Union first, even though the evidence says otherwise, and that any attempt to correct them only leads to you getting accused of being part of the conspiracy.
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When Angels Wept / int_ba9073e6	type	Land Downunder
When Angels Wept / int_ba9073e6	comment	Land Down Under: Australia becomes a new global power after the Fire, with Sydney becoming the new home of the United Nations Headquarters and millions of immigrants from the Northern Hemisphere moving in, including the American-born writer.
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When Angels Wept / int_c335b9ec	type	Irony
When Angels Wept / int_c335b9ec	comment	Irony: The Soviet Union is destroyed on November 7, 1962, the forty-fifth anniversary of the end of the Bolshevik Revolution.
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When Angels Wept / int_c8c968c3	type	The Alliance
When Angels Wept / int_c8c968c3	comment	The Alliance: A New Commonwealth is established after the Fire, now including the United States, which petitions to join the United Nations in 1975.
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When Angels Wept / int_cdaa029f	type	Nuclear Weapons Taboo
When Angels Wept / int_cdaa029f	comment	Nuclear Weapons Taboo: In-universe, understandably. After the Fire, America completely dismantled her remaining arsenal and the United Nations Nuclear Control Commission is on the lookout to ensure no one ever creates another nuclear weapon again.
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When Angels Wept / int_d243518d	type	In Spite of a Nail
When Angels Wept / int_d243518d	comment	In Spite of a Nail: Lyndon Johnson becomes the 36th president, succeeding the deceased John F. Kennedy. Despite a brutal nuclear war and outside pressure from the New Commonwealth, Apartheid in South Africa still comes to an end in 1991.
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When Angels Wept / int_dddbdc26	type	Monumental Damage
When Angels Wept / int_dddbdc26	comment	Monumental Damage: Inevitably so. During the destruction of Washington, D.C., every building at the National Mall- the White House, the Capitol, the Smithsonian museums, and the presidential monuments- are all obliterated.
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When Angels Wept / int_e003c829	type	History Repeats
When Angels Wept / int_e003c829	comment	History Repeats: Once Mao and the Chinese Communist Party are wiped out, China enters another Warlord Era.
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When Angels Wept / int_ef4d8558	type	A World Half Full
When Angels Wept / int_ef4d8558	comment	A World Half Full: On the one hand, the world is still scarred by the Fire, hundreds of millions have died, many cities and cultural treasures have been lost, diseases and genetic disorders are rampant and some hostile factions- such as the white minority government of Rhodesia- still cling to power. On the other hand, the Cold War is long over, nuclear winter didn't happen, humanity has survived and managed to recover, and the United Nations is committed to ensuring nuclear war never happens again. The writer muses that humanity is lucky that nuclear war happened in 1962. Had it come after a bit more proliferation, the damage would've been far worse.
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When Angels Wept / int_f32d85ab	type	20 Minutes into the Future
When Angels Wept / int_f32d85ab	comment	20 Minutes into the Future: The story is told through a textbook written in 1996.
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When Angels Wept / int_f516f938	type	Never Found the Body
When Angels Wept / int_f516f938	comment	Never Found the Body: Both Kennedy and Khruschev are thought to have died in the destruction of their respective capitals, as their bodies were never recovered.
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When Angels Wept / int_f651b980	type	Forbidden Zone
When Angels Wept / int_f651b980	comment	Forbidden Zone: In he post-Fire U.S., exclusion zones have been established in a large portion of North Dakota, Amarillo, Texas; and New York City and Long Island, all of which were sites of groundburst nuclear weapons.
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When Angels Wept / int_ffad4e9f	type	Shown Their Work
When Angels Wept / int_ffad4e9f	comment	Shown Their Work: Swedin himself is a history professor and the story is presented as a legitimate historical textbook, complete with references and cited sources.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

When Angels Wept	hasFeature	Apocalypse Not / int_25fd072b
When Angels Wept	hasFeature	Double-Blind What-If / int_25fd072b
When Angels Wept	hasFeature	Gaia's Lament / int_25fd072b
When Angels Wept	hasFeature	Sliding Scale of Alternate History Plausibility / int_25fd072b

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