Those mad heaps and their (not so) mad drivers

A good part of this blog has been dedicated mostly to people and the historical elements that could have been different, or several books/films/videogames/others dedicated to alternative history. Today, this routine is going to change, and this post will be dedicated to an important, but sometimes little used, element of our history: vehicles. Both the military and civilian kind.

Yes, it is true, military vehicles have influence history thanks to war, particularly during the 20^th century, when war began to become something won by whomever could bring more war vehicles to the battlefield or whoever built the best planes, but maybe, for some of you, the civilian vehicles are not so important. I quote Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Alliec Commander in Europe during World War Two:

The most vital equipment for our successes in Africa and Europe were the bulldozer, the jeep, the 2.5-ton truck and the C-47 plane. Curiously, none of them is designed for combat.

And they certainly did their job well, enormously contributing to the victory in that war, particularly during the Battle of the Bulge, when the American trucks were able to transport two full divisions from France to Belgium in one day.

But, let's go with the idea we are dealing with today: vehicles. Not any kind of vehicle, but vehicles that make appearances in alternative history. There are many ideas in culture about vehicles that never existed, but could have come to life, or that appear a lot in there because they did not have that much influence in real life. And there are so many possibilities...

• Flying cars: yes, there are some in reality, but they have yet to go past the "prototype" phase, and they barely have flight autonomy due to the great consumption of fuel they require just to keep flying. However, films, comics and TV series show them very often. Who does not remember how Doc Brown said that thing about "Where we are going, we won't need roads" before starting up his Delorean DMC-12 and start flying in Back to the Future? The film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang also had a flying care, invented by the main character. And, in the TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has, as one of its elements, Agent Coulson's car, Lola, which can fly, the same way they did in the old Marvel's S.H.I.E.L.D. comics.
• Zeppelins and dirigibles: very much ruined in the eyes of the public after the terrible Hindenburg accident of 1937, it is actually a (not completely) undeserved fame, and nowadays scientific and engineering advances have made them more secure and useful. Due to the Imperial Airship Scheme, by which the United Kingdom had the idea to develop a fleet of airships that would connect all parts of the British Empire, and which the accident of the R-101 forced to drop, it is common to see that, if the British Empire remains powerful, the dirigible becomes popular. The Two Georges by Harry Turtledove and Richard Dreyfuss (yes, the actor), in which the American Revolution does not take place, has dirigibles as the main long distance transport. Doctor Who's chapters "Rise of the Cybermen"/"The Age of Steel", in which the TARDIS accidentally goes to an alternative world where the United Kingdom becomes the Republic of Great Britain, there are zeppelins everywhere. In the last version of The Three Musketeers, one of the elements that changes is the presence of dirigibles, apparently an invention of Leonardo da Vinci. And, in the webcomic Girl Genius, Europe's most powerful noble's base is Castle Wulfenbach, an enormous dirigible that is more than a kilometer in length.
• Mechas: these are huge robots of humanoid form, normally controlled by a human. They tend to be very famous in Japan, where many manga and anime have, as their main characters, mecha pilots, although they do happen to appear among the western public. I am sure that anyone around still remembers Mazinger Z and his "Rocket Punch!" attack, which he used to fight evil. More western are the Power Rangers with those mechas that combined to form a bigger one (though, those fist fights were pitiful). And, more recently, we have the film Pacific Rim by Guillermo del Toro where the Pacific nations decide to build enormous mechas called Jaegers (after the German word for Hunter) to fight the invading monsters, nicknamed Kaijus.
• Tanks: yes, even tanks belong to this category, even if they exist. For example, Leonardo da Vinci designed in real life a prototype of tank that was the inspiration for many things, such as a scene in the videogame Assassin's Creed II in which Ezio, the main character, rides this tank and pilots it, attacking an enemy position thanks to the cannons that have been mounted on the tank. The Chaos Timeline (which I spoke about in the Genghis Khan post) has Germany as the inventor of the steamtank. And we have three nearly-real facts, what I like to call The Three Teuton Terrors (bad alliteration/pun, I know, but I thought it was hilarious): Maus, Ratte and Monster, the three supertanks invented by the Nazis, none of which were ever built en masse, due to how useless they were (Maus, the smallest, weighted 188 metric tons, while Ratte weighed 1000 metric tons and Monster 1500 metric tons), but they appear in some situations in which the Germans have either won or have access to advanced technology, such as the film Captain America: The First Avenger or the videogame Warfront Turning Point.
• Walking Tank: the European version of the Mecha, with a non-humanoid form and with a well-armed cabin. Generally, though, they are treated as something awesome but impractical, as their legs are a weak point that can be easily taken advantage of (if you don't believe me, ask the pilot of the AT-AT Luke Skywalker destroyed by tying a cable around its legs). The novel Leviathan has the Central Powers invent this type of tank to face against the genetically modified creatures the Entente members are using. The huge devices that give name to the Metal Gear videogame saga are another good example of this kind of vehicle.
• Airborne Carrier: probably one of the most impressive things that could ever be invented. A device that can fly and carry planes at the same time? Any army would love to have one of those: and they appear in many ways: they can be zeppelins capable of carrying one or two planes (they actually were able to do this in reality, although their recover capabilities were not so good) or they can be normal carriers equipped with systems that allow them to fly. Among the latter example is S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Helicarrier, an enormous aircraft carrier equipped with four powerful turbines that can rise the ship to a great height, as seen in The Avengers (Marvel's, not England's). The videogame Bioshock Infinite takes place in the floating city of Columbia, which has a fleet of dirigibles. And, to end with, the animation film Up, one of whose most important elements is the dirigible Spirit of Adventure, which carries several planes that have been modified by character Charles Muntz so that they can be piloted by his dogs.

So many possibilities that could have been amazing... did you know that one of the reasons petrol-powered cars won the war against electric cars was the discovery of oil wells in the United States, dropping the value of oil and making it a much more useful choice?

Well, that's all for today. I hope you have had fun with this, that you comment if you have any suggestions, and that I'll be back next Tuesday with another post. See you!