I'm imagining up a world where, through incredible science, the soviets successfully develop genetic engineering, the west develop psychic powers, and such things. Lots of inspiration from the metal gear solid series. I want to include some cool interesting real life people, like Ted Kaczynski, and make them even more interesting, like him becoming president or something. Then I also need cool locations, like an east german state run gay disco club. Any suggestions?
through incredible science, the soviets successfully develop genetic engineering, the west develop psychic powers, and such things.
Ok so here's a question: can the tech extend life? Or bring back the dead? So that you can have Lenin or Tsiolkovsky or Rasputin in the 1980s?
If they can bring people back from the dead they would bring people back to the dead according to the priorities of the soviet union.
So Rasputin is unlikely and Lenin while obvious would probably get pushback (which would likely make a good plot element) as Lenin being brought back to life would mean the people in charge of the soviet union would have their authority massively undermined. And that's not even considering the fact that the cold war was a delicate balance with each side afraid to provoke the other too far.
Also due to all the espionage once one side finds something that big both sides would have it eventually so now there's the question of who the Americans would bring back
Lenin's body is preserved, making it much easier to some kinds of resurrection tech
yeah but bringing Lenin back would have basically meant that the people in charge would no longer be in charge so a plotline about leadership working to prevent the ressurection of Lenin would make a lot of sense as well as have potential for a lot of conflict for example with both genuine socialists and opportunists not knowing who or what to be loyal to
as well as genuine concerns about a ressurected Lenin in a world of nuclear stalemate as even a commited socialist might worry about introducing an element that has potential to upset that delicate balance and someone concerned about holding on to power might lie to other people or even themselves about their true motive there
a story about ressurecting people long dead raises questions about whether the dead belong in the past
I was going to suggest bringing back people from the dead as well, look into Russian cosmism. It’s origins are well before the 80s but I think it could add an interesting dimension to the setting, and it has a historical and cultural basis
https://theconversation.com/amp/russian-cosmism-a-national-mythology-against-transhumanism-152780
https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/akwx3k/the-proto-communist-plan-to-resurrect-everyone-who-ever-lived
The SRB podcast is also a good resource for Russian and Soviet history in general from a leftist perspective. A bit academic in style, but this episode covers some of it: https://srbpodcast.org/2020/03/27/immortalism-and-transhumanism-in-russia/
It looks like for the 80s there was a real military unit in the USSR that was inspired partly by cosmist ideas and paranormal/psychic stuff as well. Savin Alexei Yurievich and the 10003 unit, see https://valenteshop.ru/en/voennaya-ekstrasensorika-fabrika-voennyh-ekstrasensov-v-sssr/
I was considering doing it in afghanistan during the soviet war, any specific suggestions for other places?
Abandoned hidden bunker in the mountains of Albania that's been totally forgotten and since been converted into a small communal farm for a communist cell.
I would strongly suggest you avoid glorifying the unabomber mainly as he commited a string of random murders but also because he wasn't a leftist at all and was in fact an incredibly racist libertarian his critique of industrial society is a bit like those people in the civil war who wanted to end slavery so they could get rid of all the black people the institutions he was against suck but holy shit was he against them for the wrong reasons. It's like talking up Jack the ripper it's just weird and frankly ghoulish
if you want to include him anyway altering his history so the CIA experiments ran on him at college were to develop psychic powers and they worked leading to him using those powers in a campaign of random attrocities.
Yeah I wouldn't be of a mind to glorify him even as president, but keeping him as a deranged terrorist is probably the safest bet.
a deranged terrorist is probably best yeah. Also it's worth keeping in mind that he was antisocial and reclusive so becoming president would be a bit inexplicable.
on an unrelated note a potentially interesting piece of alternate history would be a black nationalist breakaway state in the south coming to be in the 60's led by the black panthers which was at one point a real concern for the US establishment particularly as while there were never that many black people in America as an overall demographic they were highly concentrated in the south
I was thrown by the phrase cool real life people.
although the unabomber would make a difficult villain to include as he commited ultimately low stakes for society as a whole attacks remotely which doesn't add a lot to work with and his real life murders make him an uncomfortable figure to change too much as he has actual living victims he's not like dracula he hurt real people who's pain is deserving of respect and empathy and if you change very much it would probably be better to just create a fictional villain instead
Escobar is exactly the kind of person I wanna include, thank you for that one.
For the psychic power stuff on the US side look into Project Stargate, there's all sorts of colorful characters and stuff should you go down that youtube rabbithole, the wiki should be enough for interesting figures and ideas for places though, maybe.
You could use it to deconstruct the Tianamen Square protests (or create something similar)- if they're psychic they might just give off a "vibe" that people don't trust outside the West and therefore can't gain support for Operation Yellowbird, "pro-western democracy" type views, so you can present the narrative of people being against Deng's reforms rather than flatly anti-communist.
Also you should have some "anti-psycher" tech in there.
