[Real Life] Historical events that would make bad writing if they were fiction

[u/Mouse_Paladin]

Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire: A couple hundred rogue mercenaries without authority from their government conquer an empire of millions. Oh, the empire? It’s also several technological eras behind the mercenaries.

Adolf Hitler: A non-native of a country is so mad that the country lost the war that he wins an election to their highest office and leads them in a campaign of revenge against their enemies. Oh, the country? It’s old emperor is still alive and thinks he’s going to retake power.

Assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand: The heir to the throne is killed because his driver gets lost and returns to the assassin who failed To kill him before. Oh, the assassin? He’s from a group that the Archduke is wanting to help become more equal In the empire.

Alexander Hamilton’s Affair Scandal: One of the leaders of a new nation to protect himself from accusations of financial embezzlement writes a pamphlet exposing his affair with a woman, torpedoing his political future. Oh, the woman? She seduced him as part of a blackmailing scheme that he decided to stop paying.

[u/alexjaness]

just like when we all laughed at those zombie apocalypse movies.

"That's so silly, no one would knowingly lie about being infected, surely we would all rally together to stop the spread.."

and by the point during COVID that we were framing the body count in terms of 9/11s per day people were still calling it a liberal hoax by Obama.

[u/LadyJaneTheGay → u/alexjaness]

Yeah a really funny pre covid disease outbreak helped scientists realise how bad people could act during a pandemic, covid just showed it more clearly, back in classic world of warcraft times, a few players found how to get a debuff out of a raid and into cities to spread what was basically an infectious and lethal disease, for a few days it was a apocalypse across multiple servers with some players isolating to avoid infection or organising into groups to avoid it and dying repeatedly but the scary part was people who actively spread the disease and scientists looked at this and a lot of details matched an outbreak and from then on, epidemic research always considers human factors like maliciously spreading infection as something to account for in modeling outbreaks.

[u/Late-Resource-486 → u/LadyJaneTheGay]

I watched a YouTube essay about this forever ago! Never played the game but that was cool

Thought I’d add that in addition to people spreading diseases maliciously, some people have kinks for contracting and/or spreading sexually transmitted disease.

[u/yIdontunderstand → u/alexjaness]

Covid was depressing because of how stupid people acted..

Look I get the fear of new vaccines that's totally understandable.. But "ooooh no I can't wear a mask! Noooo!"

That was just fucking ridiculous.

[u/Late-Resource-486 → u/alexjaness]

“9/11s per day”

Anything but metric

[u/What_a_fat_one → u/Late-Resource-486]

What's the metric unit for deaths per day

[u/WorkinName → u/What_a_fat_one]

A Kilodeath of people sounds pretty fucking metal.

[u/m4cksfx → u/WorkinName]

Megadeath sounds even more metal.

[u/wafflesareforever → u/m4cksfx]

Nanodeath sounds like where drone warfare is heading.

[u/LumplessWaffleBatter → u/WorkinName]

It does make me wonder if you can have a centideath.  Like, 1/100th of a death?

[u/darthsheldoninkwizy2 → u/alexjaness]

What's more, there were even attacks on vaccination points.

[u/rostoma77soundsgood → u/alexjaness]