The World As We Know It, After the First World War.

Two weeks ago I went to the "I was 20 in 14" expo in liege, it's a very impressive exposition about the First World War. We were guided through all the events that expired, from the events that caused this war, to the signing of the peace treaty. One of the things I didn't know before is that one man (Gavrilo Princip) almost single handedly caused the First World War to happen. In 1914 he shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and in response Austria-Hungary declared war to the Kingdom of Serbia.

This makes me wonder, where would the world be right now, if it wouldn't be for this assassination. Lets imagine Schrödinger was right about his cat and the universe could have collapsed differently. What would the other universe look like?

Let's take a look into this alternate universe. To have a clear picture of all the good and bad that came out of the First World War, we should first understand, the First World War caused the second one, which in turn caused the Cold War and "The golden age of capitalism". So what would be different?

What would the current world population be, if it wasn't for the First World War? The First and Second World War combined counted 97 million casualties. That's about 1.3 percent of the current world population and of course these people would have had children, and their children would have had children. accounting the average birth rate over this period that would account for a total population decrease of 890 million, more than 12% of the current world population! of course many of them would have died but that still increases our population by about 10%.

Our current world is also shaped by the war's innovations. Weapons, airplanes and infrastructure are a big part of this innovation. But other things you might not think about; cosmetic surgery (on the disfigured, after the war). But also the moon landing driven by the Cold War. And I'm not even talking about the horrible experiments the Nazi scientists did on the people they perceived no less then animals. Even this horrible act brought us important medical and scientific information.

Would you like to live in this alternate universe?
Maybe there wouldn't even be internet.