The Multiverse, the Infinite Earths Projects, and the LDS Church may hold the keys towards resolving the Fermi Paradox.

To review: Given that (as the late Elder Maxwell was fond of putting it) there are indeed more stars in the heavens than sands on all the beaches of Earth, the question naturally arises: where is everyone else?  Such was the question famously put by the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, and has since come to be known popularly as the Fermi Paradox. For the fact of the matter is that astronomers have scanned the stars for decades now with the most powerful telescopes known to history, but we have yet to uncover the barest traces of any sort of extraterrestrial civilizations.  To put that in perspective: the entire visible universe is roughly 13 billion years old; yet it would surely take any sort of space-faring peoples—even ones restricted to zero faster-than-light travel—less than a million years of interstellar generation ships to not only colonize but completely encase our entire galaxy in solar panels.  Even just within the relatively brief 4.5 billion years that our Earth has existed (of which we humans have occupied it for only the slightest fraction of cosmic time), space aliens in the Milky Way could have reasonably accomplished said feat at least 400,000 times over—including repeated colonizations of the Earth itself—and yet we search the archeology record and scour the heavens and find no evidence that anyone has ever even tried.  Our Hubble satellites penetrate the absolute limits of outer space, but we have found not so much as the detritus of a Dyson sphere, or the lonely ruins of an abandoned city on some distant exo-planet.  Again, to emphasize: we have zero evidence that anyone has ever even tried.  This fact darkly implies that there is some sort of unknown “Great Filter” which stops alien civilizations from advancing into interstellar colonization.  The great question hanging over all astrophysics is simply: what is that Great Filter, and will it filter us, too?

Among the sorts of scientists who obsess over these sorts of things, there are generally 6 accepted hypotheses for the Great Filter:

1. Life is incredibly rare in the universe.  We may in fact be on the only planet in the history of the cosmos to produce life.  
2. Life might be common, but complex (i.e. vertebral, complex nervous systems) life might be rare.  Such might explain the absence of advanced space-faring aliens.
3. Complex life might be common, but perhaps intelligence is rare.  There may, for example, be dolphins swimming on some Europa-like Ocean planet, but they are not constructing tools, let alone rocket ships.
4. Intelligent life might be common, but these civilizations invariably and absolutely without exception destroy themselves before colonizing their galaxy, whether through nuclear weapons or mass-pollution or both.  Remember, we have found no evidence for interstellar alien civilizations.  If anyone else had colonized the galaxy, we would have seen it by now.  Every single advanced, intelligent alien species must have failed miserably at space travel for our observations to be believed.
5. Intelligent life might in fact be common, and even commonly seeks to colonize space—but all of them, without exception, are destroyed by some unknown outside force before they make it far.
6. We are the first species to ever develop space travel.  There will be others, but all as yet are more primitive than us.  

Needless to say: 1) is almost too sad for words; 2) is fine but kind of boring; 3) could be fun (interstellar dinosaurs!  Exo-planetary mammoths! pan-galactic jellyfish!), if at present unprovable; 4) is an almost too-on-the-nose Cold War allegory; 5) is downright Lovecraftian; and 6) feels a little too arrogantly Manifest Destiny-ish to be taken seriously. 

But there is also, I maintain, a seventh possibility: as a practicing Latter-day Saint, I am personally partial to the idea that: God Almighty has organized this universe for the mortal probation of his nigh-infinite spirit children and always translates their planets to the Celestial realms of our Heavenly Father in the twinkling of an eye long before they even need or try to achieve interstellar colonization.  Now, I have volunteered this hyposthesis informally at various conferences and luncheons with my colleagues, and always get some good-natured chuckles out of it (especially from my fellow scientists in the Republic of China and the European Alliance). They usually just respond with something along the lines of, “Hey, it’s no more provable or disprovable than the others”, but they clearly don’t take it any more seriously than a mere flight of fancy. 

I, however, would like to offer this LDS hypothesis as more than in jest, for reasons that I think should be abundantly pertinent to those of us associated with the Infinite Earth Project, involved as we are in cataloguing all the various alternate timelines in the visible Multiverse (where we have also yet to encounter alien life, by the way).

As is well known, the vast majority of the Alternate Earths documented in the known Multiverse are quite similar to one another—varying only in minor details from each other (hence the presence of the well-documented “Mandela Effect”, wherein misremembered historical details become evidence of nearby, near-identical Earths leaking into our own dimensions)—while others diverge quite radically from the norm. These latter examples, naturally, gain the majority of popular attention, granting us glimpses into those worlds where, say, Nazi Germany won the Second World War, or the American Revolution never occurred.  

Yet it would be a mistake to dismiss the less glamorous, near-identical worlds as unworthy of our study: for it is not the outliers, but the Earths on the bell-curve that give us the most information about the shape and arc of human history.  Indeed, it has been by studying these infinite Earths that researchers have been able to identify certain recurring patterns which become remarkable if only for their regularity. Indeed, given the infinite diversity of the infinite Alternate Earths, one may naively expect certain events and conditions to be rare across the multiverse, and yet they still happen in a disturbingly large number of worlds. We see for example: the Scramble for Africa, which occurs which in nearly every timeline; the remarkable stability of Chinese and Indian history, remaining entirely identical to the Average Earth across far too many timelines to be coincidental; a conflict-prone mid-20th Century, pitting any two of the contemporaneous ideologies (Communism, Fascism, Democracy) against each other; and, for my interests, the endless recurrence of the Mormons in Deseret. 

In nearly every timeline, the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“Mormons”, informally) is identical to the Average Earth until Mormon settlers arrive in the Great Salt Lake Basin in the Summer of 1847. So many tiny, individual, insignificant choices must take place in each timeline—the Smith family choosing just the right township to move to in upstate New York, Martin Harris’ farm turning profitable at just the right time, Brigham Young even being home the day a missionary calls, and etc.—for exactly this result to occur. The probability of all those events going just right boggles the mind and integer-overflows the calculators.

I therefore offer some empirical support for my 7^th hypothesis to the Fermi Paradox: specifically, that if the rise of the LDS Church occurs in virtually all observable timelines, then perhaps there really is a single God of the Multiverse filtering all possible Earths into the Celestial Kingdom well before interstellar space travel ever becomes possible.  Now, I openly concede that this hypothesis remains as untestable and unprovable as the other six, but I believe it should nevertheless retain the same force and attention as the rest of them.  Here, in fact, is where it might in fact be most useful to examine all those Outlier Earths after all, since they can tell us so much more about the sheer tenacity, adaptability, and uncommon persistence of this most strange and peculiar repetition amidst the vast and unvaried spectrum of Average Earths.

Let us take a sampling…

Earth CVBIDHNS4638920874: Midwest Mormons

In this outlier world, the timeline diverges significantly in 1843, when LDS founder and Church president Joseph Smith, Jr., writes to all U.S. Presidential candidates concerning their intentions towards the “Mormon” peoples and their dispossession at the hands of the Missouri mobocrats.  Previous President Martin Van Buren had rather infamously stated that, “though your cause was just, I can do nothing for them, for I would lose the vote of Missouri.”  All ensuing Presidential candidates tended to follow the same strategy.  Yet in this particular timeline, the fiery and impetuous William Harrison had worn a coat to his inauguration after all, and therefore did not die of pneumonia 30 days into office as America’s shortest tenured President, thus never allowing Vice-President John Tyler to succeed him.  Hence, President Harrison was the incumbent campaigning for re-election in 1844, and so responded to Joseph Smith’s inquiries with a fire-rousing oath to force reparations upon the recalcitrant Missourians.  As a result, Smith convinced the Latter-day Saints to vote as a bloc for Harrison, by which he secured Illinois—and thus the entire victory in that contentious election—in favor of the Whig candidate Harrison.  Their loyalty to Harrison was rewarded with Federal Troops dispatched to southern Illinois to properly protect Joseph Smith while in jail in Carthage, Il under trumped-up charges of sedition and treason.  After his acquittal at a neutral court site up in Springfield (which trial was observed by a young Abraham Lincoln), Mormon tensions with their Illinois neighbors gradually simmered down.  Within a generation they were thoroughly ensconced in the region, as Midwestern as Mennonites and corn fields.  

Though they had thrown their weight whole-heartedly behind the rabidly pro-slavery Harrison, theirs was nevertheless simply a political alliance of momentary necessity; hence, when the Whig Party inevitably collapsed and its voters shifted to the nascent Republican Party (founded in nearby Iowa Territory), the Mormons had little ambivalence about shifting their allegiances as well, swiftly adopting the Republicans’ Anti-Slavery Platform (indeed, Joseph Smith had briefly considered a Presidential run on an Abolitionist platform himself, before President Harrison’s overtures caused him to shift tactics).  Indeed, the Saints became avid members of the Underground Railroad, assisting hundreds of slaves escaping out of Missouri (for whom there was little love lost), several of whom eventually became Seventies and even Apostles during the Reconstruction-era.  Indeed, a consequence of Joseph Smith eventually surviving to be 85 was that he could matter-of-factly continue apace his practice of ordaining Black converts as Elders, blithely blocking any possibility of a Priesthood ban that afflicted other timelines.  (Such, incidentally, also allowed the LDS Church to begin proselyting work in West Africa at least 2 full generations earlier than in most Average Earths).  The Nauvoo Legion acquitted itself well during the Civil War, being one of the few white units willing to fight alongside the Buffalo Soldiers—for which heroism, an elderly Joseph Smith was even granted an audience with President Abraham Lincoln and the Abolitionist Frederick Douglass, as depicted in a famous photograph.  Post-war, the Nauvoo Legion became fully integrated into the U.S. military as part of the Illinois National Guard.

By the year 2025, the greater Nauvoo/Zarahemla metropolitan area has become the largest urban center in both southern Illinois and eastern Iowa, rivaling Chicago and St. Louis as the pre-eminent metropolis of the Midwest; it is the cosmopolitan home of several sky-scrapers, a respected art museum with the largest collection of Dutch Post-Impressionist paintings outside of Amsterdam, and to popular NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB franchises.  Carthage, where Joseph Smith was once briefly jailed and threatened with mob violence, is now one of Nauvoo’s quieter suburbs.  The original Nauvoo Temple, still standing, is now part of a highly-gentrified neighborhood that is surrounded by a massive mall, second in size only to Minneapolis’s Mall of America. The city is also home to Joseph Smith University (JSU), a major private college with a Top 20 Dental school, Law school, and Astrophysics program; a Big 10 football team; and a women’s basketball team that regularly makes the Sweet 16.  Naturally, Nauvoo also hosts LDS Church global headquarters, the General Conference center, and 3 additional Temples in the outlying suburbs.  

The Great Salt Lake Basin, meanwhile, was eventually designated a National Park by the U.S. Department of the Interior under Teddy Roosevelt, with the remainder of the largely-uninhabited region we typically know as “Utah” being divvied up between Nevada, Idaho, Arizona, and Colorado.  There was brief discussion in the 1930s of making the area a resettlement zone for Romani refugees fleeing anti-Gypsy revanchism in fascist France and Italy, but such plans were scrapped in favor of the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska instead, after the Salt Lake basin was deemed too harsh and unsuitable for human settlement.

Global LDS membership as of 2025: 33,985,431.  

Earth CHNKOSND8639274: Mexican Mormons

The key timeline-divergence here emerges in 1848, when General Santa Anna rallies the Mexican military to repel and expel the invading U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War.  Manifest Destiny fatally defeated, all of what is commonly known among most Average Earths as California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, Wyoming, and yes, Utah, remains part of the Mexican Republic into the present day.  The Texas independence movement was resoundingly crushed, the traitorous white-settlers that the Mexican government had originally invited to settle the region were now forcibly expelled, and the Alamo became a swiftly forgotten footnote in the history of Anglo-Mexican relations.  The Mormons who had recently settled the Great Salt Lake Basin of Upper California, however, were permitted to stay, since they had been forcibly expelled from the United States themselves, and besides, were swiftly cultivating an otherwise inhospitable region.  The sticky situation surrounding the Mormon Battalion was easily dismissed, since they had clearly been coerced by the U.S. Army into reluctant service, and in any case had fired no shots during the entire Mexican-American War.  

Seeing the United States’ disastrous defeat in Mexico as a sure sign of divine judgment upon a hypocritical nation for the slayings of the Prophets Joseph and Hyrum, Brigham Young could not sing high enough praises of the Mexican government.  In numerous fiery sermons from the Tabernacle pulpit, he persuaded the Saints to proudly embrace their new-found Mexican citizenship, even encouraging the learning of Spanish in their homes and schools.  In exchange for their loyalty, the Mexican government not only allowed but encouraged the industrious Saints to set up further settlements all throughout Arizona, Sonora, Chihuahua, and the California coast.   

The California Gold Rush that began the following year swiftly enriched the coffers of the Mexican Republic, allowing them to quickly modernize their economy and infrastructure, build railroads and public schools, and fortify their military defenses.  As such, they were able to easily repel the French forces of Napoleon III when he attempted to install a puppet emperor in 1861 (the revived Mormon Battalion, incidentally, was part of the national coalition that decisively defeated the French at the Battle of Puebla).  These victories allowed President Benito Juarez to further strengthen the nascent Mexican democracy, crush the influence of the tyrannical and feudal Hacendados once and for all, and prevent the rise of the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship that arose in so many other timelines.  What’s more, with the United States left in shambles after the American Civil War (many slaves escaped into a suddenly more liberal Mexico), the Mexican Republic alone stood to become the preeminent economic, political, cultural, and military super-power of North America.  The Mormons had backed the right horse, and their alliance with a Mexico-in-ascension was taken by the Saints themselves as further proof of Brigham Young’s prophetic inspiration.

Nor were the Mormons content to merely settle across northern Mexico; their missionary program quickly reoriented itself away from Europe and the U.S. to instead face towards the broader Latin America.   Soon, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and the whole of Central and South America all became fertile fields ready for harvest, as Mormonism came to be regarded as a uniquely Mexican religion—and that at a time when Mexico had become a dominant hemispheric power that all the Latin American republics looked up towards as a proud bulwark against Yankee and European imperialism.  By the end of the 19^th century, Mormonism had flourished to become the largest minority religion (well behind Roman Catholicism, but still far ahead of most mainline Protestant sects) across not only Mexico but the majority of Hispano-America.  

By the year 2025, Mormons compose up to 10% of the local population in multiple Latin American nations.  Ciudad de Lago del Sal is Mexico’s fifth largest city (after the D.F., Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Los Angeles).  La Universidad de Brigham Young Politécnico is one of the top religious private colleges in all the Americas.  All General Conference speakers deliver their talks in Spanish, with English over-dubs when broadcast into British Canada and the modestly-sized United States.  7 of the 12 Apostles are of ethnically Spanish and Indigenous heritage, with the remaining 5 and 2 members of the First Presidency being of mixed Anglo-Spanish ancestry.  When Elder Bruno R. McConkie Alvarez published Doctrina Mormóna in the 1950s, there was no entry decrying Catholicism as the Great Whore of Babylon, since the Saints had long ago concluded that the Catholics were the most Christian of the sectarians, since it was not they but solely the Anglo-Protestants who had mobbed them out of Missouri.

Incidentally, one of the collateral effects of the Mormon rise with Mexico was the early spread of the LDS Church into Ireland.  Irish-American defectors to Santa Anna’s army (resentful of their maltreatment by U.S. nativists) had been marshalled and organized by Mexico into the San Patricio Battalion, where they fought with honor and distinction during the Mexican-American War.  Ireland and Mexico became sealed together with a bond of blood, and waves of Irish refugees fleeing the potato famine redirected their emigrations towards Mexico instead.  The Mexican government even returned the favor, sending arms and volunteers to assist in Ireland’s successful Wars of Independence in 1916.  Hence in this timeline, 17% of the Irish Republic identifies as Spanish-Mormon, and at least a handful of General Authorities hail from Belfast, Derry, and Dublin.

Global LDS membership as of 2025: 65,345,101.  

Earth CJISKDN0697245: Reservation Mormons

In all timelines, Joseph Smith, Jr. records a revelation on Christmas Day, 1832, (usually found in Doctrine and Covenants section 87) prophesying that the Civil War would commence with the rebellion of South Carolina.  The difference in this timeline is that the prophecy was literally fulfilled that year, as the South Carolina secession crisis—aggravated by the upset victory of the anti-slavery Henry Clay, Sr. over the incumbent Andrew Jackson—resulted in an American Civil War nearly a full 30 years before almost every other Average Earth.  The Union eventually won, an Emancipation Proclamation was signed, and Henry Clay came to occupy the same hallowed place in American history that Abraham Lincoln occupies in most other timelines.  The LDS Church was scarcely 2 years old when this conflict broke out (Joseph was drafted into the Union army along with all his brothers; Joseph miraculously survived but Hyrum was killed).  

The fuller ramifications of this alternate timeline for the Mormons came decades later, when the Utah War broke out in the 1850s, several years after the Saint’s settlement of the Salt Lake basin after their mobbed expulsion from Nauvoo, IL.  Absent the Abolitionist/Slaver-owner dilemma and looming specter of a potential Civil War (already a full generation old) to distract the nation, the Utah War (a minor footnote itself in most Average Earth textbooks) took on preeminent importance in national discourse, eventually resulting in the full-fledged invasion of Utah by the U.S. military.

The Utah War was an unmitigated disaster for the Saints: Salt Lake City was burned to the ground, the Saints massacred, and Brigham Young hung from the scaffolding of the never-completed Salt Lake Temple.  The survivors in the surrounding settlements became the only non-indigenous group in U.S. history to be herded into reservations.  The Mormon resettlement zone comprised what on most Average Earths are known as southern Idaho and western Montana.  

Tensions eventually simmered down in the 20^th century, though the LDS Church never fully recovered, either demographically or institutionally. A single small Temple was permitted to be built in the Idaho Falls conclave, and the Salt Lake Temple ruins are a pilgrimage site for the remnant faithful, like the wailing wall in Jerusalem is for the Jews.  The Mormons themselves, when they are regarded at all, are largely now considered a curio; and tourists passing through “Mormon country” tend to treat them as a much sadder, more traumatized version of the Amish—a people stuck out of time, from whom you might buy some old-fashioned blankets and gawk at their (illegal) polygomy, but little else.

Those few anthropologists who have taken an interest in the Mormon Reservation, have catalogued how the full name of the faith—the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—takes on a particularly apocalyptic bent.  Recalcitrant among outsiders, they nevertheless console ominously among themselves about how the Second Coming of Christ is ever imminent, when the Savior shall return to the Earth and cleanse it with fire, purging the wicked as the elements melt with a fervent heat.

Another collateral effect of the near-complete eradication of the Utah/Idaho Mormon Church is that the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (RLDS) grew to fill the vacuum and become the world’s predominant branch of the Mormon faith tradition.

Global LDS membership as of 2025: 1,552,141; Global RLDS membership: 9,888,211.

Earth CCVOYHMK86924: Deseret Mormons

This is another one of those interesting Earths wherein a large number of major historical events that have been strangely consistent across multiple timelines all seem to happen just a scotch too early.  Just as a small sampling: the American Civil War begins in 1852, not ’62, when a healthier President Zachary Taylor does not die early in office, but instead follows through on his threats to burn the South to the ground when they threaten secession.  There is no Missouri Compromise to postpone the inevitable, but a full-bore bloody conflict—and no steadying hand of Abraham Lincoln to restrain the bloodshed.  Likewise, the conservative revolt against President Mariano Arista in Mexico results not only in his exile, but in the newly-crowned Emperor Napoleon III of France attempting his bloody annexation of Mexico (at the conservatives’ invitation) a full decade early as well—and again, without the steely-eyed firmness of Benito Juarez to help weather the crisis.  A panicky and inexperienced Napoleon III also attempts to simultaneously recover the Louisiana purchase and the Quebec territories amidst the chaos of the American Civil War—which results in not only a violent response by British Canada, but a foolhardy attempt by the latter to recover New England during this disaster as well.

The results of all these ill-timed and ill-considered North American wars was catastrophic for all parties involved, and ultimately resulted in the economic and political ruin of the entire continent, which entered the 20^th century as one of the most politically unstable regions on the planet.  The Republic of Texas re-seceded from the Union, only to balkanize into an ever-fragmenting series of micro-states with no clear and continually fluctuating state boundaries, their innumerable mini-wars being funded by foreign overseas interests attempting to corner their immense oil reserves; as is the former Mexican Republic, which is locked is in a near perpetual state of Civil War between various Revolutionary and Reactionary interests.  Likewise, two of the earliest modern examples of a terrorist-state arose in Quebec and Louisiana; the Confederate States of America devolved into a proto-fascist white-supremacist ethno-state; British Canada suspended all Parliaments to become even more radically and repressively Monarchist than even Great Britain itself; the New England Peoples’ Democratic Republic became a communist dictatorship; and the larger Midwest a no-man’s land of roving warlords.

Against this backdrop, Brigham Young forged in blood the theocratic kingdom of Deseret, whose frankly-impressive dominions cover all of what is now Utah, southern Idaho, eastern Nevada, western Wyoming and Colorado, and all of Arizona, clear down into the former-Mexican states of Chihuahua (California and western Nevada remain under the loose-control of the provisional Mexican government).  Though the core cities of Salt Lake/Provo/Ogden remain (relatively) developed and stable (at least compared with the rest of the continent), their frontiers are constantly threatened by raiders, invaders, and opportunists.  (The Mormons themselves are not innocent in these matters either, for their religious zealotry still drives them to seek recovery of their ancient claims in the former Missouri Republic).  If the Mormons are no longer besieged by mobs and Feds, it is largely because the mobs have long since turned on each other, and the Federal government no longer exists. Indeed, the absolutist authority of the Church President is feared and respected enough across the continent, that he is sometimes called to serve as a power-broker between all these various sects; nevertheless, alliances are forged and broken among all these various competing states with alarming rapidity.  These permanently precarious circumstances have of course seriously hampered the Church’s overseas proselyting missions, and attempts to “gather into Zion” the converts have of necessity focused instead upon the Church’s far more stable and secure outposts in New Zealand, Hawaii, and Indonesia.

Global LDS membership as of 2025: 4,250,000 (estimated, since no reliable figures are available).  

Earth CQEKWHDKNF27857009: Chinese Mormons

In most Average Earths, Mormon missionaries first arrive in China (usually via the then-British colony of Hong Kong) in the early 1850s, where they struggle mightily with the language, enjoy only limited success, then finally give up and sail back to Utah.  In this timeline however, Hosea Stout, James Lewis, and Chapman Duncan embark on the inaugural Chinese mission 5 years earlier—and instead of giving up after their failures in Hong Kong, instead sally forth with faith across the Sham Chun River into Guangdong province of mainland China directly, making a beeline for the local Provincial capital of Guangzhou.   There, to their initial great jubilation (and much later to their incalculable horror), they immediately find their first convert in Hong Xuiquan, a disillusioned convert to Protestant Christianity who had recently been denied baptism by an American Baptist minister.  Pivoting enthusiastically to Mormonism instead, Hong soon claimed to receive visions that he was the “spiritual brother” of the recently martyred Joseph Smith.  He soon began preaching his unique syncretism of Mormon Christianity, Confucianism,  and Daoism across the frontier province of Guanxi, tapping into popular discontent against the corrupt Qing dynasty.

The new faith swept like wildfire across the country, with every attempt to suppress it by the ruling Manchus only swelling its ranks.  The ensuing Taiping Rebellion broke out December of 1850, lasted 14 years, and became the bloodiest civil war in world history, costing the lives of 20-30 million soldiers and civilians (albeit the majority died due to famine and pestilence).  What is even stranger, however, is that this particular version of the Taiping Rebellion was actually successful in overthrowing the Qing dynasty and sitting Hong Xuiquan upon the Heavenly Throne.  His Taiping Mormonism was instituted as the official religion of the Chinese state, with the collateral effect that—despite the most vehement denouncements from Salt Lake—his also became the most globally recognizable version of Mormonism.  The Utah Church was placed in the exceedingly strange position of becoming overshadowed by its own schismatic (even having to forcefully eject Taiping missionaries to Salt Lake City who attempted to unite the Utah church under the authority of the Beijing one in 1868), becoming a “minority faith” within their own faith tradition.  LDS missionaries worldwide have had to deal with the constant headache of being endlessly confused for the Taiping version.  The Mormons were still the villains of Arthur Conan Doyle’s debut Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study of Scarlett, but again, it was the Taiping version, not the Utah one, pulling off the neat hat-trick of combining the racist Yellow Peril stereotype with the retrograde anti-Mormon ones.

Another curious after-effect of the Taiping Mormon victory over the Qing Dynasty is that it prevented not only the 1911 Revolution, but the 1949 Communist one, as well—for one of the core elements of Mormonism that Hong Zuiquan did preserve was the concept of the United Order, wherein society was structured without rich or poor, but all wealth was consecrated for the benefit of all, in accordance with both Acts 2:47-48 and 4 Nephi 1:3.  China therefore became the world’s first truly “Socialist” nation nearly a full half-century before the Bolsheviks.  Although the Japanese Empire attempted to forcefully break up the United Order during WWII (most notoriously during the Nanjing Massacre), Elder Mao Zedong of the Seventy eventually routed the Japanese out of the country after leading the “Mormon Battalion” on the New Long March to Zion.  Though nominally allies during WWII, relations between the Taiping and Utah Churches remain testy.

Global LDS membership as of 2025: 1,104,567,098 (Taiping) and 16,444,631 (Utah).

Earth CQEKWHDKNF27857002: United Order Mormons

Throughout the vast majority of Average Earths, the egalitarian United Order economic system first attempted by Joseph Smith in the Midwest—and again by Brigham Young in the Intermountain West—simply fizzles out without fanfare in the face of the inexorable pressures of assimilation into the capitalist American mainstream.  Certain relics like the ZCMI or certain language in the Temple ceremony stick around for awhile like a sort of prehensile tail, but certainly the United Order project had been quietly abandoned across the Church entire by the early 20^th century.

But in this outlier Earth, the United Order not only survives but thrives; the model pilot communities of Brigham City and Ordersville established by President Young to practice the Law of Consecration in their fullness do not merely diminish into unremarkable pit-stops along the I-15, but expand to become wealthy metropolises—the new crossroads of the West—mini-utopias of neither rich nor poor but equal partakers of the Heavenly Gift, blossoming in the desert like a rose.  Mormon settlements across Utah, Idaho, Alberta, and Arizona rush to emulate their examples before the end of the 19^th century; and by the dawn of the 20^th progressive luminaries like George Bernard Shaw, Leo Tolstoy, and Teddy Roosevelt are writing enthusiastic letters to Salt Lake inquiring how to replicate the UO abroad.  Karl Marx is forced to revise his statement on “religion being the opioid of the masses,” citing the Saints as an important exception in his landmark Kapital. Mormonism becomes especially popular among the broader Working Classes during the upheaval of the burgeoning Labor movement (such that Chicago in the early-20th century becomes a sort of mini-Utah, as Mormonism makes its triumphant return to the Midwest).  The Robber Barons of the Gilded Age even attempt to incite new state prosecution against the Saints, in order to break up the threat the UO poses to their power structures.  

All that changes, however, with 1929 and the start of the Great Depression.  FDR makes the United Order structure the chief cornerstone of his New Deal, and President Heber J. Grant graciously volunteers the services of the young Apostle Ezra Taft Benson to assist in its implementation, and thereby avoid in America the worst excesses of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.  By the outbreak of WWII, the United States of America has become a fully functioning Democratic Socialist state, one praised abroad by the likes of George Orwell as a model for not only the UK, but the entire world to follow.

However, there must needs be opposition in all things, and after the defeat of European fascism during WWII, a Cold War emerges with the Russian state.  The heavy casualties incurred by Stalin’s all-deserters-will-be-shot policy had resulted in the dictator’s violent overthrow, with him being replaced by the revolutionary Ayn Rand (who in this timeline never emigrated to the U.S.) and her band of militant objectivists and egoists, re-establishing the Soviet Union as an aggressive Libertarian Dictatorship.  Many of the Robber Barons disempowered by the United Order flee to Russia to fund its military, and institute a series of pogroms against the Russian-Mormon communities that had been established by Tolstoy and tolerated under Trotsky.  Fortunately, this neo-Soviet Union collapses in 1991, the Russian-Mormon communities are restored, and the United Order begins to take root again in the Eastern Bloc at last, in fulfillment of the promises of the Lord.  

Global LDS Church membership by 2025: 80,952,662.

Note: in an infinite Multiverse, there are of course outliers to the outliers (such that the very concept of “Average Earth” loses its meaning, but that’s a discussion for a different paper).  Some other significant variants of this United Order Earth include:

1. Earth CQEKWHDKNF27857003: In this timeline, the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age are in fact successful in inciting renewed state violence against the Mormons, such that the majority of the Saints are forced (yet again) to flee not only Utah but the United States entirely. They join the Tolstoyian United Order communities in Russia, serve as a moderating influence on the 1917 Bolshivek Revolution (e.g. establishing a genuine democracy; preserving limited private property; saving the Czars from assassination while still stripping them of all state power, à la the British Royal Family; etc.).  Consequently, by the end of the 20th century, Mormonism is primarily identified as a majority-Russian religion. (Global LDS Church Membership by 2025: 22,335,299).
2. Earth CQEKWHDKNF27857004: In this timeline, the 1912 attempt on Teddy Roosevelt’s life results not in a memorable quip about how “it takes more than a bullet to bring down a Bullmoose,” but in his assassination and thus the radicalization of the U.S. Labor movement.  As such, a sympathetic Bolshevik Revolution erupts in America in 1917, resulting in a communist coup of Washington, D.C. a year later. Although initially friendly to the Church, by the 1930s, more extremist elements within the Soviet States of America deemed the Saints “insufficiently Socialist” and “decadent bourgeoisie corruptions of Marxist principles”.  The Saints thenceforth began to suffer far worse state persecution than they ever did even under the Robber Barons or even the Missouri mobs.  They were forced into “Re-education Camps”, with some Church leaders fleeing to join Trotsky in exile (establishing a Church-in-exile in Mexico City), while others became important members of the American Underground Resistance. (Global LDS Church Membership by 2025: 2,545,016).
3. Earth CQEKWHDKNF27857007: On this Earth, not only does the United Order fizzle out, but Utah Valley eventually becomes a hot-bed for pyramid schemes, Ponzi scams, shady Summer Sales, and other assorted low-level white-collar fraud.  A Mormon businessman receives the Republican nomination for U.S President in 2012, but loses. That same year, the ZCMI is replaced with a second mall.  Their only pop-cultural relevance is a Broadway play that openly mocks them.  In 2016 and 2020, the majority of Utah and Idaho residents vote for a failed casino magnate for President. (Global LDS Church Membership by 2025: 16,763,816).

Earth CWKLLJJN01928375: Muslim Mormons

The similarities between Mormonism and Islam (e.g. a visionary Prophet, the coming forth of new scripture, history of polygamy, etc.) have been noted by apologists and detractors alike of both faiths across all sectors of the Multiverse where both faiths co-exist.  Hence, it is curious to note that there are relatively so few Earths wherein Mormonism makes real in-roads into the Muslim world directly.  In those that do, they tend to follow a familiar pattern: an immigrant from, say, Syria or Palestine, arrives in the U.S. around the turn of the 20^th century, where they meet Mormon missionaries in New York or New Jersey, then continues on westward to Utah to unite themselves with the Saints.  However, in some of these worlds, the family patriarch instead makes the decision to instead return to Syria at great personal risk to preach the Restored Gospel among his own people—initially just among the Coptic Christian minorities (where he is tolerated) but then among the larger Islamic population itself, where he begins to suffer official suppression under the waning Ottoman Empire—that is, until the end of WWI dissolves their state apparatus.  As in other nations, the small Mormon populations eventually penetrate to about 2% of the Arab world (where, again, they are eventually tolerated as fellow “People of the Book” alongside other Christians and Jews), thereby bolstering the global Church membership by (on average) about an extra 6 million by 2025.

However, out on the far reaches of the visible Multiversal spectrum, our scientists have uncovered universes wherein the Umayyad Caliphate won the Battle of Tours in the Aquitaine region of France in A.D. 732, eventually leading to all of Europe becoming subsumed into the Muslim Caliphate.  There is never a “Reconquest” of Spain, nor a French colonization of Algeria, for example.  What is most curious, is that so much of so-called “Western” history retains much the same trajectory: the hegemony of the Caliphate is torn apart by a sort of “Reformation” in the 1500s, beginning with the protests of a German Imam named Aalmiriykh al-Luther.  It is Spanish-Muslims who (in the name of Allah) colonize what we currently consider “Latin America”, while Franco-Muslims colonize the upper Gulf Coast, and Anglo-Muslims who settle North America’s north Atlantic coast—who sometime in the late 18^th century declare independence in a bloody Revolutionary War to establish the United States, wherein all citizens would be free to practice whatever branch of Abrahamic Monotheism—Sunni or Shi’ite or Reformed Islam, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, or even Coptic Christianity—that so moved their individual conscious.  It is here that I must call attention to the presence of Juzif al-Hidad—which really gets to the heart of my larger thesis that the almost maddening persistence of Mormonism throughout the observable Multiverse must force us to take seriously the possibility that LDS theology provides a plausible 7^th hypothesis for solving the Fermi Paradox.

For in the early 19^th century, a young Anglo-Muslim farmboy named Juzif al-Hidad enters a grove of trees in upstate New Cordoba, to pray unto Allah which of the many sects of Islam he must unite himself with.  By his own account, he beholds a pillar of light wherein he beholds two personages—Allah and the Prophet Jesus—who, quoting the Qu’ran, instruct him to unite himself with no sect, for they are all in error.  Rather, they instruct him to follow in the illustrious footsteps of the ancient prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon His Name) in bringing forth a new Qu’ran by which to restore the fullness of his doctrine, and that he was to make ready himself to assume the weighty role of the Mahdi, who prepares the Earth for the return of Jesus to defeat the al-Masīḥ ad-Dajjāl once and for all before the great and final judgment.

I do not need to inform the more educated among my readers that Juzif is Arabic for Joseph, nor that a Hidad is a Smith.  Our scientists have not yet sufficiently studied this far-off Multiversal variant to confirm the contents of al-Hidad’s second Qu’ran—but they have at least confirmed that al-Hidad’s new sect is met with violent opposition in all parts of this nascent Islamic United States, resulting ultimately in his own martyrdom, and the emigration of his followers into the deserts of the Intermountain West, to establish a new theocratic community where they might practice their religion in peace.  Further research will be necessary to confirm whether we are discussing an actual Muslim Joseph Smith and Islamic Mormonism (certainly their purported polygamy met with much less opposition); but, if my supposition is correct, then we must take seriously the possibility that a Multiversal God is directly interceding into the affairs of humanity in all realities via a Prophet of the Restoration to ensure that their respective Earths are prepared for their imminent Translation into a heretofore unobserved Celestial dimension, thus conclusively resolving the Fermi Paradox.

Global (average) LDS Membership by 2025: 22,588,011.

Earth CXKKUJ385702: Intergalactic Mormons

Further complicating the strange intersection between Mormons and the Fermi Paradox is the exceedingly rare yet astonishing existence in the Multiverse of what have colloquially come to be known as StarGates—deceptively simple stone archways built from incomprehensibly advanced tech, that somehow generate physics-defying, faster-than-light energy portals connected to other, similar StarGates on human-habitable planets scattered across the far ends of the known Universe.  When activated, these StarGates functionally allow someone to casually stroll from one end of the cosmos to the other in a single step (“in the twinkling of an eye”, one might say).  Debate rages among Multiversal Researchers as to whether these StarGates were placed there by just the sort of ancient space-faring aliens that the Fermi Paradox demands must exist, or if they were built by some ancient, hyper-advanced yet still merely human civilization that has otherwise disappeared completely from the archeological record; opinion is also split as to which of these two possibilities would be the more astounding.  

In any case, in this particularly rare Earth, mid-19^th century Mormon settlers the Great Salt Lake Basin explore the area typically known in most Universes as “Moab”, where they stumble quite by accident upon just such a StarGate among the desert arches.  Brigham Young dispatched multiple expeditionary parties to explore this far-reaching network of StarGates across the heavens, where they found the remnants of human(oid?) settlements but no other apparent locals to harass or mob them.  The Quorum of the Twelve found this providential; hence, when the U.S. Army marched into Salt Lake City during the ill-fated Utah Wars of the 1850s, they found it an eerie and abandoned ghost town.  Army Scouts fanned out across the territory found similarly abandoned settlements—and no sign of bodies.  Naturally the mysterious disappearance of the Mormons became one of the perennial cause célèbres of American folklorists and conspiracy theorists, with theories ranging from the Saints being dragged down to hell to raptured to heaven to (once the mid-20^th century rolled around) abducted by aliens.  Little did any of them know that the truth (as is so often the case) was even more incredible.

Not until the 1990s did the U.S. government find their quarry, albeit quite by accident; routine radiation sweeps of the Utah nuclear test zones uncovered some highly unusual Gamma ray signatures, which in turn led to the excavation of the Moab StarGate that had been buried under dynamite after the Mormon Exodus to the stars.  The StarGate was moved to a Top-Secret facility hidden in plain sight beneath the over-built Denver International Airport, where the Pentagon sent out small teams of Special Forces to explore the farthest reaches of the visible universe—where much to their surprise they discovered flourishing Mormon colonies on multiple planets, living in techno-utopias developed by Mormon scientists who had reverse-engineered the StarGate tech themselves.  The U.S. emissaries were greeted graciously (as only the victors can do) at Church HQ in New Nauvoo—where they discovered to their somehow even greater surprise that the Mormon colonies had swelled so large not only due to the absence of state persecution, but due to local conversion rates.  Numerous pre-Industrial human societies (some scarcely out of the stone age themselves) had been discovered by the Saints on these distant planets, and their missionaries had gotten right to work.  Right now, the biggest controversy in intergalactic diaspora studies is whether these human societies were the remnants of prehistoric Earth-bound migrations through the StarGate (the American position, since these populations are genetically identical to those of Homo Sapiens) or whether they are wholly indigenous to their planets, having been placed there by our common Father in Heaven (the Mormon position, explaining away all genetic similarities by our shared divine heritage).  

Needless to say, Earth CXKKUJ385702 complicates any explanations of the Fermi Paradox immeasurably.

Intergalactic LDS membership by 2025: 318,954,001.

We could continue.

I have not yet even touched Earth CIOLJJ643197, wherein the Federal Expulsion Order of 1859 leads to the Saints settling entirely in Polynesia, intermarrying with the locals and becoming a strictly Pacific Islander faith; nor Earth CAWSEDRFT9922883, wherein the bulk of the Saints really do follow Sydney Rigdon to Pennsylvania, or Earth CBUVYCT555564300, wherein they gather instead with William Strang in Wisconsin.  Heck, we haven’t had the room to discuss Earth CLAPQOWIEY9453267, wherein the sailing ship Brooklyn is diverted at Tierra de Fuego down to Antarctica—which turns out to be the entrance into an actual, bona fide Hollow Earth, wherein they settle among an illuminated underground sphere populated by living dinosaurs whom they tame and domesticate, and then use to repel the Nazis when they attempt to similarly escape underground at the end of WWII.  

For that matter, I have not yet even catalogued all of the variant Joseph Smiths (of which Juzif al-Hidad was, believe it or not, but the tip of the ice-burg), which seem to be stubbornly persistent across all variant worlds.  There is for example Earth CWIMIHDJ37196450, wherein Joseph Smith is a Black Man—a slave who escapes north to New York from Maryland, experiences his First Vision and translates the Gold Plates while working as a wood-chopper, and becomes a prominent Abolitionist and Pan-Africanist, persecuted as much for his Civil Rights work as for his religious beliefs; not only is there never any sort of Priesthood ban, but Mormonism becomes known primarily as an African-American faith, hardly even attempting to convert white people until the mid-20^th century Civil Rights era. There is also Earth CMQPZWKIXD1236874, wherein Josephine Smith is a woman—a religious reformer like unto Ann Lee or Elena G. White—who not only produces the Book of Mormon but also practices polygyny (much to the anguish of her husband Emilio Hale).  These alternate Smiths would seem to indicate that there really are—per LDS doctrine—certain designated “noble and great ones”, Spirit Children of our Heavenly Father, selected pre-mortaly to fulfill certain divine roles, of which multiple different physical body types may serve (although admittedly, the fact that there appear to be infinite versions of each of these Spirit Children seems to throw a wrench into Mormon Doctrine that will still need to be worked out by future LDS CES teachers and General Authorities).  

All of these examples I have cited in defense of my theory that the reason we have yet to discover any other intelligent life in the visible universe is because all other alien civilizations are translated by God Almighty to celestial realms when they reach a certain level of development (this would be the best possible version of the “Great Filter” hypothesis), and hence LDS doctrine should be counted as a reasonably valid explanation for the Fermi Paradox.

Indeed, unlike the other possible explanations for the Fermi Paradox, the LDS hypothesis is potentially testable, since the Infinite Earth Project has provided us with one such world that may in fact be at imminent risk for global translation:  

Earth CILUKYJTH3245897601: World Mormons

Up until the mid-19^th century CE, this Earth is categorized as an “Average Earth”, with only minor variations from the mean.  The history of the early LDS Church likewise follows the typical trajectory—Joseph Smith in New York, First Vision, Book of Mormon, persecutions in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, etc.—with only trivially different details from our own world.  However, for reasons that are still unexplained and inexplicable, around the 1850s LDS missionaries begin to experience steady linear growth.  Near as our researchers can tell, there is no appreciable difference in their approach or their doctrine—quite simply, the missionaries began to be more and more successful.  

Not only did that steady linear growth never plateau or self-correct, but it even expanded into exponential growth around the turn of the 20^th century.  Again, there is no clear explanation as to why: it appears that, simply, their message was resonating with more and more people—or, at least, more and more people felt the Holy Spirit (as they claimed), and so repented of their sins and were converted.  There was no global jihad nor forcible conversions, no government coercion nor widespread propaganda campaigns, no cultural pressures nor wide-ranging debates, no—the faith simply kept spreading, quietly, quickly, “without compulsory means”.  Even their retention and activity rates remained just as baffling high, across all demographics, ethnicities, age-groups, and tax brackets.  The result was one of the most divergent 20^th centuries we have ever observed in the Infinite Earth Project: there are no World Wars, no Cold War, no genocides or civil rights movements, no rise of fascism or communism or even of global capitalism, only the steady and inexorable spread of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

By the year 2000, 90% of the Earth’s population is a member of the LDS Church.  Nation-states have largely disappeared, as the planet has been divided into multiple Church administrative zones.  Although there are a few scattered hold-out zones, these are treated peaceably, are traded with congenially, and missionary work continues there a-pace.  By 2020, the Church/Global President has announced plans to establish a network of global Thorium reactors and high-orbital solar-panels to address the planets’ energy needs sustainably, plans are underway to colonize Mars, and probes have been launched to the asteroid belt to begin construction on a Dyson sphere.  If it is never completed due to imminent Translation upon the Second Coming, then we will potentially have our Mormon answer to the Fermi Paradox.

Global LDS Church Membership: 8,127,856,922