What if the minutemen never collapsed

A what-if history asking what happens if General Joe Becker survives the ambush that killed him in canon, denying the Minutemen the leadership vacuum that caused their real collapse. Instead of falling apart, the militia consolidates, retakes the Castle, and grows into a real regional power — which puts it on a collision course with the Institute's oldest founding fear: a unified Commonwealth. The piece traces that slow three-way standoff between the Minutemen, the Brotherhood, and the Institute through the 1980s and 90s, ending on the open question of what the militia's founders would think of what survival cost it.