Time Travel INC.
 

If you could pay a visit to any point in History, anywhere in the world, where and when would it be and why?

The first place/time I think i'd go would be to The very beginning. I'd like to see Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals interact. I'd like to know the truth about that. I'd also like to impress them by lighting a fart with a bic lighter.

They would kill you.:(

or worship me :)

*chuckles* no in fact I never did.
Well, ok here goes. It's a visit to this time/place so you get a ticket both ways. You go alone. You are there in the capacity of observer. You are unseen and unheard ( think of yourself as being a fly on the wall)

The cost of such a trip is so great that most people would only be able to afford one in a lifetime

We already have the answer to that one. They killed Jesus, then they worshipped him.

I'd time travel back to some place more pleasant - say Tahiti before the Europeans arrived and avoid the entire issue.;)

The moment my parents conceived me... Want to know if they were happy that moment

If I could go back to any time it would be the great meeting between Edward the Confessor and his greatest Earl, Godwine,in 1051/52 when England stood on the brink of another terrible civil war and those two great statesman stood off against each other. With the charge of treason floating acreoss the air Godwine sought safe passage to the meeting and was refused. Both parties had armies ready. What an atmosphere that must have been! All the courtly intrigue that had led to the stand off.....Edward locked in to a childless marriage with Godwine's daughter......Godwine charged with treason for his refusal to lay waste to Dover on Edwards orders......Must have been an electric atmosphere at the meeting....Godwine eventually fled with his family and was pronounced Exile ......Two years later he was back and ws once again Father in Law to the King and Englands most powerful Earl.

I thought about this for a few minutes. At first I thought watching the failed assassination attempt of Hitler might be interesting. I wonder if the German officer who planted the briefcase bomb had sweat trickling down his brow. I wonder what the reaction was after the bomb went off. If Hitler wet himself. If everyone left, running and screaming out of the room. Insider details like that.

Unfortunately, all the famous events that took place in a moment in time are usually the bad ones. The good things in the world take time to slowly build up. Rome wasn't built in a day. But the WTC did fall in a day when the planes hit.

At first, trying to come up with something good, the only thing I could think of was Jesse Owens, the black American, winning at the Olympics in Nazi Germany.

Thinking about "Good," I immediately started thinking about religion. What if I went back to witness the miracles religions are based on. Get to see if they really happened. Yeah, that's it. I'd go back and watch the tomb to see if Jesus really did rise from the dead. That's what I'd do. Put the tomb under surveillence. I would drink some invisible coffe to stay awake while I was standing there as my invisible self, and see if that rock moved.

I would enjoy watching Van Gogh paint Starry Night, or maybe sit in a lawn chair and watch the Sistine Chapel ceiling be painted.

If I am not just a 'fly on the wall' but rather totally incorporeal, I would consider standing in Hiroshima during the dropping of the bomb. Consider, yes, but I think I would reject the idea as way too depressing and wind up standing under Apollo 11's Saturn V rocket as it takes off to the moon - as long as I have REALLY good earplugs.

If we are not limited to events where we know the _exact_ time of the occurence, I would enjoy seeing the last wolly mammoth hunt done by humans, or a Tyrannosaurus attacking another dinosaur, or better yet, seeing the asteroid impact that doomed the dinosaurs.

I would consider sitting in on the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus, but give me two years prep time to learn Aramaic first.


Decisions, decisions, decisions :confused:

Go back to the night before the Clay/ Liston fight and bet the farm at 8 to 1.;)

I'd spend some time hanging around Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, and have a front row seat for Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.

It's something by which I have always been fascinated. I think I've mentioned my a-bomb lust several times before ... I want to see it really happening, Oppie and Groves and Teller and Szillard and Fermi ... *drool*

Oh, and yeah, I'd like to go to the Nuremburg Rally, just to see if Hitler was as compelling an orator has history books would have us believe ...

If I could be given an understanding of Sanskrit or ancient Hindu, I'd like to be a bird sitting on the branch of the Bodhi tree where the Buddha became enlightened. I'd like to watch him approach the tree in his unenlightened state and then see him go through the whole process of becoming an enlightened being. I'd fly after him when he got up and gave his first teaching, "The Fire Sermon." I imagine that it would all be pretty amazing stuff. I'd also like to be a moth and witness the most incredible Leonid meteor shower of all time.

If I could only observe, I would go back to watch the Constitutional Convention.

If I could do things when I was there I'd go back in time and eliminate certain people who have caused tremendous evil on the world before they were old enough to unleash the horrors they would eventually cause to happen in America.


I'd get rid of:

Harry Anslinger
Joseph McCarthy
Prescott Bush
Cecil Rhodes
Karl Marx
Edward Mandel House
J.P. Morgan
John D. Rockefeller
Mayer Amschel Bauer (Rothschild)
Engels, Friedrich
Joseph Stalin
Adolph Hitler
Mao Tse-Tung
Pol Pot
Osama Bin Laden
Yasser Arafat

*Of course there's always a danger that one of the people who died as a result of these guys is even worse than they are.

I'd also make sure scandal kept the worst presidents in American history from getting elected like:

Abraham Lincoln
Woodrow Wilson
William Howard Taft
George W. Bush (Neither of them would exist, or the brothers because dear old grand daddy would be gone)
Ronald Reagan
Richard Nixon
Franklin Delano Roosevelt


Without these people we would have had no American involvement in WWI, not WWII would have happened period, and no cold war afterwards, also most likely no civil war.


And if I could just go back to meet people I'd go meet Thomas Jefferson, Peter McWilliams, Albert Einstein, Ayn Rand, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Wosniak, etc.

I might also visit Jesus of Nazareth if he weren't a fictional character.

how do you know that if you DID off those on your list, someone even worse wouldn;t take their place?

I'm no fan of war, but much of the modern workd is a direct result of the world wars and the cold war. You go making huge drastic changes like the ones you proposed, and you have no idea what would happen as a result. We might all be dead, wiped out by plague. No penicillin. Who knows?

Besides, the rules say you are just a fly on the wall.

I don't. As I stated when I said...

I don't know that there wouldn't be anybody worse, but considering these are some of the worst people humanity has ever produced, the odds would be in my favor.

Anyone have any random speculation on how long slavery would have lasted in the US without the Civil War? And whether civil rights would have been smoother or rougher afterwards?

Slavery would have lasted less time in America and more time in the Confederate Union (a different country), but probably not much longer. The Civil war wasn't fought over slavery anyway.

yeah...oops!...missed that....

you're just looking for arguments about Lincoln and FDR being on your list anyway, so......I'm not taking the bait.

No, I'm not. In fact I'm pleased that someone isn't starting an argument with me, making childish insults, ignorant comments, baseless accusations, etc.

They are on my list for my own very good reasons. I'm sure you'd have a different list that I might disagree with. That's fine with me.

Right, but the ending of slavery was a Civil War gambit. And I wonder if the Civil War would have been postponed or prevented if Lincoln had lost the election.

lumberjim - Lincoln and FDR were libertarian nightmares.

Yassar Arafat is not a wonderful statesman but somehow I don't think he's quite hit the same league as Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin.

This is like one of the silly IQ test questions: Which item doesn't below with the rest.

Stalin is someone, I must say, if removed at the right time would have been most likely replaced by someone wholely more moderate, I think anyone that has studied the russian revolution would agree with me on that.

Storming of the Bastille would have been cool, watching darwin work out evolution, wander though a real medieval castle in it's prime, debating between greek philosophers, the politics of the roman forums.....

*Reads Marx and Engels on the list of people who have led to harm in America and bites so hard on tongue a bloody strip falls out of mouth *

No, Marx & Engels have caused harm not only to America but to the entire world. Their incredibly flawed, and ignorant philosophy has cost millions of lives.

*Takes a deep breath and with an act of will says ....* Okay

Excellent show of restraint. :) I commend you.

Actually when people are writing stuff as Radar did it seems so stupid that I lose every pleasure to try to discuss such matters...

like many untrained animals he does tend to shit all over the place.

Coming from person who is far more stupid than I would be even if I were hit on the head repeatedly with a sledgehammer, I consider that a compliment.

Untrained animal....jaguar.....hmmmmm it all makes sense now.

:turd: :turd: :finger: :turd: :shotgun:

Yeah I'm whining already... "You are more stupid than me" Man, you know how to insult somebody. And talking about knowing how stupid I'm am? Well you must know me better than I thought, because that's a secret. And if you would have read my post correctly, or is it my bad english?, you would see that I didn't make any observations but only a personal opinion that stresses on "it seems" but never mind. I can understand that you feel attacked by everybody...

Note to self: Check temperature of Hell. Must be low, I agree with radar. This must also mean the Eagles are going to win the Super Bowl this year.

Now look here. If someone feels the need to constantly validate themselves by provocation, because causing a reaction, any reaction, is more effective self-confirmation than what is actually said, because then at least they know they actually exist, then that's up to them. Don't let them get to ya Radar, I'm with ya.


Goes to stand next to DanaC with gritted teeth and exchange sympathies over Karl Marx

*joins the Marx-Engels sympathising group*

Don't think this is going anywhere... Radar already said that he doesn't know what'd happen if he did kill anyone on his list...

I know what wouldn't happen. But something else might happen. And the odds are with me that whatever does happen won't be as bad as what did happen as a result of the influence created by the actions of the people on my list.

Hey there are a ton of other people on this board. By all means, stop focusing on what MY hypothetical plans would are and get to what YOU would do if you went back in time.

Marx-Engels

"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs"

Marx-Engels had nothing to do with the crimes commited in the 20C in their names, however it remains...

...Communism, wonderful theory, wrong species.

Three things:

I'd like to show up about 5 minutes before the big bang just to see it happen.

I'd like to go back to witness the exact moment that life was formed (on earth) just to know how it happened.

I'd like to witness the death of the last human.

----
**Overlooking obvious problems with some of these requests**

Also seeing as time was supposed to have been created in the big bang how can you show up about 5 minutes before.

Just shows that singularities can be a real mindfuck

Why I'd stand on a silver surfboard. :)
http://www.fulgan.com/players/marvel...s/s_surfer.jpg


While time may have been created at the big bang, that doesn't rule out that it existed and terminated just before it. And if it terminated for an infinitely small period of "time" then its as if it didn't really terminate at all. I think the real problem with witnessing the big bang is finding something to hide under or outrunning it

You want to be a hood ornament?:)

Well, you can always fall back on the first law of thermodynamics which states that energy is neither created nor destroyed. In the sense that consciousness is energy, we were ALL there for the big bang. The concussion just knocked it out of our memory banks. ;)

Brilliant.

Whenever I've thought about this, I've always wanted to really stir the anthill.

[no killing - no prevention of some event that you really don't like]

How much could one person do, at the right time?

What would have happened if someone from our time, with our knowledge of history, had assisted Hannibal's invasion of Rome during the Punic Wars? He probably could have won if he had assaulted the city immediately, instead of waiting for Scipio Africanus. Was Rome such an immense and unique builing block of modern civilization that we wouldn't have internal combustion engines?

Could Phoenician society have survived the barbarian invasions?

Could an industrial revolution like they saw in England in the 17-1800s have started in Hellenistic Greece/Persia? They were pretty inventive, and if memory serves me correctly that is when the water screw was developed.

Since it didn't happen, even with that culture, I assume that it could not have. Why not? Did they not have enough math, did they not have the right level of technology? Did they have too cheap of human labor? (Something which the Americas /definitely/ did not have).

What if, centuries before Christ, you built a big-ass highway between Native American cultures in the Northeastern United States, Central America, and Peru? The cultures could have shared technology and local their local providences (llamas, wheels, foods?) and shared diseases and may or may not have been able to resist the European diseases.

Would we still be living in thatch huts? What would have happened?

I would go back in time and bring the sports almanac with me. :D

That somehow sounds familiar...you could almost make a movie about time travel where someone brings a sports almanac back in time and then perhaps travels back to the future. hmmmm