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Given Time Travel, Where & When Would You Want To Travel?

Forget going into the past, I am far more interested in seeing the future. If that future was too awful, I would be all about getting lotto numbers so I could raise the resources to change it. If the future was better than expected, and seemed receptive to me, I wouldn't come back.
 
Forget going into the past, I am far more interested in seeing the future. If that future was too awful, I would be all about getting lotto numbers so I could raise the resources to change it. If the future was better than expected, and seemed receptive to me, I wouldn't come back.


This confuses me. If winning the lotto raises sufficient money to change the future you presumably are talking about your personal future, rather than that of the planet or society, since there's no lotto prize big enough to shape the latter.

But if you do mean visiting your own personal future, then staying there would undermine your efforts because your failure to return and live your life on its present course would prevent that future life of yours from ever coming about. Plus what you'd find is many if not all of those you care about would be dead, their lives a tragedy shaped by your mysterious disappearance all those years ago....

On the other hand if your personal - or indeed the general - future is bad and winning the lotto would change what's bad about it, why not be "all about getting lotto numbers" anyway, regardless of time travelling, just to cover yourself?
 
I'd probably just use time travel to go and see all the great bands of the 70s. I'd like to think that the entire audience at Led Zeppelin's 1975 Earls Court gig is just me at different stages of my timeline.
 
This confuses me. If winning the lotto raises sufficient money to change the future you presumably are talking about your personal future, rather than that of the planet or society, since there's no lotto prize big enough to shape the latter.

But if you do mean visiting your own personal future, then staying there would undermine your efforts because your failure to return and live your life on its present course would prevent that future life of yours from ever coming about. Plus what you'd find is many if not all of those you care about would be dead, their lives a tragedy shaped by your mysterious disappearance all those years ago....

On the other hand if your personal - or indeed the general - future is bad and winning the lotto would change what's bad about it, why not be "all about getting lotto numbers" anyway, regardless of time travelling, just to cover yourself?

My thinking on this matter is slightly different. As money is power, the ability to land windfalls that can then be invested and turned into a proper fortune could then be parlayed into political influence around the world, potentially tipping the balance on certain decisions that influential people may make. While it is possible to change the world without access to sizable slabs of cash, resources are useful for opening doors and changing things. I suppose it might be possible to "butterfly effect" things, but that requires an attention to detail that may not stick in the face of an unforeseen time paradox.

Future time travel might also be very interesting for the prospect of stealing successful future patents that one then uses the funds to develop in the past, potentially heading off crises via a technical fix before they occur. Hopefully the effect on the timeline wouldn't be too disastrous in terms of temporal loops and feedback etc.
 
Future time travel might also be very interesting for the prospect of stealing successful future patents that one then uses the funds to develop in the past, potentially heading off crises via a technical fix before they occur. Hopefully the effect on the timeline wouldn't be too disastrous in terms of temporal loops and feedback etc.

McCOY: Do you realise of course, if we give him the formula, we're altering the future.
SCOTT: Why? How do we know he didn't invent the thing!


 
I'd probably just use time travel to go and see all the great bands of the 70s. I'd like to think that the entire audience at Led Zeppelin's 1975 Earls Court gig is just me at different stages of my timeline.
I'd like to go to Woodstock but with something like a digital watch just to confuse hippies.
 
I'd like to go to Woodstock but with something like a digital watch just to confuse hippies.

Or why not get a snazzy haircut, grab your modern camera, throw on a t-shirt and bomber-jacket not forgetting your recently purchased fashionable sunglasses and jump back to 1940 to photograph the opening of a famous bridge?
Oh hang on .... It's been done...
PSX_20190903_121508.jpg
 
Or why not get a snazzy haircut, grab your modern camera, throw on a t-shirt and bomber-jacket not forgetting your recently purchased fashionable sunglasses and jump back to 1940 to photograph the opening of a famous bridge?
Oh hang on .... It's been done...
View attachment 19886
That actually is me in that pic .. I also dropped a Tamagotchi on the floor on purpose for a laugh just before I left ..
 
.. then there was that time I accidently left that box of 2146 fireworks at the World Trade Centre but I think I got away with that one ..
 
There are 5 totally unexplained British railway accidents - Salisbury and Grantham 1906, Shrewsbury 1907, Sutton Coldfield 1955, and Moorgate tube disaster.

It occurred to me that I would like to go back to the cabs of those various trains to see what really happened.

But then it further occurred to me that a 21st century time traveller appearing in the cab might have so frightened the crews that it caused the accidents.

So I don't think I'll do that.
 
There are several historical figures I would like to go back and try to save. In a surprising number of cases, a simple dose of antibiotics could have made all the difference. However, I am of a mind that everything that has happened in the past, including all actions by time travelers, has already been accounted for in our current understanding of history.
 
August 15–18, 1969.

Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York, 43 miles southwest of Woodstock.

:joint:
 
August 15–18, 1969.

Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York, 43 miles southwest of Woodstock.

:joint:
And with any luck you'd hardly be noticed. I'd happily be transported to the crowd at any Jimi Hendrix concert but Woodstock would be the best. I was lucky enough to see most of my rock heroes, but I missed a few - Jimi being the one I miss most. Free/Paul Kossoff would be another.
 
And with any luck you'd hardly be noticed. I'd happily be transported to the crowd at any Jimi Hendrix concert but Woodstock would be the best. I was lucky enough to see most of my rock heroes, but I missed a few - Jimi being the one I miss most. Free/Paul Kossoff would be another.
Ah, a fellow connoisseur...

Brought up in Glasgow and seen Free at the Green's Playhouse/Apollo (not sure if he been renamed at that time).

Kossoff was so wasted, the band had to prop him up against his amp & speaker stack.

Such a tragic end for one of the finest rock & blues guitarists ever.

Tell you what, I'm heading across to the Troll's Head and will stick on some decent tunes.

Just happen to have come across some rare Hendrix earlier. It's an early, live, performance of 'Hey Joe' and haven't heard it yet.

Quite a thought provoking thread this and I shall return!
 
There are several historical figures I would like to go back and try to save. In a surprising number of cases, a simple dose of antibiotics could have made all the difference.

1899, Braunau am Inn, Austria : Vaccinate Edmund Hitler against the measles.
 
1899, Braunau am Inn, Austria : Vaccinate Edmund Hitler against the measles.
What would that change?
Why not just shoot Adolf or his father?
 
What would that change?
Why not just shoot Adolf or his father?

To quote the sacred Wikipedia,

Hitler was deeply affected by the death of his younger brother Edmund, who died in 1900 from measles. Hitler changed from a confident, outgoing, conscientious student to a morose, detached boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers.


If Edmund didn't die, it would be interesting to see how Adolf turned out. Less of a bastard. perhaps. Same with other infamous villains... amend their past, prevent key incidents. Or if all else fails, go back to the place and time of their conception and cause a little coitus interruptus. No need to kill anyone.
 
To quote the sacred Wikipedia,

Hitler was deeply affected by the death of his younger brother Edmund, who died in 1900 from measles. Hitler changed from a confident, outgoing, conscientious student to a morose, detached boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers.

If Edmund didn't die, it would be interesting to see how Adolf turned out. Less of a bastard. perhaps. Same with other infamous villains... amend their past, prevent key incidents. Or if all else fails, go back to the place and time of their conception and cause a little coitus interruptus. No need to kill anyone.
Hmmm. I think he'd still have turned out as a bastard. Alois Hitler was the kind of man Adolf became.
 
What would that change? Why not just shoot Adolf or his father?

Idk if that would be a great idea. Remember in many ways, despite the press to the contrary, Hitler was pretty much a figurehead put in place by the Junkers as a means of curtailing the rise of Communism. Germany was always going to re-arm and re-militarize, and Hitler was a symptom, not a cause. If Hitler hadn't risen to power, someone else would have, as the push to do so within German society was huge. Hitler was also instrumental in making some of the biggest mistakes that ultimately destroyed Nazi Germany. Cooler heads may well have made fewer mistakes.
I am uncertain that killing Hitler actually gets you further ahead, as Nazism did ultimately go a long way to discrediting anything that even smelled of it. I would personally be more interested in targeted assassinations of Guderian, Von Manstein, and Hjalmar Schacht. Far better to kill the talent in the organization. On the other hand, thanks to the Mandela Effect, some of us may well wind up living in some form of the Inglorious Basterds' universe where one of the assassination attempts on Hitler worked. If so, when you rejoin the main timeline, tell us how it all went.
 
I'd like to go to Woodstock but with something like a digital watch just to confuse hippies.
Idk if that would be a great idea. Remember in many ways, despite the press to the contrary, Hitler was pretty much a figurehead put in place by the Junkers as a means of curtailing the rise of Communism. Germany was always going to re-arm and re-militarize, and Hitler was a symptom, not a cause. If Hitler hadn't risen to power, someone else would have, as the push to do so within German society was huge. Hitler was also instrumental in making some of the biggest mistakes that ultimately destroyed Nazi Germany. Cooler heads may well have made fewer mistakes.
I am uncertain that killing Hitler actually gets you further ahead, as Nazism did ultimately go a long way to discrediting anything that even smelled of it. I would personally be more interested in targeted assassinations of Guderian, Von Manstein, and Hjalmar Schacht. Far better to kill the talent in the organization. On the other hand, thanks to the Mandela Effect, some of us may well wind up living in some form of the Inglorious Basterds' universe where one of the assassination attempts on Hitler worked. If so, when you rejoin the main timeline, tell us how it all went.

Why not take a step back and prevent the Slavic nationalist Gavrilo Princip from being born?
Without him assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand, WW1 wouldn't have occurred.
Without the extremely draconian reparations imposed on Germany after WW1, National Socialism would never have gained any popular support and Hitler would have lived and died as a bitter and twisted but obscure and insignificant non-entity.
 
Why not take a step back and prevent the Slavic nationalist Gavrilo Princip from being born?
Without him assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand, WW1 wouldn't have occurred.
Without the extremely draconian reparations imposed on Germany after WW1, National Socialism would never have gained any popular support and Hitler would have lived and died as a bitter and twisted but obscure and insignificant non-entity.
But where would the fun be in that?
 
I'd go one better and assassinate Karl Marx before he came up with his radical ideas.
Hitler and Mussolini got their inspiration from that ol' doom-monger.
 
I don't think assassinating the Archduke would have prevented WW1 anyway, something else would have started it sooner or later. It may sound glib but i think Blackadder had it right 'it was too much effort not to have a war'. Anyway back to the time travel it has to be seeing Dinosaurs for me. How could it not be the first stop for any time traveler.
 
Anyway back to the time travel it has to be seeing Dinosaurs for me. How could it not be the first stop for any time traveler.

Because it could easily become the last stop for any time traveller? :) Stargate SG1 had the right idea when visiting an unknown location - send a probe through first, make sure conditions are safe and there's no carnivores nearby.
 
Because it could easily become the last stop for any time traveller? :) Stargate SG1 had the right idea when visiting an unknown location - send a probe through first, make sure conditions are safe and there's no carnivores nearby.

Did they have breathing apparatus?
Given that the oxygen content of the atmosphere during say the Cretaceous era was far higher than the atmosphere humankind evolved in, any more than a few hours exposure would result in acute oxygen toxicity, irreversible lung damage and, ultimately, death.
 
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