The Time Tunnel

[Bugman]

You are able to travel back in time and change one event in world history.What are you going to do?Kill Hitler,or perhaps Stalin?Or prevent the murder of Lincoln,Kennedy or someone else?Explain what you would do,and what you think would result from your actions.

 

[milagros317]

I would go to Sicily in about 250BC and bring a bunch of technological items to give to Archimedes of Syracuse. A hand cranked electric generator with a small incandescent light bulb, for example. Some books for him, too, both pure math and the natural sciences. With that head start, technology would be very much advanced over what it is today.

Of course, the whole thing might backfire and today's world might be radioactive slag form a thermonuclear war fought in the year 1,000.

 

[SpiffyTickler]

Around 2000 years ago there was a great engineer named Heron who invented what was basically the first steam engine, called the Aeolipile. Unfortunately he didn't take the idea of steam-powered devices very far and no one at the time realized the potential uses steam power had.

I would go back around 2000 years ago to Alexandria and tell Heron to push his concepts of steam power farther than the Aeolipile by looking at the industrial applications a steam-driven device could have. Hopefully we would end up having the Industrial Revolution soon after, resulting in humanity being far more technologically advanced at this point in time than we currently are now.

 

[drew70]

But....If we go back and change the past, the Enterprise might not exist today as we know it.

 

[milagros317]

Maybe I would just go back to 1978 and tell myself to get a job at Microsoft. 😛

 

[goddess_nemesis]

Hmm, does it have to be something that deals with important people or event from the past? Or can it be more personal? Because if I could go back in time to change one event, I would go back in time (maybe several years) before my maternal grandmother passed away and teach her how to do a breast exam and encourage her to go to the doctor sooner so the doctors and she could detect the cancer sooner.

Then maybe the treatments would have helped save her and at least let her live long enough to see her grandchildren. And if she lived she could have helped steer her youngest child down a better path. And to be a mother to my mom when she was in her teens.

But then again it could go all to hell and change everything, including me never being born. 😱

As the saying goes: 'Everything happens for a reason.'

 

[Capnmad]

I'd go back and convince the inventor of The Time Tunnel (when he was a kid, before he'd invented it) that he'd be better served becoming a short-order cook than a physicist, so people wouldn't have the opportunity to f@*k with stuff they don't understand, and for the sheer joy of tweaking-off Bugman, completely un-existing the premise of his thread! 😛

 

[Bugman]

I'd go back and convince the inventor of The Time Tunnel (when he was a kid, before he'd invented it) that he'd be better served becoming a short-order cook than a physicist, so people wouldn't have the opportunity to f@*k with stuff they don't understand, and for the sheer joy of tweaking-off Bugman, completely un-existing the premise of his thread! 😛

I demand that the mods take immediate action against this hijacking of my thread!!! 😛

 

[Tickleslave83]

Maybe go back to 2000, stop Bush and 9/11, Iraq etc. and use my future knowledge to make myself rich and change things furthur!😱

 

[Dussicar]

Smother Brad Wall (Saskatchewan Premier) and Stephen Harper to death the day they were born.

 

[brianspencer66]

If I could go back in time Id go to 2001 and come up with a novel Idea of starting a Tickling Web site. It would have clips and stories also pictures and cartoons and 40,000 members one day. I wonder if others had this idea too?🙂

 

[AffectionateDan]

Ahhhhhhhhhh, the age old question.

"What would ya do if you could do it again, knowing what you know now?"

Well, I'd go to Cupertino, California on April 1, 1976, and invest heavily in a fledgling company named Apple Computer Inc., then enroll myself in taekwando classes 20 years earlier than I did this time around. Using my totally unexpected, sudden wealth, I'd travel a lot more, and be one of the founding fathers or the Internet, and NEST would be a place where you could go year round, like Disneyland. And I'd prolly spend a little time knockin' around New York, seeing what I could find... lotta cool stuff out here, and ya just never know who ya might meet! Maybe even travel back to the Middle East and kick a few choice future fathers in the nuts as hard as I can, preventing people like Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden from ever being born.

 

[The Sean Man]

I would go back to 1985, and would have pursued a relationship with Martha a bit more seriously.

Martha was a devout christian, with a body built for sin

 

[LindyHopper]

I've seen enough time travel stories to know that any change, regardless of how good an idea it seems at the time, has unintended consequences no one could have predicted. Thus, I would choose to leave well enough alone.

 

[kyle]

I would travel back to the moment of conception and slap my dad on the ass; reminding him that I will kill his dreams and drain his pockets.

 

[Dave2112]

The problem with a concept like this is that it's all hypothetical. it could never happen. Machine or not, you ain't ever going anywhere other than your own personal moment. People just don't really understand the nature of time. Most importantly, the fact that it doesn't exist. At least, not in the way people choose to comprehend it, anyway. Time is nothing but a creation we've come up with so our little primate brains can wrap around the concept that there's no "Now". It's the way we can understand the distance between not places, but events.

Ok, that being said...I'd probably leave most things alone, unless it was something personal. I know the big thing is to usually say that you'd go back and kill Hitler or something. You honestly think that would have stopped anything? It would have just postponed it. I know it's a rather banal example, but think of John Connor in Terminator 3. "But...but....we stopped Judgement Day!" "No, you just postponed it...." Dumb example, but it's true. Stopping Hitler would have done nothing but hand the reigns to someone else with the foresight to take control of what was already going on.

Hitler did not just arm himself up like Rambo and walk into Poland, or single-handedly make Eurpoe lie down. He had an entire nation's military behind him. He had an entire (constantly growing) culture behind him. People who agreed with him and completely thought they were doing the right thing. This is a movement that is not the creation of one man. So often when looking back on history, we focus on the person in charge, and not the social stream of the time. There was a reason Hitler was able to take over an entire country. It was a social shift, a direction of humanity that was going to happen no matter what you do about it. There is ZERO chance you could "go back in time" and prevent Nazi Germany. You'd only postpone it, or perhaps even inadvertantly strengthen it. Things happen for a multitude of reasons, not just because one person did something, or one event changed everything.

Think of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Kicked off World War I. Yeah, officially. Think you're gonna stop World War I by stopping his assassination? M'kay.....go ahead. The machine was in place. The emotions were there. it's one small thing leading to another small thing to creating a bigger thing that joins with another bigger thing which is itself a combination of smaller things. Major shifts or streams in human development and social events are going to happen no matter what you do.

All of that being said, I'd probably just go back and re-experience something really great that I know has already happened.

 

[Redmage]

As a time travel story I read once put it, "Everyone kills hitler their first time. Let them get it out of their systems."

 

[Fire_Sprite]

Lame. You guys are given a window into the fourth dimension and you're hardly leaving the decade. Thats like buying a lamborghini and using it to drive to your mailbox. I like the ideas of people going back a few thousand years and jump starting science. I'd go back to ancient Greece and teach them everything about modern medicine and warfare. It'll be totally worth blanking out my own existence. Although if I survive the time ripples and get to go back to a 3000+ years advanced home then double win!

 

[Artoo]

The problem with a concept like this is that it's all hypothetical. it could never happen. Machine or not, you ain't ever going anywhere other than your own personal moment. People just don't really understand the nature of time. Most importantly, the fact that it doesn't exist. At least, not in the way people choose to comprehend it, anyway. Time is nothing but a creation we've come up with so our little primate brains can wrap around the concept that there's no "Now". It's the way we can understand the distance between not places, but events.

Ok, that being said...I'd probably leave most things alone, unless it was something personal. I know the big thing is to usually say that you'd go back and kill Hitler or something. You honestly think that would have stopped anything? It would have just postponed it. I know it's a rather banal example, but think of John Connor in Terminator 3. "But...but....we stopped Judgement Day!" "No, you just postponed it...." Dumb example, but it's true. Stopping Hitler would have done nothing but hand the reigns to someone else with the foresight to take control of what was already going on.

Hitler did not just arm himself up like Rambo and walk into Poland, or single-handedly make Eurpoe lie down. He had an entire nation's military behind him. He had an entire (constantly growing) culture behind him. People who agreed with him and completely thought they were doing the right thing. This is a movement that is not the creation of one man. So often when looking back on history, we focus on the person in charge, and not the social stream of the time. There was a reason Hitler was able to take over an entire country. It was a social shift, a direction of humanity that was going to happen no matter what you do about it. There is ZERO chance you could "go back in time" and prevent Nazi Germany. You'd only postpone it, or perhaps even inadvertantly strengthen it. Things happen for a multitude of reasons, not just because one person did something, or one event changed everything.

Think of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Kicked off World War I. Yeah, officially. Think you're gonna stop World War I by stopping his assassination? M'kay.....go ahead. The machine was in place. The emotions were there. it's one small thing leading to another small thing to creating a bigger thing that joins with another bigger thing which is itself a combination of smaller things. Major shifts or streams in human development and social events are going to happen no matter what you do.

All of that being said, I'd probably just go back and re-experience something really great that I know has already happened.

Awesome post, Dave2112; I agree with you on a number of points, but disagree on a number of others. For example, I believe time exists.

A Philosopher named J. E. McTaggart argued against the existance of time (or rather, that nothing worth calling time exists), because of the logical incompatability of events being simultaneously past, present and future dependng on one's point of reference (which is the case according to the tensed theory of time, where one's choices affect what will happen in the future).

However, the more commonly accepted definition of time is that it is "Tenseless" (that your choices would not affect the future, because you could not have made any other choice, as events in time are fixed in place in the same way that london and paris are fixed in space). Therefore the logical incompatabliliy proposed by McTaggart is meaningles.

Because of this, I'm going to spoil the thread by saying that even if you went back in time to kill Hitler, you won't, because you didn't the first time round.

Having said that, I'd probably visit myself, 10 years ago, and tell myself not to be such a pussy in school 😀

 

[mustangtickler]

wow... thats just deep, man!

I liked the part in bill and ted where they are hiding and bill wants to be reminded about a trashcan later, and BOOM! the trashcan lands on the guy... not sure about all the details as i havent seen this movie in years.

Aside from that, I think I would go back and convince myself NOT to get back together with the ex girlfriend that I ended up marrying..

😵