Where will you go?

Dis86 said:
Dunno. It's be a struggle to go to say new York I 1372!
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Assuming time travel is just passing through time (so if you stood in London, then time traveled meaning you end up in the past/future in London) why would you not travel to The location first in the present then time travel (excluding places which wouldn't yet exist in the year you are travelling to)
 
I own a printer and paper so would print off a ream of scientific information and plans for various methods of transport and machines that could be made with relatively simple techniques (larger wooden ships, steam engines etc) and go back to 1372, then discover America and Australia, claiming it for myself. :p

I'd also become a celebrated inventor and move the world forward scientifically and mechanically several hundred years, perhaps allowing all of you I left behind access to personal jet packs, teleportation and decent space ships!;)
 
dowie said:
You could go back to 1907, take a trip to Vienna, persuade the admissions tutor at the Academy of fine arts that it would really do the whole world a favour if they'd not reject the application from a young chap called Adolf.
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I think a better plan along those lines would be to have Franz Conrad von Hotzendorf killed instead of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. That might well have prevented WW1(*) and I think that preventing WW1 would have a higher chance of preventing WW2 than allowing Hitler to become an art student. In a worst case scenario, that might end up with a more competent person as leader of the Nazis. If nothing else changed, the circumstances that led to the success of the Nazi party would remain the same. You also might well end up changing nothing - there was massive conscription in WW1, so Hitler would probably have ended up in the army anyway.


* I know that German/Russian conflict was another big factor, but at the time both countries were led by people who wanted to avoid a war and I think it could have been avoided if the Austro-Hungarian empire didn't invade Serbia. Avoiding WW1 might also avoid the Russian revolution and thus the deaths of millions of Russians and possibly several other wars (notably Vietnam and Korea).

But I'd probably go back a few weeks with lottery numbers. I quite like living here and now. I wouldn't really fancy living in 1914 even if I added something to make me rich. Plans for a more efficient internal combustion engine and transport vehicle would probably work for that purpose - the market was there and it wouldn't be anything strange enough to attract any negative attention. With a few weeks work here and now, I could cobble together viable plans for something that would work as roughly the early 20th century equivalent of a Transit van and plausibly present them as my invention. The same engine could be used for the luxury car market as well, of course. Both would be much better than anything else at the time, so I should be able to sell them very profitably. I'd have to make sure I could go back with enough assets to get a demonstration vehicle built in order to persuade someone rich enough to finance the business for a stake in it because I couldn't go back with enough assets to do it by myself.
 
That would open an absolute can of worms far larger than you mention. What would Africa be like without the proxy wars waged between west and east there? That's if countries were ever given their independence.

Would the US have had the same leverage over the UK and European countries and would the UK have stayed strong enough to hold on to its colonies, even if just long enough to give them independence after properly setting up the internal mechanisms (we managed it with a couple but rushed independence with most).

Would women be as equal in society as they currently are? The two wars advanced women's rights significantly.

And finally what would it have done in the east? The Japanese colonization of Asia would almost certainly still have gone ahead, would we now have a Japanese Emperor controlling much of China, Korea and associated locations? The surrender and change in society there was significant and may not have happened without the Second World War.

Heck the League of Nations, UN, NATO and EU wouldn't have existed. Would the Triple Entente or Triple Alliance have expanded to create something similar to the above?

Would we have nuclear technology today? Jet engines, Rocket power? Would we have got to space?

Makes you question the whole "fixed" and "flexible" timey wimey stuff you see in Scifi. Is it correct that there are almost "fixed" points in time that will almost "always" occur no matter variations in big events, or are we mostly where we are now because of these big events (I.e. Would we have invented nuclear weapons if we hadn't needed to because of a war that happened just at the "right" time?
 
Dis86 said:
Should this not be when would you go, not where?
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dowie said:
surely you can go wherever you want once you've moved back in time
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johnny6 said:
Assuming time travel is just passing through time (so if you stood in London, then time traveled meaning you end up in the past/future in London) why would you not travel to The location first in the present then time travel (excluding places which wouldn't yet exist in the year you are travelling to)
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johnny has it, the rules are you can start your time travel from anywhere you can go in the present, and you'll appear in the same geographical location. so if you're rich enough to be a space tourist now (or if you're an actual astronaut), then there's nothing stopping you time travelling in space (although probably not advisable to travel beyond the launch/de-orbit of the spacecraft)

i'll admit the whole location matching thing is a bit vague if you think about the movements of the earth in space, because if you travel 6 months in time on earth then technically you should appear on the opposite side of the sun floating in space because the earth's moved, but we'll just assume the machine can track the orbit of whatever body you set out from and will re-materialise you relative to where on/in that body should be.

Angilion said:
You also might well end up changing nothing - there was massive conscription in WW1, so Hitler would probably have ended up in the army anyway.
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hitler was in the army during ww1?

the issue with preventing either of the 2 world wars is one must ask if it was an inevitable consequence anyway, by preventing ww1 and ww2 for example then there would be no collective memory of the true horror that mankind can achieve, and as such the war may well have happened later, for example during the cold war, and thus end up being worse for humanity overall.

possibly the better way to do it would be to convince the allied powers after ww1 not to give germany such crippling war reparations, hitler would still end up being an evil sod but without a starving country to preach to he'd just end up like the modern bnp, and we could possibly assume that the aftermath of ww1 would then play out more like the aftermath of ww2 with a richer and more prosperous germany posing no threat to anyone, but we'd still have ww1 in our collective memory to inspire us not to go for the whole nuclear war thing.

although as amp quite rightly points out- this won't stop the war with japan (well, unless part of japans motivation to attack was due to the war in europe providing a distraction for the americans, my history on that side of things isn't all that good)
 
Craig321 said:
I'll just memorise the winning numbers of a £100m+ EuroMillions draw and go back to just before. Yeah, I'm that imaginative :p
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Going back in time doesn't guarantee that the same numbers will be pulled.

Better off investing in Bitcoin/Google/Facebook
 
Purchase book on how to make a VCR, travel back to before the VCR was invented, invent the VCR. Spend the rest of my life in Miami doing blow surrounded by women with massive perms and those weird bikinis where the bottoms almost stretch up to the armpits.
 
I'd go forward in time 7 years when anime becomes both an e-sport and a contact sport and I would dual wield IRL, just ownage everywhere and then I become Otaku Heritage Class, and then it's, it's the President of Anime, I've invented that but it will be real, so you, you know, you should listen to this, I'll be the best President of the Anime (POTA) that you've ever seen, the best, I get all the best numbers and swords, everyone says so, and I'll, I mean they've told me and I think it's true, so I'll get an orange tan like Cheetos but on my, you know, on my face, it's the best face, it really is, so very, very, very good, and then we'll make anime great again, god bless and thank you.
 
I'd go back to 822AD, probably somewhere around what is now Finland.
No real reason for that specific year... I suppose since I used to take part in Viking re-enactments, it'd be interesting to go back and experience the real thing.

krooton said:
Better off investing in Bitcoin/Google/Facebook
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Why invest?
If you're going back to before they existed then you may as well steal the code and invent sites like Google/Facebook.
 
[FnG]magnolia said:
I'd go forward in time 7 years when anime becomes both an e-sport and a contact sport and I would dual wield IRL, just ownage everywhere and then I become Otaku Heritage Class, and then it's, it's the President of Anime, I've invented that but it will be real, so you, you know, you should listen to this, I'll be the best President of the Anime (POTA) that you've ever seen, the best, I get all the best numbers and swords, everyone says so, and I'll, I mean they've told me and I think it's true, so I'll get an orange tan like Cheetos but on my, you know, on my face, it's the best face, it really is, so very, very, very good, and then we'll make anime great again, god bless and thank you.
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I know you are clinically insane and have seen evidence that you will be a disaster in practice. However I am insecure about the future and feel I need somebody who can "just ownage everywhere" to protect me from the Asians when anime takes off and as such I will vote for you to be POTA.
 
suenstar said:
I'd go back to 822AD, probably somewhere around what is now Finland.
No real reason for that specific year... I suppose since I used to take part in Viking re-enactments, it'd be interesting to go back and experience the real thing.
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interesting, although they would be real battles (ie people would actually be trying to kill you), what would you take with you?
 
adolf hamster said:
interesting, although they would be real battles (ie people would actually be trying to kill you), what would you take with you?
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Fully aware that I'd probably end up dead if I join a battle... probably even if I cross the wrong people out in the wilderness.

I'd probably take an old backpack, camping supplies, one of my re-enactment weapons (throwing axe), a few old coins/gems so that I can possibly barter for a more functional weapon because if I hit someone with my axe it'll just **** them off, some type of parchment and something to write with as being able to write'll make me fairly valuable in that period... probably worth taking some food and something to hunt with as well.
 
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