If you could go back in time and change something what would you do

Keep my dad from leaving that cigar burning.

Or keep my sister from running in front of that truck.

This would literally prevent me from being born.

Go on a spree hunting down every single person involved in the decision to foist this piece of shit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SA80

on the British armed forces and putting 7.62mm NATO bullets from a proper rifle through their chest and skull. Preferably before the decision was made final.

How about preventing this from being scrapped?

Yeah, that would stop a lot of people from existing, including many of my friends.

And maybe me, too.

edited 6th Feb '15 11:10:38 AM by BaconManiac5000

c:◊

You, my friend, have earned one of the first Official Bacon Seals of Approval I've given out in a long time.

I mean, I'm an antinatalist so I'm not really opposed to the prevention of my existence but the fact-of-the-matter is that my existence is completely dependent on and inseparable from the Cold War.

I don't understand? Is it literally a piece of shit? Like the F-35?

I'd prevent 9/11, and thus all the domino effects like the Patriot Act, increased military budget, botched foreign relations with Iran, etc it * arguably *caused

How so?

edited 6th Feb '15 12:08:08 PM by Xopher001

And, look here, I find a again a bit of short fiction I read on the blog of an comics and animation writer about Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act that seems like it would be of interest to this thread and all of the shoulda, coulda, woulda: http://buzzdixon.com/buzz-dixon/fiction/fictoids/fictoid-i-killed-hitlers-mom-several-times/

I still stand by my "I would go back in time and... probably be too nice to kill the guy who invented money, but would talk him out of it or lock him in a bubble or something."

Either that or mercy-kill the first one of us to come down from the trees and to gain self-awareness and an awarness of things like death and malice. Yeah, I'm one of those people the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy describes as one of those people who thinks us coming down from the trees was a bad idea.

Sorry for the red link. The system is not letting me edit for some reason.

Ah, let's just say if the Cold War never happened, one of my parents would have no reason to be in my current country and thus would have never met my other parent.

edited 6th Feb '15 7:24:31 PM by death_vlk

Apologies to everybody born due to the Cold War, but the brutal calculus of the matter is that more people can be saved by preventing it.

My solution would have been to just let Patton drive the Russians out of Czechoslovakia, you know considering he was right there and could have done it but was given orders not to because the US government basically made a deal with the Soviets, but you know whatever floats your boat.

As for me, I'd take all the bombs we developed during the Cold War and detonate them all. Everywhere. Omnicide uber alles.

Every little action from everyone affects every single thing else that happens in the world, so one small change—say, going back in time to this morning at breakfast and ordering a buttered bagel, with extra butter, on your way to work rather than a plain one—could affect things you would never even know about.

For example, because you ordered that bagel with extra butter, when another customer comes in later and orders a bagel with butter as well, there is no butter left. This customer argues with the clerk at the counter about it and eventually storms out. This clerk's mood has been worsened, and he was already having a bad day (his girlfriend broke up with him, and he just found out he won't have enough to make rent that month), so now he's livid. He leaves the store early, a half hour before his shift is over, because he can't stand to be there anymore. In his anger, he isn't completely paying attention to his driving, and thus crashes into a traffic light, causing a traffic jam that makes you late to come home from work.

You bastard.

edited 7th Feb '15 10:10:06 PM by Odd1

Or or or

Nothing happens

Nope. You're wrong. So just sit there, in your wrongness.

SHAAAAAAAME

Should this discussion therefore about being able to go back to time and changing something without invoking the Butterfly Effect?

I would go back in time and prevent my twin brother from coming out too early, therefore preventing my premature birth and I would grow up to be a normal girl with a twin brother.

If it would change the timeline I return to, I would convince my past self to invest all the money I have now, into short selling the companies affected by 9/11, then use the superfluous amounts I earned from the investments to help those affected by it.

If I would of have gone around in the fabrics of time, then the first and most obvious thing I would of had done is to kick Justin Bieber's father in the ovaries so he would of never had children to begin with.

Other then that though, the rest is just carefree nonsense!

And now I would add "figure out how to stop my mom from getting sick", either by having her go to a doctor that could have figured things out sooner or whatever.

Not to coattail on my younger brother's idea or anything, but I would give Alexander the Great some penicillin.

kill off the earliest animal with a spinal cord(Pikaia) to prevent humans from ever appearing and to stop Hitler's Time Travel Exeption Act