This has little to do with history but I didn't know where else to poast.

Let's say you had access to a time machine and only had one objective, say to stop 9/11.

How far do you think you could go back and still manage to successfully stop it? What would your strategy be?

Let's also say you have a limited amount of time, say a month, from when you first arrive, if you have your lifetime to dedicate to the task your chances of success probably go way up. You get to pick where physically on earth you go back to as well.

I mean, hypothcially if you got sent back to 1,000 AD for 1 month would you really be able to do anything to stop an event more than 1000 years away?

~570 AD would do it

Probably a year or two before.

At first I thought this was some drunker nonsense..but I pondered it a second. Its kind of interesting. Assuming you could go back a few years..you go biff tannen your way to riches via betting sports.. nbacking the right rich people( subtly of course) as, large changes might ripple in unexpected ways.

With money you could probably get involved with Afghanistan in the 80s or iraq/iran. Either by wiping em out or getting usa into non involvement. .assuming the behind the scenes stuff we assume true is infact ( not 9/11 coverups, more policy in 80/90s.)

I suppose you go could 12monkeys and try to stop the specific planes, but that would likely ripple into future attack.


Perhaps you could swing leaving Israel out as a country post ww2 but who knows if that wouldnt set something else in motion.

Well, it is largely non-sense, that's for sure.

But I think if you go back a short period of time it's amost trivially easy, you get in touch with the FBI or the airlines and stuff, giving them the names of the hijackers, the date, the details of the plot, etc. They might think you're a crazy man but you'd have so much specific information and names eventually someone would take you seriously and something would happen I'm sure.

I'm also assuming you have no sort of special powers when you go back, you're just a regular guy.

So like if you get dumped in say Europe in 1000 AD, what if anything can you do to stop it? The only thing I could think of was to try to leave some sort of record behind warning of it hoping that would somehow alter it.

Like I said, it's non-sense, just an interesting thought exercise, well at least to me.

This is the exact same premise as Stpehen King's 11/22/63, which deals with the same topic, except, of course, not 9/11 but the kennedy assassination

if i dropped off a truckload of history textbooks in 1850, as people saw that they knew the future they'd use them to prevent events. i'm not gonna get into the ripple effect stuff, but I think it's clearly possible by doing that. if you can't bring back objects, you could get around it by memorizing history textbooks and writing for a month then giving it to the president or something.

i think as you go back further and further, it'd become more likely the information is lost or ignored. predicting the future in 1600 might get you burnt at the stake or something. I think 1800 or later, you'd have reasonably good luck, but before 1800 odds start to skyrocket that you are ignored or burnt at the stake as a witch or whatever.

Kill a really important person or do something else that has a big impact. That should do it (actually it wouldn't because you'd probably end up causing the non-existence of one of your ancestors, etc)

Do you guys believe in historical determinism or something?

Simple

Looks like you could go all the way back to Abraham's time and kill him and stop 9/11. Or you could go to Genesis and read his genealogy and kill the furthest one back you can find.

Come on guys lets make this thread interesting (and create a movie or 3 out of it lol). The real question is how many hours/days do you need to stop it say before 8am Eastern time on 9/11/2001. No need to go earlier. But here is the catch;


1) You have access to internet right now and can pick up any data you want and then be transferred in time. Obviously this allows you a perfect information collection today that involves the names and flight numbers and all kinds of details you like that can potentially prove your case within hours or even minutes if you talk to the right authority. So answer it for this case that you have perfect internet access.


2) But now imagine i am about to take you back in time in less that 1 min and you have no access to internet only your memory (knowledge of near term history). After that 1 min and a couple hours in some isolated location you will be transferred. While waiting to be transferred you are free to think your plan but again no access to data other than your own memory. Then you are transferred a number of minutes or hours or days before 0 point of reference (ie ~8am) and have to stop it. You are given your usual wallet and ids, credit cards, and some 1k cash at hand, thats it, you say are left downtown a city of your choice in the US. You can even pick your own home back then or downtown Manhattan. Give me a sequence of action that can produce a result in the least amount of time. Do you need min/hours or is it days before that 8 am morning as reference time? How about some ingenious effort that needs only minutes before 8am?

By the way you do not need to worry about going back centuries or thousands of years. If you could do that you would be able to change the entire human history to the point of not ever even having a USA as you know it. I mean all you need to do in antiquity is to get in touch with famous scientists of the time and show them a couple of tricks from modern era or technology, math etc and get their attention, then once you learn basic language you can tell them everything they need to change science and technology with a jump of hundreds of years. Obviously the discovery of America takes place hundreds or even >1k of years earlier as a result.

The map of the world alone that you have in your mind or your astronomy (knowledge of rough distances and sizes of objects), or your math education skills is enough to change everything. All you need is some "Archimedes" of that era's world to give you a few hours of his time out of curiosity to start suddenly attracting unreal attention from him and his cycle that they will never let you go anywhere, to eventually be effectively completely debriefed for years under the most intense focus and protection conditions. To get to that person you need to start talking to any teachers/philosophers of that time. Your real big problem is that once transferred and left you have no equipment with you and no ideal knowledge of local language so before you can get to do the above you need first to survive as a weird foreigner with no connections. That is the real challenge and the most important aspect of this sci-fi/history contact.

Yeah I clearly meant stop 9/11 and try to do have as little other impact as possible.

14 billion years
just eat the big bang and make a big fart

Buy a ticket on Flight 11 and fight em would be the most badass

I would need to kill Bin Laden and pretty much the entire Al Qaeda structure to stop A 9-11 from happening.

I would go back to August 6th 2001 and make a memo and hand it to the president. I would title it " Bin Laden determined to strike United States. " Clearly any executive would spring into action to stop such an attack.

I would go back to the 80's when it all started..... Under "Operation Cyclone" from 1979 to 1989, the United States provided financial aid and weapons to the mujahideen

I would simply tell the CIA , Listen guys don't give weapons to the mujahideen and oh ya don't go through with the Iran Contra affair while your at it

Butterfly effect though.

I think that would work about as well as telling Bush not to invade Iraq.

In fact prob worse as they'd assume you're a communist who knows about highly secret government programs.


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Go back to england a few centuries ago and kill Karl Marx. Communism is never created, soviet union is never formed, and the USA doesn't form, indoctrinate and arm Alquida.

1. 8/11.
2. Improve cockpit security.

1: 9/11 reverse pick-pocket cocaine wrapped in tinfoil in the pockets of all the hijackers before they go through security
2: post on 2+2 details of how you just prevented the destruction of the twin towers, and encourage the next guy with a time machine to prevent the next disaster (might also advise people to cash out of pokerspot.com ASAP)

Of course they would. They did get warnings didn't they ? They didn't seem to do a lot in the fifty minutes after the hijackings started.

24 hours. I'd spread it out over a season of shows though.

More seriously, maybe 3 or 4 days if I had addresses of where the terrorists lived. Maybe a bit more if I had to do some calisthenics to be up for the job. I'm rather out of shape to be taking out terrorists.

i always thought the same, but i think i would have failed because no one would believe what i would be saying.