Time travel

Discussion in 'The Lounge Bar' started by Peter Clare, May 12, 2006.

  1. lancesergeant

    lancesergeant Senior Member

    If Russia and China are fighting on a united front with the Russian resources to the fore, then it would be stalemate or they would perhaps go for Indo China and consolidate the Korean peninsula.
     
  2. Kyt

    Kyt Very Senior Member

    I don't think that the Japanese would have attacked the US. Taking the the scenario that there is no war in Europe, then the Japanese military would not only have had to contend with the large Russian presence in the east (which had continued to some degree ever since the 1905 war), but also the European colonial armies. The British had India etc, but France would not have surrendered to Germany and so would still have had a presence IndoChina, and Dutch in their colonies. So the Japanese would have been more hemmed in.

    HOWEVER, the Japanese may then have been able to concentrate their resources on China (who Stalin wouldn't necessarilly have supported - don't forget at times the Nationalists and Communists spent more time fighting amongst themselves than the Japanese). With the colonial prescence, the US may not been motivated to goud Japan with whole embargos and sanctions which caused the Japanese to attack anyway (during the 1940/41period when the above mentioned colonial powers had their hands full).

    Ah, what if..............................!
     
  3. drgslyr

    drgslyr Senior Member

    The US is often maligned for its isolationist stance at the beginning of the war. This scenario raises another good question. If Germany had not started a war in Europe but Japan had attacked on Dec 7, how many nations not under direct attack and with no vested interest would have come to the aid of the US? My guess is none.
     
  4. Kyt

    Kyt Very Senior Member

    Following on from my post above, I think the assumption of any attack Dec 7 is dependent upon the geo-politics of the region. There would be absolutely no reason for Japan to attack then unless other factors also fitted. So if in that wildly suicidal moment Japan did attack, then other countries would have been involved (maybe not voluntarily but then again the US didn't join that way either).
     
  5. lancesergeant

    lancesergeant Senior Member

    The US is often maligned for its isolationist stance at the beginning of the war. This scenario raises another good question. If Germany had not started a war in Europe but Japan had attacked on Dec 7, how many nations not under direct attack and with no vested interest would have come to the aid of the US? My guess is none.
    I would have to agree there. India and the subcontinent are in the other direction and not at threat. Inclined to agree it would be a two horse race. Japan's only other front would be in Manchuria/ Manchuquo
     
  6. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    I am quite sure that the veterans who grace this site would have little interest in reliving their wartime experiences. For the rest of us who were born long after WW2 but who carry some special interest there is a fascination with specific places, people and events.

    Am I alone in idly thinking sometimes about where and when I would go if time travel weren't a fantasy? I actually have two.

    Being on Nan White (Bernieres-sur mer), Juno Beach at dawn on June 6th with the Queens Own Rifles would be my first choice.

    My second is more generic but piloting a Mosquito on night Intruder missions would be it.
     
  7. marcus69x

    marcus69x I love WW2 meah!!!

    :lol: ;)

    Nah you're not alone mate.

    As long as the technology allowed me to time travel back but be safe in my own little 'bubble' where I couldn't get shot, then there's many places I'd like to 'visit'.

    The first would have to be the D-day beaches. Any would do. Standing in the middle, safe in your bubble, invisible to everyone else and watching all that chaos unfolding around you. Crazy stuff. Imagine being able to do that?

    The second would probably be in London during the worst of the bombing raids. Hearing them sirens first hand and watching people running for cover. The droning engines of the Lufftwaffe and the whistle of falling bombs.

    Unreal!!!

    When's back to the future 4 coming out? ;)
     
  8. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Perish the thought...War is shit in short and if I had to go back in time to WW2 and could choose where I wanted to be I'd choose somewhere like the Falklands or Iceland.

    Interesting reading the other posts and your reasons mind you.

    Cheers
     
  9. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    We had a thread like this before.
    I'll still stick to my previous answer.
    Running a brothel in Paris.
    1939-1940 I'd be making money out of the French & British.
    1940-1944 the Germans
    1944-1945 The Americans.
     
  10. Smudger Jnr

    Smudger Jnr Our Man in Berlin

    Owen,

    Thats pretty rational thinking:D

    Regards
    Tom
     
  11. James S

    James S Very Senior Member

    Owen
    Running a brothel in Paris.


    The oldest profession !
     
  12. dbf

    dbf Moderatrix MOD

    I'd follow 3IG around taking copious notes and photos, and 'procuring' various maps

    ... and risking further intervention, I'd be whispering a few bits of advice in my father's ear ...
    Keep a diary;
    don't leave your stuff at your Mum's, it'll only disappear;
    don't give away most of that gear you bring back as souvenirs,
    and don't go mad with the scissors on all those photos you get.
     
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  13. von Poop

    von Poop Adaministrator Admin

    Merged three time-travelling threads.
    I'm sticking with the hats... and maybe a box of grenades & a machine gun to stash somewhere in the countryside - you never know when a box of grenades and a machine gun might come in handy... :unsure:

    And maybe a Hafthohlladung to use on our server.
     
  14. Smudger Jnr

    Smudger Jnr Our Man in Berlin

    I would like to take a trip back in time to follow my father around Italy and Greece just to see what he got up to.

    Like Diane I would urge him to keep a diary and write details on the back of photographs.

    Oh well - to dream is a good thing:).

    Regards
    Tom
     
  15. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    Well, I like your thinking Owen. But what about post 1945? Are you counting on enough profit to retire?

    Your post has made me re-think who I would select as my navigator in that Mosquito. My choice for a crew mate would clearly break many air force regulations but what the hell, it's a long flight back from Berlin!!!!!
     
  16. Owen

    Owen -- --- -.. MOD

    I should hope so!!!
    A nice little place in a tax haven like Monaco & then I could watch all those post-war Grand Prix there.
     
  17. Gage

    Gage The Battle of Barking Creek


    I don't know why, Owen. But you remind me of Rene Artois!

    [​IMG]
     
  18. brndirt1

    brndirt1 Senior Member

    I don’t mean to go off on a "reality tangent" here, but the first problem expressed by most who have studied the stuff is that it is logically NOT possible to travel to a time previous to the machine being developed. This seems to limit travel in the "temporal plane" to the future, not the past. The one other problem is "Parallel universes" as expressed in both Schrodinger's paradox, and touched on in the Back to the Future series. Schrodinger's theorem held that personal decisions created parallel realities which "spit off from" each other and developed independently. Is the cat dead or alive, or both at the moment before you look in the box? (read the postulation)

    The second problem with time travel being an original one-way street until you get on it, then you can come back to where you developed the machine, you cannot simply think temporally. You have to think spatially as well, since you target is moving! All of these next figures are just approximations for demonstration in the thought process only, so don't point out they are "off".

    First of all, you have to remember that the earth itself is rotating at the speed of about 1,000 mph, and "wobbling". It may not seem like it, but that is why our day is the length of time it is compared to our own approximate circumference at the equator. And don’t forget that while it is "spinning in place", the bugger isn't "in place"! Since it is also revolving about the sun at close to 67,000 miles per hour. Divide that down and it comes out to about 18.5 miles per second. So if you were to develop a "time machine", and to test it out you decided to go back, you could only go back to the moment you invented it and that would be about 100,000 feet away from where you decided to try it for each second since you built it. If you plan to go ahead a second, the earth would run you down at 67,000 miles an hour! So you would either "appear" in space and get left in the wake of the disappearing earth, or you would "appear" in space and get run down by a hit and run bus driver extraordinaire.

    To keep these next numbers inside of comprehension, I will stick with miles per second. That said, don’t forget to figure in the fact that the solar system is rotating around one of our own galaxy's outer arms at about 155 miles per second (250 kilometers per second), over a hundred times faster than it is rotating around the sun, and our own Milky Way galaxy is moving at another 185 miles per second (300 kilometers per second), inside of our own group of galaxies, and they are all moving away from the "big bang" at an as of yet debated speed!

    So if you just choose to go back to a specific time, and ignore the fact that is not logically possible (in physics), then you have to aim at where the "earth" was at the time you are shooting for (in space). If you want your story to be inside of an even stretched reality. If you are just writing for entertainment, and none of the physical laws apply, then you will have to conquer only the intellectual paradoxes which develop inside of your fictional world. How would your own "timeline" coincide with theirs on even the very peripheral. One would have to look at his own family and life "history" rather carefully to decide if Hitler’s elimination may impact your own existence. And then decide when would be the "best time" in which to "do the deed".

    Without Hitler, who would come to the fore in Germany in the thirties? If he was gone from the timeline, would Stalin become more aggressive toward his own western borders, the Poles for example? What about we get rid of both guys? If that is the choice, why not pick a time when both were actually together (unknown to each) in the same place?

    They both enjoyed sitting in the same park in Vienna, the same year. Stalin was writing on Communist doctrine while in exile, and Hitler was an aspiring "art student", neither were yet "real criminals", but both could be gotten "rid of" right then! Shortly before Hitler left Vienna for Munich in May of 1913, Joseph Stalin (age 33 just an up and coming Bolshevik) was sent to Vienna in January to study the "Austrian situation." He rented a room just off the NE corner of Schonbrunn Park for a month and while there, working with the German socialists, wrote a Marxist tract called; Marxism and the National Question. Hitler continued to visit Schonbrunn Park at that time, as it isn’t that far from the Mannerheim where he had resided for the past few years. Hitler and Stalin used to spend time in a common park, Stalin writing, and Hitler sketching. Whether they ever met or not is moot, no common language. If they did it was probably a polite "nod" at someone else in the park.

    You could become the "undiscovered" serial killer of the park! Two relatively young men, with no obvious (in this time-space continuum) connection to each other, both shot (or stabbed or whatever), and without apparent motive in say; February of 1913. I wonder at which directions the world we know today might have taken without those to dynamic individuals in the mix?
     
  19. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive


    I have recently read that in 1940 it was encouraged by the 'Love' General while the BEF was in France :lol:
     
  20. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Hot air manufacturer

    Cultural attaché for the US Embassy at Rio de Janeiro touring Walt Disney to provide him with local colour for his Watercolor of Brazil :)
     
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