Soen Eber

Looking to put up a fun, thoughtful thread. To keep it from getting too heavy, assume your power to change history also allows you to keep your friends and family as they are, or to change how they are affected as you wish.

My one change, would be to make Bismark a Bavarian. Why? Germany would be consolidated under Bavarian, not Prussian rule, and that fool Kaiser Wilhelm II would be unable to set Europe's course the destructive way he had. It might still have blown up, but perhaps in a better way - absent a certain Austrian - and anyways, I don't care. Its my wish so I get to set the rules

I'm also figuring a Bavarian center would have bought in Austria and the Rhineland, and those states would have been a better influence than Prussia, which would then have had to look east and south for allies instead. Rather than founding national policy along racial lines as Wilhelm did (thus setting up instability and encirclement), it would have kept much of the existing balance which had kept central and eastern Europe fairly stable. I'm not quite so sure on this point though. And by fairly stable I mean small booms, not big booms.

And the thought of Bismark having to work with mad King Ludwig makes me giggle.

Kokoro Fasching

That the humans had kept the extra finger and toe they lost, so you all would use a base 12 math.

It would have prevented religion from happening.

Cindy Claveau

That Alois Schicklgruber would have fathered a girl, instead.

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Tracer Graves

No burning down of the library of Alexandria

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detrius

I'd drop a copy of the Encyclopædia Britannica in Hippocrates' bookcase. Screw temporal continuity.

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Beebo Brink

I'd block that sneaky genetic mutation that created these strange creatures called Homo sapiens.

Being closer to a Bonobo is more fun. Lots of sex and pretty laid back about life.

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Noob: "okay.... im in a house with cages and people in gags and the door just locked and i cant get out :c"

Void

whatever asteroid, volcano, or other force wiped out the dinosaur would have been just a bit bigger... nothing special, just a few orders of magnitude... in Kokoros base 12 =D

PS
why does everyone always go for the obvious godwin? horrible as all that was, it was bound to happen in some version, and the cautionary tale it represents was a hard won lesson of humanity in awareness... and unfortunate internet memes...

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Persephone Milk

I wouldn't change anything at all. People have asked the same question about my own life, knowing something of the difficult bits. I have always felt that adversity shapes us, provides the catalyst and energy for growth, and prepares us for the next evil thing or difficult time.

Cindy Claveau

You're begging the point.

I think I was the only one in this thread who made an obscure reference to Hitler.

But really, the premise was "what one thing would you change".

Whether there are other possibilities or not, I would elect to save six million human beings from the most hellishly brutal deaths imaginable. In an alternate reality, I'd elect the same thing under different circumstances.

And I'm not so sure humanity has learned much at all. The list of genocides since WW2 is long and bloody.

Genocides in history - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pol

I would prevent the Hindenburg crash. The passenger zeppelin industry would have continued evolving, and our skies would now be filled with swarms of Metropolis-esque dirigibles floating majestically among the skyscrapers.

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Dancien Graves

I would want to be transported back into prehistoric times into a field full of butterflies with a cricket bat and just let the chips fall where they may.

Teeny Leviathan

I'd go back to the beginning of biblical times, and leave hundreds of Batman logos on stuff. 2000 years later, all religions will be kickass religions.

Dancien Graves

I'd also go back to when Napoleon first became Emperor. I'd put my hand on his head and be all "Haha you can't hit me"

Seyla Warden

I'd have made sure Gustav Adolfus survived Breitenfield.

eta: Or, depending on how you define 'one thing' I'd change things so that human society never adopts capitalism.

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Serendipity

Maybe prevent them to make Matrix 2 & 3...

Wrong Weatherwax

That Western toolmakers had realized the superiority of pull over push in saws several hundred years ago.

Western style carcass saws are crap.

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Stormy Weeks

I'd make Monica get her blue dress drycleaned.

eku Zhong

erase the making marijuana illegal bit...

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Han Held

I'd tell John Lennon to beware of that creepy asshole lingering by The Dakota. (._.)

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detrius

Just make sure you don't litter the place with West Virginian hillbilly enclaves.

Cindy Claveau

I may have given stealth technology and lasers to Native Americans before the Europeans showed up.

Adeon Writer

As much as the options could benefit humanity, I refuse to change any event that occurred before my birth.

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Void

you share the honor with OP

Cindy Claveau

It makes sense, though. Modern humans have no recollection of Genghis Khan, Aztec blood rites or the Inquisition. We're only 1 generation removed from the horrors of Buchenwald.

Jahar Aabye

Wouldn't have mattered one bit. I'd say give them smallpox and measles vaccines, and teach them about how clearing swampland will prevent infestations of the imported mosquitos and the imported malaria and yellow fever that they will carry. That way you head off the worst genocide in human history and arguably reduce the impetus for plantation farming amd chattel slavery that would develop in the southern states humid enough to support mosquitoes and warm enough for malaria to reproduce inside of them.

Of course, the effect this would have on the past 500 years would produce a very different and unpredictable world.

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