Theoretically Killing Off One Person In History.

[PMorgan18]

Thomas Edison. Then Nikola Tesla would have got the credit he deserves.

Or Gavrilo Princip.

 

[omicron1]

Hmm. Maybe Muhammed? No offense intended, but on a pragmatic scale you could do a lot worse than stopping the crusades, Islamist jihad, modern-day terrorism, and mandated patriarchal culture of much of the world, with a single blow.

 

[White_Lama]

I'd probably kill off Gavril Principe (not sure on the spelling of his name) but basicly the guy that shot the king/emperor of Austria that set off WWI, just to see if WWI would still happen or if it would just be prolonged into a combined WWI and WWII just called World War. Or it might not occur at all

I would go back in time and kill William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy. English culture would be completely, utterly different. It'd be interesting. No decimation of the North, no gathering of the different laws of the land to create a common law, no Doomsday book... yeah, interesting.

But then we wouldn't have the Lord of the Rings series of books and others by J.R.R Tolkien! :C

 

[Joseph Harrison]

Thomas Edison. Then Nikola Tesla would have got the credit he deserves.

Or Gavrilo Princip.

If you killed Gavrilo Princip I doubt much would change, it wasn't the first time the Black Hand had tried to assassinate the Archduke and it certainly wouldn't be the last. Plus Even if Ferdinand wasn't assassinated the tensions between the Allies and the Central Powers would still remain and it would probably end up in a war anyway.

OT: I would probably assassinate Andrew Jackson following the Battle of New Orleans, that way he would never become President and then there would be no Trail of Tears so the Cherokee Nation would probably be a sovereign nation to this day.

 

[Saladfork]

Well, going off the fact that you have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents and so on, you're effectively a direct descendant of pretty much anyone if you go back far enough. There's a pretty good chance you're killing off one of you greatx100 grandpa and that you're going to erase yourself and replace yourself with a slightly different you.
So you'd have to kill off someone quite recent, or make sure to map out your family history completely accurately.

Based on the fact that I'm too lazy to map my family history, I think I'd just get rid of one the current horrible dictators.

Very true, though if you were a pretty wholly white guy and you wanted to kill an historic asian or black guy, you'd probably be personally safe.

As for myself... Difficult to say. It's impossible to know what might have turned out differently without some specific person, and in what ways it would have been different. You could perhaps say Stalin in the hope of preventing him from ending Lenin's policies, which would have ended up with the Soviets being probably much better off, without as much fear of starving or being killed by the KGB, but on the other hand, his rapid industrialization of Russia is one of the key reasons why Nazi Germany was doomed to failure. Without the Soviets, the allies would have had a much harder time of things and they may well have lost entirely.

There are also the moral implications of going back in time to kill someone for something that they haven't done yet. The person you kill has not committed any crimes. Do they deserve it?

 

[Weealzabob]

inb4 Hitler

I'd kill off this person [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/profiles/view], because he's a prick.

Very well. He shall be destroyed.



Steering myself back onto the topic, I don't think I could choose to kill anyone, aside from those pesky moral issues, trying to figure out who was key to certain actions, and how things would change without them would ruin a persons sanity. It would be like having a single no strings attached wish, it's to damn good too waste.

But I suppose seeing the world without the American Revolution would interesting. So...King George the third.

He may not have had a direct hand in how the situation developed, or how the actual war was fought, but assuming he was solely responsible, that would be an interesting change.

Or maybe Genghis Khan. Oh what am I saying, even if I had modern weapons Genghis Khan would have still killed me and eaten my heart.

 

[Sixcess]

Hmm. Maybe Muhammed? No offense intended, but on a pragmatic scale you could do a lot worse than stopping the crusades, Islamist jihad, modern-day terrorism, and mandated patriarchal culture of much of the world, with a single blow.

The crusades originated in the west, at the behest of the Pope, and Saladin, one of the great muslim leaders, is correctly regarded as a more tolerant and honorable man than many of his christian enemies.

The problem is not Muhammed, but certain leaders who came after him who twisted his teachings to suit their own ambitions and prejudices. If Muhammed came back today I rather think he'd be as disapointed and angry with islamic fundamentalism as Jesus would be with christian fundamentalism.

 

[Petromir]

Actually, a lot of people lend credence to the theory that alcohol is one of the reasons civilization even exists. People discovered you could ferment different plants into booze, but the problem is you had to tend the crops year round. Leading to agriculture and eventually life as we know it today

I am not aware of such theory. It makes no sense however. Food back then was more important, and crops meant food first and foremost. infact alcohol was not made from crops for long time. it used to be fruit or mead for a long while even with existing agriculture.

There are a number of effects that alcohol has had on existence of civilisation, while individual ones can be argued its difficult to go against the general push that the progression from nomadic hunter/gatherers to villages towns and cities and much technological advance owes a lot to alcohol.

These include;

Relatively safe to drink. This is a biggy, clean water is such an issue in sedentary populations that the health issue with using beers and wines as a water substitute are massive outweighed by the fact that its disease free.

Time made to make it often encourage sedentary. As did crop production to ensure its supply (and since Bee keeping to produce honey is known to be a very early domestication I wouldn't use meed as an argument against alcohol production causing sedentary communities, fruit bearing plants also comes under agriculture and generally sedentary).

The encouragement of social gathering.

There are more.

While the balance today between alcohols pros and cons has shifted more towards the cons, for much of history its benefits to society have outweighed its issues. It is after all tricky to die of liver disease at 50 if you died of dysentery at 25.

 

[Tom_green_day]

I'd kill off because he's a prick.

You know, for a minute there I actually fell for that. Well played dude.
Probably someone minimalist composer because they ruined my education with their noise pollution that I was forced to study.

 

[Tropicaz]

Justus von Liebig. the world would have to cope without Liebig condensers, but on a massive plus side there would be no Marmite. I hate Marmite.

 

[Strazdas]

Well, i can see where you are coming from. However i would disagree on its importance to these factors. while alcohol definitely was a drive for some things and the cons used to be much lesser when average lifespan was 30 years, clean water was sought after regardless its purpose whether alcoholic or not. so i would argue not against it helping such progress but against it being the major factor of such progress. However i do have to admit i know too little on the subject to state either way.

 

[Saladfork]

I would go back in time and kill William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy. English culture would be completely, utterly different. It'd be interesting. No decimation of the North, no gathering of the different laws of the land to create a common law, no Doomsday book... yeah, interesting.

Well, I suppose it'd be completely Saxon without the Norman (and by association, French) influence. Now, would the Saxon monarchs have been able to unite the isles to create a united kingdom? The Irish were nowhere near unified enough to take England, Wales and Scotland, and Wales didn't really have the manpower, but the Scots might have been able to do it. They always seemed to be on the defensive against England, but if that changed, they may well have been capable of taking the isles over. That'd be interesting.

On a side note, you'd probably have killed Protestantism as well, which would change other countries outside of the isles such as the Netherlands or Portugal.

 

[RandomMan01]

Steering myself back onto the topic, I don't think I could choose to kill anyone, aside from those pesky moral issues, trying to figure out who was key to certain actions, and how things would change without them would ruin a persons sanity. It would be like having a single no strings attached wish, it's to damn good too waste.

But I suppose seeing the world without the American Revolution would interesting. So...King George the third.

He may not have had a direct hand in how the situation developed, or how the actual war was fought, but assuming he was solely responsible, that would be an interesting change.

You probably would have wanted to kill off George Washington then. He started the French and Indian War, which caused a butterfly effect that led up to colonists hating the British, and then starting the American Revolution. Either him of James Townsend (I believe that was his name), the Prime Minister that passed a lot of those acts that sparked the Revolution.

OT: I would probably do what Joseph Harrison did and kill of Andrew Jackson, because he was a terrible person.

 

[Daverson]

Oh, that's easy. Cromwell.

Alright, so basically, since this'll mean the Stuarts didn't have the whole civil war (alternatively, the civil still happens, but someone who isn't crazy and/or stuipd takes over, and actually stays in power, causing Britain to become a republic, like France - same end result), which prevents the Hanover house from taking the English crown, which in turn stops the first world war. No WW1 means that that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia never happen, no Soviet Russia means no communist China, so, no Kim Il Sung, no Pol-Pot, no Ho-Chi-Min, no Saddam and so on and so forth, and best of all, no one in Britain is technically breaking the law whenever they eat a mince pie!

So that's pretty much every problem with the world today gotten rid of, just by offing some warty git.

 

[Da Orky Man]

Hmm. Maybe Muhammed? No offense intended, but on a pragmatic scale you could do a lot worse than stopping the crusades, Islamist jihad, modern-day terrorism, and mandated patriarchal culture of much of the world, with a single blow.

The crusades originated in the west, at the behest of the Pope, and Saladin, one of the great muslim leaders, is correctly regarded as a more tolerant and honorable man than many of his christian enemies.

The problem is not Muhammed, but certain leaders who came after him who twisted his teachings to suit their own ambitions and prejudices. If Muhammed came back today I rather think he'd be as disapointed and angry with islamic fundamentalism as Jesus would be with christian fundamentalism.

I would suggest this guy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ghazali]. He's the guy usually credited with moving Arab civilization away from science and such and into the religious fundamentalism we see today. When composing his philosophy, he immediately disregarded the Roman and Greek philosophers because they weren't believers in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god.

 

[omicron1]

Hmm. Maybe Muhammed? No offense intended, but on a pragmatic scale you could do a lot worse than stopping the crusades, Islamist jihad, modern-day terrorism, and mandated patriarchal culture of much of the world, with a single blow.

The crusades originated in the west, at the behest of the Pope, and Saladin, one of the great muslim leaders, is correctly regarded as a more tolerant and honorable man than many of his christian enemies.

The problem is not Muhammed, but certain leaders who came after him who twisted his teachings to suit their own ambitions and prejudices. If Muhammed came back today I rather think he'd be as disapointed and angry with islamic fundamentalism as Jesus would be with christian fundamentalism.

A. Islam's prior invasion of Spain etc. played a pretty major role, too. Let's not pretend there were innocent sides in that conflict.
B. Motives and origins do not change the fact that, sans Islam, the Crusades would have had little reason to exist. At worst there would be a drive to set up a Christian kingdom in Palestine.

 

[Not Matt]

Either Hitler or breivik.

I hate them both equally. Both have taken stuff from me and my family

 

[Jak23]

Franklin Roosevelt.
He's the biggest reason for the economic mess America's in today.