Rules:
- You may only use the time machine once.
- You can only kill one person.
- This person CANNOT be someone who, in our original timeline, became a leader of a tribe/country/state/whatever. So you can’t kill Hitler, even baby Hitler, but you CAN kill Goebbels. Basically, anyone who is/was the supreme authority of a given country or empire or whatever cannot be killed.
- You can go back in time to any place in any era you want to. It can be as specific as “three AM on September the 17th 1329 in my target’s bedroom.”
- Your trip will be a maximum of fifteen minutes: only long enough for you to go back in time, kill the person, and return. You will not have time to open a bank account to invest in Apple real quick while you’re attempting the murder.
- After the fifteen minutes, you will automatically return to your original time. If you’re in the middle of a duel with your target, you will go home when the fifteen minutes are up. If you are caught, you will still return after fifteen minutes (you will just vanish). They do not need to die within fifteen minutes, but you only have fifteen minutes to carry out your part of the plan.
- You may kill the person in any manner you want to, provided you can physically use it (ex: a syringe full of botulinum toxin is fine, but you can’t drop a house on someone Wizard of Oz-style). If the means of murder is something as-yet unknown in your chosen era (ex: shooting someone prior to the invention of gunpowder), the people investigating it will either attribute it to something they are familiar with (“maybe it was a really big rock!”) or to supernatural causes. They will not invent new technology solely from studying the effects of your murder.
- You will both be immune to any diseases and unable to transmit any diseases inadvertently. You can deliberately kill your target with a disease if you want to, but it will only affect them (ex: if you give your target smallpox, only they will get it, and it will miraculously not infect anyone around them).
So, given these parameters:
- Who do you kill?
- How do you do it?
- How would history be changed as a result?
Comments
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So, given these parameters:
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Henry Alfred Kissinger. 1937. Snitch him to the nazis. I would not do this to anyone else. Only he gets this treatment from me.
I’m killing the guy that lucked out and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand. that doesnt happen ww1 get changed significant ly it would still happen but it would be different enough that maybe WW2 never happens
Jack Reagan in 1909 or earlier
Thomas Midgley Jr. he’s the reason we had leaded gasoline and CFC’s. Did more environmental harm that any other man.
It’s tempting to pick various warmongers.
But I think the biggest bang for the Buck is executing Thomas Midgley Jr.
That guy is responsible for millions of deaths, catastrophic brain damage in the elderly worldwide, environmental chaos, and is likely indirectly responsible for 90% of all Karen behavior currently on planet earth.
Execute that asshole and billions of lives are improved.
Hitlers maw before she gets pregnant with him?
Eli Whitney
He gets to work a field until he dies from exhaustion!
Honestly, this could very well fuck over the entire industrial revolution and the US, but fucking worth it!
A„
You can just kill the mother or father of a leader.
Trump’s dad
What if I’d rather guide history with information, rather than killing someone?
Thomas Midgely Jr.
The guy who put lead in gasoline and invented PFC forever chemicals.
He was brilliant, and just trying to solved problems he saw in the world.
But good LORD did he fuck shut up. The road to hell was literally paved with his good intentions.
Just drop me in when he’s a teenager and I’ll decapitate him with a broadsword
Whose that idiot who said vaccines cause autism? And is he dead yet?
I’m gonna kill Cain before he kills Abel
Nice try, FBI! 😅
Do we know who decided puns were an acceptable form of humor? If so, that guy.
I wouldn’t do it but the biggest impact would be Paul.
The guy who invented leaded gasoline.
Is Fred Trump home?
Either Allen Macy Dulles or Edith Foster Dulles, before 1888.
Me when I was a baby
A lot of people are leaders of something, so does this include CEO’s?
Personally it would be fun to go back in time and kill someone like Bill Gates; no issues with the guy, I would just be curious to see what alternate history comes from it.
Same with Albert Einstein. This actually gets explored in the C&C games and what happens is nuclear warheads never got invented and Japan becomes a gigantic superpower with nothing holding back their Empire; it’s pretty deliberately facetious and silly, though.
Thomas Edison
Exact date isn’t important, but probably late October / early December 1879, or really early 1880.
This is good, for several reasons:
It is shortly after Edison improved the lightbulb, meaning he does manage to contribute major things to the world.
It is significantly before his first child, so there is no single mother or fatherless child left.
It is before Ford and Edison meet, which will hopefully discourage and hinder if not outright stop Ford’s success in automobiles and assembly lines.
It is also before Tesla and Edison meet. I’m not sure what the exact results of this will be, but I think they’ll be in Tesla’s favor since Edison discouraged Tesla (who was a way better person and inventor), which is good.
People saying kill Hitlers mom and such I just can’t get on board with. Changing that event will have an absolutely massive butterfly effect. Fuck knows what will happen. Humanity will need to learn the “Fascism bad” lesson at some point(hoping we don’t have to relearn it in our current timeline, but getting worried) I think we just got to take an evil fucker out that won’t have massive complications for the timeline. Kony, Fritzl, Epstein, all spring to mind
Rupert Murdoch in 1952 with a wrench in the ballroom
Can they kill me while I’m trying to kill them?
Does the Catholic Church count? It’s a powerful force, but not actually an empire. There are a couple of early Popes who are excellent candidates.
Marcus Vispanius Agrippa … Western Civilization gets a do-over and we can’t fuck it up worse than we already did, right?
John Wilkes Booth, before he kills Lincoln. See if Reconstruction continues to be fully implemented, and Jim Crow never happens.
Gavrilo Princip. He shot Franz Ferdinand and his wife setting off World War 1. Or John Wilkes Booth for a backup option.
Albert Speer.
Mitochondrial Eve, before she has any children.
Probably the hugest possible change to humanity. I’d just be curious to see what happens to the world…
Oh right, Gail Berman circa November 2002.
haber
Adam
/s
Theodor Herzl
Christopher Columbus (not the film director.)
Push him overboard on his first voyage.
Surely terrible stuff would still come to pass because Europeans would still eventually try to colonize the Americas, but hopefully it’s not quite so lopsidedly brutal in this new timeline.
The first human, with a sledgehammer
Adam. As in Adam and eve.
Ronald Reagan’s father. The world would be much better over the past 40+ years without Ronald Reagan.
The virgin mary is fictional right?
Marx. (Karl, not one of the brothers.)
hitler’s mom
Mary…
I wonder what a world without Christianity would look like.
Fred Trump?
Hitler’s mother is definitely the right answer
Can i kill the father of a president before the president was born?
Can it be more than one if they are all in the same historical group? I’d like to kill the paparazzi that chased princess Diana the day of her death in 1997. If it can only be one, kill whoever is leading the pack of vehicles and watch them all flee.
I don’t have any attachment to princess Diana as a Canadian, but I’d be interested to know if the conspiracy theory about her was correct and this seems like a safe way to prove that theory. Also, her son’s having to bury her at such a young age seems unfair
Karl Marx.
Mitochondrial eve… lets just reshuffle the whole deck and start over.
I got one:
I’d go back to 336 BC in Macedonia and kill a guy named Hephaestion.
I would do it by loudly accusing him of cheating on me somewhere within ear shot of another guy named Alexander.
This would change history by making Alexander super depressed go full tilt before attacking the city of Thebes.
This will hopefully let at least a few members of the Sacred Band of Thebes survive defending the city, and maybe even let the city itself survive.
Now you have surviving members of the ancient times’ version of gay navy seals that have become war heroes that saved the city some of the best minds of the ancient world came out of.
Now flash forward to March 7, 2007, and Gerard Butler stars in a new movie and plays a warrior in love with his best friend played by Jake Gyllenhaal who join the military to stop an invasion force of Spartans and wipes them out by kicking them down a giant well while yelling, “This is THEBES, Bitchessss!!!”
And then jump to 2025, Pete Buttigieg is running the United States government so well people keep forgetting how to spell his last name because it just never comes up as things just work pretty well and as intended.
Oh, and you can now buy molly over the counter at gas stations while you wait for the uber to get to a rave.
And all the straight men get to stay home with their kids and wives and be present, supporting, and nurturing parents that raise their kids without much childhood trauma… while the gay super soldiers mop up the last of the Russians in Ukraine.
Lucy. The one from Olduvai.
Adam
Screw it, Ea Nasir with a knife. See what happens when you sell shitty copper to someone.
Andrew Wakefield. Overdose of Tylenol, before he writes his bullshit about vaccines. It’s supposed to be a horrific way to die. Serves the bastard right. The new push of antivaxers wouldn’t exist.
Kim Ung-u, great great great grandfather of Kim Jong Un. No more Kim Family
Hitlers mother before she fell pregnant?
Paul revere. Before his midnight run. He was a silver Smith. I’d make his forge explode.
The guy who convinced Reagan to run for SAG President
Gavrilo Princip
Enough would be altered that we would probably skip Hitler entirely.
And the US likely never becomes a hegemonic superpower.
Things may not be better, but radically different
Thomas Midgley Jr, this guy was the reason have holes in our ozone and and leaded gas for over a century.
Trump in 2015
Henry Kissinger, he is arguably the most influential person of the last 70 years, and is still one of the most influential of the last 100. He made the world worse
Vladimir Lennons mom.
Himmler was confined to one area. WW2 would still happen without him. Kissinger literally orchestrated policy to topple democratic leaders on multiple continents. This led to many horrible atrocities that lasted decades. I’m not saying it is worse than what happened in Europe. I’m not saying more people suffered. I’m saying Kissinger as an individual is more responsible for these things happening than Himmler. Kissinger was the brains, the shadow mouthpiece as well as the direct negotiating party in many of these catastrophic deals. The nazi party had many many evil maniacs who would have done as much damage with or without Himmler.
Adam.
Rupert Murdoch’s father. Murdochistan media around the world has done immeasurable harm to civilized society.
Errol Musk, before 1971. The world without Elon Musk sounds good, even if he did do some nice space stuff before showing his true colors.
Who? Frederick Trump, the orange rapist’s grandfather.
How? I’d convince the German government to execute him instead of deporting him.
How would history be changed? NYC would be freed of several generations of discriminatory slumlords, and we could have a sane person in the White House who keeps the country going instead of destroys it.
Rush Limbaugh
Lee Harvey Oswald, it would answer a lot of conspiracy questions when I get back.
Eliminate Gavrilo Princip, this may prevent WWI AND WWII. Nazis never take power, might prevent the Russian Monarchy from falling, stop the Russian Communists from coming to power , prevent the domino effect of other communist regimes rising, maybe even delay the need for the creation of nuclear weapons.
Grigori Rasputin, right after the first time he “heals” the Tsarovitch. Just to fuck shit up. Basically take the ever unstable Tsarina who finally has hope someone can save her son, and bam, dead. Cobined with the already unstable political position of the Tsar and European arms race sliding everyone quickly into WW1. Would love to see how history plays out.
Do the Tsar and his family survive WW1? Is there a revolution? Does Communism take over? How’s Lenin, Kolentai, Trotsky, and Stalin doing? How does this affect WW1’s outcome? Does King George V die quickly after from the stress of WW1 and losing his best friend/cousins? Does WW2 even happen? If it does happen, how’s Russia? If communism and WW2 don’t play out, does American expansionism occur? Is the CIA created? If the CIA isn’t created because there’s potentially no communist “threat”, then how does the Democratic Republic of Congo fair? How’s Iran and every other country where the CIA has assassinated democratically elected leaders? There’s potentially no Soviet Afghan war in the 80s for the US to supply and support the Taliban leading to no 9/11. Not to mention, potentially no communist party in China or Vietnam/American War. Same with the Korean War.
Also, with potentially no cold war, do people ever make it to space? There won’t be any space race per se. Potentially no astronauts. No IBM computers leading eventually to the computers we have on our phones.
Or the revolution and communism happen that much sooner. Pre WW1. Don’t know what their stance would be or the outcome if the Kaiser isn’t at least a little distracted by the Eastern front. Maybe the communists fight WW1 with the power of increased industrialization, coming out as the dominant victors. Leading to even more countries adopting communism?
Either way, assuming I can watch like a chaotic impartial god, I am killing Rasputin.