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xkcd #2976: Time Traveler Causes of Death (xkcd.com)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Many a hungry time traveler has Googled 'trilobites shellfish allergy' only to find their carrier had no coverage in the Ordovician.

https://explainxkcd.com/2976/

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (9 children)

[off topic]

One of my favorite time travel novels is 'The Big Time' by Fritz Leiber.

The two big ideas in the book. First, that there's a Law of Conservation of Reality. Go back in time and shoot Hitler. He dies. Then gets better, really fast. Twenty minutes after you shoot him, he's fine. Spend your whole life shooting him and the history books will just ignore it. It takes an army of time travelers working night and day to get any changes to stick.

Second idea. There are two armies, both trying to change the past/future. They have been at it since before the Big Bang and will go on until the Heat Death of the Universe. They recruit humans but no human has ever seen the big bosses, just low ranking stooges.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (3 children)

The first one was also used in the short series "11.22.63". Going back to change things results in huge amounts of temporal inertia to overcome.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

And the second one reminds of the TV series "Travelers", with future factions of time travelers emerging from the changes of previous time travelers in the past. It's worth noticing that time travelers from "Travelers" only displaces their mind consciousnesses, not their entire bodies.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Watched a couple of episodes, didn't get to the time war part. May check it out.

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