If You Could Set a Time Machine to Any Date?

Some of y’all are the reason we have the Time Police, smh.

Had I been asked this question a few years ago I would have answered Gettysburg, July 2, 1863, just to see the troop movements. And, yes, the combat. But I can’t imagine being able to deal with the carnage and suffering now.

Funny, though, I don’t have an updated time in mind to replace it. I’ll have to keep thinking.

I’m all for killing Hitler, but why does everyone with time travel always pick baby Hitler? Go back to the early 20s and toss a few grenades into a Nazi party meeting. It’ll be a lot easier on you, and take out a bunch of other people who deserve it.

Jan. 20, 2021, Washington, DC.

Is the challenge to guess the exact time and place of the thing we want to see, or can we just describe the event we want to see?

If I can just describe the event, I would like to spend some time with Neanderthals and other proto-human species, but I don’t know exactly what is the optimal time/place for that.

If I am forced to pick an exact date and place, then I pick January 30th, 1969, at 3 Savile Row in London. In the morning, GMT.

It’s a little disturbing how eager people are to assume that time travel also exempts them from moral prohibitions on baby-killing.

Arrange for young Adolf to get a job as an animator for Walt Disney. No moral prohibitions on that.

802,701:wink:

Adult Hitler had an uncanny knack for surviving attempts on his life.

I’m setting the time machine back 300 million years or so and going camping in the Carboniferous period. I wonder if sea scorpions are edible?

I would want to go into the future but the problem would be to know how far to go such that:

Technology and civilization have advanced beyond any predictions being made today
The apocalypse has not yet happened
Future English is still mutually comprehensible to today’s English

I’m going to say 200 years.

Wednesday April 1, 33 AD, and I’d stay through Monday April 6th.

Then I think I’d go to November 2, 1963.

And finally, I’d go back to about 66.25 million years ago, and to 65.75 million years ago (to see the difference).

You can work out the where yourselves.

I would like to see all that weird Devonian shit. Huge blobby marine invertebrates, weird-ass giant plants, ancient fish, first amphibians.

The bigger problem would be starring in Alien Autopsy.

Seriously, how could you convince the people of that time period you were not a space alien?

“I’m human. Test my DNA.”
“What’s DNA? See, it’s taking our form, but using secret code words we do not know.”

I’d love to visit several locations circa 10,000 to 6,000 BC and see what kinds of civilizations are flourishing then and what levels of technology* they have.

*pottery, building, agriculture, record keeping etc.

A couple more mundane ones;

Go back in time and insist Douglas Adams to go to hospital instead of his health club that fateful day.

Go back in time and warn Terry Pratchett of impending Alzheimer’s

Get Robin Williams the help he needed to prevent his suicide

If I could get the timing right and set it to return me just before I was blown to smithereens, I would like to hang out in Chicxulub for a few days watching dinosaurs and then finishing up my trip with the most awesome fireworks display ever.

No love for Jim Henson? :frowning:

Also I’m not sure what Pratchett would have done differently had he known earlier.

D’oh, forgot Jim Henson, that’s a given, definitely save him

Those sound familiar. It’s been awhile.

I might go back to Albuquerque and strike up a friendship with the young Bill Gates. Encourage him in his endeavors and offer some financial backing.