# If You Could Time Travel, What Would You Attempt to Interfere With? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 10, 2011, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-time-travel-what-would-you-attempt-to-interfere-with/577826 "2011-04-10T02:44:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-time-travel-what-would-you-attempt-to-interfere-with/577826/21 "2011-04-11T04:17:35Z")
Assuming I didn’t do the probably sensible thing, which is to DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING DO NOT MESS WITH THE SPACE TIME CONTINUUM, I would go back to 1993ish and do two things: (1) give my younger self some good financial advice about when to sell stock in the company I worked for (2) get a message to Bill Clinton to KEEP IT ZIPPED ALREADY! ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-time-travel-what-would-you-attempt-to-interfere-with/577826/22 "2011-04-11T06:21:23Z")
> [@mbh](#): > > I would be strongly tempted to try to murder the baby Hitler. You probably couldn’t get to him, or you might be too late. There’d be thousands and thousands of other time-travelers trying to do the same thing. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-time-travel-what-would-you-attempt-to-interfere-with/577826/23 "2011-04-11T06:49:13Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > You probably couldn’t get to him, or you might be too late. There’d be thousands and thousands of other time-travelers trying to do the same thing. That would be a pretty funny scenario – thousands and thousands of gun toting time travelers jamming up the streets of Austria, all asking how to find the Hitler family, getting into fights with each other over who gets to shoot him. That could even be a way of eliminating time paradoxes – people going back to change history end up killing each other instead. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-time-travel-what-would-you-attempt-to-interfere-with/577826/24 "2011-04-11T10:18:40Z")
I would also like to go back to the time of the writing of the Second Amendment and tell them to write EXACTLY what they mean. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Cazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cazzle/32/75_2.png) [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-time-travel-what-would-you-attempt-to-interfere-with/577826/25 "2011-04-11T10:49:32Z")
11 May 2001: Attempt to lure Douglas Adams away from the gym with doughnuts. ---
**Author:** ![Todderbob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e47774/32.png) [@Todderbob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Todderbob)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-time-travel-what-would-you-attempt-to-interfere-with/577826/26 "2011-04-11T11:19:18Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > I would also like to go back to the time of the writing of the Second Amendment and tell them to write EXACTLY what they mean. 🙂 I think someone did that, it doesn’t seem ambiguous. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Scubaqueen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c0e974/32.png) [@Scubaqueen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scubaqueen)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-time-travel-what-would-you-attempt-to-interfere-with/577826/27 "2011-04-11T16:34:05Z")
> [@A Monkey With a Gun](#): > > Last night, for some bizarre reason, I watched _A Sound of Thunder_. For those of you unfamiliar with the title, it’s the movie adaptation of the classic Ray Bradbury short story of a group of time traveling hunters who travel back in time to kill a T-rex, but accidentally kill a butterfly and the ripples of that minor event have dramatic consequences when they return to their own time. Having viewed this film, I believe I have a unique perspective to the question in this thread. > > If I could travel back in time, what would I interfere with? I’d interfere with the filming of _A Sound of Thunder_. My god, that was a horrible, horrible movie. Dang you, **Monkey**. That’s what\*\*\* I\*\*\* was coming in to say!!! I couldn’t decide which was worse: the lead’s wooden face/acting or Ben Kingsley’s hair. Gads, but it was every bit as bad as \*\*Monkey \*\*says, dopers. That said, I’d be wary of messing with too much more history. Don’t want the reapers or the Shadow Proclamation hunting me down. That could get ugly! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Bad\_Horse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ba8739/32.png) [@Bad\_Horse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bad_Horse)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2011, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-time-travel-what-would-you-attempt-to-interfere-with/577826/28 "2011-04-11T16:53:04Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > You probably couldn’t get to him, or you might be too late. There’d be thousands and thousands of other time-travelers trying to do the same thing. [http://www.viruscomix.com/page382.html](http://www.viruscomix.com/page382.html) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-could-time-travel-what-would-you-attempt-to-interfere-with/577826.md?page=1)