Following my threads on the Colosseum and Auschwitz I have another money-making idea involving my time machine. This time I’ve perfected the time circuits to allow you to interact with the past (and future - but that’s off limits to you plebs for now).
So, I travelled to the future and acquired a nanosuit which allows total user safety in the most dangerous environments, complete with holographic interface to allow seamless integration with temporal natives. Nobody will see your arrival or departure.
So, I’m offering trips back to the most chaotic battlefields of World War II. Omaha Beach, Stalingrad, Iwo Jima, you name a valid combat zone and off you go. I’ll provide you with authentic World War II weapons of choice - fresh from the factory floors - and the nanosuit fitted to size. I’ll give you an hour to have your fun, all for the bargain price of $250!
The nanosuit makes the battlefield essentially a paintball game. If you’re hit by a bullet, sit on a grenade or anything that would render one KIA or WIA you will instantly return to the present while holograms cover your slip-up. You don’t have to defend yourself with the provided weaponry (I recommend the M1 Garand myself), but if you don’t you may find yourself returned to the present rather quickly.
The time machine has an inbuilt paradox suppression device and temporal monitors, so don’t worry about fragging your granddad by mistake. Likewise trying to be clever and taking a sports almanac back or similar will return you to the present. Since you’ll only be there for an hour a time at most (and one battlefield only) and due to the aforementioned devices you won’t alter history drastically. Anyone up for some carnage, or has my wacky scheme gone too far?
Oh, and you can’t kill Hitler because this happens. Likewise if you want to fight for the Nazis, fascist Italy or Imperial Japanese I’ll transport you to Tunguska in the Russian Empire circa the morning of June 30th, 1908.
Don’t send them there, I have a small research station studying a strange rend in space-time at that location. Our instruments suggest that it will be reaching some sort of climax around that time.
Hmm, ok - I’ll send anyone who wants to fight for the Axis back to 1960. To the Marianas Trench. For 20 minutes.
I should also have mentioned that I’ve modified the World War II hardware with a futuretech Identify Friend/Foe device - if the device detects that the trajectory of your round will find an allied serviceman it will not allow the trigger to be pulled, eliminating the possibility of friendly fire.
If you can change the past, you probably shouldn’t, because the consequences are unknowable. Speed up the end of WWII by a week…and we all die in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Who can know? Bad idea.
If you can’t change the past, then why the hell bother? What kind of sick masturbatory fantasy is it to kill Nazis for no purpose? Get a copy of Castle Wolfenstein, ya wank!
Seriously: I see absolutely no point in this whatever.
ETA: I don’t know how close I’ve come to breaking the board rules; I wasn’t calling Mr. Kobayashi, or anyone else, a wank, but just a general sass at people who might do such a thing. If I’ve transgressed, I apologize.
Eh - I’d cheerfully go back to shoot actual Nazis, but most German soldiers weren’t. They had to be shot in battle, of course, but that’s just a regrettable necessity; I wouldn’t go back for the sake of killing regular German army.
Could you send me in front of an SS unit, though? Shooting SS members could be fun!
Your average German soldier on Omaha wasn’t a capital ‘N’ Nazi, but some poor schlub drafted into the army. Or IIRC was more likely a Polish or Russian ‘volunteer’.
I wouldn’t be shooting anybody, but I’d love to experience it, with the knowledge that I’m completely safe from harm of course!
Can’t kill a higher up Nazi, or even a seemingly inconsequential one. You’d risk altering the course of history. You might kill the the barber who kept telling Hitler “Think about it: the town is named after the guy! We can’t let Stalin win this one!”
Unlike everyone else, I have no problem shooting Average Fritz Feldgrau. Getting shot was an occupational hazard he accepted when he put on the uniform. But you could still alter the course of history. The dad of one of the women in ABBA was a German soldier. With any certainty, can you accept the possible ramifications of a world without ABBA?
How about just a phone app that sends you back to any empty elevator in the Reichsministry for ten seconds, that you can use whenever you have to pass gas? They’ll all assume it’s Hitler, Hitler will resent being blamed for somebody else, and a lot of irritation will arise.
Yeah, I was all excited when I saw the thread title, less so when I read the poll, but the OP was a cold wash. Who the fuck wants battlefields? I want to go back to 1940s Amsterdam, save Oma, and kill me some SS.
As tempting as it sounds, I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t kill somebody, not even a really bad person. I believe there’s a fat line in one’s life before and after committing murder, and I will never willingly cross it. As far as self-defense, well, who knows what I would actually do when placed in a life-or-death situation? But I’m incapable of killing anybody, not even Hitler himself.
Per the rules of the game, I won’t join the Nazis, Italians or Japanese, but then the rules say nothing about a second rate power like say, Hungary or Finland. Weapon of choice, a squadron of B29 silver-plate class bombers armed with Fat Man standard gravity bombs. Please prepare to welcome your Nordic/Magyar overlords.
On a more serious note, the Burma campaign would be awesome. I won’t even need a nano suit then (well except not to die) and I could simply employ the jungle as cameflaouge.
Functionally the Allies are getting a relatively clueless untrained soldier for likely less than an hour. [Q]Please! Spare me your egotistical musings on your pivotal role in history. Nothing you do here will cause the Federation to collapse or galaxies to explode. To be blunt, you’re not that important.[/Q]
Wolfenstein isn’t reality.
They fought and killed for a reprehensible organisation against those who sought to destroy it, but if fighting regular Wehrmacht isn’t your bag I can easily send you to a battle where the Waffen SS were present.
That is far from a guarantee of not changing the future! Oh, look, I just killed a Nazi Youth…who would otherwise have gone on to become today’s Pope!
Well… Yes and no. Some people actually are that important. If FDR had died in 1940, then maybe John Garner would have risen to the occasion and been a great wartime leader. But it’s kind of hard to believe…
Heck, in terms of the premise, it’s better than reality! You get lots and lots of Nazis to kill, and a darned good chance to kill them. They come running up in ones and twos, and they don’t communicate with each other to isolate you and box you in.
In reality, you, yourself, are as likely to be killed as the guys you’d want to target. You’d go back in time, find yourself freezing your toes and tits off in a snowbank in the Ardennes, and you might see no enemy soldiers at all…or a damn battalion of 'em!
Anyway, I stand by my dichotomy: the exercise either risks altering time in a catastrophic fashion, or else is masturbatory.
