AHC: create an POD in ancient world but now butterflies till 20th century

Ryan

Donor
it would have to be in a place that didn't interact with the wider world from between the PoD and the 20th century.
 
Marianas Trench, 10 BCE: A small crack appears in one section of the rock that did not appear in OTL, thereby creating a divergent timeline.
 

SunDeep

Banned
What about Paleo-Indians migrating to Antarctica across the Land Bridge which existed between Tierra del Fuego and the Antarctic Peninsula during the last Ice Age? A small population of Natives endures somewhere on the continent, living in complete isolation until being encountered by an Antarctic Expedition after 1900. Of course, you'll still have butterflies of human-induced extinctions of native Antarctican species, along with different weather patterns which will swiftly diverge from those IOTL, leading to different natural disasters at different times changing the course of human history elsewhere... Yeah, it'd take an ASB to install a butterfly net that large, for that long. Not gonna happen...
 
This is literally impossible.

Not impossible, but very hard to create huge butterflies. All the ones I can think of deal with archaeolgy and what we know of the ancient world and how people act about it.


When did they discover Pompeii? King Tut's tomb was unearthed in 1922, IIRC. What about the beginnings of the unearthing of Babylon?

Each of those things, if something happens just befoer the eruption of Vesuvius, or if King Tut dies some other way, for instance, will trigger some stories that could perhaps slightly increase or decrease a writer's reputation, or get someone interested in archaeology.

For instance, there was a short story I read somewhere between 4th and 6th grade about Pompeii int he last days with this boy and his dog, and this dog had this loaf in his mouth or something when the reuption hit, and people years later were unearthing it and wondered what the dog was doing carrying that around at a time like this.

Mind you, I don't know if the story was even real, let alone recall the name of the short story. However, suppose for a moment it was real. Some writer got to write about it who wouldn't if the dog didn't have that loaf in his mouth; this inspiration helped him or her in some small way. Some kid might have become interested in archaeology who wsn't before.

The thing is, that story irtself isn't likely to be the only thing to launch a career, and doesn't mean the person would be famous; my uncle wasn't the only 8-9 year-old boy to see a picture in a magazine of children with club feet in the mid-50s. He remembers that being part of his inspiration to become a doctor, but that wasn't the only thing that inspired him, and he's just a very good doctor who has done well for his family and been an excellent profesional without any real fanfare. Which he might well have done without the magazine article, something else might have inspired him later.

So, could a really cool story spark someone's interest in becoming a great archaologist who discovers something else amazing? Or who went into another field OTL? Sure. But, it's not likely that, for instance, Margaret Thatcher's father rhears some awesome story about King Tut because of something on his mummy that wasn't OTL, becomes an archaologist, and his daughter becomes a real life Indiana Jones.

Edit: Cool, I found the Pompeii story. https://mskmoodle.zis.ch/pluginfile.php/12569/mod_resource/content/1/The%20Dog%20of%20Pompeii.pdf WOw, excavation began in the 18th century. Still, the King Tut example makes more sense, anyway, and it did bring back some fun, fond memories of that age for me. so it was worth it.
 
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The name of the "butterfly effect" comes from the idea that atmospheric models are a chaotic system, and thus small changes like a butterfly flapping its wings, if not accounted for, well eventually lead to large results, like hurricanes on the other side of the world. That's why weather forecasting, even with massive supercomputers, can only predict so far ahead, because you can't model every single butterfly, etc.

Now, extrapolate that to the earth as a whole. Any change, no matter how minute, is going to create changes in the weather (and other things, but we'll focus on weather for now). Think of how many things are affected by the weather! A wetter or drier growing season means more or less food, more or fewer disease outbreaks, easier or harder marching, etc. Each of those mean people live or die who otherwise wouldn't. It means that parents will conceive at slightly different times, resulting in kids with different genes (to the extent that someone who was born male in our world might be a woman in this one). A POD in the ancient world, no matter how minor, is going to have thousands of years of these changes, which will result in a world almost unrecognizable to us.

And these weather effects will be global; you can't isolate the atmosphere in one part of the world from the rest. That's just talking about the effects of changes on the weather and how that feeds back; other changes would obviously happen. So the challenge is impossible by definition.
 
A resident of Pompeii, in the throes of dying from being buried by a pyroclastic flow, moves his hand a few millimeters to the left resulting in a ATL, until being discovered later be archeologists. The ever so slight alterations of the movements of the archeologist later creating and preparing the plaster cast causes a completely different person to be born when he later goes home to boink the wife.
 
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POD: A chance nudge moves an asteroid into another orbit in 157 AD.

The asteroid hurtles around on its changed orbit for the next two millennia without any changes on Earth. Until the asteroid slams into Yellowstone on 16 August 1945. It strikes with a cataclysmic impact, creating a shockwave that wipes out all nearby life, and sending debris skyward that blots out the sun. Worse, the impact unblocks part of the Yellowstone caldera, triggering a supervolcano eruption unlike any that have been seen in millions of years.

Between them, the asteroidal rubble and the supervolcanic debris and climate change wipe out all human life on Earth.

On the plus side, though, the impact is just late enough that the Allies still win World War 2.
 
On the plus side, though, the impact is just late enough that the Allies still win World War 2.

I feel bad for this guy:

Kissing_the_War_Goodbye.jpg



Just finishes winning the war and then hes wiped off the face of the earth.
 
Not greenhouse effect in Venus and there evolve life, perhaps even something intelligence and they develope their own culture, but are anyway unable travel to space until 20th century.
 
With a literal interpretation of butterfly effect... maybe some star 2000+ light years away explodes that didn't IOTL, and we see that explosion in the 20th century. Jared's asteroid example is still going to have an effect on weather.

Otherwise, the Pompeii (or Tutankhamun) examples are probably better than any other Earth-based possibility.
 
A photon takes ever so slightly longer to reach Earth from the Sun, via Quantum Mechanical effects that causes imperceptible change on Earth.
 

SunDeep

Banned
With a literal interpretation of butterfly effect... maybe some star 2000+ light years away explodes that didn't IOTL, and we see that explosion in the 20th century. Jared's asteroid example is still going to have an effect on weather.

Otherwise, the Pompeii (or Tutankhamun) examples are probably better than any other Earth-based possibility.

Yeah, this works. Are there any stars around 2000 light years away which could go supernova? Because if a supernova explosion were occur at this proximity, you'd be kissing the ozone layer goodbye for at least a year or so. Big impact when it gets here, but no butterflies until it does...
 
The idea occurred to me of have Marcionite Christianity survive somewhere, but remain only a curiosity unttil a movement in Germany following that country's defeat in the First World War build their "Positive Christianity" around the until then little-known divergent faith?
 
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