Aah, but a macro effect like a shockwave should according to the theory produce lots of different micro effects, such as altering the trajectory or chemical composistion of rain drops, causing lots of trees to be killed of and causing winds and a force that could be felt even hundreds of miles away in Finland etc, which according to it would all lead to increasingly large and eventually massive changes according to the butterfly effect. However, a water droplet causing some little ripples is only going to affect the pond for a very short time, it won't change the chemical composition of a pond or lake or ocean in any major way, and even if it did, te change would be so infintismal that it would probably have no effect on the organisms that live in that miniature ecosystem. Again, certain air currents and different temperatures can sometimes effect the offspring of creatures, but only if they are signficantly different, and it only seems to happen in cold blooded animals like crocodiles. Noone has demonstrated that even an outside temp change of 10 degrees C can change which sperm reaches the egg during intercourse. based on the site you showed, all the little changes could well cancel each other out and leave no long term differences, just like the raindrop analogy-the shockwave would result in changing the raindrop's trajectory, but the heat could vaporise the pool, nullifying any miniscule changes it made. tiny changes like air currents caused by breathing or blowing things up would most likely be cancelled out by that very law. How to they effect the gamete? Again, there has been no known experiments that demonstrate even significant (relatively, but far more so than a single gunshot would have on the entire planet's atmosphere) air changes can effect the gamete, even over the course of years. The 'Fundamentalist' chaos theory that everything will change as soon as the POD occurs is flawed-as said above, changes must spread over periods of time-the smaller the changes, the slower it would typically occur. a Confederate victory would definately change diplomatic scales and lead to some individuals not being born, but saying that miniscule changes which under normal circumstances would seem to be filtered out by the overwhelming majority (its like on molecule changing the flow of trillions-any change would almost certainly be cancelled out by the others and it would be as if that change never happened) leads to every single individual being different from that point onwards is beyond OTT, especially in regions where a confederate victory would have little or no effect on life for many years like in a small tribe in Tibet or Timbuktu. It doesn't mean that you'd suddenly butterfly away every single event and create a confederate utopia or something like shown on one TL (where it butteflies away all the wars and communism and fascism leading to a world peace scenario). Many events were probably inevitable, and at least some indivduals will probably be in both timelines, though of course the further in the future you go, the less this will happen.