How can I "lengthen" the life of some people without falling into ASB?

What are your recommendations for making some people live a few more years? For example:

That Franklin D. Roosevelt would not die on April 12, 1945, but would live another 3 or 5 years? Cause of death OTL: Stroke.

Plutarco Elias Calles not die on October 19, 1945, but live another 3 or 5 years. Cause of Death OTL: Complications from an operation done 12 years ago.

That Manuel Camacho Solís does not die on June 5, 2015, but lives until 2018 or 2020. Cause of Death OTL: Cancer

Warren G. Harding Cause of Death OTL: Brain hemorrhage

Here are some examples, there are other people I would like to see live a few years. What can I do without falling into ASB?
 
Just balance it with killing some others before their time

Alternate History is not a science. It is an approach that is equal to OTL - where people die young, where people many expect would have died ages ago (eg Hawking) live much longer than seems logical
 
FDR could live longer if he not get polio or there not be WW2 during his presidency which would increase his stress during his last years.
 
FDR also had cancer, from what I've heard, and while in the early stages it may have hastened his death otherwise.

Anyway, normally I'd say look at the lives of the peoples' parents or other family members, see what stresses they faced (Teddy Roosevelt, without the death of his son in WWI and possibly some debilitating effects of malaria or whatever he caught int he jungles, could be given another 15 years and it's not really ASB, given life spans of the dayamong prominent people, and you could stretch it to 1940 and I wouldn't mind, though some would. So, that goes into the area of your "complications from surgery" example.)

Can you put a person on a healthy diet earlier somehow? A person who smoked, if they quit early enough, could gain years just from that.

There were centenarians in each century, most likely, but only a few each century till the last couple. Like with any fictional work, the more outside the norm it is, the more it needs explained, but if someone wanted to have some weird scenario where a person saves someone's life and convinces them to life a healthier lifestyle when they're in their early 20s, then you could have them live a lot longer. Harding smoke, IIRDC, for instance, so if that aneurysm had anything to do with that through what it did to his heart, you could have him live a good deal longer.

(Really, Hoover was a nice guy overall and gets a bit of a bad rap - he was not nearly the worst President. Get Harding healthier you could have butterflies let Hoover be elected in 1920 somehow and Harding in 1928 after his 2 erms. Just to get a guy in office who might deserve the "worst President" label at the start of the Depression. Though it'd be hard to do worse than the ones jsut before the Civil War.)

Just try not to have the living till they're 122, the oldest recorded. :) Even 100 is pushing it unless there are some very good reasons.
 
Assassins may miss, the timing of diseases and plagues may be changed, and sometimes the destinies of entire nations may change for want of a nail.
 
What are your recommendations for making some people live a few more years? For example:

That Franklin D. Roosevelt would not die on April 12, 1945, but would live another 3 or 5 years? Cause of death OTL: Stroke.

Plutarco Elias Calles not die on October 19, 1945, but live another 3 or 5 years. Cause of Death OTL: Complications from an operation done 12 years ago.

That Manuel Camacho Solís does not die on June 5, 2015, but lives until 2018 or 2020. Cause of Death OTL: Cancer

Warren G. Harding Cause of Death OTL: Brain hemorrhage

Here are some examples, there are other people I would like to see live a few years. What can I do without falling into ASB?
Depends on how avoidable the condition is and if they really were "taken too young". For instance it would be pretty easy to butterfly the pneumonia that killed Emperor Charles, and given that he died at only 34 years of age he could have easily lived many more decades than he did.
 
You could give them a health scare, plenty of people have bad habits that you could change (ie Winston Churchill’s drinking) you could also change society, ie cigarettes never became popular, and have that person see the benefits.
 
I mean it’s not that hard to have someone just not have a stroke, to use FDR as an example.
Without a stroke FDR is still going to die before the end of 1945 IMO. He was in declining health even in 1944, and Truman was picked as his VP because he would be an acceptable president when Roosevelt either died or had to resign due to his health. You are going to have to change things earlier in his life to make him live significantly longer.
 
It's very easy to extend the lives of any character without veering into ASB. No one knows anything about the reality of the health or the intimate details of the immune system of even modern people, look how long Hawking lived for, or how often people live longer or shorter than Doctor's expect with almost every single disease. The margins of error for this is huge, and having someone die 10 years early or live 30 years longer is very very rarely ASB.

The big problems are hereditary diseases really, everything else you can just handwave a way by a better roll on their immunoresponse.
 
What are your recommendations for making some people live a few more years? For example:

That Franklin D. Roosevelt would not die on April 12, 1945, but would live another 3 or 5 years? Cause of death OTL: Stroke.

Plutarco Elias Calles not die on October 19, 1945, but live another 3 or 5 years. Cause of Death OTL: Complications from an operation done 12 years ago.

That Manuel Camacho Solís does not die on June 5, 2015, but lives until 2018 or 2020. Cause of Death OTL: Cancer

Warren G. Harding Cause of Death OTL: Brain hemorrhage

Here are some examples, there are other people I would like to see live a few years. What can I do without falling into ASB?

It depends on the person and what killed them really. For example with FDR he was a smoker. Have him never pick up the habit and it could give him a few extra years at a stretch.
 
Prevent Theodore Roosevelt's Amazon expedition somehow, and quite likely he lives well into the 1920s if not the 1930s. Someone--his wife Edie, or one of his friends--convinces Ernie Kovacs to call a cab instead of driving himself home on a rainy night in January 1962, and Kovacs lives probably well into the 1980s or 1990s. Have Roberto Clemente's flight delayed, and / or not loaded beyond the gross takeoff limit weight, and likely he's back with the Pirates in 1973--although that would probably be his farewell tour, since he'd be coming up on age 39 during the season.

And finally, have Pelle Lindbergh drive his Porsche over a roofing nail or something like that in the wee hours of 10 November 1985, causing a flat tire. He's in no shape to change the tire himself; one of his passengers calls AAA. While on the side of the road, the local cops show up, recognize the car and the driver--and notice immediately Lindbergh is impaired. They give him a choice: take a cab home and come back for the car in the morning, or get arrested for DUI. His passengers convince him the cab is obviously the right choice. Lindbergh goes on to backstop the '86-'87 Flyers to the Cup, beating Edmonton in six games. The goaltending duo of Lindbergh and Hextall is the terror of NHL forwards for quite some time. Oh, yeah...Lindbergh mentors his fellow Swede Peter Forsberg, upon the latter's arrival to the Flyers...
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SsgtC

Banned
Some are real easy. For example, if they died an unexpected (violent) death, it's pretty easy to butterfly that away. It's also, occasionally, possible to advance medicine. Allowing someone who died IOTL to be saved by more advanced medical care. For example, Penicillin. It was discovered in 1928. But because Alexander Fleming was a terrible speaker, he was unable to convince other scientists of his discovery. This delayed the introduction of Penicillin by 14 years. Getting people to take Fleming seriously earlier could easily extend thousands of people's lives.
 
Early intervention is also obviously a life-saver - this applies to strokes, brain haemorages etc. The longer after the incident that treatment occurs, the less chance of recovery.

This also applies, obviously, to early treatment - and you can have a lot of diseases that kill picked up earlier in their cycle by pure happenstance for that individual
 
I'm doing a lot of that with my timeline. I'm currently working with the Hashemites, specifically the ones who went on to become kings of Iraq. For those who don't know, irl King Faisal I lived into his late 40s before dying in the 1930s due to either a heartattack or poisoning during a medical examination in Switzerland. Obviously, that's pretty easily butterflied out, so he lives. His son also died irl in either the late 1930s or early 1940s in his 20s in a car accident, leaving his 5-year-old son, Faisal II to be king. Obviously, something like a car accident can also be butterflied out. So basically it's not unrealistic to butterfly out certain causes of death. However, it's a bit different for old age, terminal illnesses, health troubles from birth or a young age, etc.
 
Some are real easy. For example, if they died an unexpected (violent) death, it's pretty easy to butterfly that away. It's also, occasionally, possible to advance medicine. Allowing someone who died IOTL to be saved by more advanced medical care. For example, Penicillin. It was discovered in 1928. But because Alexander Fleming was a terrible speaker, he was unable to convince other scientists of his discovery. This delayed the introduction of Penicillin by 14 years. Getting people to take Fleming seriously earlier could easily extend thousands of people's lives.

Or someone could even be saved with medicine of his/her time if doctors do better job. For example president Garfield could had survive and serve at least one term if doctors would had manage find bullet with röntgen. In OTL they tried but metal parts of Garfield's bed made that impossible. So different bed for him and then he could be saved.
 
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