Time Traveler

I haven't read all the posts so sorry if this has already been posted. If he's around in 2036, how old is he right now or who are his parents.
Peace

 

I was suspicious right from the get go, the more I read the more I found inconsistencies

but this little tid-bit sealed it for me:

Someone asks the question of whether or not Canada gets hit with nukes too. His answer is "They had the DEW line didn't they?". The DEW line, or Distant Early Warning Line, is now nothing more then a string of rusty, delapitated radar sites (now classified as toxic hazards because of all the shit the Americans left behind and still to this day have not cleaned up) scattered about the Arctic. It's been completely inactive since the early 90s, but iregardless it's in the bloody arctic! you nuke the DEW line, you take out a few thousand Inuit, not Canada. If he was born in 1998, as he said he was, he wouldn't have a clue what the DEW was, though it may be common knowledge for an American who grew up in the cold war era. Which is basicly what I pegged him as: a well read sci-fi computor genious baby boomer, with a well thaught up but ultimately vague and overly utopian vision of the apacolyptic aftermath.

Oh, he WAS a fake? what a surprise {!}

either way, it made for some interesting reading

 

you can always tell the good science fiction from hoaxers who don't do their homework, because the really good sciffy authors always do. only the crap that comes out of hollywood (and/or appears in and is targets toward, the 'main stream') tends to get sloppy about it.

=^^=
.../\...

 

Themnax

LOL.. Hit the nail on the head laddie

Now if this joker had hired David Brin or Stephen Baxter to write the script.
Just about everyone would [still] be convinced he was the real thing.

Better Yet. Get 'Niven and Pournelle' to write the script
'Lucifers Hammer' is still the best ever description of an ELE

Sure they could come up with a script that would have the so called 'experts' hiding in shelters for years to come.
The only experts on the future
ARE SPECULATIVE FICTION WRITERS.

Occam

 

time travel would be so much fun... i would so do it.

 

i don't say this to be a wet blanket, but paradoxes aside, there might be some real good reasons not to, even when and if we ever do develop the tecnological capability.

and i do suspect someone or some several, possibly from our own, somewhat more distant future, has indeed messed with our equaly distant past, much to our current detriment. this cannot of course be provin. any tecnology transfer backward in time that wasn't totaly obviously blantant, and could one that was take place, however innocently intended, would perhapse to history appear to have been a local invention of its time and place. and people have always been able to come up with new things, and have always continued doing so, even when strongly discouraged by fanatacism from this.

still the rise of greek and subsiquently roman domanance could well have been aided and abeted by such modest gifts from the future as concepts like the stirrup for riding war horses and the infantry tactic of flying wedge.

i'm not saying exactly that there couldn't have been a powerful greece and rome without temporal interferance. only that their rise could have been partialy due to it.

and that much of the suffering in today's world and several centuries previous, might well have not naturaly occured otherwise without there having been, as there were on the now dominant timeline, the rise of greece and rome.

it is things like this that could come about all too easily, if not all but inevitably, were time travel to become commonly available as a toy.

it is this concern, that may some future day give rise, to an activist group concerned to prevent such disasters, calling itself the society for real time. they will not be ludites. they will not oppose sane and sustainble tecnologies and uses of tecnologies. but will lobby vigourously for licencing proceedures and restrections on the implimentation and use, of time travel tecnology.

=^^=
.../\...

 

Themnax

Way interesting my friend...
You refferance to flying wedges especially pertinant.
Smacks of armor tactics and modern operational encirclement/isolation
theory

But then again it could have been the result of a really smart dude.
who finally had his ideas recognised.. much like a Hans Guderian born 500 years earlier..his ideas were of MOBILITY and it's power.. But the fastest thing he had was horses.
Which funny enough are damn fast is millitary terms.

A horse is WAY superior to a tank in many areas.
It does not need petrol/lubricant..
It starts first time in any weather but weather that would kill both horse and rider.
It does not explode or result in spalling shrapnel when hit by a projectile.
It may shed a shoe... but keep going..
while a tank that shed a track can go nowhere but circles
It can sense 'things are not right' or 'something is near'
It can be a great friend and companion.

And horses work well with dogs.. The true allies of humans.
Most people now have no realisation of how important horses and dogs were in the time before 'industry'
We seem to have 'shed our friends' in this new modern age...
for MACHINES
Occam gives far more emotion to the sacrifice of a horse or dog in loyalty to a human. Than any sacrifice a human can make.
For these creatures are totally selfless, even across species bounderies
The examples of such are PLENTIFULL in human history..look em up.
Horses have been known to destroy mounted human enemies while their own riders are wounded and helpless,
and the horse itself is 'shot through' or lanced/cut.
War dogs have defeated enemy formations AFTER there masters have been killed.

Its not about war.. , but war brings to the fore... TRUTH.
One can say they are fearless macho men...
Stick them in a war and you SEE the fear on the faces that all who live will experience
[but those who have nothing to live for. the most dangerous of beings.
do not]

While the dog also fears.. but STAYS by the side of it's human friend
NO MATER WHAT

 

you've given me new respect for the horse. i've sort of known these things of course, but tended to think of them a little bit as a cleche, their overuse in fantasy, though i can understand and see why.

as energy becomes more expensive intrest will once again increase in making human powered and animal powered tools more efficient and less arduous in their use.

a military having to accept the reality of creatures with a mind of their own would itself be a very different kind of a beastie then what we have now.

i hadn't really thought about how having to rely on other creatures could force us to be a little more 'human' here and there arround the edges.

---

both of my parents were born in a time when working horses as opposed to ridable pets of the rich, were still an everyday sight, even in cities. though cars, trains and trolleys were rapidly replacing them. but they were still there.

out in the country where my dad grew up, draft horses were still more common then tractors.

---

there was one particular battle or probably several, that was particularly pivotal in ancint history, i've a terrible memory for such things, but i remember being taught that the simple tecnology of the styrup was the deciding factor, or a major one, and thus, entirely conceivable, had it not been available, our world today could be a very different one indeed.

---

although i think most of the real turning points in history weren't battles or speches but popular perceptions at the time, even in times and places no one was trying to pretend to be democratic, reached some sort of critical mass that chainged subtly perceptions, and those whole i guess paradigms of 'command structures'.

little people make big history, big people take credit for it, seems to be the way it usualy goes. by big and little here, of course, i simply mean degree of decision making authority, whether assumed or accorded.

=^^=
.../\...

 

Themnax

Those battles were 'hastings'
Where the advantage of the norman cavalry was many times multiplied by the technology called the styrup.

In 1683 polish cavalry allied to germany/austria defeated turk forces
in the battle for vienna.. decisively... because the had styrups.

And the most pointed example is the battle of Poitiers/Tours way back in 732ad. A battle which is described as having been the 'saviour of christianity in europe' [against the moors]
The new technology called styrups enabled 'merovingian cavalry' to deliver irresistable charges where the 'cog' [center of gravity] of the charger is couched at point of lance, crushing formations that had no defence to such.
This might be the pivitol one you speak of.

Such a simple idea as the styrup can change history .
Have u watched the movie the patriot? [mel gibson]
the military formations act like morons...standing there waiting to be shot.
Even average people with no military knowledge say it.
occam cringed as they stood there like fools.. all guts and no brains.
The british realised this was idiotic. [as anyone would]
now
watch the movie zulu.. and see what the brits work out about line formations. Cycling dynamic lines that can reteat or advance while maintaining a constant fire to supresss the enemy.
The battle scene where 60 or so soldiers defeat 10 times their number
using this method is awesome..
Sometimes movies CAN educate.
the latter development of the machine gun has its roots in just this idea,
constant supressive fire

This sort innovation, and the royal navy, maintained the british empire for centuries

Sorry.. just rambling.. so few even admit that history even existed before THEY were born.

Occam thinks history our greatest resource to understanding.
the past is who we are. the present is it's result. the future. what we maybe.

Occam