if you go back in time to change a timeline, which history event , you would change and why?

The strong subjugate the weak. That is the natural order of things.

In a world where there was no one was enslaved , may be the strong would just eat the weak instead ,like the wild animals do things .

I suppose, metaphorically, they already do that.

The Butterfly Effect is a concept within chaos theory which sets out the proposition that a minute localised change within a complex system can have vast consequences elsewhere.

It gets its name from the idea that if a person goes back in time and makes even the smallest change to historic events, say, kills a butterfly, it could trigger a chain of events which escalate in seriousness until a momentous alteration to history occurs.

For instance: Imagine that I go back in time and find myself in Bosnia Herzegovina in the late summer of 1914. I'm walking around in the countryside enjoying the sunshine and I sit in a field, accidentally crushing a butterfly that is resting on a grass stalk, with my big bum.

My nice white trousers are now messy, and as I'm very fussy about my clothes, I don't want to walk around with insect remains on my butt. I walk into the nearby village intending to buy a something to clean my trousers with. All the shops are closed but a couple are coming out of a house and I ask the woman if I could have some water to use. She goes back into the house to get me some but her husband is annoyed because I am now making them late for an appointment with friends in Sarajevo.

I am given some water, I wipe my trousers off, thank the couple and they get into their car and drive off. Because I have made them late, the husband drives faster than he should in an attempt to make up some of the time they have lost. As he enters Sarajevo, a young man comes out of a bar, deep in thought about what he intends to do later that day and doesn't look as he crosses the road. The car hits him and he is killed instantly. A terrible tragedy which is deeply upsetting to the couple and the young man's family. It makes the local newspaper the next day and that is the end of it. Or is it...?

Now, if I hadn't sat on that butterfly, I wouldn't have needed to clean my clothes, I wouldn't have delayed the couple and they would have passed the bar several minutes earlier and therefore not hit the young man crossing the road.

However.........

Imagine that in the scenario I list above, the young man killed by the car is Gavrilo Princip and because he is dead, he isn't able to, later that day, assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand, there is no World War I and millions of men don't die in the fields of France. Because there is no WWI, a young Austrian wannabe artist doesn't serve in the German Army and the train of events which contribute to forming his twisted ideology don't occur. He eventually gets a job as a painter and decorator in his hometown of Braunau-am-Inn and the world goes on in peace.

All because of a butterfly in a field.

The weak are meat and the strong shall eat .
This is a line from the movie ' Cloud Atlas' .

Define weak.

In the context of what we are talking about , it would be a group of people that is attacked by a larger group with better weapons .


weak.

[wēk]

ADJECTIVE

1.lacking the power to perform physically demanding tasks; lacking physical strength and energy:
"she was recovering from the flu and was very weak"

synonyms: frail · feeble · delicate · fragile · infirm · sick · sickly ·

2.liable to break or give way under pressure; easily damaged:
"the salamander's tail may be broken off at a weak spot near the base"


3.lacking intensity or brightness:
"a weak light from a single street lamp"

synonyms: dim · pale · wan · faint · feeble · muted

4.
grammar

denoting a class of verbs in Germanic languages that form the past tense and past participle by addition of a suffix (in English, typically -ed); contrasted with strong.

Well actually, we were talking about changing an event in history which has ongoing consequences. As usual though, the inevitable thread drift that occurs on this site takes us veering wildly off course.

I did attempt to get the thread back on track with a relevant post about the Butterfly Effect but I guess that will just be ignored because it isn't about power trips. Ho-hum.

I guess I'll play the game though.

OK, so from what you suggest, only the powerful - in in a physical or militaristic sense - can prevail. You subscribe to the argument that "Might Is Right".

It is reasonable to state that power can be achieved by force, but history tells us that such power is often relatively short lived.

The Roman Empire was powerful, but it fell. The Mongol hordes that swept across Asia and Europe carried all before them but what of them now..? The British Empire ruled the waves and had an empire on which the sun never set but was brought to its knees by an old, bespectacled man in a loincloth who refused to take up arms. He said:

"For my cause I am prepared to die. But there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill."

That simple philosophy brought freedom to millions of Indians without a shot being fired.

In the first fifteen years of the new century we have seen one of the most powerful, well equipped armies on Earth given the runaround by a handful of tribesmen on mopeds.

I can see your argument.... that physical strength can be used to exert force upon individuals or groups.... but that only applies up to a point. Greater forces such as the inspiration of a Gandhi or a Mandela (remember his policy of Truth and Reconciliation) can overcome all the guns in the world.

People can be strong without picking up a weapon.

I would say that weak is relative. There are hierarchies (a pecking order) [A] is stronger than [B] but weaker than [C]. And hierarchies are dynamic. flying high in April, shot down in May.

Power determines who dominates who.

ray bradberry's " sound of thunder " is one of his classic. it is one of the best way to explain: " the butterfly effect ".

sounder of thunder:

n the year 2055, time travel has become a practical reality, and the company Time Safari Inc. offers wealthy adventurers the chance to travel back in time to hunt extinct species such as dinosaurs. A hunter named Eckels pays $10,000 to join a hunting party that will travel back to the late Jurassic Era, on a guided safari to kill a Tyrannosaurus rex. As the party waits to depart, they discuss the recent presidential elections in which an apparently fascist candidate, Deutscher, has been defeated by the more moderate Keith, to the relief of many concerned. When the party arrives in the past, Travis (the hunting guide) and Lesperance (Travis’s assistant) warn Eckels and the two other hunters, Billings and Kramer, about the necessity of minimizing the events they change before they go back, since tiny alterations to the distant past could snowball into catastrophic changes in history. Travis explains that the hunters are obliged to stay on a levitating path to avoid disrupting the environment, that any deviation will be punished with hefty fines, and that prior to the hunt, Time Safari scouts had been sent back to select and tag their prey, which would have died within minutes anyway, and whose death has been calculated to have minimal impact on the future.

Although Eckels is initially excited about the hunt, when the monstrous Tyrannosaur approaches, he loses his nerve. Travis tells him he cannot leave, but Eckels panics, steps off the path and runs into the forest. Eckels hears shots, and on his return he sees that the two guides have killed the dinosaur, and shortly afterward the falling tree that would have killed the T-Rex has landed on top of it. Realizing that Eckels has fallen off the path, Travis threatens to leave him in the past unless he removes the bullets from the dinosaur’s body, as they cannot be left behind. Eckels obeys, but Travis remains furious, threatening on the return trip to shoot him.

Upon returning to 2055, Eckels notices subtle changes - English words are now spelled and spoken strangely, people behave differently, and Eckels discovers that Deutscher has won the election instead of Keith. Looking at the mud on his boots, Eckels finds a crushed butterfly, whose death has apparently set in motion a series of subtle changes that have affected the nature of the alternative present to which the safari has returned. He frantically pleads with Travis to take him back into the past to undo the damage, but Travis had previously explained that the time machine cannot return to any point in time that it has already been visited (so as to prevent any paradoxes). Travis raises his gun, and there is "a sound of thunder".

I'd go back in time about 10 years, and make sure that Jennifer got a 404 error when she typed "theforumsite.com" for the very first time..

I would stop Muhammad from wandering out of his cave.

Was nothing to do with Gandhi, in the end it came down to economics, the Empire was costing more to run than it brought it, when that happens it's time to leave.

I'd go back and make sure every vote in Florida was counted in 2000 as it should have been.

Actually, I take this back, because had she not been here, I would never have had the orgasmic pleasure of using the term "vapid cow" in a sentence.

I still smile when I see that on my punch list.