Time Travel and Alternate Histories

[Samloyal23]

Okay, I'm working on a campaign setting that is a bit off kilter: Life on Earth is extinct, there are no humans left at all, the oceans are dried up, the atmosphere is too thin to breathe, there's no ozone left. The planet is a radioactive ball of dirt. Your mission is to find out how the world ended, travel back through time, and change history so armageddon is stopped. Oh, you're an ALIEN, you know nothing about humans except what some old computer files and data discs of movies and music can tell you about this extinct hominid, so you have to be extremely careful about interacting with the locals when you go back through time.

I'm setting the clock to go {{BOOM!}} in circa 2080. So, any suggestions for possible events or trends that time travellers will run into between 2010 and 2080? If I let the jumps go back earlier in history, say WWII, the 60s, the Old West, etc, then I may have to change events that actually happened and create more alternate histories. For example, what happens if a jump goes back to the 20s and the agents find a way to prevent the Great Depression? Or what if they meet a young Elvis and convince him to learn sitar and become a hare krishna for his own good? Also, if you were an alien disguised as a human and walking around West Los Angeles in 1997, what really surprise you?

[TerishD]

Well, we all know that the world ended in December 21, 2012. How to prevent it? Nothing, except to go back centuries and convince the Mayans to make a more optimistic calendar.

Prevent the Great Depression? What you need to prevent are the stupid government policies that were created to fix it (same as today). What made the Great Depression -- GREAT -- was its duration, and almost all will admit that was the government's fault (possibly the same as today).

Convince a Menphis truck driver to become hare krisna? Yeah, right. He'll put his blue suede shoes up some alien anatomy first.

The simple stuff would be --

1) Stop a certain person at a book depository and talk to him (won't stop the real killer, but will prevent history from blaming Oswald).

2) Get a group of star gazers out near Roswell on a certain night. This will give some actual independent observers to the cover-up.

3) Wake up a certain guard on duty on a dull night when the president is watching a play.

4) Be present to notice lights in a Washington DC hotel room where some illegal activity is occurring (oh, yeah, right - we DID do that one).

I am sure that your players will think of others.

[Legatus_Legionis]

I recently seen a "Logan's Run" episode on youtube which involved a time traveler.

Here, the time traveler when forward in time 200 years to discover what was gonna happen, and how it happened.
(In his time line, the world was on the verge of a nuclear war, and he wanted to prevent it.)

And two hundred years in his future, the nuclear war had indeed destroyed much of the world, and the debate about going back to prevent the war (and destroying the survivors of the future or try to save billions of lives from dying.)

It was not until he returned to his time, and made the announcement that time travel was possible, that all the nations of the world declared that his time machine was the greatest evil weapon ever conceived by man, and that THEY MUST have one.

(To go back and 'assassinate' people they wanted before they became trouble in their present, etc.)

So the scientists thought of going forward and bring back medicines, technology, etc to help save their present was twisted into the prospect of going back in time and alter THEY time.

They thought of them changing the future was not a problem to the scientists (as the future to them has not yet happened), but the idea they could cease to be if used to back beyond today they never considered one would.


So for your "history", it could easily be the discovery of the "alien" and its "time travel" ability which is the actual catalyst which caused the destruction of the world in the first place.

How would the alien react to this knowledge?
Would it try to prevent itself from traveling back into earth's time to "save the planet" and altering your our history by doing so?



As for what could happen on earth between now and 2080...

The United States of Africa.
The United States of North America.

The United Nations becomes a fully functioning world government body and moves its headquarters from New York to the first World Capital City of Earth, Jerusalem.

[Samloyal23]

Thanks for the suggestions. Anyone here remember the movie "Americathon"? It mentioned a new superpower in the Middle East being created when Jews and Arabs settle their differences and unite. What was that place called? I think that could be taken in some interesting directions. Anyone thinking of any current trends that could either lead toward or prevent the Big Boom? And if there was an alien disguised as a human living in your neighbourhood, how would you know?

[Fiendish Construct]

As for what could happen on earth between now and 2080...

The United States of Africa.
The United States of North America.

The United Nations becomes a fully functioning world government body and moves its headquarters from New York to the first World Capital City of Earth, Jerusalem.

Wasn't there a United States of Earth at one point in some future timeline setting as well? I can't recall where that came from. 'Twas an evolution of the United Nations, and beyond the point of a New World Government. I think.