Re: How would you save mankind (was Re: What would make you believe?)

Bryan Derksen skrev:
> Derek Lyons wrote:
>> Jens Egon Nyborg <jens.e.nyborg@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>
>>> Imagine that you are agent A, hired by someone - anyone - to save
>>> mankind in a number of paralell timelines. You have access to a time
>>> machine that will take you back into the past of these timelines.
>>>
>>> What do you do?
>>
>> Hard to say without knowing exactly what threat we are trying to
>> defend against or what even we are trying to prevent.
> 
Thinking about this, I think it becomes more and more clear that you
must put a lot of research into this.

(And incidentally should know where or how to get a dollar)

> Wildepad has mentioned a "war" and a "plague", so I'm guessing some kind
> of biological weapon caused the problem. Introducing a countermeasure
> for that could be relatively easy depending on the details of the
> disease itself. I'm assuming the future-folk will have developed a
> vaccine or cure of some kind by the time they've got time travel, or
> will be able to do so in relatively short order. Getting the basic
> information for that inserted into the scientific community could take
> the steam right out of the bioweapon and might even prevent its
> development or deployment (since there's no point any more).
> 
> Alternately, if one's worried that this knowledge will only lead to
> improved bioweapons research that makes things worse, one could take
> steps to immunize the population without their knowledge. Whip up your
> own version of the bioweapon that isn't lethal (or at least has vastly
> reduced lethality) and release it into the population to allow them to
> develop natural immunity.
> 
> You could take the Terminator approach. Surgical strikes to assassinate
> key figures before they _become_ key figures, or to destroy materials
> that will be needed for the future research. If that old flu virus that
> was dug up from frozen graves in Norway turned out to be an important
> foundation to build the superbug on, a little preemptive graverobbing
> could throw a monkeywrench in that. This is probably more
> labor-intensive, though. With the other approaches I suggested you could
> create some sort of standard information or infection package that your
> agents merely need to drop into the nearest mailbox on each timeline
> they want to save. Might not work in all of them, but by spamming lots
> you could save more.

Remember, there's all the time in the world, you might even field test
competing strategies. Iff you have the manpower!

Could/would you produce additional manpower down in the deep past?

And what about evacuation? If all you want to do is save the species
just move a few thousand.