You are given the notebook from Death Note and are time travelled to a time of your choosing, as long as it is more than 150 years ago. What do you do/who do you kill?
The Death Note lets you kill anyone by writing their real name in the notebook, although you must know their face.
I have a special and unique hatred for Diego de Landa, burner of the Mayan books. I would remove him and as many of his associates as possible from history.
Earthdivers is a graphic novel. In the future, a group of Native Americans discover time travel and decide to use it to fix the mistakes of the past. First problem is Columbus.
Probably not an outcome I would want for the world but out of scientific curiosity I would be interested in what happens if Ögedei Khan dies of old age instead of drinking himself to death in December 1241, just before his army has the chance to completely steamroll Europe. That might be one of the most extreme butterfly effects in history.
alexander dies christianity and the roman model never spread across europe, all of christiandom dies in it's crib (note, havent actually looked at the history of this all that closely).
catholism never takes off and we don't have the HRE or any of it's bastard children. no german empire, no french, no english, no protestants spreading to the new world etc.
First, before using the death note, publish everything you know about the future and its tech. For example, even if you barely remember the periodic table, filling out anything you remember about it would significantly expand humanity's understandimg at the time. Describing protons, neutrons, electrons, photons, quarks, positrons, neutrinos, bosons, etc would be a century or more ahead of its time. Knowing about radiation at all would save tens of thousands of lives from suffering just from avoidable exposure deaths.
Any modern common knowledge about germ theory, DNA, cell biology, virus structure, or the idea of antibiotics would be revolutions at the time. Just knowing penicillin comes from mold would save millions of lives, not to mention the isolation of stuff like insulin.
Asserting the existence of the photoelectric effect (photodiodes, solar panels), piezoelectric effect (phone haptics, timing crystals), the thermoelectric effect (any digital thermometer), and remembering that computer chips have something to do with silicon puts us ahead 100 years technologically. Knowing the best batteries are made mostly of lithium and something else puts us 100 years ahead in battery tech.
Knowing that rubber is supposed to be black leads to the discovery of vulcanization early and saves us from decimating the whale populations.
Knowing there are massive oil deposits in the middle east, Texas, Canada, and Mexico, or massive gold/diamond/steel/copper deposits in various areas makes nations supremely wealthy instantly after they extract resources.
For our purposes, though, photography need to advance drastically. If you know this is coming and have time to prep ahead of time, you learn everything you can to hasten the invention of the photograph.
Then you get to work with the death note.
In general: you start eliminating the elite class in whatever country you're in. Slowly, so as not to create a power vacuum that destabilizes the nation.
Because of your scientific predictions that keep coming true, elites keep wanting to meet you to see if you can make them richer. That's how you gather catalogs of faces.
Once your country moves to a strong collectivist government (socialist, communist, whatever) whose officials are chosen by true random sortition, you move on to the next one. Obviously you may have to do things out of order if there's an imperialist military threat to your country, but that's the idea. Keep society invested in the sciences and engineering to advance living conditions for all.
I'm in the US, so I'd focus on the immediate halt of the slaughter of native Americans. Oregon is already a state, so we'd still likely pick up idaho and Wyoming.
That'd probably result in an independent nation of natives in California, arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Oklahoma absorbs the Texas panhandle as a result.
A separate native nation forms in the Dakotas and Montana.
I'm not sure of statehood sentiment after that; it's likely the Dakotas/Montana vote for statehood as a single state rather than multiple territories- they're landlocked, so would become a vassal state to the surrounding countries (Canada, usa).
Next, tackle the US' existing slavery and apartheid systems. The civil war is over, but slavery still exists in the form of Jim Crow laws and such.
The next hurdle to cross is the rampant corruption inherent in the system. This era already had a great deal of progress- antitrust legislation primarily. I shepherd these movements along and make them stronger.
At the end of my life, from 1900-1920, (I'm 36, going back to 1876, so I'd be 60-80) I make sure to eliminate the political figureheads that destabilized Europe throughout the early 1900s. It's important to stabilize what is now the EU.
On the one hand, 150 years puts us at 1876, so closer to living memory than you might think. On the other hand, a fair number of people aren't even doing that cursory level of math.
Just for curiosity sake, kill both Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI some time in their life long before coming into power.
I would need to know, though, whether, considering we are already bending the books rules by killing already dead people, I could get away with looking at a portrait/painting/whatever of a person and use it to kill their younger self.
Because otherwise, I would probably kill Napoleon just for fun. No other reason than to have the history books say he climbed into a loaded cannon and was shot out with the cannonball.
Honestly I'm not even against trinitarianism there probably is something special about the number 3 as often as it shows up in world religions and philosophies but getting dedicated enough to it to develop imgroups and outgroups to start killing people over it was way outta pocket.
Christianity was way better when it was an antiimperialist death cult.
Easy pick. There was this secretary to Aurelian who made some corrupt stuff and then knowing how Aurelian is against it forged his letters to make his guards kill him. Wonder what would happen to the Roman Empire if Aurelian ruled more than 5 years.
as long as we're all in agreement that whoever of us goes back has the obligation to ensure that it happens, even if it's one of your descendants that has to make it happen.
Specify that I wish to personally kill the first person to legally change their name to Rumplestiltskin Elizondo Jones III at a time of their own volitional choosing. I would then legally change my name to such and live as an immortal until such time that I decide to die. People talk about healthspans but what amount of suffering could possibly be worse than nonexistence?
81 Comments
CombatWombat@feddit.online · 29 pts · 40d
I'm going back to the like 1780s and going full John Brown.
DoubleDongle@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 40d
I have a special and unique hatred for Diego de Landa, burner of the Mayan books. I would remove him and as many of his associates as possible from history.
Hadriscus@jlai.lu · 3 pts · 39d
That's a great pick, damn ! fuck that Diego guy
Can I throw in Vespucci and/or Colombus as well ?
LongLive@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 39d
the Mayan curse cosplay
andros_rex@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 38d
This is the best one, IMHO. I’d want to make it painful.
Hello_there@fedia.io · 21 pts · 40d
Quick, find Donald Trump's family tree and start pruning the old branches
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 40d
Could do the same with Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and other dictators. Juist kill one person in each one family tree and see how it works out.
gedfromgont@piefed.ca · 1 pts · 38d
Just start with or before the Neanderthals...
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 38d
If I recall correctly the neanderthals were a separate branch from homo erectus and mostly not our direct ancestors.
MisterNeon@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 40d
Christopher Columbus never meets Queen Isabella.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social · 20 pts · 40d
https://bookshop.org/p/books/earthdivers-omnibus-stephen-graham-jones/3766210d7189a0b7?ean=9798887243528
Earthdivers is a graphic novel. In the future, a group of Native Americans discover time travel and decide to use it to fix the mistakes of the past. First problem is Columbus.
artifex@piefed.social · 6 pts · 40d
Orson Scott Card did something along these lines in the book Pastwatch.
newton@feddit.online · 15 pts · 40d
Adam and Eve
WoodScientist@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 40d
Not good enough. I'm killing LUCA.
newton@feddit.online · 7 pts · 40d
Take my upvote .
normalentrance@lemmy.zip · 14 pts · 39d
His whole bloodline. I'd do the research, and make sure I get his family tree.
Agent641@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 39d
No names required
Apeman42@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 40d
Ooh, looks like Emperor Constantine was just smote by a thunderbolt from a clear blue sky in full view of the entire senate.
Maybe we won't be spreading that cult he liked around, seems like it pissed off Jupiter something fierce.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 39d
Same idea, except I'm going all the way back for ol' Abe. And I don't mean Lincoln. Important clarification nowadays.
matthurtme@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 39d
Lincoln murdered more native Americans than any other president in history
andros_rex@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 39d
I don’t think that’s true. I doubt his numbers match Andrew Jackson’s.
I think you are thinking of the fact that his administration did the largest mass judicial execution in U.S. history, with the hanging of 38 Dakota warriors. He did commute the sentences of a few hundred of them though.
matthurtme@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 39d
I was wrong and you are right. Thank you friend.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 39d
Regardless, killing Lincoln prematurely has already been done.
Agent641@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 39d
John Wilkes Booth had the death note, but forgot his pen.
matthurtme@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 39d
True
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone · 11 pts · 40d
No one.
redsand@infosec.pub · 4 pts · 40d
Congratulations. You do not become a shinigami.
KC_Royalz@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 40d
Find Trump's and every other major Nazis great great grandparents
quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 40d
But all the people I want to kill is alive now, that is unfair.
lazynooblet@lazysoci.al · 3 pts · 39d
Their ancestors
quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 39d
I know, but that is not as rewarding as seeing them trip down a set of stairs on live tv or having one of their stunts go horribly wrong.
andros_rex@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 39d
That list would be too obvious to be fun, and would probably get us all v&.
It’s more fun to see people have beef with random obscure historical figures.
LostCarcosan@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 39d
v&?
andros_rex@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 39d
Having police vans show up at your door. Getting arrested.
dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de · 7 pts · 40d
Probably not an outcome I would want for the world but out of scientific curiosity I would be interested in what happens if Ögedei Khan dies of old age instead of drinking himself to death in December 1241, just before his army has the chance to completely steamroll Europe. That might be one of the most extreme butterfly effects in history.
DagwoodIII@piefed.social · 5 pts · 40d
Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace were on the verge of inventing computers back in the 1820s.
I'd like to see what happens when I get them to suceed.
gajahmada@awful.systems · 11 pts · 40d
How do you suppose to achieve this with a Death Note?
Postmortal_Pop@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 40d
That's just the backup
ozymandias117@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 40d
Not OP, but you can control people before their death, so... Probably write other people around them and force them to help before their suicides?
DagwoodIII@piefed.social · 2 pts · 39d
I'm in 1820 with all my knowledge of the future.
I don't need the Death Note.
IronBird@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 40d
alexander the great, indirectly probably kills just about every western despot after him and we'd all be speaking mongolian probably
luthis@lemmy.nz · 2 pts · 40d
I doubt it. No one speaks Latin now.
IronBird@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 40d
alexander dies christianity and the roman model never spread across europe, all of christiandom dies in it's crib (note, havent actually looked at the history of this all that closely).
catholism never takes off and we don't have the HRE or any of it's bastard children. no german empire, no french, no english, no protestants spreading to the new world etc.
TheWeirdestCunt@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 40d
Tbf Alexander already died at a pretty young age, he was only in his 30s afaik.
sicarius@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 39d
My own family ancestors. If I'm never born I can never die, and become a god!
Reference from "Rant, and oral biography"
andros_rex@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 38d
Rant just kills his male ancestors and impregnates his female ones IIRC?
sicarius@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 38d
You might be right, it's been a long time since I read it.
sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 38d
Doesn't matter what era.
First, before using the death note, publish everything you know about the future and its tech. For example, even if you barely remember the periodic table, filling out anything you remember about it would significantly expand humanity's understandimg at the time. Describing protons, neutrons, electrons, photons, quarks, positrons, neutrinos, bosons, etc would be a century or more ahead of its time. Knowing about radiation at all would save tens of thousands of lives from suffering just from avoidable exposure deaths.
Any modern common knowledge about germ theory, DNA, cell biology, virus structure, or the idea of antibiotics would be revolutions at the time. Just knowing penicillin comes from mold would save millions of lives, not to mention the isolation of stuff like insulin.
Asserting the existence of the photoelectric effect (photodiodes, solar panels), piezoelectric effect (phone haptics, timing crystals), the thermoelectric effect (any digital thermometer), and remembering that computer chips have something to do with silicon puts us ahead 100 years technologically. Knowing the best batteries are made mostly of lithium and something else puts us 100 years ahead in battery tech.
Knowing that rubber is supposed to be black leads to the discovery of vulcanization early and saves us from decimating the whale populations.
Knowing there are massive oil deposits in the middle east, Texas, Canada, and Mexico, or massive gold/diamond/steel/copper deposits in various areas makes nations supremely wealthy instantly after they extract resources.
For our purposes, though, photography need to advance drastically. If you know this is coming and have time to prep ahead of time, you learn everything you can to hasten the invention of the photograph.
Then you get to work with the death note.
In general: you start eliminating the elite class in whatever country you're in. Slowly, so as not to create a power vacuum that destabilizes the nation.
Because of your scientific predictions that keep coming true, elites keep wanting to meet you to see if you can make them richer. That's how you gather catalogs of faces.
Once your country moves to a strong collectivist government (socialist, communist, whatever) whose officials are chosen by true random sortition, you move on to the next one. Obviously you may have to do things out of order if there's an imperialist military threat to your country, but that's the idea. Keep society invested in the sciences and engineering to advance living conditions for all.
I'm in the US, so I'd focus on the immediate halt of the slaughter of native Americans. Oregon is already a state, so we'd still likely pick up idaho and Wyoming.
That'd probably result in an independent nation of natives in California, arizona, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Oklahoma absorbs the Texas panhandle as a result.
A separate native nation forms in the Dakotas and Montana.
I'm not sure of statehood sentiment after that; it's likely the Dakotas/Montana vote for statehood as a single state rather than multiple territories- they're landlocked, so would become a vassal state to the surrounding countries (Canada, usa).
Next, tackle the US' existing slavery and apartheid systems. The civil war is over, but slavery still exists in the form of Jim Crow laws and such.
The next hurdle to cross is the rampant corruption inherent in the system. This era already had a great deal of progress- antitrust legislation primarily. I shepherd these movements along and make them stronger.
At the end of my life, from 1900-1920, (I'm 36, going back to 1876, so I'd be 60-80) I make sure to eliminate the political figureheads that destabilized Europe throughout the early 1900s. It's important to stabilize what is now the EU.
luthis@lemmy.nz · 3 pts · 40d
ITT: people think musk, trump, Hitler etc were born in the early 1800s.
EponymousBosh@awful.systems · 1 pts · 38d
On the one hand, 150 years puts us at 1876, so closer to living memory than you might think. On the other hand, a fair number of people aren't even doing that cursory level of math.
rain_enjoyer@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 40d
Whoever contributed to modern advertising, and bloodline of Jack Welch (he invented firing people to please The Line)
Big_Boss_77@fedinsfw.app · 3 pts · 39d
Been a long time since I've seen the anime...but can't you schedule deaths for in the future?
andros_rex@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 39d
Big_Boss_77@fedinsfw.app · 1 pts · 39d
Neat.
AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 38d
Just for curiosity sake, kill both Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI some time in their life long before coming into power.
I would need to know, though, whether, considering we are already bending the books rules by killing already dead people, I could get away with looking at a portrait/painting/whatever of a person and use it to kill their younger self.
Because otherwise, I would probably kill Napoleon just for fun. No other reason than to have the history books say he climbed into a loaded cannon and was shot out with the cannonball.
andros_rex@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 38d
My idea was that as long as the portrait was painted by someone who saw the person while they were alive, it counts as seeing their face.
So Napoleon can be killed, but not Ea-Nasir. You’d have to go buy some copper and meet him in person first.
AceFuzzLord@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 38d
Damn! Can't kill Mr. Bad Copper himself! Glad I didn't think of him!
radiofreebc@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 40d
quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 40d
They're old, but not that old.
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 3 pts · 40d
You'll be dodging all the other time travelers trying to erase Yellow Submarine.
BlackPenguins@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 39d
The plot of Yesterday.
EponymousBosh@awful.systems · 3 pts · 38d
I've been on a deep dive about Mormonism, so I'm gonna say Joseph Smith. Yknow, earlier than he was actually killed.
Apytele@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 40d
Athanasius of Alexandra.
Too fucking easy.
Honestly I'm not even against trinitarianism there probably is something special about the number 3 as often as it shows up in world religions and philosophies but getting dedicated enough to it to develop imgroups and outgroups to start killing people over it was way outta pocket.
Christianity was way better when it was an antiimperialist death cult.
redsand@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 40d
I don't need the deathnote just a tablet with a bunch of books downloaded. Good fucking luck stopping me 🫡
leave_it_blank@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 39d
I kill myself. If I have learned anything from books and movies, it's that you don't fuck with time travel.
nullify3112@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 40d
Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro were distant cousins so that person.. between the two though I think Pizarro was worse
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 39d
Woodrow willson The leaders of the SPD in germany between 1919-1923 exept Stresemann Andrew Jackson Those are the names that come to mind right away
matthurtme@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 39d
I would never go to an even more regressive timeline, that is suicide.
HubertManne@piefed.social · 2 pts · 39d
Im just going to go back to the 90's and get a job in tech. I would not do something evil like have somone choke on a big mac.
Jo4ted@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 39d
I'm going back in time and killing both my parents so we can see what happens to me.
pressanykeynow@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 39d
Easy pick. There was this secretary to Aurelian who made some corrupt stuff and then knowing how Aurelian is against it forged his letters to make his guards kill him. Wonder what would happen to the Roman Empire if Aurelian ruled more than 5 years.
Rivermoonwolf@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 38d
Paul of Tarsus. History goes massively: different.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 39d
as long as we're all in agreement that whoever of us goes back has the obligation to ensure that it happens, even if it's one of your descendants that has to make it happen.
Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 39d
Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 39d
Benny Harvey
HeHoXa@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 39d
It can also work up to 150 years in the future, but you have to pay half your lifespan for the future eyes to really use it
qualia@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 40d
Specify that I wish to personally kill the first person to legally change their name to Rumplestiltskin Elizondo Jones III at a time of their own volitional choosing. I would then legally change my name to such and live as an immortal until such time that I decide to die. People talk about healthspans but what amount of suffering could possibly be worse than nonexistence?
cepelinas@sopuli.xyz · -1 pts · 39d
Wait 2 more years and kill Stalin or just kill Lenin.
damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 40d
Churchill, Gandhi, Hitler, Mountbatten off the top of my head.
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 40d
Seriously Ghandi before Hitler? I mean he was no saint, but he was a long way from being in the same ballpark as Hitler.
damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 39d
To each their own.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 39d
Not 150 years ago.
newton@feddit.online · -3 pts · 40d
Epstein ,Musk ,Peter Thiel ,