You can go back in time and prevent a great catastrophe. Which one would you prevent?

Sorry, Ionus. This was one of the those stupid stories that go on here periodically. I can tell you a version, but I am not interested in the details. I have no desire to do any kind of sourcing.
As I understand it, President Obama was talking recently about hurricane Katrina in the New Orleans area (short-hand for the whole region of the gulf coast of the U.S.) and then he mentioned "the earthquake in Hawaii" where a state of emergency was declared within our country.
The conservative media (like Fox) went crazy. Hawaii? Did he mean Haiti? Does he really think Haiti is part of the U.S.? He must be really stupid.
It turns out that on October 15th, 2006, an earthquake (6.something) hit Hawaii and then President Bush declared an emergency for that state. Fox breathlessly reported on the damage that turned out to be not that significant.

Again, Ionus, I post this but it is not a story I care about so if I have some of it wrong please don't hold it against me.

Thank you for your time, I appreciate your help. When I googled it I got an earthquake but it was mild so I assumed there was some politics involved.
Cheers!

There is an interesting novel built upon the premise that the Black Plague wiped out 95% of all Europeans and then the rest of the world went on . . .Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robertson.

You are the 3rd person I know to recommend that novel.

Triangle trade . . . remember the molasses?

You wrote this in 2008, probably when the book Slavery by Another Name was in galleys. A condition of forced servitude existed in the South until the middle of the 20th C and was the basis for the industrialization of the South after the Civil War.

Which Ice Age? There were several.

That's a repair. Those old churches today are repaired with bas reliefs of astronauts.

Without Hitler, there would have been no baby boom. . . which might not have been a bad thing.

Let me tell you what would have happened to the American Indians under such circumstances.

Without Europeans to ply the Pacific Ocean trade routes, China or Japan or possibly a united nation including both would have finally gotten back into the sailing groove of the early Ming and eventually gotten to the Pacific coasts of America.

They would have gotten to the Americas in wooden vessels 400' - 500' long and a hundred feet abeam with herds of horses and either allied Mongol horsemen or Chinese and Japanese horsemen trained in Mongol weapons and horse tactics, and their conduct towards the Amerinds would not have been ameliorated by Christianity as was the case with Europeans.

Christian monks saved Greek philosophy, Arabic mathematics and Latin poetry and prose.

In 1984 (the novel, not the year), Britain and America are one block: Air Strip One.

Where the Arabs sold them as slaves or they sold each other.

Are you aware that some American Indians sailed to Holland in the (I believe) 15th C ?

Yep. Christian monks, being romish, saved works favoured by the Latin world. They wiped out those of the Northern world. The works of the Norseman and Anglo-Saxon are now few and far between. And don't tell me they produced none - that's a church lie. They had several written languages including runic and oggum. But even northern oral traditions which were remotely pagan were christianised - like Christmas for example.

The Roman Empire of the East was a strong and ongoing concern long long after the Western Empire had fallen and a lot of the works you refer to was re-introduce into the West from that source and not by Christian monks.

Why don't you read the novel (easy read: it is alternate history) and find out what Robinson thinks? Or, are you too convinced of your own rectitude?

Do you know who compiled the first encyclopedia? While that guy who runs around claiming the Irish saved civilization over states his claim, there are germs of truth in it.

One hell of a lot of things had a small grain of truth however the fact is that just because Western Europe was in a dark age does not mean that the whole world was in a similar state. The sun does not in fact revolve around the earth and the total history of the human race does not revolve around Western Europe.

Please refer to the Eastern Rome Empire(Byzantine) and the Persian Empire and then the Muslim Arabs.

Works of the great thinkers/mathematicians of the ancient world was saved and protected and even added to during the dark ages of the West in the East and then later re-introduce back to the West during the Crusades period.

"You can go back in time and prevent a great catastrophe.
Which one would you prevent?"

If I were able to go back in time
and prevent a great catastrophe,
I 'd prevent Obamacare from passing either house of Congress.





David