You must change the future for the better! (RAR)

[Crossroads Inc.]

Inspired by a RAR that, unfortunately, didn't really get off the ground, I propose the following.

The year is 2100! It is a Dark and Stormy world!
Peak oil has ravaged global economies, global warming has flooded vast amounts of the planet and changed the climate.
America has collapsed under into a series of states loosely held together while everywhere people are trying to hoard what oil remains.
In this bleak landscape, a crazed professor develops a Time Machine! Not just any time machine but a Pseudo TARDIS bigger on the inside!
You his trusted lab assistant, some raised knowing the history of the world, is tasked with going back in time and doing something, anything to make the world a better place!

The "Tardis" is indeed bigger on the inside, but is hardly a true Tardis. It can go back in time but once!
Once used, the improbable means that can push it back in time will simply melt down. However it will still function in other regards.
The machine can still travel in space, if not in time, and can act effectively as a "teleport" machine, taking you anywhere on the planet in moments.
Inside are several rooms fitted with everything the scientist thought you may need.

There is a Library with both books as well as Ipod like memory drives that contain everything from the great works of fiction and music of the 20th and 21th century, to schematics of machines and powerplants.
There is a Machine shop that can be used to machine parts or fabricate small pieces of technology but works very slowly .
There is a Medical bay full of advanced medicines and medical technology, vaccines and other items.
There is also a comfortable living space inside and a power plant that can keep the Tardis running for almost 300 years.
Sadly the technology OF the 'Tardis' was developed by a crazed mind and could never be replicated.

YOU, the crazed scientists hand picked student, have full knowledge of how the machine functions as well as being personally 'altered' to have a lifespan of well over 150 years in good health.
Also, while the machine can no longer travel in time, there is a way to "jump" into the future. The medical bay has three perfect cryo tubes. They can be set to put a person to sleep for any length of time. Once set, the person inside will reawaken, in a way going into the "future" in the blink of an eye. Of course when this is done there is no going back in time.

This is the choice that now stands before you! The Machine is loaded and ready, the controls set!
Where do you go? And When?

[Chaotic Neutral]

I do nothing and play with my enormous breasts!

And then I travel to 1850 10 years before the start of the civil war. I invent morphine to make myself rich, and I then use my wealth to buy as many slaves and poor immigrants I can. I use the TARDIS to travel to California, hopefully being able to squeeze in at least 500 people.

Then I develop a small country, occasionally going back to the US to get more laborers. I then use my empire to take over the world!

[Rabid]

Okay. First question : Why exactly the world turned to shit ?

First answer : Peak oil. It seems that we hadn't been able to found an adequate alternative energy source to petroleum.

Second answer : Following the first answer, with the scarcity of the energy resources, and given the probable demographic pressure of more than 8-9 billion humans, humanity fought over the last remaining resources like wolves around the body of a fallen prey.

Third answer : Humanity wasn't able to establish a peaceful solution to its problem.


Okay, so, the primary goals are :

1 – Find or help find an alternative energy source to petroleum.

2 – Find a mean, if not to unite humanity, at least to permit it to find peaceful solution to its various problem.



I will go back to Europe, in the year 1800, during the industrial revolution.

First of all, I will find a cache for my Time Machine. Then, if I have taken some gold, I will exchange some of this gold for some liquidity.

I will use use France and Great-Britain as my primary ground.

I will create a screen of corporation, that I will use to sell technological innovation, so I'll boost technological progress. I will not do it very fast, but so that by 1860 the world as a technological state equal to the one of USA-1960.

My screen of corporations will be made so that nobody can directly find me at the top of them ; discretion indeed. The organization will be so the head of these corporation will be member of a pseudo Freemason lodge, in which I will let enter political and scientifical/cultural agent. Only the Grandmaster of the lodge and the higher initiated will know of my existence, and I will do so that they are as loyal to me as they can be.

If things go according to plan, by 1860-1870, the population will be still under one billion people, and under two billion at worst.

Using my web of influence, I will spread the idea that the world population as to stay under three billion people as much as possible.

I will do so that the corporations under my influence spread a social version of capitalism, so much that the need for communism, fascim, or any of these totalitarian idea to emerge as a concrete ideology will be no more, because there will be no more proletariat in wich to raise hope of a better futur (they are already well fed and benefit of a good education), nor a bourgeoisie to deceive with he promise of more wealth (they will know to appreciate what they already have).

I will use all my influence to prevent a major conflict to emerge in Europe, and to spread the idea of an Union between all the Nations of the region, as a better option than an ever-growing escalation of tension.

During the time I will have worked in Europe, I will also have worked in America and in Asia, the first to... well, influence the culture of the country in as much a positive way as I can ; The second to establish China as an equal partner to Europe, before its population become a REAL problem, and for the country to raise in prosperity in way that will prevent it to succumb to the typical Chinese problem (When the country is prosperous, its diverse province fission and begin to wage war on each others).

By raising the global quality of life, and by pacifying Europe before 1870, when the global population is still manageable, I will have done my best to establish a stronghold of stability and prosperity for the world to look at in envy, while the rest of the world has the best chances to follow peacefully on the road to prosperity.

On the long term, I will do my best so that Science and Culture are more treasured than temporal wealth, so much that a new artistic masterpiece, or a new scientific discovery, will be the equivalent for today’s people of winning one billion dollars. The whole when still continually raising the global quality of life in as much an eco-friendly manner as possible, and when still maintaining a global population less then two billion people.

Because my life isn't infinite, and because I am not secure from incident, or wars, or assassinate, I will raise a cohort of potential successor, my most trusted ally. They will continue my work when I am no longer here.

On the longer term, I will promote colonization and exploitation of the solar system as a mean to continue improving human quality of life, by extracting the almost infinite resources of space, the goal being to spread mankind out of the cradle, in case something unexpected happen. This will be supported by the Culture I will have engineered, that promote more new discoveries than a piece of material wealth.

Oh, thinking of that :

Do not try to construct an AI. Better for them to try to increase human brain capacity and ability to distinguish between good and evil. I think that it will work better on the long term. Just a guess...

[Crossroads Inc.]

I wanted to make a small addendum... If you are using the Time Machines Cryo Tube, the Machine will "PowerDown"
So the 300year energy life of it can be extended for however long you may go into deep sleep.

[Solauren]

Assumptions
#1 - I have access to the needed material to create better energy sources, there was just never any political will to implement them, until it was too late.

#2 - The 'Tardis' is bigger on the outside then a Police Phone Box. The size of a 20th Century Space Shuttle would be nice.

#3 - I premake some remote controlled flying vehicles about the size of a motorcycle.

So, my plan

I'm going to travel back to 1945. I feel this is a good place to start as politics are a bit more stable, and I wouldn't have to do nearly as much infrastructure tooling up. There are also plenty of resources left on the planet to work with yet. Also, the United Nations was starting up, and the Cold War hasn't started yet.

I fly around and 'Buzz', the various major cities of the world, in such a way, that no one doubts that I'm a 'flying saurcer' type ship.

As I get ready for my final landing, I will send out my remote control flying vehicles to land in my target zone ahead of me, and they will be repeating in a variety of languages: "I will arrive on this spot in..." followed by a count-down, followed by "my intentions are not harmful. I simply wanted to make sure I had everyone's attention."

I will land in Washington DC.

I will come directly to the point; I am from the year 2100 (whatever my exact departure time/date was), and the world has effectively ended. I will explain why. "Simply put, we used up all the Earth's resources to power everything, before we figured out other ways. I'm here with those other ways, as well as other advances. I'm here to save the people of the world, from themselves."

If I have hologram technology, I will address the world via that, as a 12 meter tall hologram.

I will then demonstrate my superior technology and future-origin, if I am not already (i.e Hologram). A Tractor beam would be nice. Depends what I have avialable.

I will explain that because of advances in cars, people spread out across the world, which is good. Unfortunately, those cars ran on gasoline, and there is only a finite amount of gasoline for the entire world. We used it up before we could find and implement replacements. We did figure out replacements, but by then, it was too late. The same with coal, and other fossiel fuels.

Also, once the full effects of nuclear weapons were known, there was a 'backlash' against all nuclear power technology, so it wasn't implemented. Had it been, I wouldn't have needed to come back.

So, I'm here to
#1 - Introduce a replacement to the internal combustion engine that runs on gasoline. (We have some in real-world modern times, so develop them and implement them first. We're going to need lots of farm land).

#2 - Give you clean nuclear technology that won't scare people. It's URANIUM they need to fear, not my new Thorium reactor.

#3 - Widespread use of cars created other problems. Materials shortages, and so forth. I encourage the creation of mass public transit. Screw roads and highways, use the train people!

#4 - Help develop other forms of power generation technology. i.e Solar power, Hydropower, Wind Power

#5 - I might slip in some stuff about part of the problem being religious and special interest groups resisting change. Do what I can to get equal rights and all that in ASAP.

In short -
Replace all power generation with Hydroelectric dams, Solar Power, Wind Power, and clean-nuclear reactors, as quickly as possible. This will limit the use of Coal, and cut down on pollution.

Replace most highways with mass-train systems. Preferably a system that uses electric trains. Failing that, a mass cable car system might be in order. This will cut down on the use of gasoline fuels.

As a result, everything will be running on renewable energy resources instead of non-renewable ones to begin with. The only factor I can see as a resource problem would be eventually, you'd run out of Thorium or any nuclear material, but with the other forms of power generation in place, it might be easier to 'switch over'.

[RowanE]

Go back 100,000 years, put the TARDIS on a nice big (BIG) asteroid, and spend a few years building a bunch of autonomous mining/construction robots.
I'd program them to build a massive solar array, and stick to it an ion drive or something like that that runs on solar power, and a microwave transmitter for power beaming. It would have its own autopilot, and would be programmed to, once it's built, move to the opposite side of the sun from the earth - i.e. the L3 lagrange point - and wait until 1930 to approach earth orbit, then sit in GEO and await further orders, on a specific frequency, that i tattoo on myself somewhere so i can't possibly forget it or lose the information.
Once i've turned the robots on, i land the TARDIS somewhere safe, skip forward to 1910, and enter contemporary society, with a collection of sports almanacs, stock tickers, and details of technologies that will be developed through 1910-1930.
I then work myself into a position of power and wealth somewhere in the world with this information, probably in america. By the time the solar array thing arrives, i should have bought quite a bit of land in the desert somewhere, where i'll have built a suitable rectenna for some of the energy, with warehouses full of cables nearby, and made it look like some kind of farming operation.
Once the solar satellite does arrive, I'll tell everyone I'm from a future where oil was used to fuel everything, but then ran out and civilization. And that the satellite is for beaming energy to earth, so that oil doesn't need to be used. And then i prove it by having the satellite beam enough energy to supply the entire country it's in, shortly after wiring it all up of course. I then outcompete all other electricity providers anywhere in the world that i can wire up to the rectenna, and ramp up the power transmission from the solar satellite to keep up with increased demand - The solar array would be big enough to supply world energy demand up to and including what it would be in 2100 if peak oil didn't happen, and maybe bigger still (with thousands of years to build in using the resources of the asteroid belt, there's no need to skimp even the tiniest amount) so I could keep just increasing how much power is transmitted for decades at least.
With world electricity demand sated for decades to come, and a strong kickstart to the space programme, peak oil is much less of a problem. All we need is an electric car and the problem is mostly solved, so I offer millions to the first person to produce a competitive electric car, and invest enough of my by this point vast wealth to make it really cheap, to the point where I can push it to take over completely from petrol and diesel-powered cars.
I also, by occasionally letting animals or unpleasant people run under the rectenna and then blowing them up, and by dicking around with thermals to make it impossible for birds to fly over it, big up the microwave energy beam to seem like a death ray, then prevent WW2 and the cold war by threatening to zap Berlin/Moscow.

So, by this point, I'm by far the richest man in the world, because i have a source of vast amounts of energy, and i've prevented world war 2 AND the apocalypse. I might get other awesome stuff done, but by this point, I can just live out the rest of my days in obscene luxury, and never feel bad about anything I do from then on.