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What happen in a sound of thunder?
Topic Started: Jan 26 2011, 03:28 PM (3,822 Views)
Dark-Matter
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Ok,I just rewatch a sound of thunder and I wonder what could make such a bizzard alternative world.
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

First off, you gotta alize that the movie is extremely inaccurate and is different than the Ray Bradbury story it's based off.

Pretty much, in the movie (and in the story), someone stepped on a butterfly, causing a chain reaction (ever hear of the Butterfly Effect? Basically, if you kill a butterfly in the past, a rat goes hungry, causing a dinosaur to go hungry. All their kids aren't born, and their kids's kids aren't born, so on and so forth).

However, in the story, stepping on the butterfly just changes who is elected president. In the movie, the whole ecological system changes (more accurate, but what's inaccurate is the stages it takes. The ecological changes would happen instantaneously, causing you not to be born, meaning you couldn't make the trip in the first place (in essence creating a paradox)).
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Kingpin
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In the book, the butterfly mainly just effects the history of humanity. It's hinted heavily that America changed it's social views, and that there is a strong German influence on at least their version of english.
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T.Neo
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What happened in A Sound Of Thunder? I'll tell you what happened: Peter Hyams directed the worst movie I've ever seen. :(

I'm skeptical of the butterfly effect, natural selection affects groups of organisms over thousands of years at least, so I doubt killing a butterfly would do much. To change the timeline like that you'd probably have to create a mass extinction.

Whether it effects human history and civilisation is a totally different matter, I doubt you could make the USA a bunch of Nazis that easily without radically changing history, for example. There's also the issue of whether such things would even affect recent history, it's probable stuff would "even out" over time as the differences to history are utterly minimal.
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Cephylus
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The alternate creatures aren't even realistic.
What you SHOULD get when a butterfly is stepped on in the past: a frog or lizard misses a meal. Simple.
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Jasonguppy
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My favorite story...
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ATEK Azul
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I loved that movie even if it was inaccurate. As for how you could create that world realisticly I have no idea except to start in the permian(or before).
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Cephylus
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Yeah, it wasn't too bad a movie in my standards. I still loved the dark setting, the baboon reptiles, the pterosaur bats and the catfish eel. But you sure can't get that kind of alternate world by just crushing a butterfly.
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SIngemeister
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Wasn't the butterfly going to die in the lava anyway?
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Canis Lupis
Jan 26 2011, 06:33 PM
The ecological changes would happen instantaneously, causing you not to be born, meaning you couldn't make the trip in the first place (in essence creating a paradox)).
That's actually not true, there's no such thing as a nonexistence paradox. You could go back in time and kill your own mother while she was pregnant with you and you would still exist. Why? Because changing the past creates a different time line from the one you were born in, which still exists somewhere. Merely going back in time changes the past, that's why the Doctor travels through time with reckless abandon and no regard for how his actions will affect history.

Temporal logic is a bitch.
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"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

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Dark-Matter
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Creatures that appeared on sound of thunder:
-Baboonlyzard
-Moving predatory plants
-Giants ant
-Giant bats like pterodactyl
-Giants eels
-Giant mushroom
-Other quadruped lyzards
-wolf-crocs
-Arachnid like mammal
-Legget snakes
-pterodactyl like dragon
-humanoid cat fish


The baboonlyzard suppously is the allosaur descendens.
( http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=3096#
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Rick Raptor
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That Baboon-lizard actually looks really cool, though I´m not sure a reptilian could evolve such a mammalian face.
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Kamidio
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Admiral Parasky
Jan 28 2011, 07:19 PM
Canis Lupis
Jan 26 2011, 06:33 PM
The ecological changes would happen instantaneously, causing you not to be born, meaning you couldn't make the trip in the first place (in essence creating a paradox)).
That's actually not true, there's no such thing as a nonexistence paradox. You could go back in time and kill your own mother while she was pregnant with you and you would still exist. Why? Because changing the past creates a different time line from the one you were born in, which still exists somewhere. Merely going back in time changes the past, that's why the Doctor travels through time with reckless abandon and no regard for how his actions will affect history.

Temporal logic is a bitch.
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Edited by Kamidio, Jan 29 2011, 01:21 PM.
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Canis Lupis
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Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the Earth.

Admiral Parasky
 
Canis Lupis
 
The ecological changes would happen instantaneously, causing you not to be born, meaning you couldn't make the trip in the first place (in essence creating a paradox)).

That's actually not true, there's no such thing as a nonexistence paradox. You could go back in time and kill your own mother while she was pregnant with you and you would still exist. Why? Because changing the past creates a different time line from the one you were born in, which still exists somewhere. Merely going back in time changes the past, that's why the Doctor travels through time with reckless abandon and no regard for how his actions will affect history.

Temporal logic is a bitch.


That's actually not proven yet, since no one has actually gone back in time to test that. It's a theory. A good theory, yes. But it's equally likely for there to be nonexistence paradoxes or just random things happening that prevent you from changing the past in the first place.

Like say you went back in time to shoot your grandfather. Under one theory I've read (particularly in Michael Crichton's "Timeline" (he does quite a bit of research before writing his books. Even if "Jurassic Park" is inaccurate by modern standards, back in the late 80's or early 90's (forget when it was published) it was quite plausible. Though he did take artistic liberties)), the gun will jam, you'll shoot a blank, the bullet will miss, a bird will fly in to block the bullet, etc.

Now, I admit that I support your theory of a completely different timeline splitting off. But there are also other theories that are equally as likely at this point.
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Kingpin
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I actually think Crichton's got it right in that respect. Though it would make for disappointing movies.
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I love New York. You can pop out of the Underworld in Central Park, hail a taxi, head down Fifth Avenue with a giant hellhound loping along behind you, and nobody even looks at you funny.

-Last Olympian, Rick Riordan.

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HELICOPTER. It is a HELICOPTER. You call that thing a 'whirly-bird' one more time, I'll beat you SO bad, your sister's gonna wish she never gave birth to you.

-Nick
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