Moral dilemma - train bridge

[Reverend Conehead]

You're sent back in time to late 19th century Austria-Hungary and meet up with an underground movement. Their mission is to prevent Hitler from coming to power. At this point in time, he's just a kid living with his mom, dad, and sister. The movement has figured out that the Hitler family is taking a train to go visit some relatives. That train will cross over a bridge. They've rigged up that bridge with explosives, and they know exactly when the train will cross it.

Your job is to wait for the train to be crossing the bridge and then press the thingamabobby to blow it up. If you do so, a lot of innocent people will be killed, but it will also prevent Hitler from coming to power and he won't be able to start World War II or set up any concentration camps. It will save millions of lives.

The underground movement argues that they're sacrificing hundreds of lives in order to save millions of lives in the future. You can either do the assignment as they've asked you to do, or you can push a homing button to simply leave and return to the present. It won't just return you to the present. It will return the entire underground movement to the present, so none of them will be able to do it either. The people will know who you are and will likely pester you your whole life, blaming you for World War II and the concentration camps.

What is your choice? Do you blow up the bridge or do you simply return to the present.

 

[DallasEast]

Do you blow up the bridge or do you simply return to the present.

Answer: Return to the present

The scenario does not account for the Grandfather Paradox. The assignment is mindlessly killing a group of people to eliminate one target. If someone in the group is related to the person given the assignment, killing that someone will also result in either dusting cousins or (if it is someone of direct lineage) the person pressing the button.

Side note: I would be kinda funny if two people went back in time as partners, with one person (who does not have anyone related on the train) watching the other person press the button. One moment, they are watching the other guy press the button then *ZAP!* they're gone.

Personally, I feel it would be less of a moral dilemma taking out the target, who was childless, than playing Russian Roulette. Perhaps a more strategic time travel assassin would kidnap the target, take them to a secluded location, do the deed, and return to the present..?

 

[Hoofbite]

Press the button. If we're comparing hundreds versus millions, you'd be complicit in perpetrating the Holocaust not to. Also, without that war, how many other people wouldn't have needlessly died? Tens of millions?

Seems pretty simple.

 

[CouchCoach]

Press the button..........several times.

 

[JohnnyTheFox]

Press the button, and you need a valium.

 

[John813]

Alert Hitler, become his right hand man. Tell him the issue for Germany isn't the Jews but instead Amber Heard from the future. Hitler takes out Ambers grandparents and Rev lives a peaceful life free of Amber Heard. Johnn Depp never gets booted from the Pirates franchise.


Would of been something to see how the world would of been without **** Germany. Would someone else done something close to what Hitler did after WW1 and the collapse of Germanys economy looking for a scapegoat? How much power would the USSR had over the modern world without fighting Germany/losing all those men? Cold war after no WWII?

 

[Runwildboys]

There's no telling how much worse the world might have become, had history played out differently...Return to present.

 

[DallasEast]

There's no telling how much worse the world might have become, had history played out differently...Return to present.

Yep. What ifs increase as the number of victims go up. What if there is the mother of an inventor of an important 20th century device on the train? What if there is someone on the train who would grow up as an influential leader in some other part of Europe? What if it is a person who later inspires large scale humanitarian aid to some other part of the world?

Properly manipulating time would involve creating the least amount of ripples in the fabric. Avoiding tidal waves should be the goal.

An axe should not be used to eliminate people or alter events. It should be performed with a scalpel instead.

 

[Runwildboys]

Yep. What ifs increase as the number of victims go up. What if there is the mother of an inventor of an important 20th century device on the train? What if there is someone on the train who would grow up as an influential leader in some other part of Europe? What if it is a person who later inspires large scale humanitarian aid to some other part of the world?

Properly manipulating time would involve creating the least amount of ripples in the fabric. Avoiding tidal waves should be the goal.

An axe should not be used to eliminate people or alter events. It should be performed with a scalpel instead.

A scalpel with a computer guiding it.

 

[Hoofbite]

There's no telling how much worse the world might have become, had history played out differently...Return to present.

That's a risk that I'm willing to take. Most people in history aren't even known to exist. Those who are either did something great or did something awful. Removing one of the awful ones is a good wager.

Also, if Hitler can be defeated it's fair to assume the world would rally to defeat whatever other psychopath decided to arise.

Trading a train of hundreds for a population greater than many countries seems like a fair trade.

 

[Runwildboys]

That's a risk that I'm willing to take. Most people in history aren't even known to exist. Those who are either did something great or did something awful. Removing one of the awful ones is a good wager.

Also, if Hitler can be defeated it's fair to assume the world would rally to defeat whatever other psychopath decided to arise.

Trading a train of hundreds for a population greater than many countries seems like a fair trade.

According to the premise, Hitler is just a kid at the time. The world wouldn't know they'd "defeated" him. Maybe this action would start a chain reaction of more and bigger terrorist bombings, culminating in an even more expansive world war, from which there would be no recovery, no allies, and more death than before.

Also, think about the German scientists who defected to the Allies. If not for the world uniting against Germany, who knows where they would have ended up? Maybe Germany or Russia gets the A-bomb first.

 

[Oz-of-Cowboy-Country]

You don't kill Hitler. Without Hitler mankind would have never known the lasting effects of dropping a nuke on a populated area. There will forever be birth defects in Japan from those bombs.

Now without Hitler, the first time mankind drops the A-bomb on a population, they're way bigger and more powerful. But this time it's Russia striking the US with 12 bombs.

Those bombs were going to get built sooner or later. And someone was going to use them sooner or later, because they didn't know the lasting effects. But with Hitler the bombs that were used, were smaller than the ones we have today. So in trying to save 50 million, you could potentially kill billions more.

Because of the nukes that what drops during World War II, we don't have to worry about super power countries going to war with one another. So would you sacrifice 50 million people to assure that no superpowers went to war with one another?


Hitler gave us peace... from a nuclear perspective. It was the first time and last time that mankind would use nukes. Without that peace we might not be here today.

 

[John813]

IIRC the Germans under Otto Hahn were one of the first to discover nuclear energy and the possibility of a weapon being made from it.
During the early 30's quite a few Germans/surround country scientist left as **** Germany came into power in 1933.
Who knows what could of happened with the birth of the atomic bomb and who controlled that power if those scientists didn't deflect, and fears over Germany being the first to have one under a murderous dictator. The USA bought a lot of uranium in the late 30's.
While the Manhattan project started in 1939. Without the fears of **** germany does the manhattan project get started?
What if Stalin got an atomic bomb first?

Japan was also a war crazy country back then, with atrocities not too far off from what Germany was doing, with their slaughter of Chinese people. They attacked the US over oil embargos/sanctions that would of still happened had **** Germany not come into power. Still would of been a pacific war, but possibly with way more dead Allied men without the Atomic bomb.

The US was leaning towards isolation back then as well. Would the US still be the "worlds police" or would the USD be the currency of the world had WW2 not happened when it did?

Interesting topic when discussing a major ripple as taking out Hitler.

 

[Creeper]

So your question is should I kill a little boy who has not harmed anyone yet, but in the process also kill hundreds of other innocents?

What assurances do you have that killing Hitler would have stopped the rise of the ***** in Germany or prevented the killing of 6 million Jews? That plot was not Hitler's alone.

And what of the others who die in the explosion? How does ending their lives effect the future? It is too unpredictable. The Butterfly Effect.

 

[Reverend Conehead]

So your question is should I kill a little boy who has not harmed anyone yet, but in the process also kill hundreds of other innocents?

What assurances do you have that killing Hitler would have stopped the rise of the ***** in Germany or prevented the killing of 6 million Jews? That plot was not Hitler's alone.

And what of the others who die in the explosion? How does ending their lives effect the future? It is too unpredictable. The Butterfly Effect.

History showed us that the **** Party could not survive without Hitler. When he was in prison for a little less than a year, the party was dying without his leadership, and it continued to die after he was released but was under a gag order. As soon as he was once again allowed to make his speeches, the party started getting strong again. Then in 1945, upon his suicide, the party immediately collapsed.

In 1933 when Hindenberg won re-election for President, defeating Hitler, he originally planned to make Franz von Papen Chancellor, but was pressured to appoint Hitler instead. Without Hitler in the picture, von Papen is almost certainly whom Hindenberg would have appointed, and von Papen was no ****. He was a moderate conservative, and we know for sure how he would have governed. He had previously served as Chancellor.

So the likelihood is, if there were no Hitler, Germany's Weimar Republic, a representative democracy, would have continued under the moderate conservative leadership of von Papen.

 

[Runwildboys]

So your question is should I kill a little boy who has not harmed anyone yet, but in the process also kill hundreds of other innocents?

What assurances do you have that killing Hitler would have stopped the rise of the ***** in Germany or prevented the killing of 6 million Jews? That plot was not Hitler's alone.

And what of the others who die in the explosion? How does ending their lives effect the future? It is too unpredictable. The Butterfly Effect.

While I do agree with you, I have to say that Hitler's power of persuasion over the people is probably the only thing that made the Holocaust possible.

 

[Hoofbite]

According to the premise, Hitler is just a kid at the time. The world wouldn't know they'd "defeated" him. Maybe this action would start a chain reaction of more and bigger terrorist bombings, culminating in an even more expansive world war, from which there would be no recovery, no allies, and more death than before.

Also, think about the German scientists who defected to the Allies. If not for the world uniting against Germany, who knows where they would have ended up? Maybe Germany or Russia gets the A-bomb first.

That's a risk I'm willing to take.

 

[Reverend Conehead]

That's a risk I'm willing to take.

I'm with you. I would take the risk, especially since I know it would probably result in Franz von Papen being made Chancellor instead of Hitler. He was a decent guy. He never participated in any of the NSDAP crap, and he was acquitted of any wrongdoing at the Nuremberg Trials.

 

[Creeper]

History showed us that the **** Party could not survive without Hitler. When he was in prison for a little less than a year, the party was dying without his leadership, and it continued to die after he was released but was under a gag order. As soon as he was once again allowed to make his speeches, the party started getting strong again. Then in 1945, upon his suicide, the party immediately collapsed.

In 1933 when Hindenberg won re-election for President, defeating Hitler, he originally planned to make Franz von Papen Chancellor, but was pressured to appoint Hitler instead. Without Hitler in the picture, von Papen is almost certainly whom Hindenberg would have appointed, and von Papen was no ****. He was a moderate conservative, and we know for sure how he would have governed. He had previously served as Chancellor.

So the likelihood is, if there were no Hitler, Germany's Weimar Republic, a representative democracy, would have continued under the moderate conservative leadership of von Papen.

Yes, this is the consensus among those who studied the period but it is still speculation. There is no way to get the definitive answer. And again, hundreds of others on the train would die and we have no way of knowing what effect that would have on the future. Consider this, even the train destroyed in the wreckage could be an important link to future events that would be altered. The possibilities are infinite, and not all good.

 

[Creeper]

One personal consideration. If there was no WWII my parents would not have met. Killing Hitler as a young boy might mean I was never born. Considering how many baby boomers were born after WWII, I suspect a lot of us would not be here to answer these moral dilemmas today if not for the war.