If you could go back in time and stop one disaster.....

[Shmoigel]

If you could go back in time and stop one disaster or other historical event, what would it be and how would you go about stopping it!

There's so many but probably aberfan or Dunblane.

Wow I had never heard of this one! Just read about it and it’s awful.

Other ones that would be good to put a stop to would be the

SS Eastland disaster
The triangle shirtwaist factory disaster

and in terms of child victims

The Hartford circus fire with 167 killed and 700 injured for life.

I would solve all of the above by stopping the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs - then humans wouldn't exist in the first place.

At this moment in time I'd be tempted to intervene when Eve met Adam.
We're a danger to the planet.

Aberfan - those helpless little children, told to crouch under their desks

and wish I hadn’t read Laurie Lee’s account which haunted me for years

Epstein Island. Appreciate this isn’t a dated event.

Aberafan

I hadn't heard of this, though I had heard of the other casualties in the same storm - according to Wikipedia, around 2000 dead on land and hundreds more at sea.

It was awful, but if you stopped that you’d also be stopping the changes to gun laws that went on to save many more lives.

The patriarchy

Seems most disasters are man-caused so I think preventing the patriarchy would have the greatest impact on society

Having visited Belgium, Krakow and Amsterdam and visited concentration camps, Ghetto Heroes Square and Anne Frank Museum, has to be the Holocaust for me. The shock of people living their lives where starved, lived in the most horrendous circumstances and split from families, so didn't even die in same place as loved ones, I can't put into words how awful that is for me

Holodomor
One way or another the current situation would be different.

It's 'only' one person but I think the little boy lost on the mountain near pen y fan. It breaks my heart to think of a lost 5 year old walking over 1000ft up a mountain and dying of exhaustion where he could see houses but not reach them.

Well - Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot et al are not religious.

And that was just 20th cent.

They were very efficient. More than the religious I think.

For me - the holocaust.

The Berlin Conference

I would like it if Covid had never existed and all the financial implications of furlough etc that we’ll be paying for years. I wonder how the world and life would be if it had never happened.

The Irish potato famine/The Great hunger

Covid.

The library in Alexandria being destroyed

Religion (in its most basic form) predates people ‘having’ anything much. The worship of various deities or things such as the moon and sun is linked to an attempt to understand and control a world where humans knew nothing about the causes of various disasters such as famine, earthquakes and disease.
In it’s current, most modern form it can be traced to be the root cause of many of the worlds most distressing problems.
I do believe though that, sadly, this is a human issue rather than a religion issue. Humans are so rarely content with what they and far too sure that they know better than other people.

I wouldn't stop any because how would I know if any of the people who I 'saved' wouldn't go on to become abusers, rapists, serial killers or cause a disaster themselves? Even if just one of the people I 'saved' went on to rape someone I wouldn't be able to live with myself and would feel responsible somehow.

The advent of agriculture.

The invention of the car.The invention of mobile phones and the Internet.

The First World War .. the loss of so many especially young men