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!

Pretty much every human society has a religion, so it's not just one person inventing it, is it?

Whereas communism during the 20th century caused massive man-made famines - the Holodomor mentioned upthread was part of the Soviet famines, while China had The Great Leap Forward.

COVID.

It was hideous to work through it. The death and the refusal of relatives. We even had ones smash the ward doors trying to get to their loved ones. (All whilst Boris was hosting parties as it later transpired)

We often sat in the emergency department as the patient numbers increased desperately calling for a lockdown that never came until our patients were dying.

Appreciate worse has happened (a lot worse!) but I would know how to stop that one at least.

I had never heard of the 1984 Bhopal Disaster until recently it was a toxic gas leak at a pesticide plant in India which killed between 15,000 and 20,000 people and injured half a million more!

9/11

I think the human ability to collectivise and cooperate has been overall detrimental to the planet. Agriculture and the development of societies has just led to an consistent draining of natural resources and persistent over-production as methods became better.

I'm not advocated the eradication of the human race, I just wish we were more mindful overall that we share the planet.

In terms of man-made disasters, I’d get rid of religion.

Brexit

WWI. Because without that, WWII wouldn't have happened either.

I would stop my conception and birth.

Communism

Brexit.

Overall unfortunately it would have to be the humans. Although I am religious banning religion including mine might do a lot of good. but what we are really wanting to ban is unfettered power - religion very senior clerics of different faiths and politicians who use religion.
Secular systems with powerful leaders also had unspeakable horrors.

I knew an elderly man years ago who was also among the first troops into Belsen. He told me that he still remembered the terror of seeing these skeletal figures staggering towards them and not really understanding in those first panicked moments that they were people. He still woke in that moment of terror over 50 years later
It broke my heart to hear his accounts all those years later and hope that the more stories like this are shared, the more his experiences live on

British colonisation! I am currently in a common wealth country and what it’s done to these countries is beyond appalling!!

Be careful. This sort of talk attracts the Time Police.

The Second World War probably.

This ignores the mechanism and fallout that exists to this day.

It was an entirely arrogant way to deal with resettling displaced people, something which has never been done before or since. There were better options taking the homeland of one group of people and giving it to another.

A lot of historical ones to choose from
More up to date
Either Netenyahu or Trump being born.

The Partition of India, the sack of Persepolis by Alexander the Great, the burning of Smyrna, the 1793 Nader Shah sack of Delhi where they removed thousands of eyeballs, the massacre at Cawnpore, the 1857 Indian mutiny British retribution, Dunblane, Columbine, Aberfan, 9/11, the ruin of Syria by ISIS, the Manchester bombing of the MEN, the murder of Hannah and David on Koh Tao. Too many.

Also brings to mind the "Herald of Free Enterprise" in 1987. Capsized in just 90 seconds after leaving Zeebrugge.

Bosworth, let Richard wipe out the Tudur

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire

Aberrant