"The Final Countdown" what ifs

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I just re-watched the movie "The Final Countdown", the 1980 film about a modern day aircraft carrier transported back in time to just hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and it made me think about a few "what ifs". What if the "time storm" or whatever it was that transported them back in time did not return them to present day immediately and they were able to intercept the Japanese fleet heading toward Pearl Harbor. That one ship and its aircraft would have easily had the ability to sink all or virtually all of the Japanese fleet. Even if immediately after that success the ship had returned to current time, how would history have changed? The Japanese leadership would have been devastated, and likely would have not dared to continue their advancement upon the Phillipines or other American holdings. America would not have suffered any losses at Pearl Harbor and most assuredly would not have entered WWII at that time. The desire for NOT entering a European war was very strong in the USA, and most likely we would have stayed neutral. Without our support the UK would eventually surrender to the Germans or be taken by force by the Germans, and the Soviets, even if they alone could have held the Germans from fully conquering their nation would not have the resources to threaten Germany itself or its forces. Where woud the world have gone from there?

And if the Nimitz was never pulled back to current time, it would have had to return to Pearl Harbor after destroying the Japanese fleet for aviation fuel, and other supplies. The USA would lack the ability to provide modern spare parts, and what would likely have happened would be a multi years long reverse engineering of the jets and modern equipment making the USA unlikely to be challenged by any foreign power, but would exist in a world where the Nazis controlled Europe, possibly parts of Africa as well, and Japan would dominate the Pacific theater. After losing their fleet to destruction which they could not possibly understand, Japan likely would have focused on seizing the oil fields of Indonesia and continuing their advances in China, but could easily have avoided threatening American interests elsewhere in the Pacific.

Interesting possibilities to imagine. Stopping the Pearl Harbor attack might well prove worse in the long run than what actually happened.
 
You're assuming the existing timeline would continue, just changed. Not necessarily the case. An opposing theory is that it would create an alternate timeline (or multiple alternates like branches on a tree). Which of them would be the "real" timeline? Hmmm? ;)
 
Probably would have ran into an old (very old) freighter, lose propulsion, hoist Two Black Balls and gone into a Safety Standown and refresher on DEI and inclusiveness… Remember THIS isn't even 1980, as far from then as WWII was to when that movie debuted. We're NOT even the same Navy that they were in 1980, let alone 1941… Sorry about those burst bubbles…
 
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Reminds me of the Ray Bradberry story which was made into at least one movie about the hunters going back in time to kill a dinosaur that was going to die anyway and one of them steps off the ramp and kills a butterfly..... when they come back it is a totally different world.
Titled "A Sound of Thunder" One of the earliest stories that hooked me on science fiction.
Also, the John Carter series of Mars. Mars series introduced me to the idea of reading as fun (as opposed to schoolwork)
 
Best part of that movie was that it had Tomcats.......even then those Tomcats chasing the zeroes scenes were more realistic than the goofy redundant Tomcat vs F5 (Migs :ROFLMAO:) fight scenes in Top Gun...and I was part of the making of Top Gun for those scenes....I will always be a bit sentimental about Top Gun for several reasons.....but I enjoyed the Tomcat scenes in The Final Countdown more. Many folks just don't know how goofy Top Gun was....fun movie but goofy ;)
 
Why would they have splashed the zeros when Pearl hadn't been attacked and we were technically at peace with Japan? My scenario would be since we were not currently in hostilities and war had not been declared would be carry Senator Samuel Chapman around the cape to Washington and bring him to the SecDef. The Nimitz could have ended the war in both theatres within weeks and saved millions of lives.
 
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Of course all time travel is an impossibility. If you went back in time and killed yourself as a child, or one of your future parents, then you would not have existed to go back in time in the first place. But fun as a fictional genre.
Not so sure about it being impossible. I think we just aren't smart enough to prove/demonstrate that it is possible. We don't even know what time actually is. We speak about "the passage of time", which implies that it has some velocity. We measure something with an hour glass or another instrument, and call it 'time'. Is it? What are we really measuring? Is it some universal 'stuff' that we somehow travel thru when driving to grandma's house, to whack our granddaddy? If so how fast would you have to go to move thru this amorphous undefined 'stuff' either into the past or into the future, or just hit the brakes at 'the present' ?

How about this: There is no such thing as 'time', only an infinite sea of probabilities that become realities as the universe does whatever it's gonna do, and we choose or stumble into, a probability thus creating a reality bubble that may or may not persist.
 
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If the US had delayed entering WWII the Germans would have likely developed an A-bomb before us and also jet aircraft and more capable/longer range rockets to deliver them. We likely would have lost the war due to this. However, if the Nimitz had stayed in that time, I'm sure they had some nukes on board and they would have singlehandedly won WWII for us.
 
Lots of cool carrier and aviation footage. And Katherine Ross from the Graduate and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Not to mention Kirk Douglas. I thought they wrapped the story up well.
 
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