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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: Trinity: Explanation Please. (HEAVY SPOILERS)
Message-ID: <GGJw3y.AI4@world.std.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 05:19:10 GMT
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[Trinity spoilers]



























Duncan Stevens <dnrb@starpower.net> wrote:
>Rereading the text in question, namely "Nature doesn't know the word
>'paradox.' Gotta bleed off that quantum steam somehow. Why, I wouldn't be
>surprised to see a good-sized 'bang' every time they shoot off one of these
>gizmos. Just enough fireworks to keep the historians happy" (hooray for TXD
>the time-saver), I think there's a good case to be made that the timeline
>you create when you sabotage the test is this one (the one we're currently
>inhabiting), rather than one with a lot of "bangs" but no actual
>destruction. (Sabotaging the Trinity test, in that theory, needn't have any
>direct causal effect on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and progeny--the Trinity bomb
>was bigger than it was expected to be because of some sort of error that
>wouldn't have been repeated.)

Ok, unfortunately I was playing Trinity with several other people
when I came home on breaks from school, and they finished it without
me so I never saw the ending, but the way it was explained to me
was that you had reduced the effects of all atomic bombs, that is,
you had created the timeline we currently inhabit; and although
you don't prevent WWIII, you presumably prevent it from destroying
the world.

I'm not sure how from the quote provided you draw the conclusion
you "needn't have any direct causal effect on Hiroshima": the
whole bit about "see a good-sized 'bang' every time they shoot
off one of these" sure sounds to me (without more context) like
this is supposed to be *different* from how it was, and "every
time" sure would apply to Hiroshima etc., especially given the
"historians" clause.

>When we get back to 1945, for some reason, we've gotten into an alternate
>timeline where the Trinity test becomes "multigigaton," and sabotaging it
>seems to be necessary to create the timeline you started with in the first
>place. (Unless, of course, you're in the Trinity-was-multigigaton-explosion
>timeline at the beginning--it's hard to tell.)

The last was the operating assumption for how I understood it,
except this doesn't make much sense either--if the explosions were
so much bigger and they made nuclear weapons anyway, wouldn't they
have scaled them down?

SeanB
