A what-if thread

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Bob
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A what-if thread

Post by Bob »

In this thread, someone asks a what-if question, you give an answer (the style is up to you; it can be serious or whimsical; long or short), and then ask your own question.

What if computers didn't exist?
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KnittingFun14
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Post by KnittingFun14 »

Then I imagine the price of paper and pens would be much higher, people would be reading a lot more books and I also probably wouldn't have any friends :lol:

What if you could only eat sour food for the rest of your life?

Fun thread idea, btw. I like it.
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Post by Bob »

Unfortunately, sour food often contains acids that damage your teeth. I suspect my dental bills would skyrocket. :(

What if all houses were designed with skylights?
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KnittingFun14
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Post by KnittingFun14 »

Then I would be afraid of someone falling though my skylight and taking me to court. :lol:

What if you had to go barefoot from now on? \:D/
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I normally go by N on the chat, but it's actually short for...
"No, John, I can't marry you. Why? Because my father won't let me. He says you're not good enough for me, John.
Yes you have big muscles and know how to run a farm, but I need a man that can give me the moon.
You are not the sun. I am." -Pengwin
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Post by Bob »

I have gone barefoot often around the house and neighborhood, probably more than many people in the US. It can be convenient.

The difficulty is that there tend to be a lot of sharp things on the ground, especially in Texas, which is known for stickers, these tiny sharp objects that resemble traditional naval mines. Out here, that basically means you can't walk on grass. Then if there's any glass or other sharp things on the ground, you have to worry about those too. And on summer days, that pavement sure gets hot...

If you do it often enough, your feet get calloused and tougher and better able to stand up to those conditions, but it's hard, especially while you wait for that to happen. You might also be a bit self-conscious about your feet if you're at some kind of formal event. It isn't that unusual for girls I know to take their heels off, with the result that they go around barefoot, but that's usually when a situation has changed from being formal to more casual; it stands out otherwise. I don't know that I could get away with it at all.

Short answer: Life, especially social life, would be more difficult. ;)

What if all the air conditioning (not fans) in the United States simultaneously broke down?
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Post by KODY 105 »

Florida would really suffer for 11.5 months of the year. The price of fans would go through the roof (pun intended). A/C technicians would make bank fixing all the units that broke.

What if DC were chosen for distributing electrical power instead of AC?
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Post by Bob »

The traditional view is that we'd need a lot more power stations. ;)

Curiously, recent reports [1] [2] seem to indicate that DC may end up dominant yet, transmitting power more efficiently and economically than AC. If that's true, then the oft-vilified Edison may turn out to have been a century ahead of his time.

[1] Scientific American, "A Powerful Alternative to Alternating Current"
[2] Scientific American, "Edison's Revenge: Will Direct Current Make a Comeback in the U.S.?"

What if we were all transported back in time to 1997?
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Post by Patterson »

Depending on what time continuum rules our universe follows, I might cease to exist in 1997 as I was not born until 2001, since some time travel stories don't allow things to travel to times before their creation. If one follows that killjoy time travel rule to it's logical conclusion, time travel to the past would likely be disastrous to the future being's(while he/she was existing in the past) health as the bodies of time travelers would only have the existing cells they had in 1997. That is if it's the type of time travel where two of yourself at different life stages can exist at the same time. If it's the time travel style where you physically become the exact same person you were in 1997(essentially replacing your past mind with your future mind in your past body or maybe becoming the same person you were in 1997 past mind only), the rule of nothing existing physically before it was originally created might be just fine. :-k

Additional surcharges and time loops may apply. Please contact your time travel provider for more information.

What if the Earth's atmosphere was made of 3% nitrogen instead of 4%? (Eugene's barometer experiment in War of the Words)
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Post by Bob »

Short answer: Everybody dies. ;)

The medium answer is that the AIO writers goofed. Earth's atmosphere is actually mostly nitrogen, 78%, not 4%. Plants depend on it. Without any plants, we can't live. Some say we would die from asphyxiation; I'm not certain if that is true, but the vast majority of life on earth would certainly starve or die by other means, in a relatively short time period.

A way to preserve some of Eugene's reputation, incidentally, is to say that he left out the context behind his experiment; he may have initially looked into the earth having 4% nitrogen, and then decided to find the difference between 3% and 4%, and then only thought to mention the latter. As a layman who dropped some college science classes, I suspect the difference would be negligible.

What if Hasbro continued to reintroduce vintage Super Soakers, on a similar timeline as the original releases? The new SS 200 ("XP 200") could come out this year, the XP 150 and 300 the year after that, and so on, culminating in the re-release of the CPS 2000 in 2026 and the rest of the CPS line in '27/28.
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