1. If sending a human being into the past will ever be not just possible, but practical, then it is likely that time travelers from our future are among us right now.
2. If there are time travelers around, they are:
a. Observing us.
b. Interacting with us.
c. Both.
3. If they are interacting with us, it can be assumed that this interaction is being used by the time travelers as a means of advancing their own agendas.
4. These agendas may or may not be in our own best interests.
5. The most obvious way for time travelers to pursue a nationalistic agenda would be to travel into the past and change:
a. The history of their country and/or people.
b. The history of their allies' countries and/or people.
c. The history of their enemies' countries and/or people.
d. Any combination of the above.
6. Researchers from several countries are currently involved in time travel research. It can therefore be assumed that more than one country will eventually have access to time travel technology.
7. It can also be assumed that time travel technology will continue to proliferate, just as nuclear weapons technology has proliferated.
8. Since the effects of any overt actions in their relative past(s) would be visible to other nations with time travel technology, time travel missions would involve a level of secrecy and subtlety never known before.
9. To avoid exposure, any person not a time traveler who became aware of time travelers - and who could offer up substantive proof of their existence - would necessarily be killed prior to or immediately following public exposure of that proof. (This scenario may violate the causality principle.)
10. To avoid detection if accidentally captured or killed, time travelers would need to conform to the physical characteristics common to the time and place in which a given mission takes place. This includes not having any physical evidence of anachronistic medical procedures.
11. To prevent detection in the future, time travelers would be unable to carry any anachronistic technology that might inadvertently be lost in their past, and serve as a red flag to opposing forces that a time travel mission had been conducted.
12. Since time travelers could not carry future technology with them, they would need to be intelligent and resourceful enough to build or adapt whatever is necessary for them to complete their mission.
13. The easiest and most obvious way to create profound, long-term changes that are literally undetectable and largely unquestioned would be to influence or create one or more religions, and make the actions and way of thinking that will accomplish one's agenda a part of each religion's creed.
14. Since it can be assumed that more than one nation will eventually possess time travel technology - and that the possession of such technology is de facto possession of a weapon of greater impact than any other weapon ever devised - it can also be assumed that the initial goal of any country's time travel program will be the elimination of all other time travel programs.
15. In order to survive intact, whatever political and/or military power develops time travel first must eliminate all other nations prior to those nations' development of time travel.
16. If two nations developed time travel simultaneously, the resulting conflict, as each attempted to prevent the development of time travel technology by the other, would literally destroy the world, or at least all human life.
17. The apparent absence of time travelers - or any evidence that they exist or will ever exist - in our own relative time is a strong indication that one of the following will occur:
a. Practical human time travel will never be perfected.
b. Time travel results in the extinction of our species at some time prior to the development of time travel technology.
2. If there are time travelers around, they are:
a. Observing us.
b. Interacting with us.
c. Both.
3. If they are interacting with us, it can be assumed that this interaction is being used by the time travelers as a means of advancing their own agendas.
4. These agendas may or may not be in our own best interests.
5. The most obvious way for time travelers to pursue a nationalistic agenda would be to travel into the past and change:
a. The history of their country and/or people.
b. The history of their allies' countries and/or people.
c. The history of their enemies' countries and/or people.
d. Any combination of the above.
6. Researchers from several countries are currently involved in time travel research. It can therefore be assumed that more than one country will eventually have access to time travel technology.
7. It can also be assumed that time travel technology will continue to proliferate, just as nuclear weapons technology has proliferated.
8. Since the effects of any overt actions in their relative past(s) would be visible to other nations with time travel technology, time travel missions would involve a level of secrecy and subtlety never known before.
9. To avoid exposure, any person not a time traveler who became aware of time travelers - and who could offer up substantive proof of their existence - would necessarily be killed prior to or immediately following public exposure of that proof. (This scenario may violate the causality principle.)
10. To avoid detection if accidentally captured or killed, time travelers would need to conform to the physical characteristics common to the time and place in which a given mission takes place. This includes not having any physical evidence of anachronistic medical procedures.
11. To prevent detection in the future, time travelers would be unable to carry any anachronistic technology that might inadvertently be lost in their past, and serve as a red flag to opposing forces that a time travel mission had been conducted.
12. Since time travelers could not carry future technology with them, they would need to be intelligent and resourceful enough to build or adapt whatever is necessary for them to complete their mission.
13. The easiest and most obvious way to create profound, long-term changes that are literally undetectable and largely unquestioned would be to influence or create one or more religions, and make the actions and way of thinking that will accomplish one's agenda a part of each religion's creed.
14. Since it can be assumed that more than one nation will eventually possess time travel technology - and that the possession of such technology is de facto possession of a weapon of greater impact than any other weapon ever devised - it can also be assumed that the initial goal of any country's time travel program will be the elimination of all other time travel programs.
15. In order to survive intact, whatever political and/or military power develops time travel first must eliminate all other nations prior to those nations' development of time travel.
16. If two nations developed time travel simultaneously, the resulting conflict, as each attempted to prevent the development of time travel technology by the other, would literally destroy the world, or at least all human life.
17. The apparent absence of time travelers - or any evidence that they exist or will ever exist - in our own relative time is a strong indication that one of the following will occur:
a. Practical human time travel will never be perfected.
b. Time travel results in the extinction of our species at some time prior to the development of time travel technology.