"A Sound of Thunder" is an interesting short story about time travel which gives a great example of how the Butterfly Effect works. The Butterfly Effect states that "small changes in the initial conditions lead to drastic changes in the results." Ray Bradbury, the main character, goes on a time safari way back in time to go hunt dinosaurs. Now, going back in time to kill dinosaurs sounds like it will make a difference in the future if the Butterfly Effect is true, right? Well, one of the men, Mr. Travis, who works for the time safari company goes back in time, before the next customer is supposed to, and marks dinosaurs that will be killed soon by natural disasters. The ones he marks are the ones that are hunted by clients, because killing those ones won't make a difference in the future since they die soon anyways. In order not to change the future in a different way, the time safari company built a walkway for customers to walk on when hunting so that they do not accidentally step on a certain type of flower, bug, etc. While on the time safari, Bradbury gets scared after seeing the dinosaur, backs out of killing it, and runs off the path. After the others kill the dinosaur and find him hiding in the time machine, they go back to the time which they came from and find that everything has been altered. The main differences compared to their reality before they traveled back in time were that the president was now a dictator and that spelling was completely different. The reason why everything changed? When Bradbury ran off the path, he in turn kills a butterfly. Simply killing a butterfly changed everything. Bradbury's consequence for altering the future was death, given to him by Mr Travis.
This story made me think about how little things that seem irrelevant can actually be life-changing.
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