Avoiding preventing your own birth in a time travel paradox?

Assume a world with no multiverse theory, just a single unbroken timeline. If you were to go back in time to the town your parents lived in on day of your conception, the air displacement due to your presence in the world is going to prevent your own birth. The reason for this is simple. Semen is a liquid. The slightest alteration in the father's movements is going to make that liquid move differently.

The displaced air starts a chain reaction. The difference in air pressure alone, however slight, is going to make things act differently. All it takes is for the change due to your displaced air to interact with something, that interacts with something, and so on and so forth, until somewhere in that chain is your father.

The crux of this is the air displacement. How far away from your parents physically, or temporally, do you have to be before the air displacement from your time travel excursion no longer prevents your own birth? For the sake of making this more interesting, you are only in the past for a single second before being sent back to your own time. One second of air displacement.

Slight change in appearance is enough to make it a different me. If a different sperm reaches the egg, I die. As a hypothetical dramatic event that causes this plot point, imagine that somebody is trying to kill me by catapulting me back in time for the aforementioned single second. I can alter where and what time I "land", but not by much. How much do I need to alter it to be safe.

posted about 8 years ago

Space Ostrich‭

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