Why was the world in total ruins?

yeah.. the book does explain why the world was destroyed. The show skips this.

Thank you. I can't believe I had to read into page 2 of comments to find someone who actually had an understanding of history. Obviously there had been a backlash after 8 years of Democratic rule that gave the presidency to that little backward demagogue Wallace. That this simple explanation is beyond the comprehension of 95% of the posters here is a sad commentary on our society.



"The problem with quotes from the internet is that many of them are just made up" Abraham Lincoln

I'm guessing Kennedy accelerated the Civil Rights movement and the backlash led George Wallace to getting elected and Wallace started the Nuclear War. Wallace was actually doing good in the polls in 72 embarrassingly enough before Bremer shot him.

It's the butterfly effect which was a repeated theme in the show.

It wasn't just JFK, a lot of lives were changed: that boy who died in the fire who was going to join the service, Sadie's ex husband, all those bookies, kentucky .... and a lot more from minute changes to large changes. And each of those affect others - The butterfly effect.

Also, consider this:
If Kennedy had been a great president, de-escalating Vietnam amongst other "good" things, we would not have had the 60's as we know them (hippie revolution, protests, etc) which changed things, and without the 60's we wouldn't have had the 70's as we know them, etc. This thought is echoed in the final episode with old Sadie's reading of the poem that basically states that you need the bad in order to appreciate the good.

Plus because of the butterfly effect on politics, we could have had an entire roster of unknown presidents since JFK, as they alluded to in the last episode, and we could have ended up with a Nuke happy one eventually probably sometime in the eighties.

Not to mention that the intel agencies now knew, or at least suspected time travel ... they wouldn't know this was an isolated incident, which could lead to rampant paranoia and a much more hostile attitude - so instead of a cold war we got a nuke war.

There's also his phone he through in the water someone could have found ...

Many, many possibilities. Again the butterfly effect was a repeated theme of the series.

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I don't think Stephen King is saying, "Had JFK lived, the world would have ended up worse" as much as he's saying, "Save JFK's life, and the future from the point of his assassination is now a blank slate where any number of things could happen."

I had to chuckle when we found out that George Wallace became president after JFK in '68.

I think the implication is that, since JFK lived, the powerful forces (the mafia, Castro, CIA, Russians, etc.) that all had motives for wanting him out of the picture would've remained strong. In essence, having JFK live would embolden the dark side, who didn't get their Vietnam War.

JFK averted an October nuclear crisis in his first term, but it's suggested that another one may have happened either later in his 2nd term, or during Wallace's tenure as President.

All that stuff aside, I was more fascinated by the wrinkle that basically says, "Beware what you wish for, because it might come true."

In real life, I still think Nixon after 2 terms of JFK would be set up well to be POTUS in '68 because a) that man wanted to be POTUS really, really bad and b) guys like Wallace throughout America's history never actually won on the national level.

Kennedy was a staunch anti-Communist. If he would have continued his presidency into two terms, the Democratic Party would not have been taken over by the "New Left," i.e. the Commmunists. Wallace would have then been the next Democrat nominee, and with no Vietnam or social strife to handcuff the party there would have been no reason to expect him to lose. Curtis LeMay and other hawks would also be powerful in the party, and no one would want to be seen as a weakling who would enter into detente with the Soviet Union. The assumption is that nuclear war would follow. It appeared that the war was in the late '60s by the decor in the house Jake looks into.

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Since the history resets when one come back to the future, as said in the first episode, that's a flaw in the plot.