Let’s say people can’t agree on the time to go to bed, and each timezone declared war on every other timezone. Who would win in this conflict? What alliances would form, and will there be betrayal? What would the new world order look like with a standard time for everyone?

GMT+8 looks good with the entire population of China on its side. GMT+1 and +2 have large chunks of Europe and Africa and could be quite strong too. The timezones in the east and west coast of the U.S. might also stand a good chance.

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[–] 78 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Definitely +8, they have like a third of the world's population.

The first to lose world be +8.25 they're at the bottom of Western Australia. There's roughly 12 people there unless Bruce is passing through. A fuck ton of emu war veterans though. From the side that won

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    Not to mention that the entirety of China, a singular political and military entity (a fairly strong one nonetheless), is somehow all +8 due to a technicality

    Now all of China knows you're here!

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  • [–] 42 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The one with the entire country of china obviously

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yeah I'm regretting migrating from West Australia to East....

    Enjoy the new hegemony, you dirty ass sand gropers!

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    Greenwich Mean Time.

    Because it's mean.

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  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago*

    Probably China. It’s one nation, full of industry and under a single leadership. They could produce whatever they needed. China is one time zone.

    Next competitor is the slice encompassing a large number of countries in Africa as well as most of western Europe. Huge number of people and industries contained in that slice, but they lack common leadership.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    Any war with this many aggressors who were all opposed to each other absolutely would just look like everyone killing each other at random. Even without nukes, it would be madness on a scale never before seen, resulting in a quieter, nay sleepier world.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    China.

    Not even a question.

    They have 1 time zone.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Wow is that map ever a trainwreck

    But -5 stronk like bull

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    Kiribati wins!

    They can just go back in time, DUH!

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    China's cheating, it's all crammed forcefully into one timezone, Beijing's!
    In far western China in winter, it could be noon and the sun is barely rising over the horizon. Then in summer the sunset might be at around 1am.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    US and Russia would tear themselves apart internally. That leaves China with the largest functioning army, vs the EU if they can mobilize fast enough

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    There should be no time zones. We don't need them. It's 8pm, everywhere on Earth at the same time. Darkness is falling at 8pm in Dublin, but it's still sunny and bright at 8pm in New York. It would take some adjusting but would remove all of the logic and cost associated with timing a particular place.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Ask people in western China how that's working for them. And that's only the width of one country, not a continent or hemisphere.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    If your friend is of China's majority Han ethnicity, you can assume that by 3 o'clock he's referring to Beijing Standard Time. But if your friend is a Uighur, the largest ethnic minority group in Xinjiang, he might be referring to “local time,” which is two hours behind.

    ^ this is a problem because of the existence of time zones.

    In the summer, for instance, it isn’t uncommon in Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital, to see people enjoying a beautiful sunset ... at midnight

    ^ this is NOT a problem. there is no inherent issue with the sun being up at midnight.

    Time Zones cause more trouble than they're worth, as you pointed out. I'm recommending removing them.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I think we can arrive to a best-of-both-worlds solution if we just up the tolerance for when solar noon can be to 12:00±2 h. If China just had +7 instead of +8 as their timezone then 99 % of the population would have solar noon in between 10:30 and 13:30. Same applies to the entire EU (excluding Outermost Regions) if it had +1. The entirety of South America and most of the Caribbean would fit in +4. The US could definitely get away with 3 timezones instead of its current 5 (-6, -8, -10).

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    Whatever the China Time zone is obviously.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    +12 would just ignore you all

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  • UTC obviously.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Either +1 or +8

    That said all 4 in America could end life on earth

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    GMT-11 wins because nobody remembers to nuke them.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    The one with Hawaii could just pretend they've already been wiped out and wait for everyone else to destroy each other

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Australians, because they live in the future. Theyll fuck you up yesterday.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Every TZ has a similar amount of tactical nuclear penguins. The only way to win is not to play.

    => the moon.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I think there's going to be a multi-way tie as the nukes get launched...

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    It would result in the total collapse of the entire time zone system. Every location would switch to local solar time and the war would be over.

    When those areas need to communicate with each other, they would develop a new global time system that simply counts seconds from a particular moment in time. Sort of like unix time, but with the epoch set to the moment the new system was launched.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Develop a new time global system? We Brits can't even agree on what to call a bread roll!

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It's breadcake. Problem solved. No further discussion necessary

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    They would all lose because they stretch all the way down into Antarctica which means that the penguins would be involved...

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Hmm how do time zones work at the south pole? Can you run in a small circle and hit most if not all of them?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Poor Newfoundland

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    +9 appears to be currently shivving +10, so my money is with them

    I may have misunderstood the assignment

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Every military in the world uses UTC so I'm gonna say that.

    Otherwise, I'd go for UTC-1 because... well, look at it. There's no way they could lose because there's nothing there to lose. Nuke away, boyos, it's all ocean.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I think it's depend of which kind of war. If it's obvious for everyone that "they is no way we can agree" from the beginning, so it's a nuclear preemptive strike from the first timezone aware of the rules. So Europe, China, India and Pakistan are close competitors. US have and Canada shall destroy itself, their nuclear capacities are spread across several "timezone interests". Funny enough, what may make the difference between Europe, China, India and Pakistan may be the hour when the situation declare itself. If the ruling class is asleep, officer may need to wait to wake them up, as it was during the 1983 false nuclear alarm

    If it's not obvious that their is no way to make agreement, we may see an escalation of conflict, starting with soft and hard power. This scenario may be very close of the current relationships, and the winner may be the main imperialists power : Europe or the US In this scenario, it seems obvious that the US adopt one timezone, and make it adopt for every countries in the North and South America. It's next move would be to sabotage other negotiations. I didn't exclude Europe from the competitions, because the neo-colonial relationships may help the expand their timezone in their former colonies. What may make the differences is the attitude of UK and Russa. Depending if they adopt the European timezone or not.

    I don't think the number of people involve in one timezone make a change; this is short term scenarios, and economic and diplomatic power seems unrelated with the population size

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    UTC+08:45 obviously has the biggest military presence and would steamroll every other timezone.

    /s

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    GMT

    We've done it before and we'll do it again.

    /s obv

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    How it would work later you can see in china because the point they took for their time zone is an end.
    People would simply say something like: which retards came to the idea that 4:20 should in the middle of the suntime??

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    You can travel from Ucraine to Japan (half the world) and only go through 4 time zones?

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