To everyone who tries dodging the question by arguing the paradox-proof nature of the device, it's quite simple to explain. If you've got technology (even if build by someone else) that can utilize time-transcending destruction, I'm sure it also has the capacity to hold your own city in a "causality bubble" free from the effects of the weapon. What it would need to do is isolate your own civilization from the changing time-stream. To illustrate:
Reality A: Culture E and Culture G progress normally. Culture E eventually wages war on Culture G. Culture G activates "time-nuke". The "Reality A" progression of Culture G's culture is isolated while Culture E's civilization is retroactively eradicated, leading us to Reality B.
Reality B: Culture E never existed and what Culture G would have become without Culture E also never exists because Culture G from Reality A is super-imposed into Reality B. To preserve the millions dead in the war, the causality bubble protection is measured to "stop" just before the beginning of the war, meaning that Reality A's Culture G is preserved at the expense of Reality A's Culture E (aborted reality), Reality B's Culture E (eradicated from history), and Reality B's Culture G (overwritten with Reality A's Culture G).
It's usually said that the victors get to write the history... but in this case, writing history is what makes you the victor.
Reality A: Culture E and Culture G progress normally. Culture E eventually wages war on Culture G. Culture G activates "time-nuke". The "Reality A" progression of Culture G's culture is isolated while Culture E's civilization is retroactively eradicated, leading us to Reality B.
Reality B: Culture E never existed and what Culture G would have become without Culture E also never exists because Culture G from Reality A is super-imposed into Reality B. To preserve the millions dead in the war, the causality bubble protection is measured to "stop" just before the beginning of the war, meaning that Reality A's Culture G is preserved at the expense of Reality A's Culture E (aborted reality), Reality B's Culture E (eradicated from history), and Reality B's Culture G (overwritten with Reality A's Culture G).
It's usually said that the victors get to write the history... but in this case, writing history is what makes you the victor.
