What if

"She shed tears over her friends dying in the 1918 flu epidemic. That generation-my parents' generation- lived through a lot. They lived through the epidemic, which took ten percent of the world's population. And then came the first world war, then the depression, then the second world war. They didn't have much of a chance. That was a very tough period. My father would have been much more sucessful in a different kind of world."

Malcolm Gladwell, "Outliers: the story of success"

And I thought, "what if....."