Haha nice one <| sep |> in the title of op ' s post <| sep |> Ours is better than yours , and so is our country . <| sep |> Max can only travel back through a picture if she herself is in the photo . Using a photo of herself whilst she was back in Seattle would most likely be problematic given the distance . There ' s also the issue that Jefferson probably has a clean slate with no criminal record so if a random and anonymous phone call accused him of kidnapping girls and photographing them in a secret underground bunker paid for by Prescott cash when there most likely isn ' t a strong link between them they ' d probably laugh it off as a hoax . The storm is not Rachel ' s wrath . Chloe used it metaphorically when trying to absolve Max of responsibility . Though if you ' re a spiritual person I don ' t see why it wouldn ' t be valid . The storm isn ' t necessarily a direct result of Chloe surviving . We ' re certainly given that viewpoint that the universe is somehow correcting for Max ' s intervention . At the same time however we ' re being told Chaos Theory has some role here , and we should look at the moral of the story where it comes to Chaos Theory which is epitomised in Bradbury ' s story A Sound of Thunder . In it a group of time travelling safari hunters go back in time to hunt dinosaurs , one guy accidentally steps on a butterfly surprise , surprise and messes up the entire course of evolutionary history that hinged on that one butterfly surviving . The same moral applies here , that by saving Chloe Max has changed the course of events in unfathomable ways . The tornado thus can be seen as the culmination of those changes . To give a very crude example , by saving Chloe they end up at the junkyard where Chloe gets stuck on the tracks thus forcing Max to divert the train . What if that train had some secret US cargo containing an experimental water vaporizer that as a result of the diversion crashes off the coast and ends up vaporising the water until it coalesces into a localised storm and tornado . Yes , sounds ridiculous but I hope you get my point , the tornado might not necessarily be supernatural in origin but just merely Dontnod ' s hamfisted way of telling us the consequences of Chaos Theory . Rachel being alive would certainly create a big enough divergence that the entire events at the start of LiS would be completely different . With her alive there would most likely be no suspicion of wrong doing and Jefferson would continue doing what he did and as you say Chloe wouldn ' t have any business with Nathan . As to your last point many believe that there was some element of destinyfate involved meaning everyone plays a role and serves a purpose . By messing with that plan Fate intervened by creating a storm to bring some sort of balance , or to just to wipe everything away to make a clean slate or whatever . In this case fate decreed that Jefferson was suppose to get caught and that Chloe had to die in the bathroom in order to bring about the series of events that lead to Jefferson ' s arrest . As I mentioned with Chaos Theory one small change might have big consequences , therefore if Chloe was indeed fated to die then it had to be in the bathroom for the aforementioned reasons . We see that in Ep 5 the storm arrives anyway despite Chloe being shot at the end of Ep 4 , and in that same Ep in the alternate timeline we see that Chloe being saved in the past doesn ' t matter and animals are still dying and presumably the storm was still set to arrive . It ' s reasonable , therefore , to assume had Chloe died on the train tracks the storm would will have arrived . The only death that we can safely say averts the storm is in the bathroom as Fate has decreed . I personally don ' t buy this fate concept as I think having time travel powers doesn ' t negate fate because fate should already have factored in someone having time travel powers . I find it very presumptuous to assume we know what fate ' s master plan is just from one single event from all time . For all we know if fate can correct its mistakes then surely it gave Max those time travel powers to save Chloe . Imagine if Max can have time travel powers so can someone else , what if someone else did indeed have time travel powers fucked up in such a way that Rachel gets kidnapped and causes Chloe to seek out Nathan when she shouldn ' t have in the first place thus necessitating fate to give Max powers to save Chloe and fix someone else ' s mistakes . You see the problem when you bring fate and destiny into the equation . Where fatedestiny is involved I find it better to assume Fate knows what it ' s doing . Some others ideas simply speculate that Max using her powers constantly creates some instability causing a storm ie play with matches and you get a fire , therefore there might not necessarily be anything supernatural involved that somehow is punishing or brining balance . Therefore by letting Chloe die she has no reason to use her powers , so no storm arises . So whether it ' s simply the material cause and effect of Chaos Theory , something supernatural with Fate and Destiny , or the excessive use of extrasensory abilities we simply don ' t understand , or a mix of all three , utimately it ' s up to you how you see it all and connect all the dots . And sorry , i ' ve seemed to have waffled on for quite a bit !