Its the 14th century and you’ve had no time to prepare, after you’re done reading this post you are snapped. What do you do?
612 years in the past
In Brazil. So almost a century before the first europeans landed here. I’m assuming I just plop exactly in my relative earth-location, but in the distant past. (… It would be really funny if this was overly literal, because I’m currently in the 12th floor, so I’d thanos snap into the past and immediately fall to my death)Well
As a person from modern times – From AFTER the Americas came into contact with Europe, if I went near a person here in the Land of Palms (that’s what the natives called Brazil!) from those times we’d both get horribly infected and die a lot due to how antibodies work. Viruses did a lot of the legwork in genociding the natives. Euros would deliberately do things to infect natives so they’d die of illness.
The place I currently live in is slowly turning into a desert, but was a deep jungle back then (… It was still a deep jungle in the 1910s tbqh).
… I think I’d just die? Become food for a jaguar or eat a poisonous fungus or sth.
Would love to indulge in the fantasy of giving the Guarani people guns and a warning to shoot white people on sight just to see how history would change, but that ain’t happening.
I would be among Native Americans in what is now the Seattle area. To them I would be a gibbering idiot who didn’t even know their language, and they would probably kill me.
That’s 1375.
Not good, not bad. Depends on where you ended up on the globe. There absolutely is civilization, but it’s all kings and Tsars and the like. The English and French Hundred Years War is winding down but the plague really did a number on Europe. Lots of war in India. It wasn’t a great time in the Middle East what with the Crusades and all. The Egyptians are conquering Armenia. The Songhai Emprire is growing in Eastern Africa. Southeast Asia had a lot of conquest and a large kingdom growing, might not have been so bad as long as you landed on the winning side. The Ming Dynasty just started in China.
So it’s not like you ended up in pre-civilization or among dinosaurs or something. There are plenty of people around, but it’s still an age of war and conquest. Your best bet to have a great life would be to ally yourself with a strong leader and give them advancements to help that leader “win”. Of course, if he were defeated, you’d be slowly tortured and killed by the opposing side.
Nothing. I’d sit under an tree and enjoy the peace and quiet. No trump. No DC. No MAGA. No reporters. No non stop ads. No social media. No Google. No Elon. No bezos. The list goes on. Sure I’d probably die of some random disease or bandits. But I’d be okay with it at that point.
Well you can do that today. Find a tree out in the middle of nowhere and sit under it without any electronic devices. Then you are oblivious to all that stuff. You may be bothered by the fact that the things are still happening, but there are also plenty of horrific things happening in that time period you went to, you just won’t be keeping track of them.
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I mean, it will still be happening even if you’re in the past.
My comment was meant for a totally different post my bad
Well you can do that today. Find a tree out in the middle of nowhere and sit under it without any electronic devices. Then you are oblivious to all that stuff.
There is much wisdom buried in what seems like a simple comment here.
Even if you aren’t in the middle of nowhere, you can find or create your oasis.
Absolutely. In these times it is probably the only way to survive and stay sane. Being terminally online and informed is just leading to overdose of the shittiness of like everything. Create a soft bubble of bliss and steer away from noise and trouble. Before, I always thought that escapism is despicable but it feels increasingly like I’m not strong enough mentally to look in the face of reality for prolonged times these days. It’s like staring into the sun, it burns you.
you might well also die from being called to arms to fight for your king… sadly we won’t be rid of tyrants until we collectively oust them and ensure they are never allowed to rise to power again.
Nobody would be able to understand me because English has diverged so far from 12th century English that it’s a different language. Also I’d be in north America where nobody had even seen a white person. Additionally, I’m 20 ft above the ground right now in a building that didn’t exist back then. Finally, I’d be rightfully blamed for bringing plague to the native tribes of the area and likely killed.
Assuming those hurdles were all cleared: I’m a mechanical engineer. So, I’d tell the natives where iron ore, coal, and oil was buried and how to extract and refine it. Tell them how to make gunpowder. Speed run making steam engines and lathes. Get north american natives armed, industrialized, and organized against the external European threat.
Tell them how to make gunpowder.
That right here is all you need. If you can actually forge a gun and show them how to make gunpowder, you don’t need anything else. Although even then you would probably be executed shortly after for being a threat to the nobility.
Well I be naked, so would need to make/steal clothing very quickly
- establish a new culture in the Americas that will unify and kill European settlers on sight.
- teach the native Americans about the future they’re preventing
- teach them European science, politics, history, economics, etc
- give them a technological advantage that will set them ahead of Europe by 650 years by teaching them manufacturing skills.
basically, I want to destroy white colonialism. we have a toxic culture that honestly doesn’t deserve to exist on a planet it wants to destroy.
I’m also curious to see how North America would turn out after 650 years have passed after I have achieved my goals.
650 years ago, the place I live was inhabited mostly by the Ojibwe (a Native American people), so I suppose I’d try to find some of them and try to convince them to not kill me and let me stick around long enough to learn their language. Then I could teach them some of my knowledge. Maybe by the time the Europeans come along they’ll be a bit more prepared.
If I can’t find anyone, I don’t like my chances of surviving for any significant amount of time. Maybe I could make it a few weeks foraging for food and fishing or something, but realistically I’ll probably end up starving.
You would be surprised how plentiful food is when there are no people eating it. Fishing with a spear would be easy. So as long as you can make a fire, you shouldn’t starve. But there would also be plenty of animals that would consider you food.
Let’s skip the “I have no basic survival skills” part (also skipping disease) and assume we find a nearby group of humans. If you approach first contact carefully they’d probably let you live with them in exchange for labor, giving you time to learn the language.
I think I have enough ambient exposure to modern technology that I could contribute at least 3-4 major innovations to my group over a couple decades. The challenge would be conveying and implementing ideas more than remembering them. You’re not going to get back to modern standards of living in your remaining time traveled years no matter how much you remember, but what little you can impart to others would earn your keep.
I don’t know what all the innovations would be, but germ theory and pasteurization come to mind.
650 years ago this place was a sea. So I’d end up having to swim at least a couple of kilometers. Considering the current sea temperatures, I’d probably die of hypothermia before I could reach the shore.
Learn to build dams
like Amsterdam, which would already be a 100 years old
Slowly and with plenty of witnesses invent the toilet. But like out of wood pieces like a barrel or ship. Rain barrel on the roof for water. Start suggesting more contained sewage.
Should be just enough to not get dead for heresy or something but live comfortably and help a shitty situation.
Human urine was collected and used for many things (mostly the ammonia). Human feces was used as fertilizer in a lot of the world until very recent times and collected in certain areas.
They had sewage and toilets since Roman times. It wasn’t affordable to many (and you couldn’t make it affordable) but they definitely knew how to make it.
I could probably discover electricity, depending on where I landed. Jewelers of the time could make wire, copper was common, and magnets (lodestones) had been discovered. Realistically though I’d be a dumb giant (ie, speak no known languages of the time and statistically I’d have like a foot on the “tall” people of the era). I’d probably try to find some party trick that looked like magic to people of the era then hope that people would welcome and try to integrate me rather than burning me as a witch. Then I’d probably die in a week or two anyway to some disease lol
The party trick thing reminded me of a book series called Magic 2.0 that I read a while back . This guy figures out that the universe is a simulation and basically hacks the code; now he can jump through time as he pleases. He goes back to the Middle Ages and brings plastic wrap with him and calls it clear paper, which convinces everyone that he’s a wizard. It was a fun read but got dumb around the 3rd-ish book.
Coating wires to make windings may prove tricky tho
I’m in the US and in a place that native Americans didn’t have settlements. I’m very familiar with the area and have hunted, hiked, and camped here my entire life. With no preparation or modern equipment I give myself about a week before I get eaten by wolves or a bear, maybe gored by an elk or bitten by a venomous snake. I don’t expect that I would see another human during that week. Native hunting parties visited the area so it’s not impossible that I would see someone but it’s very unlikely.
I don’t think I know a single language from the time, so I’m probably getting murdered because I’m a strange foreigner who can’t defend themselves with words.
Wash my hands
Now you’re a witch
That would be a warlock I guess.
The definition of succeeding just becomes not dying.
Given the rate at which people would become mentally or physically disabled because of diseases, you could argue it would have a network effect (probably a better term exists): I would have more chances to meet people and influence them, to learn something useful, to accumulate and use wealth for the above, so yeah…
Everyone dies. You just get to try to make the leaderboards, if that’s your thing. There isn’t a killscreen that we know of.
Where do you wash your hands? Hope you brought a big bottle of disinfectant.
Crude soap is easy to make. Wood ash + water + fat. From there you just fiddle with ratios and timing while trying not to burn your skin off with strong alkalinity.
Thanks, that will be useful knowledge to have when it happens to me
It can also just be a fun hobby. Old-fashioned soap making is a very approachable historical craft. (Modern soap making is also very approachable if you’re comfortable handling lye)
Running water would allow for 30% reduction in bacteria, according to some sources.
Also, in that time period soap was known in Spain, France and Italy, and I personally made it in the summer using either olive oil or pork fat.
you can make impromptu harsh soap by just washing your hands with some wood ash, your hands will probably be chronically dry and red but at least you can definitely have reliably clean hands and tools, combined with wearing some thin leather gloves whenever you’re outside the home.
If you’re lucky enough to be middle class you might get easy access to soap and olive oil
Any body of sufficiently rapidly running water should suffice.
