Its the 12th century and you’ve had no time to prepare, after you’re done reading this post you are snapped. What do you do?
Wash my hands
If I snapped you back in time 650 years right this very second, how would you use your current knowledge to succeed?
Submitted 12 hours ago by Kookie215@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
biofaust@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
feddup@feddit.uk 2 hours ago
The definition of succeeding just becomes not dying.
biofaust@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
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…
Kookie215@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Now you’re a witch
njm1314@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Probably die
PahdyGnome@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
As an Australian I would struggle significantly unless you were to also transport me geographically.
Agent641@lemmy.world 35 minutes ago
Fuck I think I could just vibe with the Noongars, hunting, fishing and sleeping til I died of old age.
Maybe use basic science and chemistry to improve sanitation and quality of life. Not too much, just enough to be regarded as a clever fella, not a warra wirrin bad spirit.
ptu@lemm.ee 3 hours ago
I would imagine the east coast / tasmania could be interesting. There used to be hundreds of different peoples that are now extinct and we know nothing about. I struggle nevertheless.
pan0wski@infosec.pub 3 hours ago
I’d die pretty quickly.
softcat@lemmy.ca 12 hours ago
die almost immediately
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Yeah, this. I have medications I need. When the pair of contacts in my eyes fall out eventually, I’m functionally blind. All that aside, I’d probably starve quickly since I don’t know how to make weapons and other humans haven’t made it to where I live yet in 1375.
I’d probably look around for a couple days and then when I got super hungry just find a cliff to jump off.
adarza@lemmy.ca 11 hours ago
and if you manage to evade physical harm, sickness will surely catch up with you. the black death was not a ‘one and done’ pandemic. it lingered and persisted here-and-there for centuries after the widespread pandemic (known today simply as ‘the plague’) that claimed 50m+ lives, including half of europe’s population at the time
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
Well, I would give you the answer, but since I snapped back as soon as I read the post, I’m now responding what has been 650 years later for me, and I’m too fucking old for this shit a second time. I bypassed getting snapped back this time by just not reading the post and coming straight in to comment.
Now, what will happen if I read the
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
I’m on the Gregorian calendar, 650 years ago is the year 1375. I’m in North Carolina, so if I were to snap back in time at my present location I would be a blue eyed white guy in pre-contact North America. And while I think I’m an above average candidate for the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court scenario I’m not realistically able to start “from scratch.” I’d probably make it the summer on forage and my own body fat. I don’t picture encountering the natives going particularly well, for me or them. I’m not sick and I’m vaccinated against a lot of shit but watch I’ll give them 6 centuries worth of influenza updates.
I don’t think it would help that much being plunked down in 14th century England; we’re talking Geoffrey Chaucer’s lifetime here, to them I’d sound insane. Modern English is a few hundred years off. If they didn’t trepan me to let the demons out of my skull and I didn’t die of smallpox, I’d try to invent the electric motor 500 years early and be burned for heresy or some shit.
VinesNFluff@pawb.social 6 hours ago
612 years in the past
In BrazilWell
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.
The place I currently live in is slowly turning into a desert, but was a deep jungle back then.
… I think I’d just die? Become food for a jaguar 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.
starlinguk@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
There’s a former nunnery down the road. I suppose I’d try to join. Or maybe find a farmer who’s looking for someone to look after his kids because his third wife died in childbirth.
Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I’d use my knowledge of the future to do two chicks at same time
kmartburrito@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Fucking A
GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
… and B too
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
“I figure a guy that can time travel 650 years into the past can set something like that up”
MissJinx@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
well I’m a woman so anything I do will be witchcreaft. I would probably try to get to north america in some way and warn them “the fuckers are coming”.
that would mess up the future lol
Geetnerd@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
“You don’t need that knowledge to do two chicks at the same time, man.”
“If you want two chicks to double up on a dude like me, you do.”
Kolanaki@pawb.social 11 hours ago
“Hey ladies… Ever been with a guy who can read?”
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 3 hours ago
I would fall from a very high place
Acamon@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Many years ago when I thought about this, I realised I wouldn’t be able to put much of my modern knowledge and skills to use. I decided I’d learn to make basic matches by distilling urine into phosphate, which wasn’t invented until the 19th century, but I’ve forgotten the process. Collect lots of urine and boil it? Also, if you make white phosphate it can cause horrific toothache and they have to remove your jaw… So, I’m hoping another commentor will suggest a safer skill I can brush up to be ready for travel.
treadful@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
I’d make some fucking soap.
feddup@feddit.uk 2 hours ago
Do you know how to make soap? I’d want to but I’d have no idea how. If it already existed the hard part will be how to make enough money to buy it, as a software dev I’m not sure I’d have any sellable skills
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
How to make soap: Mix a fat or oil with a strong base like potassium hydroxide, resulting in an exothermic reaction called saponification.
Supervisor194@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Wait 612 years and buy Microsoft.
ultranaut@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Assuming I am physically in the same place, I will fall to my death. If I somehow survive the fall I would be severely injured and alone in the wilderness. Within a few days I would probably die of either my injuries, dehydration, or hypothermia.
SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Scientifically speaking, the earth is constantly moving in an upward spiral. Your exact physical location would put you in some random outerspace area without oxygen or any protection. Just floating in space until you die.
JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 10 hours ago
Scientifically speaking, there is no absolute reference frame. So you can be wherever you like depending on what reference you choose.
pebbles@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
How do you define upwards in space? North? Or maybe normal to the orbit and vaguely north?
FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
I would pretend to be super-religious. Throughout the whole of human history, pretending to be super-religious has always been a viable path to survival and personal advancement.
Apart from that, I’d probably just die.
Kookie215@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Oh! You could start Mormonism! Its super new as far as regions go and it was mad easy to convince the masses it was real, all you do is say you have special tablets of text that only you have been given the ability to read by God, and BAM new religion just launched and you’re the leader.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 12 hours ago
I’ll probably die of dysentery. Just because I know modern hygiene rules doesn’t mean I’ll survive interacting with all the other people who don’t but are used to local bacteria and viruses.
andrewta@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
This is probably the most realistic answer. Either you die quickly or you’d wind up, spreading some major contagious disease that nobody has a defense against and wipe out a huge section of the population.
gibmiser@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
spreading some major contagious disease that nobody has a defense against and wipe out a huge section of the population.
SplashJackson@lemmy.ca 11 hours ago
How do you think the boobonic plague got started?
Yeah, it was a time traveller
thelsim@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
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.
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 3 hours ago
Learn to build dams
MeThisGuy@feddit.nl 1 hour ago
like Amsterdam, which would already be a 100 years old
Lumiluz@slrpnk.net 2 hours ago
Depends what clothes I’m wearing when it happens.
If I’m wearing anything that could remotely be seen as fancy back then (which I mean a lot of modern clothes could pass off as), since I’m near the ocean, I’d immediately run into the water not seeing anyone, and then pretend I’m a royal foreigner who ended up shipwrecked. Since I usually wear a watch, have a tungsten (Wolfram) crystal wedding band as well, that would help me in passing off as royalty as well. This is assuming the people helping me aren’t brigands. There’s things we do and know of that we take for granted that could be used to pass off as someone upper class too, like reading.
Then next steps would be to get to an aristocrats home, and eventually I’d imagine somewhere where I could work with scholars so they can teach me the language and we can work on translation so we can understand each other. Would have to be extremely careful of smallpox during all this of course.
Once we could, that’s when I’d finally whip out my phone to trusted scholars and pull up my survival books, books on plumbing, etc specifically, and to explain that this is a special metal and glass book that can hold many books that’s common in the land I’m from, and that I can teach them how to build them. But that we’d need to build plumbing because I’d like a shower by then.
Jezza@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
There’s a book with almost the exact same premise.
Destiny’s Crucible.
It’s fairly good, can be a bit slow though. (I’m 7 books in)
Devmapall@lemm.ee 1 hour ago
I really enjoyed that series (don’t remember which book I stopped on). I think the slowness of it gave a sense of finding a home along with the main character.
orgrinrt@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Okay, so unlike most other scenarios, I think I would be fine for a while at least. The peoples living where I live would have made and kept more or less regular contact with the sons of bitches from the south that would later crusade us (or I think maybe one of the crusades is presently ongoing at the time…) so while I would both introduce and be hit with diseases or more likely strains of familiar ones new to my body/their bodies, I think it wouldn’t be as destructive as entirely separated landmasses like America vs Europe.
So if I survive the shock my body gets hit with, and I don’t kill everyone around me, I think I would be fairly well received. As far as I’ve read, the languages and dialects were different than after the formalization of the written form, and at this time these lands were just starting to get forced under Swedish rule, so with my basic understanding of Swedish and of course my native language, I think I would be able to communicate well enough to not get instantly killed as a demon or something.
I think my best bet would be to introduce myself as some sort of demi-god, a bastard son of the god of forests and the hunt probably, which would hopefully explain my alien attire and materials used to make them. And the alien accent/dialect of both the local language or Swedish, depending on where I’d land. If the first contact I make aren’t local but crusaders, I suppose I’d have to try and push myself as a wandering preacher of Christ or something. I’d have to hope they’d speak Swedish, since I do not know German well enough to form two words together, and they’d likely be the next likely encounters. Novgorodians I think were fine with the Swedish language in general, so if our current knowledge of history was off enough that I’d meet them here, I’d still be fine. No idea what I’d pretend to be to them though. My limited knowledge of history doesn’t help there. But as far as I understand, they were sort of a melting pot of close-by cultures, and not so focused on these lands at this time, they’d just take me for a local hermit and let me run off clumsily.
If I was able to survive the first encounters and get myself to a village or a hillfort, I’d try and establish myself as a wise one, helping with calculations and engineering and whatnot to the best of my capabilities, which I would think honestly should far exceed those of the locals at the time. So maybe I’d get by just for being useful and knowledgeable.
But I don’t think I’d live a long life. These were a turbulent and violent time and one village elder or the other, fancying themself a king or whatever, would just send assassins to off me for being an asset for the local leader where I’d end up in.
Even if I’d travel to avoid this problem, it probably wouldn’t take until my old ages to have someone off me just by happenstance. And I wouldn’t want to live a hermit in a time where internet or computers aren’t a thing. I think the only way to cope would be to focus on a family, try and bring up children and have that fulfill my life as best it can, as long as it can.
Honestly, I consider myself lucky in this scenario. We still have our language alive and in use, the same the locals would speak at that time. This together with the general superstitious nature of the local tribes — which the crusades and Christianity, with overt blood and sadistic violence, would (thankfully later, I hope for my sake here, at least according to our current knowledge) succeed in some amount to water down and turn them to its specific flavor of lame ass superstition — would make it probably at least somewhat likely I wouldn’t be killed on sight or something to that effect.
blaue_Fledermaus@mstdn.io 11 hours ago
If I time traveled to the same geographical region, considering I'm in South Brazil, if I don't get immediately killed by some jungle animal or tropical disease, I'd probably end up starting a pandemic among the natives.
bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 5 hours ago
Assuming I’m snapped back to the same part of the earth, climate-wise that’s ideal in the US PNW coming out of spring. Plenty of berries and food to forage, and I’ll probably impress the natives with my watch and well made clothes. I can probably get the native tribes to metals, and gain acceptance with my magic hand tool that will briefly shine light at night for a few weeks. I don’t know offhand where copper would be, but I know gold is in the streams, and I know how to placer mine, so I can get some electricity going with that and magnetized rocks from lava flows.
I think first contact would be the key.
BrazenSigilos@ttrpg.network 12 hours ago
Market myself as a powerful man of religion and/or magician, depending on the local vibe. Then use knowledge of science and tech to build myself a reclusive retreat where I can have regular baths and write books with predictions to mess with the world 650 years after I would die.
andrewta@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I like your style. If you really wanna have some fun, don’t name the United States as the United States, but name the year and then say something to the effect of the most powerful nation in the world will come under rule of an authoritarian individual who has dreams of becoming a dictator.
BrazenSigilos@ttrpg.network 12 hours ago
I love it! Predict that a large empire of equals will fall after 250 years.
LordOfLocksley@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
England is in the midst of the Hundred Years war with France and considering I’m ~193cm and the average height of a man in England in the 14th century is about 171cm… looks like in getting my arse drafted and shipped off to France, to act as some kind of intimidating presence. That is until I have to swing a sword, which my body, that’s used to sitting in an office looking over excel spreadsheets, absolutely can’t do, so I get bum rushed/hit in the face with an arrow and die.
That’s the most likely scenario.
Worst case scenario, considering I don’t speak middle English or Latin, I’m treated as an enemy and locked up in a dungeon somewhere.
I don’t think there is realistically a best case scenario
Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 3 hours ago
I’d just like to interject that while traveling was rare in medieval times, it did happen. People usually didn’t get thrown in jail for it, even if they didn’t speak the local language.
Regular people didn’t really speak Latin beyond a few bits of prayer. The lingua franca was a mix of various coastal languages (think of the belter patois in the expanse), but even that was only known to traders.
You’d have a tough time for sure, but wouldn’t necessarily get in trouble.
edgemaster72@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I’d be fucked
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
Fuck you buddy, I’m barely getting by with modern medicine, you just ended me.
chellewalker@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
I’d try and hold my breath to not set off the European diseases into America early.
bdonvr@thelemmy.club 8 hours ago
Hope that I don’t start the early spread of New World diseases to indigenous Americans
And I’d be dead by the end of the week
wewbull@feddit.uk 12 hours ago
1375…
We can work with metals, so we can probably make boilers.
I invent steam power 400 years early.
superkret@feddit.org 11 hours ago
You’d need metallurgy which was only invented in the process of building bigger naval guns, much later.
The issue was pressurizing the steam, which want possible in the middle ages. You had no rubber for seals, no steal that would hold, and no tools to drill holes precisely enough.
That’s why the Romans already used stream for simple parlor tricks but it couldn’t be made to do actual work until the modern eragibmiser@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Real science and innovation comes in increments
litchralee@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
no rubber for seals
Modern synthetic rubber would indeed be unavailable, but I vaguely recall reading something to the effect that early steam engines used leather seals or something like that.
But yeah, there’s a lot of missing prerequisites for machinery. Even simple rotary power – like from a windmill or waterwheel – would suffer from being incapable of long distance transmission
Geetnerd@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Die of bubonic plague, get killed for being a witch/warlock, die of appendicitis…
IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
Re-invent. Your still far too late to be first.
Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
This is something I often wonder about, what could one person even do with all of today’s common knowledge? You can’t very well just invent the printing press and have the same impact as Gutenberg - you need something what the few people who can read would, and most people can’t translate the bible from Latin into renaissance German and/or don’t know enough about the catholic church to write scathing remarks on it like Luther.
You can write and read - that’s something. Maybe more importantly, you can do math with arabic numerals - boom, easy accounting job. With a bit higher education, you may even just invent calculus once more. You know how long it took for people to figure out you can put pi on the number line? Proving all the formulas in your head is the hard stuff, but you have a head start just by knowing them. We all clown on the wormhole explanation with the paper, but it does prove Euclid wrong 400 years early.
Ah, and you can just become a medical genius by using soap and bandages - “do no harm” is better than most.
Kookie215@lemmy.world 58 minutes ago
Heres the thing though, you can write, but can you write and read Middle English from the 1300’s? There are some similar words but its a very different language than what you and I are used to, it’s another 200 years before Shakespeare and most English speakers struggle with even as far back as that.
I just asked AI to write my above comment in Middle English
“Lo! Her is the thinge, but thou mayst writen, canstow yet writen and reden in the Englissh of the thrittene hundred yere? Certes, ther ben som wordes ylich, but it is ful divers from that which thou and I ben y-used to. Two hundred wynters yet moot passen er Shakspere shal come, and fele folk that speken now Englyssh han gret strif to undirstanden that tyme.”
Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Should be noted though, even with the best plan, your frail body, weird language and no local knowledge will mean you probably still die in 2 - 72 hours.