You must log in or register to comment.
Removed by mod
This. Before a shot was ever fired the natives in most “undeveloped” regions were being decimated by pathogens refined in our “civilized” cities. This was long before “smallpox blankets” ever made an appearance.
Don’t even have to bring anything, early smallpox vaccines were little more than ground up pox sores rubbed into a cut. But it worked a hell of a lot better than no vaccine.
Didn’t they use Cowpox instead of smallpox? The virus is similar enough to trigger the correct immune response, but significantly less deadly
Noticing the connection between cowpox and smallpox helped develop a safer vaccine, but prior to that in China and India they invented variolation (grinding up and applying the scabs to cause a milder infection) centuries before European vaccination experiments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variolation
Mostly I hate the internet but then you have people who know interesting things and I’m all “fuck yea, internet!”
Then unread the next thread and some dickhead starts things off so idk.
If you never let them near the coast, those diseases won’t matter to you.
So their going to stop all of them from the coast when we can’t even do that now. Yah right.
Go back and sink Columbus, Europeans will assume they were correct about the massive ocean to the West being too big and dangerous to sail across and ignore that direction for a while longer. No Conquistadors is a huge win for South and Mesoamerica.
If you really want to reshape the history of the New World you’ve gotta go back like 12,000 years and convince people to capture and train animals like the camelops and American horse instead of simply hunting them. European diseases were so devastating in large part because New World peoples did not have a comparable livestock culture (that being a major source of disease).
they’re*
Seriously, it’s not hard to understand which is correct. It’s a 5 minute thing to learn, there’s no need make yourself look so fucking dumb.
By going back and meeting them, you just got them sick even earlier.
So show up in a biohazard suit.
Yeah, because people in 1700s would know why you’re wearing that, and not attack you for being a witch.
A 16th century native American would think this is normal?
A hazmat suit would be such a foreign concept to them, I sincerely doubt their conclusion would be witch.
I would have to be carrying disease to spread it
Even if you aren’t carrying any diseases, the fact remains that you are carrying germs that are completely foreign to their ecosystem, and as such they possess no resistance to. Something harmless to you can be deadly to an immune system that never had to deal with it.
Come to think of it, I’ve never seen a time travel story that addressed this. I guess most writers either don’t know or feel the story would be too tedious with that detail included.
“So I made a time machine and went back in time, gave them the flu and wiped out the entire human species.” The End.
I guess when you put it like that, it sounds kinda stupid.
A more creative person than me might be able to do something with it
This could be a perfectly fine film, the thing is that plot isn’t really that important. Pacing and emotional stakes are way more important. Add some characters and make the audience give a shit about them. Maybe also make the flu a metaphor for something, then you have a film.
germs that are completely foreign to their ecosystem, and as such they possess no resistance to
There’s a huge difference between the flu which kills 5% and smallpox which kills 95%.
If all foreign germs were equally deadly then European colonizers would have all died from Native American germs.
Yeah, but the Europeans were also bringing diseases on top of that. And make no mistake, plenty of Europeans died pointlessly trying to colonize the new world. It was a harsh and brutal affair and if not for the whole genocide thing I’d have felt sorry for them.
Yes you have. You’ve heard of covid, right? Whole world stopping pandemic about 5 years ago. Remember that?
That’s what you just described.
Covid was a time travel story?
Would not be the dumbest conspiracy to come out of the pandemic.
If we’re arming people I think a slightly better solution would have been to go further back and arm the peasants in Europe so they can overthrow the monarchs/feudal lords and dismantle the hierarchical system that sent people to “discover” the world for profit/plunder and did the enclosures at home
Please, Based time travelers would send the T-100 terminator to the Garden of Eden. All the problems solved
It would be so fucking wild if you invent a time machine and the very crazy Genesis story, including Eden, was true.
Oh yea I’m an Atheist, but the jokes not as funny if I have to explain finding the missing link :)
This is the way.
Our species has shown time and again throughout the eons that our very nature is the problem.
wrong
I know now why you cry. But it is something I can never do.
deleted by creator
this misanthropic bullshit is a stone toss away from malthusianism
deleted by creator
Yes. It is entirely wrong. Anthropological studies of human society shows with empirically backed evidence that humans are generally altruistic and communally oriented creatures until arbitrary social conventions get in the way and condition us to behave outside of our nature.
When you see a bear performing in the circus do you also believe it to be the nature of a bear to ride a unicycle?
You need to read Graeber.
deleted by creator
“Aborigines of Sydney Cove, I know you can’t understand me but this is called a howitzer and you’re gonna want some earplugs.”
Give the Apaches some Apaches, the Comanches some Comanches and the Chinook can take over logistics with some Chinooks and so on
And the Sioux? Give them law degrees
The Sioux: How about a Trial of Tears, pilgrim?
Can we do a Battlefield Earth style training montage?
I don’t remember the name now (I can find it if anyone’s interested) but I remember reading about a native from south America that spent some time in Spanish colonies and then joined an expedition to North America (think California) as a translator. Once he arrived north he told natives what the Spaniards are up to and to kill all of them. The north was of course still conquered eventually but they did enjoy couple more decades of freedom thanks to him.
A smallpox vaccine would be way more effective.
Take these gives infected cow tits
I shall bring horses to the Americas in the year 1011 AD. With any luck, the black plague will get around them anyway, but they’ll recover in time for the yuropeean arrival
yuropeean
yuripean
Yuripeen.
You’re-A-Peein’ ™
Yuripenis
I always wondered if I got dropped off into 1650s North America if I could get the Native Americans technically advanced enough to have semi autos by the time I die before the huge colonizer/settler events happen.
I bet even just muskets and penicillin could have tipped the scales.
Gunpowder is a removed. I don’t even know where to find potassium nitrate off the top of my head. You can get sulphur from hot springs and charcoal is simple. From experience, in a lab environment, getting the ratios for a useful explosion is a hard, even when you know what the possibilities are. Unless you have this memorized, that will be a 5 to 10 year adventure.
Thankfully, this is an easy problem to solve. If you’re planning a time trip, just research the locations of potassium nitrate deposits before you go.
deleted by creator
Now I’m imagining a movie where someone tries this. Except, as you alluded, the only way to really do this would be to completely change indigenous society. As the movie goes on, it becomes clear the protagonist is just doing colonialism all over again. Sure, they can say, “it’s for their own good though!” The cry of every Christian missionary.
Smart. They would probably think your a prophet if you could do things like that. I think the hardest part is convincing them into at least a semi industrialist type mindset.
iirc, we were pretty dependent getting nitrates for gunpowder from urine and bat guano until we were able to start synthesizing it.
Guncotton might just be easier, and far more effective.
Gunpowder would be an easy sell.
Mining/forging might be rough to bootstrap without capitalism. You’d be fighting against their love and respect for nature. Convince a number of them to mine, get black lung.
You’d also have to convince a bunch of different tribes with different languages to stop fighting long enough to fend off invaders, and well, to know the people coming are assholes that will destroy them.
Advanced medicine would be amazing, chemistry.
Honestly, if you wanted them to win, I think you’d just have to get them to band together, maybe bomb ports. If the ships couldn’t properly resupply that’d be one hell of a fight.
Are you a Factorio player? If so, then yes.
95% of the population was wiped out by smallpox. Guns weren’t the problem.
hypothetically, if Columbus journey would have sunk in a storm.
How long would it have been until another European would have tried?
10 years, 50years? a century??
or maybe an asian expedition reaching across the Bering straight would have found it?
Would the meme be a hiccup in history, or a significant change?
If the second fleet to Sydney had lost one more ship, the whole colony would have died of starvation and the British would have redirected their efforts to a tiny island north of New Zealand instead of trying to make Australia viable.
Maybe 10 years, everyone was scrambling to find a short route to India for spices and other goods, Portugal and Spain were fairly set on going West to India, even if a few expeditions failed it wouldn’t have stopped them.
Or kill the settlers yourself gruesomely and allow one or two to return to speak of the horrors. They wouldn’t be back for a long time.
Dressed as slender man
Not far back enough.
Give the AK47s to the dinosaurs.
To fight the meteor?
T-Rex shit up
That would be a horrible decision. They would likely still die from the diseases spread from europe but also proceed probably having a huge native on native war because i know this is very surprising but native americans also had wars between each other as they were also humans.
I think you underestimate the magnitude of the genocide of the natives. It completely dwarfs the holocaust. Some researchers found it had a noticable effect on the temperature of the planet. About 49.5 million were killed.
Also your comment reeks of “they’re savages!”
Also your comment reeks of “they’re savages!”
Maybe if your reading comprehension sucks, or if you’re overly sensitive to certain words
Don’t be a dick.
TBF, he didn’t say shit about them being savages. And he’s absolutely right that they were warring with only basic armament.
Where you two aren’t meeting in the middle is that the indigenous people need to work out proper communication and organize against the invaders with adequate gear. That’s kind of a big ask. To this day we’re trying to keep nukes out of the hands of warring nations and those people are decidedly not savages.
I’m not - suggesting that Native Americans weren’t/aren’t susceptible to human flaws is foolish at best, revisionist history at worst. If anything I did not show nearly enough disdain.
Were aspects of their cultures superior? I believe so, they were certainly better stewards of the earth and sexual violence was very much taboo. However they were also warring, scalping, and enslaving each other for a long time before white men showed up.
Does that mean they deserve genocide? Unequivocally, no. Effectively asserting that they aren’t human simply because the person you’re disagreeing with used terms you dislike is silly. Would you have rather they typed out ‘Native American on Native American’ war? Would that hoop being jumped through suddenly make all of this make sense to you?
Yeah? All humans are savages. I literally said in my comment. If you gave guns to the ancient romans they would also use it to shoot the shit out of eachother. Now, a much better idea would be to go back and tell them them how to defend themselves from the invaders. Also with the power you could get from knowing the future it might be better to do something political like establishing a sort of native american united states in which natives have to respect other natives’ rights and the whole of america is also protected federally under non-natives. They already had their own politics you would just need to tweak it so the british dont steamroll over them.
Really because they are saying their humans and not the Nobel savage that it seems you like to think they were
“I have black friends” level copium
Dude you need to read up on how native Americans dealt with Europeans and Americans until they were forced on reservations, the black hills were a focal point of war and and while the Lakota Sioux are the current tribe most associated with them in the American cultural zeitgeist the Cheyenne and Arapaho have older links to those hills if I remember correctly. Hell going back to the sale of Manhattan was not the local tribe selling it but their enemy neighbor who sold the land and helped depopulate the island for the Dutch.
In short native American tribes had conflict and hatreds between themselves and fought eachother to their detriment until there was no other way to go forward than to unite.
I’m sure they had conflicts, they’re human. But the colonizers had a greater impact than internal conflict ever could have. Again, 49.5 million out of 50. And your comment still reeks of this idea that the colonizers coming in was somehow a neutral or ok thing. It wasn’t. It’s one of the greatest atrocities committed in the history of mankind.
I’m pretty sure AK-47 has enough range to protect you from airborne diseases. And European countries had wars that were made more deadly with modern weapons. Would it be better if Europe was genocided by some invaders instead?
If they’re within range for an AK they’re already close enough to spread disease.
Go back and give them a couple WWII destroyers and an oiler and that will keep them safe.
