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?
find the nearest sword and belly flop on its pointy side
Start a cult.
Everything I’ve seen for the last decade indicates it’s pretty easy and highly profitable.
and you have all the knowledge of what cults already took off like wildfire. Mormonism for example, that shit is gold.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t know how to refine oil, but knowing that its refinable into diesel/gasoline is a pretty good start to looking for it. Steam power easier to figure out. A head start on murdering some sperm whales for lighting industry seems easy enough to figure out. Partnering with metal smiths who might have a clue on making gun barrels, and pipe’s in general that could be used for advanced weaponry, would be an easy path to get governments to give me a ton of money for weapons research by just showing them some drawings. Doesn’t really matter if I ever figure out how to do it, just the vision of what is possible would make me richer than Musk. Richer if I can help enslave all of humanity to one empire.
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.
I would use the superstitions of the people of the area to scare them away from me and my space. I would build a Catalan forge and a smelter that is powered by falling water. I would make gunpowder but not share the recipe. I would also distill alcohol for sale and for hygiene. I would use Leedskalnins PMH to create permanent magnets and use them to make electricity. Electric fences also help keep the superstitious barbarians away. I would also be a beekeeper.
Wow you know how to do all that stuff right now off the top of your head without books or instructions? I am impressed. I feel like the best I would be able to do alcohol wise is distilled prison hooch. Like I know the basic priceable but not the recipe.
People were mining, smelting, and forging many metals 650 years ago. The forge isn’t a complicated device. A coal fire with forced air to raise the temperature. Pressurized air can be taken from falling water. There are always bubbles. Leeskalnin’s PMH is really simple. If you have copper, silver or aluminum wire and Iron, you can make a permanent magnet. Moving copper, aluminum or silver through a magnetic field gives you electricity. Bees are not too hard to keep. Make a wood house with a small entrance for them and bait the inside with some beeswax and honeycomb and you can get them to move in. I worked at a fireworks factory a long time ago. Gunpowder is not hard to make. Finding potassium nitrate would be the hard part.
probably die
The chances of that do seem to be high.
I’d be dead since the Earth wasn’t in the same position 650 years ago. Even taking that out of the equation, I’d die since I can’t communicate with anyone and don’t have the survival skills.
Actually 🤓, position and velocity are relative, so that’s a nonsensical statement without defining a reference object for the Earth’s position. If we’re not assuming you end up safely on dry land, you could just as easily end up light-years away as wherever you were relative to the sun.
Actually 🤓 if we use the sun as our reference, they could not be light years away and would in fact be relatively close to the Earth, the distance being at most the diameter of Earth’s orbit, which even at most is less than 20 light minutes.
ah, someone who understands that celestial bodies change spatial positions with time… nice
Well, I’m in Australia so I would try and communicate with the indigenous population and teach them how to defend themselves against the upcoming colonist invasion and take advantage of what they have to offer, starting with forcing a signed treaty.
American here: governments have never cared about signed treaties with natives. But your heart’s in the right place.
Try to find the nearest shaman, apothecary or herbalist and trade my future clothes/pocket contents for some hallucinogens and painless poison. I ain’t living through a time before electricity.
You would die. There are many, many examples of explorers from “advanced” civilizations getting shipwrecked or stranded in an area where primitive hunter-gatherers live. Unless they are saved by the hunter gatherers, they are doomed, despite their knowledge of science and technology. Joseph Henrich talks extensively about these examples in his book, “The Secret of Our Success”
Check out this video to get an idea -> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jaoQh6BoH3c
Yes, but what about you?
Of course I want to think I would do better. Maybe I would manage to integrate with the local indigenous people, but the reality is I would likely die. Either way my knowledge of science and “advanced” civilization will benefit me not at all.
I reread the Bitcoin paper yesterday, so with my newly refreshed knowledge id find the nearest mathimation, explain it to them, implement the protocol with paper records, handwritten hashes, and messages on horseback or something. After a few years when every major economic power realizes how valuable a deflationary currency that Mansa Musa doesn’t control (14th century african gold-salt bazzilionare, ~400 bill USD today), the price of my currency would increase vastly, making me super rich.
So dead
other people would probably have a higher chance of dying than me from the immunity I’ve got and all the diseases I carry
I would basically become a Jewish witch and either build a small community of people or die of some ancient plague, either way I wouldn’t be thriving but I might just survive.
Well, first I’d have to learn Old English, I think. Hell, even Middle English isn’t understandable.
Hopefully I could get up to speed before they locked me up, or worse.
Middle English is understandable. It’s tricky and there are lots of unexpected differences but you’d get used to it. This is right at the edge of Early Modern English and the Great Vowel Shift.
