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?
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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 1375nevermind, I’m high. The humans that are there would probably kill me on sight though.I’d probably look around for a couple days and then when I got super hungry just find a cliff to jump off.
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
If I snapped you back in time 650 years
2025 - 650 =1375
Its the 12th century
1375 is the 14th century. Which do you mean?
Answering the actual question, nothing good would come of it if my location on earth didn’t change. Being the only white person in rural northern Japan well before Europeans came in the 1500s would probably not be a good situation for me. The language, at least the written one, was very different. Being the Nanboku-chō era, things would probably be not great since it was in the midst of 60ish years of war with two different people claiming to be in charge. I can’t find, at least before my coffee kicks in, exactly what kinda state Mutsu Province, as it was then called, was in at the time.
English would also be unrecognizable in 1375. At a glance, it seems like it was Middle English, which means you’d probably get as much intelligibility with any other English speakers as a monolingual Dutch speaker would have with a monolingual English speaker today. Maybe a bit closer, but still.
Shakespeare was still hundreds of years away.
…Not that any of this would matter to anyone living in North America.
Middle English is certainly difficult to understand, but most words still bear some resemblance to modern English. I think it would probably be more like a native German speaker trying to understand a heavy Bavarian dialect, or at worst a Dutch speaker trying to understand the same.
In my case, I’d probably be OK having studied French and German (and reading things by Chaucer and Gauer). Though French != Norman French, so that may cause some issues.
It’s not 1825 where you are?
Technologically, it does feel like that sometimes, but it would see not.
Yeah, I did it backwards. Like I knew it was the 1300’s but when I said the century, I went back a diget instead of forward.
Well, strictly speaking, if your location didn’t change you’d be transported into empty space. So you wouldn’t have very much to worry about for long.
Heh, that’s specifically why I qualified it as ‘position on earth’.
I’d use my knowledge of the future to do two chicks at the same time
Fucking A
… and B too
“I figure a guy that can time travel 650 years into the past can set something like that up”
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
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“Hey ladies… Ever been with a guy who can read?”
“Hey ladies… Ever been with a guy who can read?”
Not so fast. Assuming you’re referring to English, the year 1375 would probably put you in the Middle English period. You might not be able to read completely either.
Here’s a sample:
The weirder words was easier to read in Swedish
I mean, I’ve taken English Lit and courses on just Shakespeare so I can indeed read that. Now if I was back when Beowulf was written…
Old English is significantly harder than Middle English, yeah.
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.
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.
spreading some major contagious disease that nobody has a defense against and wipe out a huge section of the population.
Oof
Lol
How do you think the boobonic plague got started?
Yeah, it was a time traveller
i mean i don’t think it would even be that difficult to just always carry a bar of soap with you and make sure to boil your water and only eat well-cooked food, and wear gloves as often as possible.
sure people would think you’re silly and annoying but that’s a pretty cheap price to pay for not catching terrible diseases.
It would help to at least try doing that, but in practice this would probably be very difficult - it’s likely not possible to always drink boiled water and well-cooked food, and given the possibility of contaminating food and drink after boiling, you might effectively have to prepare all your drink and food yourself, which is logistically difficult given the length of the work days. Diseases also spread in other ways, like smear infections (e.g. on toilets, doorhandles, tools) and airborne infections.
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
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.
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.
Scientifically speaking, there is no absolute reference frame. So you can be wherever you like depending on what reference you choose.
How do you define upwards in space? North? Or maybe normal to the orbit and vaguely north?
I think they mean forward wrt the direction the sun is moving relative to the galaxy, like this:
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.
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.
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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
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.
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.
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.
I love it! Predict that a large empire of equals will fall after 250 years.
keep in mind that historically all the successful scientist have been really quite rich, so make sure to find a noble you can impress and get to sponsor you at first
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.
1375…
We can work with metals, so we can probably make boilers.
I invent steam power 400 years early.
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 wasn’t possible in the middle ages. You had no rubber for seals, no steel that would hold, and no tools to drill holes precisely enough.
That’s why the Romans already used steam for simple parlor tricks but it couldn’t be made to do actual work until the modern eraReal science and innovation comes in increments
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. Such a limit means the interior lands of a country away from a river or coast would remain unusable for development beyond basic agriculture. No railroads, no A/C, no Phoenix Arizona.
Re-invent. Your still far too late to be first.
People always think that the spark of invention is all that’s required, ignoring the social and material tinder and kindling that’s required for something to be useful and take off.
the real trick is to find some appliation for the technology that is easy enough to build that you don’t need later advancements to pull it off, yet useful enough that anyone is actually going to bother doing it.
or like, be really good at marketing
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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.
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.
to be fair i think the fact that it started in the US is quite vital to it taking off, if you tried it in mainland europe the local priest would come over like a mafioso and politely explain that if you were to have an unfortunate accident then your soul would be spending eternity in hell.
As an Australian I would struggle significantly unless you were to also transport me geographically.
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. A struggle nevertheless.
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.
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.
ah, someone who understands that celestial bodies change spatial positions with time… nice
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.
My point was that using the Sun, Earth, or really any object as a reference is arbitrary and the “same position” at two different points in time is completely undefined.
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.
It’s 1375 and I’m asphyxiating somewhere in the Milky Way about 600 light years from Earth.
But let’s assume that somehow my latitude, longitude and altitude relative to Earth somehow remain the same. Now I’m spawning several feet in the air probably in sight of several villagers. If I’m lucky, they’ll think I was sent by God. If not I’m gonna have a real bad time. There’s a good chance I’ll break a bone in the fall, and that’s not going to go well at all.
But let’s assume there are trees here. Lots of them. That’s actually pretty likely. They hide my sudden appearance and mitigate bone breakages.
Now I’m on the outskirts of a village, battered and bruised and very strangely dressed. I don’t speak any language they’ll understand despite technically being from that area. Middle English is the language of the day, and I speak something that won’t evolve for at least another 200-250 years. Shakespeare is technically modern English and is hard to comprehend sometimes. Here we’re talking Chaucer and that’s pretty much opaque.
I’m literate, but not in Latin, and that’s the language of the Church. I’m numerate, but they haven’t got beyond Roman numerals yet.
I’m not even sure where the church is. I know where it is in the modern day, but that building’s no more than 200 years old. Maybe it’s on the same site. I’d head there for shelter at least.
I know the Lord’s Prayer in modern English. Chanting that quietly might spark some recognition in anyone present but then it might count as blasphemy to say it in anything other than Catholic-Church-approved Latin.
Come to think of it, I could probably blow a couple of minds by writing the alphabet they know and then the same with the extra letters that have been added since.
And then I’d be burned as a witch.
Pretty sure the Earth isn’t traveling the universe at light speed
Yeah, I was about to go to bed when I was writing that. “Several” or “a few” would have been better.
