this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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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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[–] [email protected] 9 points 20 hours ago

Die a slow death from hyperglycemia once my pump runs out of insulin.

Infect the indigenous population with some god awful pathogen they have no defense against.

Die to a pathogen I have no defense against.

Die to the indigenous population due to being a white dude in pre-contact North America.

It uh... wouldn't be pretty.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

First I would seek the attention of the local ruler by cooking interesting dishes with modern knowledge.

Then I would ask him to create an akademy. I don't know the details but I know what can be known. Intelligent people will reinvent the knowledge.

Some side businesses should make enough money that the akademy and thus further development doesn't entirely rely on the king.

Build cities with public transport and no cars, because there is no car.

Success.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago

Great idea with the food. Probably won't get called a witch while building trust. Although I have no confidence in my ability to recognize any vegetable or spice, but hopefully a brine would be enough.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

Let me cook you something AMAZING!

First I need some curry...uh...okay, do you have salt? WHAT?

Alright, where is the oven? Time to prepare you some amazing lasagna! Where do you keep your noodles? No noodles? I guess I can hack it with potatoes.

...PO-TA-TOES! YOU...WHAT???

Okay nevermind, let me show you why you need to stop spending all your money on survival in warfare and instead fund my school! I can teach you to...uh...tell you about things we have in the future. No, I don't know how to create any of that. But trust me bro, just give me money. No need to tie me to your trebuchet like that, I'm sure I can remember how to build an airplane somehowAHHHHHHHHHH

You tried.

Edit: But don't worry, your myriads of novel diseases in your body will pretty much wipe out the continent you spawned on. Revenge!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

All your points are opportunities. Some should just not be taken immediately. When in Europe, it's not good to start with traveling earth, think Gallileo. When in America, it's better to build weapons first before contacting Europe.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago

I'd probably be dead in no time for a long list of reasons

First of all, nobisy would be able to understand me, as even current English would be barely recognizable by them

Then there is the issue that I'm probably at least a foot taller than most people and let's just say that "being even remotely different" back then was a good reason to be killed

Then there is the food issue. Food was scarce (hence most people being quite a bit shorter than me) so it'd be hard to keep myself fed. Clean water? Hah, good luck with that.

Then there is the issue of diseases. I probably carry shit that their bodies won't be able to handle, si being around me will likely make people sick, which in turn will get me labeled as a witch which would get me tortured and burned. Similarly but conversely, loads of diseases that were rampant back then are now gone, and likely my body is less equipped to handle that, I'd die from some disease

Ignoring all of that...

I'd probably start spreading the knowledge of democracy, and the harms of religion, and how important it is to immediately kill kings or king wannabes. I'd make a library with a vast wealth of knowledge and give access to the first country that successfully transforms itself to a representative atheist democracy with laws in place to ensure that no king, fascist, or wannabe will ever be able to rise up again.

That country would become the dominant world power within decades, spreading democracy and science over the world.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Uhh anyone know where to get estrogen injections in the 14th century?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

I bet there is a crunchy mom that can tell you what plant to eat, but there's like a 70/30 chance its gonna kill you instead.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago

Better odds than having my body change back, sooooo ....

[–] [email protected] 2 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago

Coating wires to make windings may prove tricky tho

[–] [email protected] 2 points 23 hours ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Well, I'm in America, so...

I guess I'd prep the natives to help put up a proper fight. Find a way to teach them that white people (like myself) carry diseases and to stay away and keep them away. If they land on your shores, drive them back. Never let them get a foothold. I'd try to convince them that I was a demon that got away from the other demons to warn of our coming.

I'd do my best to make it so nobody remembered the name Christopher Columbus except as the idiot that died because he thought the world was much smaller than it is and never returned from his voyage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago

Most likely, you'd just start their mass depopulation pandemic a bit earlier.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago

white people (like myself) carry diseases

Congratulations, you already killed them all

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago

Don't threaten me with a good time.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’d be dead in the vacuum of space. You never mentioned that I’d just go back in time, you forgot the coordinates. Now I’m floating, dead. Thanks man.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

This. Once you understand enough about the universe how all coordinates are relative and everything is moving relative to everything else... Like, how the fuck is time travel supposed to work it it was anywhere like this naive movie idea of it? Time travel Hollywood style is literally not a continuous operation and as such absolutely unphysical.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Well since all cordninates are realative, and your relative position to earth is unchanging, wouldn't that mean that everything else moves around you while you and the earth stand still and go back in time?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

If the earth is going back in time as well then the whole planet as it is today would begin to freeze as a rogue planet unconnected to any star.

There's a reason the tardis is a time and space ship.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Sorry I guess I should have clarified, but I think the other reply said it alright.

basically, if I move backwards in time, in my own spacetime, then my relative position in the universe would remain unchanged. hence Maybe I go back to where I was in time and relative to the universe(my parent's home 20 years back). the tardis can put you back in time and change where in that time you were.

This is all theoretical, but maybe hollywood isn't as far off as we think (even if they would have arrived there by chance and not logic)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Time travel like that can only go forward. If you want to go backward you need to decouple yourself from your relative position in spacetime. Or find a way to go faster than light without ever going light speed, which will definitely need a space ship.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago

Good one. I am the frame of reference myself... And we rewind time around me, kind of.

Okay, that at least does not sound so wrong like the "teleportation-style" approach!

What you say is like the extreme form of how time travel worked in Primer (the movie), which in fact is an interesting variation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Start a cult.

Everything I've seen for the last decade indicates it's pretty easy and highly profitable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

and you have all the knowledge of what cults already took off like wildfire. Mormonism for example, that shit is gold.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago

You don't even have to show the gold. Just say you saw it and it's now in that tent over there. No you can't go in. This is what was written on it though. Oh it's in a language only I can read. Don't worry, I'll translate. Give me your wife.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

find the nearest sword and belly flop on its pointy side

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

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.

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