Prophecy some major upcoming events, subsequently market myself as a saint, grab a comfy church position, sell indulgences, profit. Works in pretty much any era.
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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I become a scribe or accountant, since I can write cursive, do math, and know some Latin.
There was a monastery within walking distance of my home at that time, so that's where I'd head first.
Basically start digging my grave, wondering if I'm gonna die from my asthma or my dermatitis first in that era. I'm betting on my asthma.
Try to use some type of boiling water technique to invent drinkable sanitary drinking water that doesn't get me drunk (might not be necessary in some parts of Asia)
Most parts of the world that is not North America: try to convince some wealthy persons and bar owners to sponsor me to getting a bunch of bread molds and rats/mice, possibly even pigs, to conduct antibiotics and vaccine research, otherwise I might die from random sources...
Not sure if I could reasonably do those given my limited biology knowledge, but I guess they are worth trying. Besides that I'd just try to be less blunt/offensive so I don't get sent to jail and try to live my best life I guess
You’d have to work pretty hard to get drunk on small beer.
Slowly and with plenty of witnesses invent the toilet. But like out of wood pieces like a barrel or ship. Rain barrel on the roof for water. Start suggesting more contained sewage.
Should be just enough to not get dead for heresy or something but live comfortably and help a shitty situation.
Human urine was collected and used for many things (mostly the ammonia). Human feces was used as fertilizer in a lot of the world until very recent times and collected in certain areas.
Assuming I appear naked in a field in England in 1375, I would first try to, in no particular order (at first, then a particular order)
- find cloth to cover my face and hands so I don't transmit or catch any diseases
- distill water so I can drink it without getting diseases
- use yams or horse urine to create HRT
- communicate with the locals and seek a local blacksmith to create a metal tube with metal balls inside it, and mix charcoal, potash, and sulfur to make a primitive gun to defend myself against the people who think I'm a witch or a demon or whatever
- talk to the women and encourage them to rise up against the system and patriarchy, teach them how to make weapons, about 4 field crop rotation if they don't already know it, otherwise about automated steam engines, weavers, hydroelectric dams, etc
- march up to the feudal lord and demand democracy, with the fear of the gun and half the population behind me they will agree
- teach about the scientific method to get them to question things, do their own research, and learn more
- there will be scientific labs, primitive computers can be developed, we can spread our advanced culture to the rest of Afro-Eurasia, also prevent slavery
- warn people about going to America and Australia unprepared, go with them in modern ships and don't spread disease, talk to the locals and trade with them and learn from them, don't kill them or replace them. Teach them the tech advancements too
- Write down lots of things, invent the printing press if not already invented, document human knowledge and encourage more documentation by others
This is all if I have any measure of success at the first things and don't die or kill myself
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Probably die of gangrene after stubbing my toe or something else stupid. Prior to modern medicine, diseases and things we think of as mild were often deadly.
I'm doing pretty good then. Where I live has been so historically abundant in resources that people were able to just sort of vibe.
I would also establish a calendar, convey it to the locals, and warn them of what is to come along with a timeline.
The first and easiest thing would be to invent calculus. I'm sure other things would pop up situationally, I could probably get basic electricity going with a bit of experimentation.
I claw my way out of a few feet of soil, and walk about thirty minutes to where the local Olhone maintained a ceremonial shellmound from 800 BCE until the arrival of the Spanish in the 1700s. By all accounts the Olhone were chill hunter-gatherers, so my best bet would probably be to befriend and join them.
They’d be more knowledgeable than me about everything in the local environment, so I don’t think I’d have much knowledge that would be of use to them. (They seem to have known of other nearby groups that practiced agriculture, but saw no need for it themselves.) I might eventually consider traveling north or south along the coast, but many other groups in western North America practiced warfare and/or slavery (unlike the Olhone), so I’d probably be best off staying put.
First off. Do I get to bring stuff with me? Like say the entire printed off contents of wikipedia.
also, I would like find one or two things that hadn't quite been invented yet and 'invent' it.
also, Also, with a modicum of military power, I'd probably start a religion.
This assumes I have time to learn the local dialect
In what language? Modern English didn't exist yet and neither did pretty much any modern language. Good luck trying to get the local nobles and priests to decipher the hundreds of codices you brought with you that are in some strange language that nobody has seen before
Wikipedia is for my benefit, so I can just read it.
Nobody else needs to even know I have it, necessarily.
Them not being able to read it might even be a boon.
The goal is to get a leg up on things, not start having nuclear reactors in the medieval era.
For example muskets had an iterative development as small incremental changes took place. Relatively small changes made modest improvements.
It would also be nice to know when eclipses are about to happen, for, ah, reasons.
I'd write the harry potter series from memory. And all the star treks.
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Well, I know about hygiene about various diseases, and even how to treat them. I'm also running for my life to the nearest forest, as I don't have any way to prove I'm not a Vagabound or invader, and I can't communicate.
There's no choice but to try to hide deep inside a forest, and try to find a river or lake. I would eventually be forced to drink dirty, risking parasites, unless I get lucky enough to find what I need to purify it.
As soon as that is taken care of, I would focus on covering up my tracks, digging some sort of shelter to hide from medieval people, my next step would be to ensure a food source like fishing, or finding plants I recognize as edible, which might be where I mess up and die (A lot of plants look similar to poisonous ones, mushrooms too).
Next step would be making bog iron, finding copper, and so on, to make life easier at first, but then to defend myself against being discovered.
Start making siege weapons.
Get to smelting!
I would be among Native Americans in what is now the Seattle area. To them I would be a gibbering idiot who didn't even know their language, and they would probably kill me.
Clearly I am OVERprepared for this with my VAST knowledge of Doctor Who. And nothing else.
Let's skip the "I have no basic survival skills" part (also skipping disease) and assume we find a nearby group of humans. If you approach first contact carefully they'd probably let you live with them in exchange for labor, giving you time to learn the language.
I think I have enough ambient exposure to modern technology that I could contribute at least 3-4 major innovations to my group over a couple decades. The challenge would be conveying and implementing ideas more than remembering them. You're not going to get back to modern standards of living in your remaining time traveled years no matter how much you remember, but what little you can impart to others would earn your keep.
I don't know what all the innovations would be, but germ theory and pasteurization come to mind.