I’d go back to February of 2016, to a town in California, at the banks of the river that my friend decided he wanted to “take a swim” in, and try to stop him. I’d bring with me copies of all the news articles reporting about how he drowned in that river and that someone found his body and called the authorities. I’d show him a copy of my text messages back and forth with his sister when she told me what happened to him. She claimed that he went swimming in the river often and that he was unaware that the current that day was really strong. I wanted to believe her, but I knew he was troubled, that he ad psychosis and PTSD, and that he didn’t want to live past 40. And who the fuck swims in a river in February!? I would do my best to try and save his life.
- A fire extinguisher to the library of Alexandria.
- A small pox variolation kit to ~13thC somewhere in the Americas. Probably the PNW to preserve the linguistic diversity there, maybe the amazon river, the Tlaxcala or the groups who would go on the confederate into the Haudenosaunee.
- Vials of horse-plague to the cucteni trypillians, see if we can’t blunt that Indo-European expansion somewhat. If it’s virulent enough, maybe we get lucky and weaken the power of aristocrats across Eurasia for millenia to come. (Sorry horses!).
- Just for me, some magic mushrooms to shangqiu, henan ~325 BCE ish. See if I can’t convince Zhuang Zhou to trip with me.
It’s not so much the fire in Alexandria that you have to worry about although that is what is remembered, it’s the people who are setting fire to the library of Alexandria that you have to worry about. A single fire extinguisher won’t necessarily stop people from killing you and then burning everything down anyway.
My suggestion would be to also include a machine gun and a couple of hundred rounds of ammo so that you can kill them first and stop the fire from ever being started in the first place.
Why is it all about money?
I’d take everything I need to teach modern technology, sustainable practices, and cyberpunk aesthetics to the peak of the Mesopotamian society. I want the city of Ur bathed in neon!
I bet you would get the time wrong and end up in Sodom.
Just learn from the past loops mistake and don’t make it okay to rape visitors and you might not get turned into salt.
They said time travel, not traveling inside religious fiction.
I take an entire renewable energy system and a team of people both to set it up and to prepare a settlement. I want to be placed in America in prehistory. We’re getting in there and starting over before the capitalists ruin everything. We’re going resource based babyyy
Renewables require industry and high tech to produce and maintain. If you go far enough back to establish a foothold, your renewables will most likely not be functioning by the time colonists arrive. If you settle just before they do, you won’t be able to have much advantage. In either case, unless you go really far back, you’re still settling and taking land from indigenous people.
What are you hoping to achieve?
Hey they said I could take anything. That includes whatever is needed to keep them functioning. I’m trying to buy us more time before environmental collapse. Cause at this rate we aren’t solving shit. There isn’t a single place you can go back to where someone or something isn’t harmed or changed in the process.
I understand; I’m saying, you’d need to take back an entire industry to produce photovoltaics, batteries for storage, the computer control systems; or the high-tensile composites needed to build wind turbines, the fine machining to produce electric motors and wiring, and the cranes and such to raise them. You’d need to clear swaths of land for either, although you might be able to set up in the great plains, but in any case, all of the current renewable tech is high tech supported by countless other industries. You’d be taking back a civilization, to make it all work. And then you’ll need agriculture to feed all those people, housing for them to live, clothing, and so on; and which native tribe are you going to steal land from to put all of this?
Alright is there another hypothetical you wanna take way too seriously or just mine? It simply said whatever I want and thats what I’d want. It didnt say small scale, or any other restrictions. And if you really want to know I’d jack Greer Arizona, which as far as I know, Molly Butler settled there first.
You could probably fit it all into AZ. You’d still need oil wells and refineries somewhere; there are still plastics involved. And rare metal mines - mines in general, for metals, so you’d probably need outposts in other states, and then a rail system to get materials to AZ. Feeding people would be hard on AZ, though, so you’d definitely need to clear forests in the Midwest and put in a bunch of factory farms to produced food.
The US might have enough of everything to support this, although I suspect some rare metals would be difficult to source, as many of our’s comes from other countries. However, maybe you could stockpile enough to last. You need the rare metals, but maybe a few tonnes of processed would be enough to last?
That’s what they said. Whatever would make it work.
It would also have the benefit of taking a large group of people of the society they grew up with brought back with them. Then they’d not be just one person or a few people from modern society around with them.
Great idea, really.
Myself and tell Scott Norwood to aim a tad left.
*Scott is jump-scared by the arrival of the time traveler, and ends up barely missing.
It was your fault ALL ALONG
Enough money to buy a lot of bitcoin. When I get to a point where Bitcoin is about $70,000 a coin. I would want my account to be worth about $1,000,000,000 usd.
Figure I can sell it to several companies. Then retire.
I’d try to fix major issues by time traveling but the reality is either that issue was inevitable, or the alternative was probably worse.
In 2009 I did a job for a client and he offered me 400 btc or $400. I took the $400 and kinda regret it. Likely as not I wouldn’t have held till now but still
I paid someone 0.1 bitcoin for a ~$30 item in 2013. I checked the receiving wallet in 2014 and it hadn’t been accessed. I reached out to the guy and told him it was worth $60 and asked him if he had access still. Explained to him how he could access it, gave him some links. I reched out to him again in 2021 and told him it was worth $4k and told him he should sell it. He said he didn’t remember how he set up a wallet and he couldn’t access it. In the end I think he likely downloaded a wallet to his computer and then got rid of that computer. Just checked today and that .1 btc is still there, worth 9600 now.
I have almost 2 coins in a corrupted wallet file. I tried to recover it for ages. I still have it, but now it just sits there mildly tormenting me for life.
There’s always hope
https://www.wired.com/story/roboform-password-3-million-dollar-crypto-wallet/
Yep. I’ve read it. At least his stuff wasn’t corrupted.
Meanwhile they are probably on their yacht thinking about how lucky they are you chose the $400
They’re actually searching for a hard drive with thousands of Bitcoin on it.
Bitcoin was worthless in 2009, tbf. It wasn’t even until may 2010 that the first "purchase of anything was made with them, and that was 2 large Poppa John’s pizzas. All for a meager 10,000 btc.
Yes I know.
Lottery numbers for the Mega Millions drawing that happened most recently. Leave them with a note that past me would realize was the real deal to go buy the ticket.
A steam engine back to Ancient Rome, just to see what they might have achieved with that kind of idea.
The Ancient Greeks had steam engines centuries before Rome existed and mostly just treated them as curiosities (probably because they were too impractical to use as weapons of war)
I believe they lacked the metallurgy to make high pressure steam vessels.
If I could transport my mind into my childhood body with a fedora, I would go back to about three when I could say weird shit without drawing too much attention.
Then it’s just a matter of time to build my brand on the internet. I’ll start in yahoo chat rooms, responding to anyone who types 16/F/Cali, I will call them females and tell them about my sword collection. I will claim to be a ninja.
As I grow older, my methods will become more sophisticated, cell phones will open up dating apps to my awkward and slightly offensive communication. I’ll be the first to post unironic pictures of myself with a trenchcoat and swords to MySpace, thereby preventing columbine through the power of cringe.
I’ll start the incel movement a decade ahead, only to be revealed as a ten year old kid, shaming everyone involved. Then I’ll get a youtube channel and be the first gamer, playing and reviewing games while alluding to controversial opinions on immigrants and the gays, growing so big in an empty market and crashing so hard it’ll never start again, when it comes out that I roleplay as a gay femboy on tumblr.
I will take the cringe upon myself to save the world from its sins. I will be the Edgelord and savior.
I wanna go try some silphium. Idk how far back but def before humans ate it to extinction.
*Edited - I totally misread the question last night. I’d bring a pot, potting soil, and my gardening kit so I could bring that plant home!
Sylphium has been rediscovered. They are currently cultivating it and examining it for it’s various properties.
It never went extinct, the issue was identifying it with the shoddy record-keeping of the past.
No way!! That’s awesome! Do you have any sources? I would love to read up on this more ☺️☺️
$1MM to 1980, invested into Apple.
Plot Twist: You get arrested for using counterfeit money, the date on the money is probably invalid in 1980.
Plot Twist 2: The CIA takes you to a black site and tortures you because they now believe you are a communist spy sent by the USSR in the future to destoy America, this incident causes the US to start funding research into time travel technology.
Plot Twist 3: The USSR now find out about the US trying to invent a time machine and now they are trying to do so too.
Result: 🚀☢️🌎☠️🪦
Plot Twist: You get arrested for using counterfeit money, the date on the money is probably invalid in 1980.
Now I’m genuinely curious if a bank would catch it if you tried using cash from the future. If there wasn’t a redesign, do they check serials and stuff if every other security measure is present?
Yeah, for US money the serial number is prefixed with a letter to donate the year it’s from and the note also has a series year for the actual design printed on it.
Money has evolved a lot since the 1980s so modern money would be obvious. And banks in the 80s would probably be pretty hot on money fraud as hard case was so central to the economy.
A better option would be to collect money printed prior to the year you wanted to time travel to. It’s unlikely they would be able to detect duplicates of real money already in circulation elsewhere in that time. But it might be hard to fine money that old in large volumes as so much gets taken out of circulation and replaced with new money every year.
A better option would be gold or silver.
Yeah, that’s not suspicious at all
You could also go to any point in time where you were already of the age of majority and purchase a large winning lottery ticket the drawing before our present history indicates that it won.
That would get you plenty of money and then being a rich lottery winner and purchasing a million dollars worth of Apple computer or something I would not be that particularly noteworthy.
Just go and spend the rest of the 10 or 12 million dollars that you have living conspicuously and wait out the 20 or 30 years until that initial million dollar investment makes you nearly a trillionaire.
Why are you assuming I’d be dumb enough to use post-1980 currency?
Where the fuck do you plan to get $1M of pre-1980 money? Just bring 20 bitcoins.
Figure out what was needed to be able to use large amounts of gold at the time without suspicion to avoid the printed moey issue.
$1mm in 2014 invested in dogecoin would be worth more. Bitcoin in 2010 would be extra stupid crazy rich.
Also, Apple was probably cheaper to buy in the mid 90’s just before Bill Gates saved the company for Steve Jobs than it was in 1980. You didnt want apple stock before they cane up with the ipod. It went down to 10 cents a share in December of 1997.
Maybe, but I’d rather not feed the bullshit fad.
The apple fad, dogecoin fad, or bitcoin fad? Also, selling billions worth of dogecoin or bitcoin or even enough Apple, will crash the fad.
Take a Bic lighter back about 50000 years, I’d be a god. Either that or they’d kill me.
They would absolutely kill you.
I probably go to the late 1400s American east coast, wherever it was that Columbus landed and bring a couple of machine guns and a few grenades and claymores alongside an electric ATV and tow cart filled with a solar power recharging station, a shit ton of medical equipment, food, and hardy seeds.
That bastard Columbus would not survive setting foot on this soil, and his failure to return from his world-changing exploration mission would delay European expansion at least for the remainder of my life likely.
I would then make the mid country journey to my home tribe and use the information and technology that I brought with me to accelerate their advancement and development so that whenever the Europeans finally made landfall, assuming I didn’t break down or get killed in the process they would encounter a developed society fully prepared to fight a home team advantage war against them.
You’d end up causing even more death than the Europeans because the viruses you carry are 500 years more advanced than the ones the Europeans brought, and evolved in a much more connected world.
Might be better to go back 10k years and leave stone tablets on either side of the ocean, informing anyone who sees it about the existence of the other world and how to navigate there so they can evolve their immune systems in parallel in a time when force projection capabilities likely won’t mean an ocean-spanning Empire will arise.
One vaccinated and well nourished 21stC individual won’t bring back the level of disease of boatloads of sick, unhealthy, unwashed 15thC european sailors.
Crazy answer: The moon to 1969. Imagine, Apollo 11 launches to land on the moon then suddenly a second one appears in space orbiting opposite the original.
Less crazy but still far reaching: a tazer to the theater the night of the Lincoln assassination. I wonder how different the U.S. would be if Lincoln had survived and the resonstruction period gone differently.
Somewhat more plasuable: enough documentation and evidence to convince someone high up in U.S. intelligence in 2000 that I am a time traveler then everything we have on the world trade center attack. I’m curious how different things would be if that had failed. Maybe bush only gets one term and the whole U.S. political situation shifts for the better. Maybe a less destabilized middle east avoids the worst of ISIS and with fewer syrian refugees, right wingers in Europe are less successful, Brexit fails, and Russia declines to invade Ukraine.
I’d go to 2000 with a full report on how Bush stole the election so that the Gore campaign would be prepared to stop it.
If the 9/11 blank check had gone to Gore, then we might’ve jumped years ahead on the fight against climate change.
A good, well researched history textbook the night BEFORE the assassination. Just show Lincoln what would happen.
One day is not enough time to reach Lincoln and convince him you’re not delusional.
I’d go back to when Leonardo da Vinci was designing that tank and bring the schematics for a Sherman or smth, then do my best to explain the advancements that would be needed to make it.
