Rhett Allain
I can’t help myself. I keep thinking of this io9 post with an interesting question. Let me refine it just a little bit.
You are going back in time to the year 1234 AD to a location somewhere in Europe. For some crazy reason, you can bring one “thing” with you. What do you bring? (yes, I have a loose definition of “thing”)
What Do You Need?
If you look around on the interwebs, you can find all sorts of pyramid type diagrams showing the needs of humans. Let me just make my own.
Since I assume the first priority when going back in time is to survive, you would like to think about stuff that will help you with the bottom of the pyramid being the most important. Clearly you could only survive for a couple of minutes without air – but that doesn’t mean you should bring a space suit back in time (but that might not be a terrible idea).
I suspect that the at least the first 3 things (air, water, food) could be obtained in the past. Oh, what about the year 1234? This would probably be regarded as sometime in the Middle Ages in Europe. According to this Wikipedia page, the technology of the time included things like windmills and early mechanical clocks. There were cathedrals and castles for buildings and the military used bows and crossbows as well as heavy body armor. Gunpowder didn’t appear in Europe until after 1300 (so lets say it’s not there).
What Should You Bring?
Let me just go through a few of the items I thought of.
Written Knowledge. Bringing something with knowledge would be extremely useful. A book about medicine, agriculture or basic chemistry could be extremely useful. Maybe this book – The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch would be useful. But that’s just one book. Maybe this other survival book might also be useful, but damn – that would be two books.
Electronic Book. A Kindle ebook reader would be another option. You could download a whole bunch of useful stuff. It would be your own personal library of knowledge. Too bad the Middle Ages are a lot like airports in the year 2005 – not an electrical outlet anywhere. The Kindle product page lists the device as having a battery life of weeks. I suspect that’s not good enough but it’s better than the battery life of an iPad.
An electronic device would be super useful, but you have to charge it. How could you charge a Kindle? I can think of two ways – one of which might be considered cheating. The first way is to build a battery after you go back in time. It wouldn’t be too hard. You just need an acid and two different types of metals (here is an example battery made from pennies). It might be hard to find these materials, but I would suggest the first book on your Kindle be a book called “how to build a battery from scratch”.
What about another method to charge your kindle? What about a solar panel on your Kindle? They actually make such a thing – it’s a Kindle case with a solar panel. Pretty awesome. You could load hundreds of useful books and just keep using the thing. Yes, you might consider this to be “two things”, but once you put the cover on the Kindle it might just count as “one thing”.
A Weapon. Yes. You could bring a shotgun into the past. You might even be able do provide food and protection as well as clearly building a competitive advantage. I suspect that many locals might consider you to be too powerful to challenge. However, those that live by the shotgun might die by the arrow. It only takes one arrow and that’s it – you’re dead. Plus, how much ammo could you bring? Even if it still counts as one thing, I think 20 shots would be about it.
A Vehicle. Wouldn’t it be nice to travel around? What better way to do this than with some type of vehicle. Does a motorcycle count as “one thing”? I think so. Here are some options for vehicles.
- Solar powered electric motorcycle. Something that can go off road would be nice.
- Armored Personnel Carrier – you know, like a tank but on wheels and with more room inside. Yes, there is a problem with fuel – but do you think if I had enough fuel for a few days I could eventually make more? Even if the thing ran out of gas, I could still live inside of it and it would offer great protection from the elements and other baddies.
- An awesome sailboat. Seriously. Wouldn’t this work? It could almost certainly outrun any other boat of the time and you could live on it and travel. Maybe you could offer your services as a transportation person. YOu could travel to India and buy spices and bring them back.
- Why stop at a sailboat? Why not a nuclear powered submarine? Those things can run for quite a long time. Oh, but I might not be able to operate the thing.
Wind Up Watch. That sounds silly, doesn’t it? But just think how powerful you would be with a watch. They aren’t battery powered, so you don’t need to worry about that. But what can you do with a watch other than to know what time your favorite TV show comes on (there’s no TV). You can navigate. One of the biggest advancements in navigation was the invention of the watch. With an accurate time piece you can determine your longitude (latitude is much easier to determine). You would be the king of navigation with a portable watch.
Drugs – the Useful Kind. Before the invention of antibiotics, you could get an infected scratch on your arm that could kill you. Really. A whole bunch of antibiotics would be very useful – but is that “one thing”? Maybe a medicine bag would count as one thing. Also, you could keep some anti-itch cream in there. You know there must be many things that cause a rash.
Some Other Ideas. Just for fun, here are some other things you could consider.
- A time machine. This way you could go Back to the Future and get some other stuff.
- A computer (solar powered laptop). Sure, there wouldn’t be any internet but you would have a bunch of knowledge and you could write some programs to calculate stuff.
- Smart phone. Again, solar powered. Even with a signal or gps, the thing would still have a camera and Angry Birds.
- Scuba diving gear – or maybe a rebreather. Just think of all the useful work you could accomplish with this. Sunk boat? I’ll get that for you.
What would you bring? How would your answers change if you went to the same time but a different location?
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