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.
steel toed boots to the minute before my dad nutted
Spoiler: your dad was into that sort of thing
@andrewta you would know.
He paid me quite well for each kick.
that’s some monkey’s paw shit
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.
My mom.
I also choose this guys mom
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.
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 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.
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.
Taking the schematics for modern hardware back to the mid 60’s to claim I invented them.
What kind of hardware? What do you say when they ask you for details and reasoning behind design choices.
“Uh… It came to me in a dream.”
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.
Drag would like to go back to the year 1890. Drag will bring the crown of England, all of China’s mines and factories, two dozen warehouses full of modern medicines including HRT, schematics for modern solar panels, wind turbines, computers, and TVs, a United States nuclear powered aircraft carrier and crew, ten years worth of fuel grade uranium, a thumbdrive with Wikipedia, Greta Thunberg, drag’s pet dragon (we’re engaged to be married), and a million tons of gold.
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
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.
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 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.
I wanna go try some silphium. Idk how far back but def before humans are it to extinction.
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 ☺️☺️
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.
