WIERD HYPOTHETICAL: Your thrown back in time 600 years, what do you do?

[Jon Miller]

you can get innocalated to that before you go

Jon Miller

[CyberGnu]

have you ever read Forstchen's books about the lost legion?

While many people have issues with Forstchens fantasy elements, particularly his first book reads like a crash course in 'how to industrialize a peasant society in less than a year'.

He also has some really good points about how the lack of metallurgy limits everything else, and so any improvements have to be piecemeal... Sort of how you make yorself a sword from nothing but steel: You first make a really crude hammer and a crude anvil. With the hammer you make a new hammer. With the new hammer you make a new anvil. With the new anvil and the new hammer you make yet another a hammer. Eventually you can make your sword, probably with the steel used for your first three hammers...

[tinyp3nis]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
have you ever read Forstchen's books about the lost legion?

While many people have issues with Forstchens fantasy elements, particularly his first book reads like a crash course in 'how to industrialize a peasant society in less than a year'.

He also has some really good points about how the lack of metallurgy limits everything else, and so any improvements have to be piecemeal... Sort of how you make yorself a sword from nothing but steel: You first make a really crude hammer and a crude anvil. With the hammer you make a new hammer. With the new hammer you make a new anvil. With the new anvil and the new hammer you make yet another a hammer. Eventually you can make your sword, probably with the steel used for your first three hammers...

I haven't...
So there's a book about this? I once figured that my personal hell (I have thought of many of them ) would be forced to build a personal computer from out of just resources. With infinite time and the fact that I get somekind of reward if I actually do build it. Anyway, I figured then that my progress all the way to the modern manufactoring plants that will produce the parts would take "some" time , if it's even possible (alone I only have my own musclepower).
So anyone who wants to take blueprits to 1400 AD: Take blueprints of very old tech too
Btw... Are there inventions from 1400 AD to present day that could be "skipped" to achieve all that we have now?

This is of course way off topic

[faded glory]

The Wild West...my name would be Clint Eastwood...hell ya


Or even cooler. I'de go to Medevil Europe back in time with a Helicopter and roll into a castle and proclaim myself GOD. All who opposed where napalmed

[tinyp3nis]

Originally posted by faded glory
The Wild West...my name would be Clint Eastwood...hell ya


Or even cooler. I'de go to Medevil Europe back in time with a Helicopter and roll into a castle and proclaim myself GOD. All who opposed where napalmed

If you can easilly carry that in two hands, you are already almost a god
Nah, don't let silly rules come in the way of good ideas! But now I have to take a bazooka too so I don't have to worship you.

[Jon Miller]

I would take a suitcase nuke and nuke the most advanced city of the age

people's history would be screwed up for a long time

Jon Miller

[faded glory]

Nuke Baghdad?? You dont need to go back anywhere. Just wait a couple more weeks....


(yes in 1400 Bagdad was considered the most advanced city in the world)

[Urban Ranger]

The notebook computer with a solar power generator is a good idea. Fill all the knowledge I need on CD-R's. Another thing I need is medicine. Food and water weren't that clean back then.

Then I can just become a real emperor myself back then, conqueror the world with advanced technology, and change world history.

[TheBirdMan]

One man cannot control any nation without help from a handful or two of trusted helpers.

Those helpers you can get back in time, they will surely use more time to plot your death than to help you - at least when they are finished being afraid of you.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

You know, all you laptop warrior are gonna feel like pretty big idiots when you get there and can't hold your machine guns properly because you have giant bubous under your arms!

It's the end of the 14th century, people; the black death is still kicking around, and that's just one of the many diseases that would kill you quicker than any of the Rambowannabe toys you're dreaming of. And yet, except for jimmytrick's viagra, nobody's bringing drugs.

You wanna be king of your medieval world? You fill that backpack with: (1) medicine, especially penicillin (2) a good book on how to make more medicine, especially penicillin (3) gold (4) a good book on how to construct sewer systems and their accoutrements, like running water and flush toilets.

[CyberGnu]

You'd be better off bringin black pepper, actually... Worth more than its weight in gold.

Purple dye would work too. In the medieval world, the only way to get the color purple was to extract it from a mollusk that lives in the mediterranean. Only kings could afford to have clothes dyed with it, hence the royal association.

Tiny, the books are fantasy books, about a company of Yankee soliders who gets displaced trough a portal and end up on a medieval world, where humans are used as cattle by a race of aliens suspicially like orcs.

For me the main enjoyment of the book was the description of the jump start of civilization. There is also an interesting implication: the time period Forschten picked is the civil war. Right when war got industrialized, but ealry enough that the soliders had a good chance of having the skills necessary to build their own weapons etc. A modern marine unit, for example, would naturally have vastly superior firepower, but would most likely not be able to produce more bullets even... As the cartridges require fairly high quality brass, the gun powder differs quite a lot from the black powder most people are used to etc etc.

For a scenario where a marine unit IS stranded on a medieval world, there is the Jannisaries series by Pournelle. They are out of print, though, so you would have to go through some effort to get them... Don't really know how accurate they are, either. Forshten has a PhD in history, so I'm assuming that he knows what he is talking about...

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
And yet, except for jimmytrick's viagra, nobody's bringing drugs.

Are you sure?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Are you sure?

Damn! I always do that: read carefully until the last couple of posts, then miss something. You beat me to it; well done.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Damn! I always do that: read carefully until the last couple of posts, then miss something. You beat me to it; well done.

That's the difference between us world travellers and armchair types. We always bring some medicine with us whenever we travel to another place, just in case.

That'd be doubly so when we travel back in time.

[Al'Kimiya]

I would invade the holy land from the infidels, ending the jewish diaspora and build the third temple as Messiah.