this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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Its the 14th century and you've had no time to prepare, after you're done reading this post you are snapped. What do you do?

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[–] athairmor@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Do my best to warn the locals of the coming invasion. Learn their language and teach them English and tell them not to trust any group of strangers who speak it.

Help improve their technology as best I can. I’m not sure how much I’d be able to improve it. At least, teach them to wear masks and wash their hands when around sick people.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You're a stranger speaking English trying to convince the locals not to trust any stranger speaking English?

[–] athairmor@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yes. I’d have to learn their language first, anyway. I already know bits of modern versions but not much. Then, introduce the warning of invasions and teach them English with the caution that people speaking groups of people speaking will bring death and destruction.

It’s not like they’ll already have a fear of English or any concept of the language before I teach it to them.

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[–] RandomVideos@programming.dev 6 points 1 month ago

Use all the science i know from school to helpfully quicken scientific progress and spread trans propaganda

[–] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I'd be fucked. I'm not succeeding in the present, I see 0 reason to believe that would be different in 1375.

[–] BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee 6 points 1 month ago

find the nearest sword and belly flop on its pointy side

[–] thelsim@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

650 years ago this place was a sea. So I’d end up having to swim at least a couple of kilometers. Considering the current sea temperatures, I’d probably die of hypothermia before I could reach the shore.

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[–] loopedcandle@lemmynsfw.com 5 points 1 month ago

Anyone else a fan of Nate Bargatze?

[–] seeigel@feddit.org 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

First I would seek the attention of the local ruler by cooking interesting dishes with modern knowledge.

Then I would ask him to create an akademy. I don't know the details but I know what can be known. Intelligent people will reinvent the knowledge.

Some side businesses should make enough money that the akademy and thus further development doesn't entirely rely on the king.

Build cities with public transport and no cars, because there is no car.

Success.

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[–] superkret@feddit.org 5 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] arotrios@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How well do you know 14th century minutia? That can end up being a very long con if the next thing you remember is like the general lines of Joan of Arc's whole deal in 50 years or whatever.

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[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 5 points 1 month ago

I'm in Japan and while I can speak modern Japanese I don't know shit about classical Japanese so I'd be screwed. I'm also not Japanese so good chance I end up getting killed or some shit

I don't have the knowledge to survive in the 12 century so either some Native Americans find me and are kind enough to teach me to survive

Or I just die.

[–] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 5 points 1 month ago

Assuming I’m snapped back to the same part of the earth, climate-wise that’s ideal in the US PNW coming out of spring. Plenty of berries and food to forage, and I’ll probably impress the natives with my watch and well made clothes. I can probably get the native tribes to metals, and gain acceptance with my magic hand tool that will briefly shine light at night for a few weeks. I don’t know offhand where copper would be, but I know gold is in the streams, and I know how to placer mine, so I can get some electricity going with that and magnetized rocks from lava flows.

I think first contact would be the key.

[–] whoisearth@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago (7 children)

Fly under the radar as much as possible, find a cute girl and settle down and have a lot of kids.

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[–] starlinguk@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

There's a former nunnery down the road. I suppose I'd try to join. Or maybe find a farmer who's looking for someone to look after his kids because his third wife died in childbirth.

[–] Spacehooks@reddthat.com 5 points 1 month ago

Good thing I binge isekai anime

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 5 points 1 month ago

This is very A Connecticut Yankee in King Author's Court

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Connecticut_Yankee_in_King_Arthur%27s_Court

I hated that book. So pretentious.

[–] AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 5 points 1 month ago

Probably not the answer you thought, but succeed by knowing there are wild animals that could easily kill me. It's either I die by that, or wait until the lack of my blood thinners kills me, sl I'd definitely take the quicker death than the slower one.

[–] CreatingMachines@fedia.io 4 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Well I be naked, so would need to make/steal clothing very quickly

[–] Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Zos_Kia@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 1 month ago

They had sewage and toilets since Roman times. It wasn't affordable to many (and you couldn't make it affordable) but they definitely knew how to make it.

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[–] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Start a cult.

Everything I've seen for the last decade indicates it's pretty easy and highly profitable.

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[–] TheDoozer@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Well, I'm in America, so...

I guess I'd prep the natives to help put up a proper fight. Find a way to teach them that white people (like myself) carry diseases and to stay away and keep them away. If they land on your shores, drive them back. Never let them get a foothold. I'd try to convince them that I was a demon that got away from the other demons to warn of our coming.

I'd do my best to make it so nobody remembered the name Christopher Columbus except as the idiot that died because he thought the world was much smaller than it is and never returned from his voyage.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago

white people (like myself) carry diseases

Congratulations, you already killed them all

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[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Well, staying in the same location? I'm in the US, so... I'd probably try to get writing invented. To my knowledge, besides some of the Central American empires, there's no evidence or even claim of there having been any kind of writing or system for making information durable. I know there's a lot of clay here, I'm pretty sure we could bake clay tablets to store down information. There's also tule reeds here that were already being extensively used, and those could probably be made into a kind of paper as well. As to whether the people would accept that, I have no fucking idea at all; what we know of the California tribes suggests they were always semi-nomadic, but that's all very well into the post-contact period and much of what we know was written down by the Spanish while being the biggest bastards they possibly could to the locals. I dunno how useful record-keeping would be to a nomadic people. It's also entirely possible the people would be like "uh, yeah, we know how to write, dummy", and it was just lost in the multiple waves of pandemics.

I think probably something that -might- be achievable is figuring out glass. I'm mostly sure that if the native Americans had glass, we would have seen some sign of it in the archeological record by now. I'm sure some smarty pants is going to come along and tell me "you can't just throw sand in a kiln and make glass, you need a special kind of sand blah blah blah and here's 99 reasons why that won't work". Yeah, you're probably right, but I don't know any better, so I'd still definitely try. I also remember reading that clear glass was a thing figured out near Venice when they started adding grass ash or some shit to the sand, so I'd definitely experiment with that, too. Glass is just dead useful -and- pretty, so I'm fairly confident I'd get some acceptance that way.

I would say metal smithing, but the only metal deposits nearby that I know of are mercury and gold. You can't make nails and tools out of mercury and gold.

Also, maybe water wheels? To my knowledge, we have no record of native Americans using water wheels for work (I.e. grinding corn or acorns into flour). I think if I managed to put a basic water wheel together, I'd be pretty popular.

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