this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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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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[–] blaue_Fledermaus@mstdn.io 21 points 1 day ago

If I time traveled to the same geographical region, considering I'm in South Brazil, if I don't get immediately killed by some jungle animal or tropical disease, I'd probably end up starting a pandemic among the natives.

[–] LordOfLocksley@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

England is in the midst of the Hundred Years war with France and considering I'm ~193cm and the average height of a man in England in the 14th century is about 171cm... looks like in getting my arse drafted and shipped off to France, to act as some kind of intimidating presence. That is until I have to swing a sword, which my body, that's used to sitting in an office looking over excel spreadsheets, absolutely can't do, so I get bum rushed/hit in the face with an arrow and die.

That's the most likely scenario.

Worst case scenario, considering I don't speak middle English or Latin, I'm treated as an enemy and locked up in a dungeon somewhere.

I don't think there is realistically a best case scenario

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[–] BrazenSigilos@ttrpg.network 24 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Market myself as a powerful man of religion and/or magician, depending on the local vibe. Then use knowledge of science and tech to build myself a reclusive retreat where I can have regular baths and write books with predictions to mess with the world 650 years after I would die.

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[–] palordrolap@fedia.io 17 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's 1375 and I'm asphyxiating somewhere in the Milky Way about 600 light years from Earth.

But let's assume that somehow my latitude, longitude and altitude relative to Earth somehow remain the same. Now I'm spawning several feet in the air probably in sight of several villagers. If I'm lucky, they'll think I was sent by God. If not I'm gonna have a real bad time. There's a good chance I'll break a bone in the fall, and that's not going to go well at all.

But let's assume there are trees here. Lots of them. That's actually pretty likely. They hide my sudden appearance and mitigate bone breakages.

Now I'm on the outskirts of a village, battered and bruised and very strangely dressed. I don't speak any language they'll understand despite technically being from that area. Middle English is the language of the day, and I speak something that won't evolve for at least another 200-250 years. Shakespeare is technically modern English and is hard to comprehend sometimes. Here we're talking Chaucer and that's pretty much opaque.

I'm literate, but not in Latin, and that's the language of the Church. I'm numerate, but they haven't got beyond Roman numerals yet.

I'm not even sure where the church is. I know where it is in the modern day, but that building's no more than 200 years old. Maybe it's on the same site. I'd head there for shelter at least.

I know the Lord's Prayer in modern English. Chanting that quietly might spark some recognition in anyone present but then it might count as blasphemy to say it in anything other than Catholic-Church-approved Latin.

Come to think of it, I could probably blow a couple of minds by writing the alphabet they know and then the same with the extra letters that have been added since.

And then I'd be burned as a witch.

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Fuck you buddy, I'm barely getting by with modern medicine, you just ended me.

[–] starlinguk@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day 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.

[–] orgrinrt@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Edit: I’m taking the middle road here and assuming something around year 1250 or so, not 1100 or 1400 as confusingly set in OP.

Okay, so unlike most other scenarios, I think I would be fine for a while at least. The peoples living where I live would have made and kept more or less regular contact with the sons of bitches from the south that would later crusade us (or I think maybe one of the crusades is presently ongoing at the time…) so while I would both introduce and be hit with diseases or more likely strains of familiar ones new to my body/their bodies, I think it wouldn’t be as destructive as entirely separated landmasses like America vs Europe.

So if I survive the shock my body gets hit with, and I don’t kill everyone around me, I think I would be fairly well received. As far as I’ve read, the languages and dialects were different than after the formalization of the written form, and at this time these lands were just starting to get forced under Swedish rule, so with my basic understanding of Swedish and of course my native language, I think I would be able to communicate well enough to not get instantly killed as a demon or something.

I think my best bet would be to introduce myself as some sort of demi-god, a bastard son of the god of forests and the hunt probably, which would hopefully explain my alien attire and materials used to make them. And the alien accent/dialect of both the local language or Swedish, depending on where I’d land. If the first contact I make aren’t local but crusaders, I suppose I’d have to try and push myself as a wandering preacher of Christ or something. I’d have to hope they’d speak Swedish, since I do not know German well enough to form two words together, and they’d likely be the next likely encounters. Novgorodians I think were fine with the Swedish language in general, so if our current knowledge of history was off enough that I’d meet them here, I’d still be fine. No idea what I’d pretend to be to them though. My limited knowledge of history doesn’t help there. But as far as I understand, they were sort of a melting pot of close-by cultures, and not so focused on these lands at this time, they’d just take me for a local hermit and let me run off clumsily.

If I was able to survive the first encounters and get myself to a village or a hillfort, I’d try and establish myself as a wise one, helping with calculations and engineering and whatnot to the best of my capabilities, which I would think honestly should far exceed those of the locals at the time. So maybe I’d get by just for being useful and knowledgeable.

But I don’t think I’d live a long life. These were a turbulent and violent time and one village elder or the other, fancying themself a king or whatever, would just send assassins to off me for being an asset for the local leader where I’d end up in.

Even if I’d travel to avoid this problem, it probably wouldn’t take until my old ages to have someone or something off me just by happenstance. And I wouldn’t want to live a hermit in a time where internet or computers aren’t a thing. I think the only way to cope would be to focus on a family, try and bring up children and have that fulfill my life as best it can, as long as it can.

Honestly, I consider myself lucky in this scenario. We still have our language alive and in use, the same the locals would speak at that time. This together with the general superstitious nature of the local tribes — which the crusades and Christianity, with overt blood and sadistic violence, would (thankfully later, I hope for my sake here, at least according to our current knowledge) succeed in some amount to water down and turn them to its specific flavor of lame ass superstition — would make it probably at least somewhat likely I wouldn’t be killed on sight or something to that effect.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 17 points 1 day ago (4 children)

1375....

We can work with metals, so we can probably make boilers.

I invent steam power 400 years early.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

You'd need metallurgy which was only invented in the process of building bigger naval guns, much later.
The issue was pressurizing the steam, which wasn't possible in the middle ages. You had no rubber for seals, no steel that would hold, and no tools to drill holes precisely enough.
That's why the Romans already used steam for simple parlor tricks but it couldn't be made to do actual work until the modern era

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[–] thelsim@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day 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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[–] Lumiluz@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Depends what clothes I'm wearing when it happens.

If I'm wearing anything that could remotely be seen as fancy back then (which I mean a lot of modern clothes could pass off as), since I'm near the ocean, I'd immediately run into the water not seeing anyone, and then pretend I'm a royal foreigner who ended up shipwrecked. Since I usually wear a watch, have a tungsten (Wolfram) crystal wedding band as well, that would help me in passing off as royalty as well. This is assuming the people helping me aren't brigands. There's things we do and know of that we take for granted that could be used to pass off as someone upper class too, like reading.

Then next steps would be to get to an aristocrats home, and eventually I'd imagine somewhere where I could work with scholars so they can teach me the language and we can work on translation so we can understand each other. Would have to be extremely careful of smallpox during all this of course.

Once we could, that's when I'd finally whip out my phone to trusted scholars and pull up my survival books, books on plumbing, etc specifically, and to explain that this is a special metal and glass book that can hold many books that's common in the land I'm from, and that I can teach them how to build them. But that we'd need to build plumbing because I'd like a shower by then.

[–] Jezza@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There's a book with almost the exact same premise.

Destiny's Crucible.

It's fairly good, can be a bit slow though. (I'm 7 books in)

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[–] Nemo@slrpnk.net 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Unfortunately in that circumstance, I'd likely be a horrible vector for disease. Not much chance of survival if I spread devastation wherever I go.

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[–] Denixen@feddit.nu 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'd use my knowledge of history, politics, psychology and science to become an influential advisor to powerful lords and help them conquer the world in exchange for living in luxury.

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[–] chellewalker@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

I'd try and hold my breath to not set off the European diseases into America early.

[–] LostXOR@fedia.io 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

650 years ago, the place I live was inhabited mostly by the Ojibwe (a Native American people), so I suppose I'd try to find some of them and try to convince them to not kill me and let me stick around long enough to learn their language. Then I could teach them some of my knowledge. Maybe by the time the Europeans come along they'll be a bit more prepared.

If I can't find anyone, I don't like my chances of surviving for any significant amount of time. Maybe I could make it a few weeks foraging for food and fishing or something, but realistically I'll probably end up starving.

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[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 8 points 1 day ago

Hope that I don't start the early spread of New World diseases to indigenous Americans

And I'd be dead by the end of the week

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

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

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