How to survive a Time Travel accident, part four

This is the last of our lesions in surviving a time travel accident, at least until I have other things to say on the subject.

Tonight we will cover the last two options you might be faced with as, as well as do a quick review of the previous parts.

 

If you find yourself stuck in a future where human kind hasn’t encountered massive setbacks, wars or alien invasion, you have one possible option that most people wouldn’t think of exploiting, namely archeology.

Now before you dismiss this idea out of hand, please remember that you’ve got a head start on all other fakers, you’ve lived in this time and as such you can tell the future humans that a PDA wasn’t an early attempt as vaporizing people. You can also explain that the thousands of small rectangular pieces of plastic with magnetic strips on the back were used for transferring money, not as toothpicks. Small things like these might not be evident to future humans, as they undoubtedly will have DNA scanners that subtract the correct amount of Dracnors from their blood stream to pay for their purchases. and such old-fashioned ideas as having plastic cards linked to bank accounts will be all but unimaginable to them.

This is the best case situation for getting stuck in the future… if you do get stuck in the future don’t hesitate in trying to use future technology to return home, after all, if you manage to travel into the future, future humans will undoubtedly have already invented the same device.

 

Now for the best case situation after being trapped in the past:

 

Depending on when you get trapped in the past, consider going into politics, you’ll be coming at it from a unique angle; you’ll already know what will work and what won’t.

When going into politics in the past, feel free to use a fake name. A simple reason for this is that Greg Jones isn’t going to gain as much popularity as Tomas Jefferson. You must realize that you may all ready be a famous person in the past, you just need to get there in order to find out.

In such a case we’re forced to wonder if time travel has been rigged, after all, the world can be changed by a single person not being where he or she is supposed to be at a certain time, keep this in mind before and during your adventures in time.

 

To review:

Part one focused on what to do during the minutes first following being stranded in the past,  both during times of war and times of peace. It included tips for convincing the leader of an army to take you as an adviser in the midst of battle. During peace time I offered the pros of becoming an artist.

 

Part two focused on other ways to make a living by inventing items before their time, I also cautioned you about not inventing something too far in advance of it being useful.

Also included in this part was the suggestion that rescuing a doomed person of importance might be useful as well.

 

Part three dealt with certain situations that you might find yourself in in the future.

Also in part three I discussed how human kind might have changed, how it might have been involved in large wars or invaded by aliens.

I offered suggesting options ranging from becoming a blacksmith to taking over leadership of human enclaves. Also covered was the idea of becoming a hermit.

 

Part four is this part, which wraps everything up… if you need more details please feel free to comment below.

 

Thanks for reading, I hope that you’ve found the past few Saturday nights filled with interesting ideas and helpful suggestions regarding being stranded in time.

Please feel free to comment below.

How to survive a time travel accident, part 3

Tonight we come to the third part of our advice on how to survive a time travel accident; while our first two parts focused on how to survive a time travel accident that strands you in the past, tonight I will try to give you advice on surviving being stranded in the future.

Many of you are no doubt wondering why you would have any trouble surviving in the future, distant or near. As a quick answer I advise you to read or watch The Time Machine, that should answer your questions. However there are other reasons that you might have trouble, reasons I shall outline for you here:

 

1. An EMP decimated all electronics and plunged humanity into chaos.
2. An alien invasion has wiped out most humans and made any survivors leery of strangers.
3. A plague wiped out all of humanity and another race is now ruling earth.
4. A massive war, say WWIII, has raged so long that humans are reduced to swinging swords at one another as all other technology has been lost.
5. Massive changes to both Earth and human society have created small enclaves of tightly controlled humans that cannot accept a stranger into their world.
6. Humans have evolved into non corporeal beings that you cannot communicate with.

 

While there are doubtlessly other situations that you might encounter, these are enough to tackle for tonight.

We’ll focus on the EMP option first. EMP stands for Electromagnetic pulse, you can read more about them on Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse

An EMP could happen several ways, a high altitude nuclear explosion, a specially designed weapon or simply a solar flare are the two most people well versed on the subject fear. Basically what happens is that all electronics in the affected area are destroyed… you can just imagine the chaos that would follow such an event, especially if it’s a global event, all refrigeration would cease, everyone would lose all their money as banks would be destroyed in seconds, ect.

If you find yourself in such a world, the best you can hope for is an old west experience, a civilization trying to grow back too where it once was, law trying to restore itself and outlaws who think killing is fun and their right.

In such a world you must make yourself so valuable to both the lawless and the law itself that they cannot live without you, you might consider become a blacksmith or a gunsmith. No matter what you choose, you’ll be faced with a hard life.

 

In the case of an alien invasion, your best bet is to head for the hills and become a hermit or trapper, live off the land and interact with people as seldom as possible, it won’t be a comfortable life, but you’ll have a good chance to survive… unless the aliens have left behind animals from their own world that kill you first.

Should you instead try to help the humans that are left, you should be prepared to die, as it’s doubtful that you’ll succeed.

 

If you arrive in a world that has been decimated by an advanced plague, it’s doubtful that you’ll survive long enough to do anything, I’m sorry to tell you this, but it’s true.

 

If on the other hand you’re in a world reduced to medieval weapons, refer to the first part of this series as thing will be close enough not to make much difference, you should manage to live out a nice life, one filled with excitement and action if nothing else.

 

If you find yourself in a world of tightly knitted enclaves of humans that won’t accept a stranger in their midst, you do have a few options:

1. Become a hermit, a simple option that is by far the least involved and safest.
2. Keep watch over the enclave for a time, with luck you’ll find something attacking it, say a bear, if you drive the bear off or kill it, you’ll have a slight chance to be accepted in the enclave.
3. search out another enclave, there are bound to be multiple enclaves, plus every now and then an enclave is bound to split in two, at which time you can try to gain access to one.
4. Determine the leave of weapon technology the enclave has, then build something stronger, challenge the leader to a duel and take over the enclave. Note, this has the greatest risk of death and the shortest time of survival.

 

If you find yourself alone in the future as the populace has become non corporeal beings, I have nothing to offer you. The future non corporeal humans may look out for you, they may try to help you evolve yourself, or they may kill you with a thought, I don’t know enough to offer any advice in such a situation, only that once again, becoming a hermit might save your life.

 

I hope that this has given you a few things to think about. Please feel free to comment and thanks for reading!

How to surrvive a time travel accident, part 2

Last week we explored how to survive being trapped in the middle ages, both during a battle or during peace time.

This week we’ll be looking at a few other options that you should consider, while they could potentially be used during any time period you might find yourself trapped in, you will have to adapt them a bit, however with a little luck and commonsense, you’ll be able to take these following ideas and save your own skin should it become necessary.

 

While having a talent is always helpful in making a living in a strange time, you shouldn’t forget about becoming an ‘inventor’. While most of us would be hard pressed to invent anything worthwhile in our own time, if you were to find yourself trapped even a hundred years ago and in need of money, you would be capable of taking something we use today and bringing it to market in a surprisingly short period of time if you just do a little research today.

What would work you may be asking yourself right now, let’s take flashlights for an example, now while flashlights have been around for a long time, how much money do you think you could make if you were to invent it just days after Tomas Edison patented the light bulb?

Of course you should first have an idea about batteries to power your flashlight, I refer you to the Wikipedia page about batteries:    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_battery

But what if you aren’t lucky enough to be trapped during a time such as that? You can find many other inventions that would bring you fame and fortune in other eras, all you have to do is use your imagination and see what you come up with.

One word of warning: Never ‘invent’ something that has no use for the people of the time you’re stuck in… what would Caesar do with a telephone? What would King Arther do with a can opener? What would Lincoln do with radio? These are the questions that you must ask yourself before ‘inventing’ anything in another time.

 

Now let’s imagine that you’ve found yourself stranded in ancient Rome, you’ve got an unprecedented opportunity to make a living, you could serve in the Roman Legion, you could invent steel, you could even take your knowledge of history to predict when a war would break out. Inventing the Crossbow would also be a nice feather in your cap.

My favorite idea, however, would be if you could arrange to be in Rome the day Julius Caesar was killed, this would be a perfect day to gain power and wealth if you do everything just right. First of all you need to make sure that you’re prepared to intervene just as Caesar is attacked, if you could take out even one or two of the murderers and give Caesar a chance to defend himself, if he survived you would instantly become a great ally of Caesar and undoubtedly be given rank, wealth and privilege.

Yes, some of you might choose to ally yourselves with the murderers of Caesar, but think for a moment, do you really want to be allied with backstabbing murderers? Do you really think that they would spare you the time of day? Besides, Caesar might have died that day, but his family ruled Rome for generations afterwards.

 

While I used Caesar for this example, there are countless other example throughout history that could be turned to your advantage if you manage to arrive at the correct time, which while not all that likely, is still a possibility.

 

Thanks for reading and I hope you’ll be with us next time when we look at a few more ways that you could survive a time travel accident.

Please feel free to leave any comments below.

How to survive a time travel accident, part one

This series of posts will teach you everything that you need to know to survive a time travel accident. While not every situation can be covered in a single blog post or even a series of posts, I will try to give you enough pointers that you should easily be able to adjust to other situations.

 

This post assumes that you have been sent somewhere back in time to around the middle ages, future posts will deal with other eras.

 

The most critical time after being involved in a time travel accident is the first few minutes, after you’ve had a chance to adjust to your new surroundings you’ll be much less likely to die. The first thing you must do when finding yourself in a strange time is to determine if you have arrived in the middle of a battle field or what is about to become a battlefield. This can normally be assumed if there are large numbers of armed men nearby, a number of breastworks in evidence or other fortifications that have been erected quickly.

 

If you find yourself in such a situation don’t panic! What you must do before anything else is to find a leader of an army,  you should also endeavor to discover who is fighting whom.

Once you know what armies are about to do battle you must make yourself indispensable to the leader, suggest what might seem like a commonsense move, all the while hoping that the leader you’ve attached yourself to has enough brains to understand your suggestion but not enough to have thought of it himself. Once you’ve managed to aid this leader in winning the battle you’ll have a job… at least until you fail him. If asked where you come from, name any place you want to, just say that its far away and you came because you had a vision showing that the way to greatness was to follow this leader into battle.

 

If you do not find yourself in the midst of battle, consider yourself fortunate, then look for a niche in society that you can exploit while waiting for rescue from your own time, if that is even possible.

You might consider becoming an artist as they would be able to travel without being questioned as much and if you can flatter a king enough you might even be commissioned by him.

If art isn’t your forte, consider what you are good at and adapt it. It is always recommended to know at least one or two pieces of Shakespeare word for word, that would allow you to tell tales if nothing else, if you can play a flue or other small instrument you would stand an even better chance for success.

 

Next time we’ll talk about other situations that you could find yourself in.

 

Thanks for reading and have a nice weekend! Feel free to comment.

 

Imagine if you would…

Imagine if you would, a world in the future where time travel has been discovered and is as common as cell phones are today.

Next, imagine that humans have grown tired of all the sports we have today and any number of new sports that will be created by then.
There is only one thing left for humans to enjoy watching, ancient battles! Imagine watching the Battle of Gettysburg! The Battle of Midway! Bunker Hill! The Hundred year war!

But why stop there? Humans are imaginative, they will, sooner or later, want something more interesting. Maybe they will even take part in these battles.As a concerned person, I offer this tale of what I imagine might happen someday in the future (past?), as told by a color analyst team:

 

“It’s a great day for a battle, Jim, who do we have going up against one another tonight?”

“Well Bob, tonight we’re going to see an epic rematch between Caesar’s Legions and an army of Samurai. The last time these two armies last met, nearly four years ago, Caesar lost two-thirds of his army.”

“That’s right, I remember that battle! Caesar’s troops just weren’t ready to face those katanas, what do they need to do tonight to win?”

“First off, Caesar must have a better plan of attack, if you will. His troops just didn’t look sharpe last time. If he doesn’t have a new strategy tonight, then I’m afraid that his job’s on the line.”

“I talked to Caesar just a bit ago, he sounded pretty confident, saying that he has a new secret weapon at his disposal.”

“That’s right, I heard that they pulled off a trade, but the details were kept quiet. I’m looking forward to tonight’s battle, what about you, Bob?”

“It’s going to be a good battle. I think it’ll be a close battle that might go down to the last man. With any luck we’ll have a winner tonight!”

“Let’s go to our battle field reporter, Jane Smith, who’s live with the general of the Samurai army!”

“Thanks, Jim, Bob. I’m here with General… something or another, I can’t pronounce his name, but he just told me that his army is ready for this battle. They feel like they have it won already, plus it’s a home battle for them tonight, so they have the crowds rooting for them! Back to you!”

“Thanks Jane. When we come back, we’ll have the opening charge! Stay with us!”

‘This battle is brought to you by TimeCo, the leaders in Time Travel! Travel with us yesterday!’

 

 I’ve got more ideas for this, if I get good feed back I’ll write the rest. Please leave your comments, good or bad.