Going into stasis for a century; What do I need to take with me?

In My Humble Opinion
1

(Don’t need answer fast, I’ve got plenty of time.)

Long story short, I gained access to Skald’s vault of interesting and mostly harmless gadgets after distracting the flying monkey minions with a Peewee Herman mannequin. While there were plenty of cool toys, the selection that was easily portable was a bit on the light side. So since I already have a jet pack and a suitcase cold fusion generator I… umm… borrowed the stasis field generator.

The operation is quite simple, set the timer and flip the switch. It creates a time dilation field around itself 20 meters in diameter with a ratio of 1:500 meaning that for every day that passes inside the field, 500 pass outside.

I’ve done test runs of 1 second, 1 minute, and 20 minutes (1 week outside) with complete success so now I’m gearing up for the long run.

I’ve acquired some remote land in New Mexico with a cave that will be suitable to keep me out of the way and undiscovered for the time needed. There is plenty of room for almost anything I want to pack away with me. The entrance is about 6’ by 6’ which will limit the size of what can be taken in.

A hundred years will be about 73 days inside so here’s what I’ve already packed away:

To be inside the field
[ul]
[li]A 6 month supply of MREs [/li][li]Six hundred gallons of potable water which will double as a heat sink for the[/li][li]Air conditioner and CO2 scrubber[/li][li]A water recycling and filtration system[/li][li]A Porta Potty[/li][li]A Camp shower so I won’t smell like a cave man when I venture out[/li][li]An all band radio[/li][li]Computer and games to pass time[/li][li]Kindle for same[/li][li]Books[/li][li]Gasoline and spare parts for equipment stored outside.[/li][li]Pistols & long guns[/li][li]Ammunition for stored weapons[/li][/ul]

Stored in sealed containers in the cave, but out of the field
[ul]
[li]Complete tool set[/li][li]80’s era dirt motorcycle. No electronics and kick-start.[/li][li]80’s era street motorcycle. Same[/li][li]The best trail bicycle I can find.[/li][li]Some watches that are likely to be collectors items but are still affordable.[/li][li]Genuine Levi’s jeans and shirts in my size[/li][li]A few original iPads, iPods, iPhones, & Kindles [/li][li]A collection of firearms for both defense and capital[/li][li]A few thousand dollars worth of various currencies. There will always be antique coin and money collectors.[/li][/ul]

So what else will I need to survive and to ensure that I can afford to settle into whatever civilization might have evolved to. What should I invest in to sell for vast profits in 2110? I’m very leary of trying to set up any sort of trust or pure investment account for the obvious reason that anything can and probably will happen before I can reclaim it. Not to mention the difficulties in collecting on it at all. I don’t think a 2012 driver’s license will do me much good.

What challenges am I likely to encounter?

I’m pretty sure that I’ll be screwed as far as whatever ID system is in place. I can only hope that there I’ll be able to contact whatever black market there is before I run out of supplies or run afowl of “the man”.

My English will certainly be dated, but I can probably pass myself off as eccentric if I’ve managed to guess right and am wealthy. Otherwise I’ll just be crazy.

Same for clothes, but I’m betting that denim is forever.

I’ve got about 50 grand left for the remainder of my preparations.

2

After 6 months of MREs, you aren’t going to need a Porta Potty. You’re gonna need a cherry bomb!

3

You’ll be needing a generator to make juice for all those electric gadgets, and fuel to run it. Also going to need a way to vent the fumes. Might want some sort of thermal insulation to avoid detection by zombies with infrared equipment.

Prolly need to keep the generator and fuel inside the field. Fuel will last a couple months, easy…but I doubt it will last a century.

4

The initial time inside is about 2 and a half months. The remainder is for the time needed to work out the plan to blend back in. Hopefully I won’t need it, or will at least be able to supplement it by hunting.

Electricity won’t be a problem due to the previously mentioned cold fusion generator. If it weren’t available I’d have made do with a large bank of sealed cell batteries and planned to take breaks when needed to run a generator to recharge them vented through a well to mask the thermal signature.

5

Just out of curiosity, why are you staying in there for 73 days all at once? Why not come out once a week to assess the situation outside, restock, etc.?

6

Take Hindi, Spanish and Mandarin language tutorial programs if you dont speak those languages already.

Otara

7

I did consider breaking it down into 10 year blocks, but in the simulations, once you get out past about 3 decades there are too many potential issues with resupply. Admitted, I could use the breaks to gather intel, but that also increases the risk of exposure. When everything was considered, I decided to make it all in a single step. Besides, I like surprises.

It did occur to me after I posted that knowing Spanish would probably be a good idea considering where my base would be. I’ll be bringing the RosettaStone language program for Spanish. And now that you mention it, there’s no real reason not to get the entire collection.

8

Not sure I see the point of all these preparations. Once Skald reads this and realizes who “borrowed” his stuff, well the flying monkees will be well fed. Been nice knowing you Projammer. :slight_smile:

9

I got a discount on Peewee Herman mannequins buying in bulk.

The sounds they made after flying off with the first one were, how should I put this, disturbing.

Besides, I have it on good authority that Skald enjoys bold schemes.

10

Do you have any medical needs? If you do you will need a supply of your medications, until you can blend in and get cured. (or not they might have a cure since the last known case of your illness was 400 years ago.) Your medical records might be needed. How is your eyesight? Extra glasses or contact lenses should be with you. I note you did not mention grooming needs , but i assume you have will have a razor and comb.

11

Take your wits and your sense of humor and you’ll be good.

12

Remember your towel!

13

Stasis’ Mom? (she’s got it goin’ on…)

14

I’m one of those fortunate people that never gets sick. I think I’ve used 2 sick days as actual sick days in the past 20 years. Had LASIK 2 years ago so contacts/glasses are moot. Medical records consist of various injury treatments, nothing requiring long term followup.

And I did forget to mention it, but supplies include a pair of tactical trauma kits. Survivalist websites and suppliers are quite useful when planning for this sort of event.

Is there any place better than the SDMB to hone both wit and humor? :smiley:

Never go anywhere or anywhen without one!

See previous comment about honing wit and humor.

15

It occurs to me that a cave is a perfect natural wine cellar, something vintners have known for literally millenia. I’ll be moving in a few cases of good wine and whiskey. They should be good for just about any society we’ve transitioned to by then. Anything from Mad Max post apocalypse to tech utopia.

16

Learn Chineese before you go in, you might need it when you come out.

17

The whiskey needs to stay in the barrel, otherwise once it’s in the bottle it won’t age at all.

18

You might want to have the guns and ammo hermetically sealed up before you go in—I don’t know what the security situation, tech level, or the level of panicky nanny-stateism is going to be like in a century, but it’d kinda suck if you tried to blend back into a city and ended up setting off alarms at the streetcorners that picked up traces of gun oil or smokeless powder.

Some kind of dosimeter might be a good call, too. Probably won’t be necessary, but at least if worse comes to worse, you’d know if you had to pop back into the stasis field for another century or so if you come out and everything’s covered with funny ash.

19

I have an interest in your plans…I plan on going into “Coldsleep” for a longer period…200 to perhaps 250 years.
My main concern is my finances, when I emerge in AD 2240 or so.
I plan on a mixed portfolio of government bonds and stocks. Of course, my “unbreakable” trust has to last as well.
Comething that all of us time travelers have to consider.

20

One thing you’re going to need that I don’t think has been mentioned is a plausible backstory, so people don’t get suspicious and decide to monitor or investigate you.

E.g. figure out where your future persona is from and what they have been doing, and where all your neat 20th and 21st century stuff came from (great-grampa’s old AR-15 hunting rifle, and the five thousand USD in cash with dates in the 1990’s you could attribute to grandma’s crazy Aunt Tillie who thought that the electronic banking systems would fall in 2000 and never come back.)

Your backstory should be dull/boring and non-trivial to verify, such as working in a coal mine in West Virginia or something that closed in 2080 after the mountains were depleted. Boring enough that many people wouldn’t care to look into it, and combined with the difficulty of it, most wouldn’t bother.

This would be a good reason to take a previous poster’s advice and come out every once in a while to see what is going on, maybe listen to the radio a bit to see where the world is headed and decide what your persona is going to have done during that time, and monitor changes in accent and dialect so you don’t come out sounding horribly eccentric.

If you have trouble with the 2100’s English that you find, if questioned about your accent or dialect, you could say you are a big fan of or a scholar of TV programs circa 2000, or maybe your parents were obsessed with it and taught you to speak like that (similar to how today, someone could be obsessed with Victorian novels and end up talking like Sherlock Holmes or something).