What if, unexpectedly, EVREYONE currently living on Earth was instantly transported to the year ______ [pick one] with only the clothes on their backs in the exact same earth latitude, longitude, and altitude coordinates they currently occupy?
For example, everyone who happened to be flying in an airplane at the moment of the time travel would be screwed as they fall from the sky over what the Time Crashers knew as Iowa, or whatever. If you are in a skyscraper, same problem, unless that building was on landfill, in which case, you would fall into the water.
So, the hypothetical means 6 billion people (?) suddenly plopped into the past as it extisted then.
How long before the 21st Century Time Crashers figure out what happened, organize, take over the planet, and rebuild? How would we do it? Who would rule? Many would die of diease and starvation pretty quickly, I’m sure. What would happen to the people that were native to that time?
The responses may vary widely based upon the date and locations chosen. For example, if we all fell back to 1900, it might not be so bad, but 1100 is a different story. Europe is fairly populated with some infrastructure at that time, but North America is not populated much at all.
PS: Whatever happens we all can’t bet on the same sports teams and get rich.
Footprints of Thunder by James F. David begins with a similar scenario - but it doesn’t involve the whole population!
Huge areas of the Earth are ‘patchworked’ and randomly switched in time so you have loads of people disappearing back into the past and, similarly, areas from the distant past taking their place… still with their native populations of whatever - like dinosaurs!
Food Production would be a major issue. Humans rarely, if ever, produced huge amounts of excess food. I would predict a huge die-off for the first two years. Then food production would begin to outpace pre-event norms. Of course by then we would be back to pre-event world population levels too. Some survivors would be from each time line.
It would not be nice. One more thing to worry about.
Wouldn’t we carry back more lethal pathogens to earlier times and kill off many of our ancestors? Then those who went back would never have existed to go back…
Ignoring that, we could certainly make a few adjustments to the 20th century technology, no leaded petrol, CFCs etc. And in political news, a few thousand disgruntled Germans turn up unexpectedly at a beer hall in Munich to have words with a group holding some sort of meeting there…
My I suggest that you read the book 1632 by Eric Flint where a town in West Virgina is transported back to 1632 Europe. Some interesting changes occur.