Okay. I design a time machine. I mean to set it back to say, the first Velvet Underground concert, but since I goofed and forgot to set the flux capacitor, it malfunctions. I’m shot back into say, the late Cretaceous and the time machine blows up. I’m trapped. I forgot to bring tools, and since I have this thing with performing scientific experiments naked, I don’t bring anything but my body fat and a few pimples.
How well would a human survive in such a time period? A group of humans - say I brought about fifty friends? How about other time periods? How well would weak, modern me and my similarly weak, modern buddies fare in the last Ice Age, for example?
I somehow doubt 50 people is a large enough population base for decent genetic diversity, but I could be wrong about that. For the sake of arguement, I’ll agree that it is.
Are you talking about surviving a specified length of time? Or across generations? I’ll assume the latter.
And the bring nothing at all, materal-wise? Well then, I suppose it depends on the makeup of your 50 people. Speaking as an American, I suspect if you choose 50 random Americans, they would be dead in a month. OTOH, if you went with a tribe of unassimilated Bushmen, I’d say your chances of survival for quite a few years are good.
Now, if you can pick AND train your 50, you’re in a whole different ballgame. You have to weed out people with bad vision or chronic disease, unless they can demonstrate some extrordinary mental ability to make up for it. Everybody must be able to hunt, everybody must be able to run a fairly long distance (5 miles?) non-stop. I imagine you want a polulation aged between 15 and 25, half men and half women.
In addition to training them relentlessly with all possible survival information, I suggest tattooing the designs of primitive technology (ore smelters, canoes, etc.) on their skin.
When your time machine blew up, did the debris include any sharp, jagged bits of metal? If so, then you’ve got it made. Alternatively, the same goes if you can find any flint. That failing, any rock at all and some wood and I’d say you’ve got a fighting chance.
Yojimboguy has it right I think. Unless you or your friends are trained for survival, or you happen to land in a perfect place for survival (i.e. lots of fruit and water and no bad weather or preditors) you will probably die in short order.
My guess is you would not be able to find water, hunt, make fire, or guarantee that anything you were eating wasn’t poisonous until it was too late.
You and fifty friends might do better just because you would benefit from the experience of half of your friends dying. It would give you more time to learn.
I think Ice Age would be fine as long as you were in a temperate region. If you were actually in the snow you would all die.
I think a lot depends on how well you’d do if you suddenly found yourself in the middle of the Pecos Wilderness naked and without resources circa 2002.
my only input is that you’re be better off with mostly women and maybe 10 men tops, you have to grow the population and take into account a high mortality rate at birth. Since humans are pretty much “worthless” to immediate needs of a clan till maybe 6 or so (when even then they could only gather food and wood) it’s prolly best to get started early so in 14-18 years you have a base of of least double what you started with.
Don’t forget that modern humans would have no resistance whatsoever to the various microbes and viruses of the period, to which they would be very quickly introduced.
On the other hand, the critters would have no taste for humans, either, but bacteria don’t seem to be terribly discerning.
If you drop into an ice age, or really anywhere in the Cenozoic, you do have a chance to survive. It will be hard, though.
If forget when, exactly, flowering plants arose - I think it was somewhere in the Cretaceous. Anyhow, most of our foodstuffs are flowering plants (fruits and vegetables) or grasses (grains). If you land in a time before either of those arise you will be eating a diet heavy in protein i.e. dino-steaks. Angiosperms just don’t seem to produce edible bits for primates.
Which raises an interesting point… wasn’t the oxygen level lower back then? I mean, wasn’t it after the majority of flowering plants got underway that the oxygen level in the atmosphere started really climbing? Wouldn’t it be like living at extreme altitudes? Even if you brought a lifetime supply of BICs, could you even get a fire going well enough to cook a dinoburger?
How about ozone? Would there be enough atmospheric protection to filter out most of the UV rays?
How would even an experienced botanist tell what plant or fruit was edible? Would our immune systems, evolved to accomodate and live with any huge number of benign bacteria, be able to handle the primitive pathogens of the time?
As far as edible angisperm parts go, I’ll point out that there’s a difference between “edible” and “adequate to meet your nutritional needs.” We evolved to live (at least in part) on flowering plants, and I’m not sure angiosperms could fill the gap.
On the other hand, it is possible to live on a diet consisting almost entirely of raw fish, so if you can make a fishing pole, you might solve your dietary problems. Shelter, clothing, etc. are another matter.
Germs shouldn’t be a problem. If you’re going all the way back to the Cretaceous, you should be well before any primates, so there aren’t likely to be any microogranisms capable of affecting humans. Nor would any be likely to evolve, with a target human population so small. Your biggest threat would be from E. coli or any other such nasties you bring back with you. Just make sure your latrine is a few hundred feet from your village/camp and water supply.
For poisons, there were a few mammals around at the time (mostly shrew-like things), and you could probably capture a few to use as food tasters. What’s poisonous for a human is likely to be poisonous to a proto-shrew, as well. Besides, you’ll mostly be eating meat, which is very rarely poisonous when fresh, anyway.
Flowering plants did, indeed, first arise during the Cretaceous. Grasses didn’t show up until the Eocene (starting roughly 11 million years after the end of the Cretaceous), and true pines (as opposed to other gymnosperms) arose during the Paleocene (just after the end of the Cretaceous).
i was having a debate with a friend a few weeks ago about whether i could survive in the wild, so we were discussing taking me to a remote forest in canada, as far away from humans as possible. it would be by at least a small pond, and it would have to be in the spring or summer. there, i would strip naked (behind a tree, when nobody is looking), and nobody would be allowed to monitor me until i had made some clothing for myself. the conversation then turned silly as i explained how i’d wrestle a moose, choke it to death, then eat it and wear its skin (it would take a miracle for a 4 foot 8, 130 pound naked girl to kill a huge moose…).
anyway, i have almost no survival training (girl scouts doesn’t count), but i’ve read a few books, so if i was transported back to the ice age, i wouldn’t die immediately. the first thing i would do is make clothing. i’m extremely modest, and even if i lived alone in a hot climate, i’d still have to cover everything. after that, i’d test some of the local plants to see how they taste. then i’d hunt for a cave or learn how to climb a tree. i’d probably be trying to remember what ayla did in those “clan of the cave bear” books.
Well at least you would have something to barter with because I would pay to see that and I’d even throw in a CAPS key for that poor broken keyboard of yours!
