That’s assuming it’s one of those casual, I-can-travel-through-time-whenever-I-want time travelers, and not one of those I-can-only-travel-through-time-when-the-planets-align-on-a-Tuesday time travelers.
As you’d guess from my username, I’m something of an expert at this. Bring antibiotics, too. Viral pathogens aren’t likely to be much of a problem to a novel species like time-displaced humans, but bacterial infections don’t care much about what they’re bacteriating (and by the time you get back to the present, that will be a real word). Luckily, in these prehistoric times, penicillin is still pretty much a wonder drug, basically nothing’s resistant to it.
See, that’s the thing. Go far enough back, and penicillin will no longer work because the molecules it works on have a significantly different form.
Penicillin acts on formation of the bacterial cell wall, and so would probably be effective long before there was enough oxygen to breathe.
I understand that. But since humans are cooperative feeders, one could only survive until you got hungry, in an environment where you could not detect and capture any food that is digestible and safe to eat. Omnivorous mammals like raccoons could survive for more than 2 or 3 days a lot further back than humans. Humans also have poor tolerance for temperature extremes without artificial protection, and would find hot or cold temperatures much more intolerable than most mammals, maybe to the point that you would die of exposure in a short time if you disembarked your time machine in the ice age, or would quickly die of dehydration if there wasn’t any potable water within easy walking distance.
If “depart at will” is a criterion, one could even tolerate ovenlike temperatures for a few seconds, or an atmosphere with only half the requisite oxygen or high CO content, or even radiation doses that would be fatal in a few days. So y0u have to posit some kind of a definition of “survive” in terms of duration to make the question meaningful. In my response, I assumed this to be for a normal human lifetime.
If you go to the Cambrian or Precambrian, what about the microorganisms you bring back with you? Wouldn’t those get into the environment and work merry hell with the native microflora? What if you gor back to the present time and found nothing recognizable?
I certainly wouldn’t want to visit a time before land life. Imagine it: no sound except wind and rain, endless, treeless brown or gray expanses as far as the eye can see. When it rained, it would be a bleak, depressing endless plain of gray mud!
Even what we see as mud might not be there at this time! With no plants to hold the mud in place, I think it would all wash into the oceans, and you’d end up with mostly boring bare rocks.
I have no idea what this means. First, humans are quite capable of eating when they are alone. Humans are omnivorous, and should be able to survive just as well as raccoons on the same kinds of food (with the qualification that raccoons, being smaller, require less food per individual). Second, no animal is going to survive indefinitely in an environment without food.
This is rather similar to the game we used to play as kids - If you were going back to [some period in history] what would be the best stuff to take, assuming you would have to carry it.
Maybe a GQ thread on its own?
Since “best” is a matter of opinon, IMHO would be the appropriate forum. I’m sure we’ve had several previous threads on this topic.
Oh, there have been some good ones here too. Just throw in a real-enough criterion and drift will definitely keep it gee-cue-y.
Also, I think mod ninja-ing is pretty rare, outside of ABTM, and it was a pleasure to observe it.
What I want for sure to be with me is a ticket back.
What’s your date of birth? As in all likelyhood we are all just figments of your imagination, I would forwarn the creator about travelling in time past that.
Weekend camping trip? Just make sure you have a 1.21 gigawatt power source handy on the other end, or it could be a long visit…
There’s plenty of historical examples of people living on their own in the wilderness – maybe not for decades, but at least for over a year or more at a time. Granted, most people are not capable of doing it today, but trappers went out on their own, and so on. We may not be ‘adapted’ to it, but skill and knowledge and intelligence and the ability to make tools, make for a good substitute for not having claws or powerful jaws, or fur all over our body, or being able to run like a cheetah.
And what you are talking about, primarily, is learned skills, not evolution. So before you go, make sure you take some survival classes, pack the right clothing and gear (you’re not planning on traveling naked, are you?), and so on. Remember, the question wasn’t to drop an unprepared, average, dumb, naked teenager alone into the middle of the Cambrian (though that could make for a fun movie).
Primarily what is required to survive is breathable air, clean water, sufficient food, and a way of gathering, killing, and/or growing that food, and finally, protection from the elements.
It’s already been established that the air and water shouldn’t be a problem. Protection from the elements that is necessary will depend on geographic location, so you can assume that you would select a location and general time period that is mostly hospitable, and that can be supplemented with ones creativity using mud, furs, grasses, and so on – whatever is available where you are. The only question then is food. And with sufficient survival training, you can hunt (I assume you’d pick a time period where there’d be game – that’s one of the assumptions).
Another question is what are the rules about gear that you can bring with you. On the one end, you’d have the clothes on your back. On the other end, you’d have tents, backpacks, sacks filled with MREs to supplement your diet in case things get bad in the winter, knives, axes, and all sorts of tools up the wazoo, a lifetime supply of matches, lighter fluid, solar panels, water purification gear, a fully stocked first aid kit, and the entire library of references on a kindle. And why not bring along a hunting dog and firearms while you’re at it.
What I want to know is what’s so bad about the future that you’d rather go into the far past?
I mean, I know that virtual reality sex orgies are technologically possible, surely they got those in 100 years or so, right? Can’t you jump 1k years into the future and get your brain backed up with their advanced technology? Maybe grab a nanotech survival kit? Why are you using our era as the jumping off point to your past expedition?
I can think of answers to this question, and they all involve
(1) time travel being invented in the near future
(2) the future is very very very bad
Otherwise, you’d stick around…
About 5:00 am. Hellish as that is, anything earlier isn’t being alive.
The past is the Devil you know. The future, beginning next Friday, could be in a radioactive environment that would be lethal even at the maximum setting for time travel distance into the future. Or on a post-asteroid crash rock.
One thing to be careful about with oxygen levels - humans have to adapt to be able to handle too low of a level.
Consider folks traveling to Mount Everest. They spend about a month hiking from ~6000 ft up the mountain in order to acclimate their bodies to the lower oxygen levels so they can function at base camp ~20,000 ft. If you were to be acclimated to sea level and take a teleporter to the top of Everest, you would pass out almost immediately.
All that hiking they do on the way makes the body strain and work to improve it’s hematacrit (oxygen carrying ability). Of course, you could artificially pump up your hematacrit the way athletes do for cheating in races. You don’t have a restriction that they do, so can pump your blood level up to sludge.
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In my response, I assumed this to be for a normal human lifetime.
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A significantly prepared person (tools, equipment, knowledge) could survive indefinitely alone. Sure, loneliness would kick in, and that might affect will to survive, but assuming the person can get through that, there isn’t that much greater risk.
I mean, there is some risk due to injury or illness where you are unable to care for yourself, but normal survival should be possible. One would need a defendable position if one were in an era with predators so one could sleep safely, but with the right precautions it should be possible.
Identifying and gathering food could be the challenge, especially if trying to rely on plants. Go back far enough and most of the things we eat wouldn’t be around. Figuring out what plants are edible and non-toxic is a slow, tedious, risky process unless one has some futuristic technology to test it. If there are animals, one should be able to capture food using anything from high-powered rifles to snares, deadfalls, and pointy sticks. Obviously, you want reliable food supply, but that can be accomplished by a solitary individual.