You wake up tomorrow in the middle ages. What do you do?

Nephinbeg

This came up in the pub a while back. Say you wake up tomorrow and you inconveniently travelled back to medieval times with no way home and armed with nothing but your knowledge on the modern world, what would you do?

Even getting food and shelter would be a major challenge...you're hardly gonna waltz (hasn't been invented) into the nearest town and expect any help from the locals. They'd probably be livin from one harvest to the next hoping a major catastrophe, like a mild frost, doesn't wipe them all out.

Try talkin to them and they'd struggle to understand you. Presumably no one here speaks fluent middle Irish so the best case scenario would be England, but even then their English would probably be unintelligible (considering Shakespeare would be writing at least 100 years later). Even if they did understand you, your story would seem like a maniac's ravings or heresy. Likely to see you end up on the wrong side of a good flaying.

Longterm, could you use your knowledge of science etc. to your advantage? Say you get pally with the local duke:

"Yes, nephinbeg, this steam engine you keep rambling about would make me the richest noble in the kingdom. A fabulous idea. Can you build me one?"

"I have no idea how to cast iron, or how a high pressure steam engine works apart from heating up water and the steam running a piston. I also notice that ye're not big coal-men in this neck of mercia"

"That's a pity. How does gong farming sound to you?"

Say you were a mechanical engineer and you were able to follow through with all your fantastical technological claims, what then? What would you spend your new-found wealth on? Castles? (lovely drafty uncomfortable castles), Women/Men? (Your own toothless, malnourished, filthy, smelly harem), Food? (along with nightmarish diarrhoea), Luxuries? (you'd probably have to invent them all first).

It'd be pretty horrible alright. Does anyone think they could make a better situation out of it?

Guill

make millions on weapons,

Find a rich king, tell him about this black powder the asians have, send massive fleet to retrieve recipe

make explosives
Kill people
??????
Profit.

Crucifix

go around infecting everyone with modern diseases that they aren't immune to, until i get infected by some old disease that they're immune to

MagicSean

I'd bide my time and invest in Microsoft, apple and coca cola.

cosmicfart

Id join the Priesthood it, quite a lucrative profession back in them days

Guill

Seanbeag1 wrote: »

I'd bide my time and invest in Microsoft, apple and coca cola.

How much time have you?

Id join the Priesthood it, quite a lucrative profession back in them days

God, spoke to me, he told me blah blah blah.

You'd be running the place in no time.

MagicSean

You could invent the toilet. That's a fairly simple device and would make a big change.

Tazz T

Find some princesses, dude, and party! Excellent!

mackg

Say you were a mechanical engineer and you were able to follow through with all your fantastical technological claims, what then? What would you spend your new-found wealth on? Castles? (lovely drafty uncomfortable castles), Women/Men? (Your own toothless, malnourished, filthy, smelly harem), Food? (along with nightmarish diarrhoea), Luxuries? (you'd probably have to invent them all first).

Every holes a goal

super_furry

Get burned for being a witch.

NothingMan

Drink mead, fuck women and pillage villages! You know, really ingratiate myself in the local culture.

Frank Black

I would slay a dragon.

Then, after lunch I would invent the internet.

Seanbeag1

Seanbeag1 wrote: »

You could invent the toilet. That's a fairly simple device and would make a big change.

Yeah invent indoor plumbing. Also find the nearest river mill, some copper and bam you have electricity.

Gummy Panda

Replace the chainsaw on where my hand stump is with a plate glove fake hand mechanism.

Groovy!

wild_cat

Toil and fear god.

Sky King

I am a mechanical engineer and I have regularly thought about all the super awesome things I could bring to the middle ages.

This is becuase I do not have the wherewithal to bring super awesome things to the current ages.

FTGFOP

Make a living as the world's tallest man.

Teyla Emmagan

Wish I'd kept that dentist appointment last week

Noopti

Drink my own piss

Wibbs

"Invent" moveable type printing. Gunpowder would be a given. Build a blast furnace. This gives you better steel to make guns and other things. Then come up with the steam engine. Try and standardise parts, like screws etc. Avoid religious stuff like the plague. Too easy to get the heretical label. Cosy up to the church in fact. Give them first dibs on printed bibles. "discover" bacteria. Research and invent antibiotics and better antiseptics. The armies would love that. Immunisation for smallpox would be easy enough. Just find a milkmaid with cowpox pustules.

WindSock

I'd take up the position of the village oaf.
The further you go back the more you realise things remain the same in the future.

I'd also learn the lute and play some classics the world has not yet heard.

ejmaztec

Seanbeag1 wrote: »

You could invent the toilet. That's a fairly simple device and would make a big change.

There's no way you'd stop those dirty feckers sh1tting on the floor of their hovels.

ejmaztec

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Replace the chainsaw on where my hand stump is with a plate glove fake hand mechanism.

Groovy!

Haven't you already done that, Bruce?

Sky King

Seanbeag1 wrote: »

You could invent the toilet. That's a fairly simple device and would make a big change.

Then for the next thousand years everyone would say 'I have to go to the Seanbeag' every time they needed to get one out, which is especially interesting, given your sig.

Fluorescence

Rape, murder, pillage, all sorts of fun things! :pac:

Mahatma coat

Develop Gunpowder (75-15-10 )

Assemble a fleet of Ships and conquer South America before the Spaniards/Portugese. Liberate all the Gold for the empire which will be built in the (still existing) South Wexford town I'm from


find someone who can cast Bells, they could probably cast a steam engine + I would now have rubber from South America for Hoses and seals

Prempt the Reformation of the church and install my own puppet Pope

Develop Penicilin, Pasturisation & effective Water treatment

Invent electricity then invent - the Lightbulb, the Kettle, the Toaster, the electric motor and the fridge (fridge might be a lottle more complicated than the others)

Unify Europe under my 'Democratic' Reign

Kickstart modern agricultural processes

start talking to some Doctors about the importance of Hygiene and the uselessnes of their standard practices

Giant Harem

Codify building standards so that my castle wont be too draughty

Kickstart the Renisance and the Enlightenment.




yep, this topic regularly comes up during drunken conversations:D:D

WindSock

Sky King wrote: »

Then for the next thousand years everyone would say 'I have to go to the Seanbeag' every time they needed to get one out, which is especially interesting, given your sig.

Which would still get broken down in slang terms as the Johns or bog!

wild_cat

Does anyone remember that episode of Blackadder where they go back in time and Lord Blackadder gives Shakespeare a ball point pen by accident. Thus Shakespeare becomes known for inventing the ball point pen and not for his writing.

achtungbarry

Mead and wenches.

TiGeR KiNgS

Blast the King with piss

Kevin Duffy

I used to be a young, fit, energetic man. but now I moan when getting out of an armchair. I don't know when the change happened, but it seems to have been overnight and I am not happy to have woken up in my middle-ages.

dpe

super_furry wrote: »

Get burned for being a witch.

This would be the most likely outcome.

Assuming I didn't get burned at the stake in the first ten minutes;

It would depend when and where in the middle ages I was dumped (its a pretty wide period in history). If I could convince the local chief cheese to give me an audience, then the best options aren't tricky things like steam engines, but ideas you can easily adapt like crop rotation and enclosure (although there's a three year payoff for that, so you'll need some quicker wins to impress the local baron), so wind and water mills for flour grinding would be an easy way to make an impression, and easily doable with local materials.

Then you can get more ambitious; I know the basic formula for gunpowder (75% potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal, 10% sulfur) and I know how to find/make all three. Cannon would be harder (with local tech you'd have to make them from bronze, they'd be absolutely massive, and they'd be as likely to blow you up as the enemy, but hey, that's what serfs are for, and they'd impress the hell out of everyone), and then the piece de resistance would be moveable type. Once you've had the idea, a basic printing press is pretty easy to make, and would kick off all kinds of other revolutions, even if it would probably get me burned at the stake. Again.

Guill

Stampede women and rape cattle.

CorkMan

Invent gear so i'd be the local drug dealer.

opinion guy

Nephinbeg wrote: »

(lovely drafty uncomfortable castles)

Invent insulation

Ricardo G

I'd bring back the wispa

oh wait

robman60

If I had just woken up, I'd throw my basin of urine out the window. :rolleyes:

irish_goat

Draw and sell maps of the world.

Join the Astronomer's guild and "discover" the rest of the solar system.

mikom

Nephinbeg wrote: »

You wake up tomorrow in the middle ages. What do you do?

Go "It's not Dark anymore"

biko

I wouldn't understand the old Irish spoken at the time and as soon as I've learned it I'd probably be burned as a sorcerer when I started telling people about the round earth etc...

who the fug

By a May Fare Farm in Middlsex

MagicSean

Guill wrote: »

How much time have you?

I don't know. The rules weren't made too clear in the op

Deleted User wrote: »

Yeah invent indoor plumbing. Also find the nearest river mill, some copper and bam you have electricity.

Concrete shouldn't be too hard either

Sky King wrote: »

Then for the next thousand years everyone would say 'I have to go to the Seanbeag' every time they needed to get one out, which is especially interesting, given your sig.

WindSock wrote: »

Which would still get broken down in slang terms as the Johns or bog!

Ironic isn't it?

dr.bollocko

fcuk wenches; get money.

Wossack

Personally try and pinch as many of da vinci's ideas I can remember from assassins creed 2, all while trying to avoid being murdered randomly by the locals. It'd be an exciting couple of days anyway

TiGeR KiNgS wrote: »

Blast the King with piss

good call, that meme might still be funny and/or original in them times

LumpyGravy

Noopti wrote: »

Drink my own piss

Bear, is that you?

Tonyandthewhale

Same thing I do when I wake up every morning; fap.

petes

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Replace the chainsaw on where my hand stump is with a plate glove fake hand mechanism.

Groovy!

Haven't read passsed the first page of the thread but when I read the thread tiltle I thought of that and how long it would take before someone posted a reference!!!

FloatingVoter

Assuming I arrive with what I'm wearing now - go into the fashion trade. Invent the zipper, the wristwatch and introduce denim to the darkness.

I smoke 50 a day so finding South America quickly where I can discover tobacco would be on the to-do list.

No TV so I'd probably have to write some books. I'd say Shakespeare but I wasn't in school that day. The peasants would have to learn all about Harry Potter. In my version there are plenty of burnings. That'd keep them happy.

ohhh.... and I'd invent Guinness.

dpe

Noopti wrote: »

Drink my own piss

TiGeR KiNgS wrote: »

Blast the King with piss

You might want to hold on to all that piss. Useful for a ton of stuff, including making gunpowder.

Zillah

Antibiotics. I'm pretty sure I could make functional penicillin with some damp bread. When the nobility hear I can cure their various STDs I will be an international millionaire in a year. To get my foot in the door I'd approach the nearest royal court and do various things like show them my teeth (angelic by their standards), write out the prime numbers/pi (to show I am educated) and draw an accurate map of Europe (to wow them with my experience).

If that didn't work I suppose I could join a circus because I'm 6'5".

If I was unhappy with that my alternative plan would be to carve out a message in modern English on a bunch of rocks warning myself not to step into the time machine, and then bury them in places where the foundations of modern buildings would be dug. I suppose I could leave a few with some of the big European banks or orders of monks with instructions that they are to be unsealed in 2011.

Actually I prefer that last plan. What I would do if I went back in time would be to not go back in time.

bodhrandude

Set up yer ipod dock and play Aphex Twin to everyone, they would think you were the antichrist.