Prosper, perish, invent dental hygiene?

[Kitti]

There is a time-traveling incident involving a nearby mad scientist and you are transported to the Middle Ages without even a shirt on your back. How will you take advantage of your advanced knowledge?​

 

[Dervish]

Immediately take precautions about people being exposed to me, because I'm carrying several hundred years worth of evolved bacteria that would absolutely wreck the everloving hell out of their immune systems. My avatar would be rather adept for the situation that would likely unfold.

Then I'd probably go about trying to "invent" ideas that I understand the concepts are and demonstrate them to city and kingdom officials and definitely push towards advancing people's ideas of what sanitation, waste disposal, and basic water treatment are all about.

Also, cooking recipies. If I have to be trapped in time, I am not going to live out my life eating awful junk.

I'd also try to share what limited knowledge I have about science, anatomy, and medical stuff. Even the most basic stuff we take as common sense was basically unheard of for the most part there.

 

[Greenie]

Probably find a sheet to cover myself with :#

Not sure where I'd be or how seriously a woman would be taken... I may become the crazy lady who tells people their fortunes.

Most probably though I'd end up dying from malnutrition and dehydration because I have a bad immune system even in our times. :'D

 

[Kehvarl]

Be murdered by the locals since I can't speak a word of Latin or 5th-15th century English. Plus I'm naked, without any sort of family connections, and unable to perform peasant labor.

If I somehow survive, and learn the language, and reach a position of influence, my medical knowledge isn't much help since I don't actually know how to create sulfa drugs (Where do I find pure ammonia (not uric acid) and sufanyl chloride?) or how to cultivate penicillin.

On the chemistry front... again, I don't know the practice for creating the pure compounds needed to do anything cool. I could whip up some poor quality black powder, but I don't understand the corning process well enough to make good quality stuff, and there's no way I could get to gun-cotton.

Physics is easy, but we're dealing with people in between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. So there's not much call for physics equations, especially lacking a reliable way to turn them into weapons.

Mechanical engineering might help, but again, we lack materials.

Metallurgy would be good. I'm not a trained metallurgist, nor am I a blacksmith. The things I could do all require machines and materials not available.

I don't know the history of the time in enough detail to act as much of a fortune teller. Do you have the ability to convert dates between Julian Calendar and Georgian Calendar and Roman Calendar, while accounting for the skipped days in each? And do you have a memorized table of eclipses or important celestial events during that thousand years? I sure don't.

I could build a compass... assuming I could get an iron needle. I could build a sextant, but I would require precision manufacture beyond my personal capabilities, AND I can't actually use one properly without a set of tables that I don't have memorized. Plus there's not a lot of help in knowing your latitude when no maps use them.

My knowledge of architecture certainly isn't up to maintaining Roman arches or designing cathedrals.

Even if I learn to speak the local language, I probably can't write it. Even if I can write it, being a scribe is not exactly a high ranking or high impact role.

I can't draft, much less build, a schooner rig for a seagoing vessel, and while I think I could throw together a lateen rig, I doubt it would be efficacious enough to draw attention. Besides, I'm no sailor.

 

[Minerva]

Probably be burned as a witch or heretic. :|

 

[Greenie]

Well now that I've thought a little bit more on the subject, I may be okay if I end up either in Middle-East or South Asia. Somewhere where Arabic is spoken, since I'd know enough to be able to get a point across. ^_^ The 'dark ages' weren't too bad there either, actually!

 

[Shiri]

Middle ages with me naked? I can't see 5 inches without my glasses so headache incoming. I limp without my knee-brace and risk my knee shifting out of place. Yeah, I'm screwed unless someone takes me in. I also don't speak French or Latin or old English.

From a logical standpoint I would probably try to stay low in this new society and try to adjust to their ways. Try. The toilet will be fun or rather the lack of. I will probably forever crave the food that I can no longer have like bananas or ice cream. Also internet. That will probably cause some withdrawal symptoms. Homesickness is for certain.

In a fantastical sense I think it'd be fun to just mess with people. Start a cult, have a good time. Eventually get caught and crushed, or beheaded, or burned, or boiled, or hanged in the name of God. Nolo.

 

[Brovo]

The middle ages?

Uhhh... Shit.

I can't take advantage of my advanced knowledge because I can't communicate with the locals and the infrastructure required for most of it doesn't exist in any capacity. So, forget about creating things. You're fucked there, the technology and mindsets of the people then are too backwards to work.

So transfer ideas. Specifically: Mathematics. Go learn the lingua franca while doing manual labour, then teach the scholars of that time your system of mathematics. Depending on when you dropped in the middle ages, you'll fucking blow their minds by merely introducing the concept of zero. People had philosophical debates about the value of nothingness, man. Claim that you invented it in your spare time--ethos was a more powerful form of argumentation back then.

Once you have the scholars learn maths, you can start brainstorming with them to design primitive microscopes to introduce them to the concept of Germ Theory.

Congratulations. You have just saved Europe from the Black Plague, and will probably live in opulence for the rest of your life. All 50 years of it before you die because there's no hospital to fix you in old age.

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

People had philosophical debates about the value of nothingness, man.

We still kind of do. :P

 

[Kitti]

Aside from trying to teach people calculus and explain biology, I'd probably be useless (the slowly teaching them method would probably be best but I am a girl so results probably less great).

With this realization in mind, part of me is sort of inspired to look more into metallurgy or something else useful but the other part is strongly arguing you know that we're probably not going to get randomly sent back to the Middle Ages, right?

TLDR; Kehv, Tribs, and I should go on a retreat together and learn how to cultivate penicillin or something. Just in case.

 

[Razilin]

i'm gonna go make even moar of a throwback

and bring in my modern concept of polyamory, but remind these medieval shits that the Greeks practiced all sorts of kinky stuff

and then have more sex than Game of Thrones



i can also bring in my wicked awesome martial arts moves and kill people by punching them in their armor. because i'd dent the armor so the sharp bits go in.



i might invent scrubbing techniques for battlefield surgery while i'm at it too

 

[Brovo]

Aside from trying to teach people calculus and explain biology, I'd probably be useless (the slowly teaching them method would probably be best but I am a girl so results probably less great).

Well, I mean, kind of depends where and when in the middle ages too in the case of you being a woman. Female teachers were a lot easier to swallow than female warriors were. If you could find your way to the scholarly types outside of priesthoods, you could probably find people willing to listen to you.

Unfortunate that appearing buck naked in the middle of nowhere unable to speak the lingua franca would probably end badly for you, though.

The middle ages are so much fun.

 

[Hana]

I guess I could try to teach modern mathematics and geometries or something, but tbh I can't even speak the languages of that time...

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

and bring in my modern concept of polyamory, but remind these medieval shits that the Greeks practiced all sorts of kinky stuff

This is assuming they know who the Greeks are.

 

[Brovo]

This is assuming they know who the Greeks are.

@Razilin (bringing you in on this for shits n' giggles) Oh, they did know who the Greeks were. They simply considered them primitive and backward socially speaking. It goes back to the Roman Empire, when Rome and Greece were competing cultural states with similar ideological backgrounds but different directions. Rome beat Greece and as an attempt to stamp out their culture, attempted to outlaw "ostensibly Greek things." Like adult males gaining sexual favours from their younger male students was more of a Greek thing (and most pertinently, Spartan), which Rome frowned upon and looked at as deviant, debased behaviour.

The Catholic Church (Rome's final spite/gift to the world depending on your point of view) adopted many of the same views when compositing the Bible and the original canon works and laws associated with priesthood. One of those was the idea of breaking clan structure to force the church into familial matters--thus tying everyone to it. Organized religious marriages contrasted badly against polygamous behaviour. Combine this with the fact that everyone thought STI's were a sign that Satan had infested your bowels (no really), add a few hundred years of this being the status quo, and by the time you reach the middle ages? No justification would allow it to happen. Even the fact that old testament characters had multiple wives didn't dissuade the status quo of punishing non-marriage sexual behaviour. (Or, at least, frowning upon it.)

Now, amusingly, if you poofed into existence in the Muslim world, multiple waifus/concubines was totes kay there throughout much of the middle ages. So, if you appear in the middle east, you're good.

Europe?

Well, I hope whips are your fetish, cuz' you'll be getting a lot of 40 lashes if you get what I mean.

 

[Dipper]

The vernacular of the middle ages was so different compared to what it is now that I doubt I could do much at all without first spending time learning. Regardless, I bet I could still teach them how to make chocolate chip cookies if I tried hard enough. Pictures may be necessary.