I’d go back to February of 2016, to a town in California, at the banks of the river that my friend decided he wanted to “take a swim” in, and try to stop him. I’d bring with me copies of all the news articles reporting about how he drowned in that river and that someone found his body and called the authorities. I’d show him a copy of my text messages back and forth with his sister when she told me what happened to him. She claimed that he went swimming in the river often and that he was unaware that the current that day was really strong. I wanted to believe her, but I knew he was troubled, that he ad psychosis and PTSD, and that he didn’t want to live past 40. And who the fuck swims in a river in February!? I would do my best to try and save his life.
- A fire extinguisher to the library of Alexandria.
- A small pox variolation kit to ~13thC somewhere in the Americas. Probably the PNW to preserve the linguistic diversity there, maybe the amazon river, the Tlaxcala or the groups who would go on the confederate into the Haudenosaunee.
- Vials of horse-plague to the cucteni trypillians, see if we can’t blunt that Indo-European expansion somewhat. If it’s virulent enough, maybe we get lucky and weaken the power of aristocrats across Eurasia for millenia to come. (Sorry horses!).
- Just for me, some magic mushrooms to shangqiu, henan ~325 BCE ish. See if I can’t convince Zhuang Zhou to trip with me.
It’s not so much the fire in Alexandria that you have to worry about although that is what is remembered, it’s the people who are setting fire to the library of Alexandria that you have to worry about. A single fire extinguisher won’t necessarily stop people from killing you and then burning everything down anyway.
My suggestion would be to also include a machine gun and a couple of hundred rounds of ammo so that you can kill them first and stop the fire from ever being started in the first place.
Why is it all about money?
I’d take everything I need to teach modern technology, sustainable practices, and cyberpunk aesthetics to the peak of the Mesopotamian society. I want the city of Ur bathed in neon!
I bet you would get the time wrong and end up in Sodom.
Just learn from the past loops mistake and don’t make it okay to rape visitors and you might not get turned into salt.
I take an entire renewable energy system and a team of people both to set it up and to prepare a settlement. I want to be placed in America in prehistory. We’re getting in there and starting over before the capitalists ruin everything. We’re going resource based babyyy
Renewables require industry and high tech to produce and maintain. If you go far enough back to establish a foothold, your renewables will most likely not be functioning by the time colonists arrive. If you settle just before they do, you won’t be able to have much advantage. In either case, unless you go really far back, you’re still settling and taking land from indigenous people.
What are you hoping to achieve?
Hey they said I could take anything. That includes whatever is needed to keep them functioning. I’m trying to buy us more time before environmental collapse. Cause at this rate we aren’t solving shit. There isn’t a single place you can go back to where someone or something isn’t harmed or changed in the process.
I understand; I’m saying, you’d need to take back an entire industry to produce photovoltaics, batteries for storage, the computer control systems; or the high-tensile composites needed to build wind turbines, the fine machining to produce electric motors and wiring, and the cranes and such to raise them. You’d need to clear swaths of land for either, although you might be able to set up in the great plains, but in any case, all of the current renewable tech is high tech supported by countless other industries. You’d be taking back a civilization, to make it all work. And then you’ll need agriculture to feed all those people, housing for them to live, clothing, and so on; and which native tribe are you going to steal land from to put all of this?
Myself and tell Scott Norwood to aim a tad left.
