this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
253 points (100.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

40553 readers
327 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Its the 14th century and you've had no time to prepare, after you're done reading this post you are snapped. What do you do?

(page 3) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Edit: I’m taking the middle road here and assuming something around year 1250 or so, not 1100 or 1400 as confusingly set in OP.

Okay, so unlike most other scenarios, I think I would be fine for a while at least. The peoples living where I live would have made and kept more or less regular contact with the sons of bitches from the south that would later crusade us (or I think maybe one of the crusades is presently ongoing at the time…) so while I would both introduce and be hit with diseases or more likely strains of familiar ones new to my body/their bodies, I think it wouldn’t be as destructive as entirely separated landmasses like America vs Europe.

So if I survive the shock my body gets hit with, and I don’t kill everyone around me, I think I would be fairly well received. As far as I’ve read, the languages and dialects were different than after the formalization of the written form, and at this time these lands were just starting to get forced under Swedish rule, so with my basic understanding of Swedish and of course my native language, I think I would be able to communicate well enough to not get instantly killed as a demon or something.

I think my best bet would be to introduce myself as some sort of demi-god, a bastard son of the god of forests and the hunt probably, which would hopefully explain my alien attire and materials used to make them. And the alien accent/dialect of both the local language or Swedish, depending on where I’d land. If the first contact I make aren’t local but crusaders, I suppose I’d have to try and push myself as a wandering preacher of Christ or something. I’d have to hope they’d speak Swedish, since I do not know German well enough to form two words together, and they’d likely be the next likely encounters. Novgorodians I think were fine with the Swedish language in general, so if our current knowledge of history was off enough that I’d meet them here, I’d still be fine. No idea what I’d pretend to be to them though. My limited knowledge of history doesn’t help there. But as far as I understand, they were sort of a melting pot of close-by cultures, and not so focused on these lands at this time, they’d just take me for a local hermit and let me run off clumsily.

If I was able to survive the first encounters and get myself to a village or a hillfort, I’d try and establish myself as a wise one, helping with calculations and engineering and whatnot to the best of my capabilities, which I would think honestly should far exceed those of the locals at the time. So maybe I’d get by just for being useful and knowledgeable.

But I don’t think I’d live a long life. These were a turbulent and violent time and one village elder or the other, fancying themself a king or whatever, would just send assassins to off me for being an asset for the local leader where I’d end up in.

Even if I’d travel to avoid this problem, it probably wouldn’t take until my old ages to have someone or something off me just by happenstance. And I wouldn’t want to live a hermit in a time where internet or computers aren’t a thing. I think the only way to cope would be to focus on a family, try and bring up children and have that fulfill my life as best it can, as long as it can.

Honestly, I consider myself lucky in this scenario. We still have our language alive and in use, the same the locals would speak at that time. This together with the general superstitious nature of the local tribes — which the crusades and Christianity, with overt blood and sadistic violence, would (thankfully later, I hope for my sake here, at least according to our current knowledge) succeed in some amount to water down and turn them to its specific flavor of lame ass superstition — would make it probably at least somewhat likely I wouldn’t be killed on sight or something to that effect.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I'd be fucked. I'm not succeeding in the present, I see 0 reason to believe that would be different in 1375.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Assuming I appear naked in a field in England in 1375, I would first try to, in no particular order (at first, then a particular order)

  • find cloth to cover my face and hands so I don't transmit or catch any diseases
  • distill water so I can drink it without getting diseases
  • use yams or horse urine to create HRT
  • communicate with the locals and seek a local blacksmith to create a metal tube with metal balls inside it, and mix charcoal, potash, and sulfur to make a primitive gun to defend myself against the people who think I'm a witch or a demon or whatever
  • talk to the women and encourage them to rise up against the system and patriarchy, teach them how to make weapons, about 4 field crop rotation if they don't already know it, otherwise about automated steam engines, weavers, hydroelectric dams, etc
  • march up to the feudal lord and demand democracy, with the fear of the gun and half the population behind me they will agree
  • teach about the scientific method to get them to question things, do their own research, and learn more
  • there will be scientific labs, primitive computers can be developed, we can spread our advanced culture to the rest of Afro-Eurasia, also prevent slavery
  • warn people about going to America and Australia unprepared, go with them in modern ships and don't spread disease, talk to the locals and trade with them and learn from them, don't kill them or replace them. Teach them the tech advancements too
  • Write down lots of things, invent the printing press if not already invented, document human knowledge and encourage more documentation by others

This is all if I have any measure of success at the first things and don't die or kill myself

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I don't want to pop your bubble, but I think you died somewhere around step 3

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

find the nearest sword and belly flop on its pointy side

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

I'd try and hold my breath to not set off the European diseases into America early.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

650 years ago this place was a sea. So I’d end up having to swim at least a couple of kilometers. Considering the current sea temperatures, I’d probably die of hypothermia before I could reach the shore.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Prophecy some major upcoming events, subsequently market myself as a saint, grab a comfy church position, sell indulgences, profit. Works in pretty much any era.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

How well do you know 14th century minutia? That can end up being a very long con if the next thing you remember is like the general lines of Joan of Arc's whole deal in 50 years or whatever.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Nah, just say the plague will ravage the land, war will last for another seventy years, and you're the only hope of salvation - that pretty much sums up the late 1300s. Then just get your followers off the battle lines, adopt a bunch of cats to keep the rat problem at bay, and practice basic sanitation and isolation - what we learned during COVID.

Within a couple of years, yours will be the only thriving community. Play your cards right, stay peaceful, prosperous, and show deference to the church and you'll be pretty much set. Might even wrangle a sainthood if you play your cards right.

/s to all this of course... most likely I'd just use my extensive knowledge of porn and poetry to try and charm a noblewoman to take care of me.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] loopedcandle 5 points 1 week ago

Anyone else a fan of Nate Bargatze?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I become a scribe or accountant, since I can write cursive, do math, and know some Latin.
There was a monastery within walking distance of my home at that time, so that's where I'd head first.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I'm in Japan and while I can speak modern Japanese I don't know shit about classical Japanese so I'd be screwed. I'm also not Japanese so good chance I end up getting killed or some shit

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I don't have the knowledge to survive in the 12 century so either some Native Americans find me and are kind enough to teach me to survive

Or I just die.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Probably not the answer you thought, but succeed by knowing there are wild animals that could easily kill me. It's either I die by that, or wait until the lack of my blood thinners kills me, sl I'd definitely take the quicker death than the slower one.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

First off. Do I get to bring stuff with me? Like say the entire printed off contents of wikipedia.

also, I would like find one or two things that hadn't quite been invented yet and 'invent' it.

also, Also, with a modicum of military power, I'd probably start a religion.

This assumes I have time to learn the local dialect

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Assuming I’m snapped back to the same part of the earth, climate-wise that’s ideal in the US PNW coming out of spring. Plenty of berries and food to forage, and I’ll probably impress the natives with my watch and well made clothes. I can probably get the native tribes to metals, and gain acceptance with my magic hand tool that will briefly shine light at night for a few weeks. I don’t know offhand where copper would be, but I know gold is in the streams, and I know how to placer mine, so I can get some electricity going with that and magnetized rocks from lava flows.

I think first contact would be the key.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

There's a former nunnery down the road. I suppose I'd try to join. Or maybe find a farmer who's looking for someone to look after his kids because his third wife died in childbirth.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Good thing I binge isekai anime

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

This is very A Connecticut Yankee in King Author's Court

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Connecticut_Yankee_in_King_Arthur%27s_Court

I hated that book. So pretentious.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Slowly and with plenty of witnesses invent the toilet. But like out of wood pieces like a barrel or ship. Rain barrel on the roof for water. Start suggesting more contained sewage.

Should be just enough to not get dead for heresy or something but live comfortably and help a shitty situation.

[–] Zos_Kia 4 points 1 week ago

They had sewage and toilets since Roman times. It wasn't affordable to many (and you couldn't make it affordable) but they definitely knew how to make it.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

The Ring of Fire series which is about this concept was such an amazing read. Unfortunately the infinite branching plotlines became way more than I could handle.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Try to use some type of boiling water technique to invent drinkable sanitary drinking water that doesn't get me drunk (might not be necessary in some parts of Asia)

Most parts of the world that is not North America: try to convince some wealthy persons and bar owners to sponsor me to getting a bunch of bread molds and rats/mice, possibly even pigs, to conduct antibiotics and vaccine research, otherwise I might die from random sources...

Not sure if I could reasonably do those given my limited biology knowledge, but I guess they are worth trying. Besides that I'd just try to be less blunt/offensive so I don't get sent to jail and try to live my best life I guess

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Depends what clothes I'm wearing when it happens.

If I'm wearing anything that could remotely be seen as fancy back then (which I mean a lot of modern clothes could pass off as), since I'm near the ocean, I'd immediately run into the water not seeing anyone, and then pretend I'm a royal foreigner who ended up shipwrecked. Since I usually wear a watch, have a tungsten (Wolfram) crystal wedding band as well, that would help me in passing off as royalty as well. This is assuming the people helping me aren't brigands. There's things we do and know of that we take for granted that could be used to pass off as someone upper class too, like reading.

Then next steps would be to get to an aristocrats home, and eventually I'd imagine somewhere where I could work with scholars so they can teach me the language and we can work on translation so we can understand each other. Would have to be extremely careful of smallpox during all this of course.

Once we could, that's when I'd finally whip out my phone to trusted scholars and pull up my survival books, books on plumbing, etc specifically, and to explain that this is a special metal and glass book that can hold many books that's common in the land I'm from, and that I can teach them how to build them. But that we'd need to build plumbing because I'd like a shower by then.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (2 children)

There's a book with almost the exact same premise.

Destiny's Crucible.

It's fairly good, can be a bit slow though. (I'm 7 books in)

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Basically start digging my grave, wondering if I'm gonna die from my asthma or my dermatitis first in that era. I'm betting on my asthma.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Well, staying in the same location? I'm in the US, so... I'd probably try to get writing invented. To my knowledge, besides some of the Central American empires, there's no evidence or even claim of there having been any kind of writing or system for making information durable. I know there's a lot of clay here, I'm pretty sure we could bake clay tablets to store down information. There's also tule reeds here that were already being extensively used, and those could probably be made into a kind of paper as well. As to whether the people would accept that, I have no fucking idea at all; what we know of the California tribes suggests they were always semi-nomadic, but that's all very well into the post-contact period and much of what we know was written down by the Spanish while being the biggest bastards they possibly could to the locals. I dunno how useful record-keeping would be to a nomadic people. It's also entirely possible the people would be like "uh, yeah, we know how to write, dummy", and it was just lost in the multiple waves of pandemics.

I think probably something that -might- be achievable is figuring out glass. I'm mostly sure that if the native Americans had glass, we would have seen some sign of it in the archeological record by now. I'm sure some smarty pants is going to come along and tell me "you can't just throw sand in a kiln and make glass, you need a special kind of sand blah blah blah and here's 99 reasons why that won't work". Yeah, you're probably right, but I don't know any better, so I'd still definitely try. I also remember reading that clear glass was a thing figured out near Venice when they started adding grass ash or some shit to the sand, so I'd definitely experiment with that, too. Glass is just dead useful -and- pretty, so I'm fairly confident I'd get some acceptance that way.

I would say metal smithing, but the only metal deposits nearby that I know of are mercury and gold. You can't make nails and tools out of mercury and gold.

Also, maybe water wheels? To my knowledge, we have no record of native Americans using water wheels for work (I.e. grinding corn or acorns into flour). I think if I managed to put a basic water wheel together, I'd be pretty popular.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Well I be naked, so would need to make/steal clothing very quickly

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›