If you could travel back in time...

"Jagvar" (Jagvar) 11/18/2013 at 15:53 • Filed to: None

1

21

...what would you do? Assassinate Hitler? Prevent history's greatest disasters? Bet on sporting events? Buy Apple stock when it's dirt cheap? Hook up with sexy historical figures? Convince people you're a powerful wizard and get them to worship you? I want to hear some interesting ideas.

CalzoneGolem > Jagvar 11/18/2013 at 15:55

2

Concerts ... every legendary Zepplin show, Woodstock, The Doors, Queen ... I'd see them all.

But first I'd have to go back and make some investments to fund this enterprise.

wacopalypsenow > Jagvar 11/18/2013 at 15:57

0

See Pink Floyd live. That's all.

Brian, The Life of > Jagvar 11/18/2013 at 15:57

2

Just off the top of my head, go back to my high school self and talk him out of selling my '66 Mustang Fastback for one.

Party-vi > Jagvar 11/18/2013 at 15:57

2

1) Invest heavily in Apple

2) Invest heavily in Google

3) Buy all the cars!

davedave1111 > CalzoneGolem 11/18/2013 at 15:57

0

Investments? All you need is a set of lottery numbers. Boring, but true. There's nothing quite like a $500 million return from a $1 ticket.

CalzoneGolem > davedave1111 11/18/2013 at 16:01

0

Well I'd need a way to get period correct monies. No sense going back to 1965 with a stack of 2010 20's. It'd be much easier to get seed money from coin collectors and head on back.

deadpedal > Jagvar 11/18/2013 at 16:01

0

Pull tubes with daVinci.

Or discourage religion.

davedave1111 > Jagvar 11/18/2013 at 16:04

0

I'd do whatever I could to accelerate economic growth throughout history. Sounds boring, but all the good stuff we have is through being rich. The richer everyone gets, the more good stuff.

Even if the invention of the motorcar only happened fifty years sooner or so, we'd basically have half as many cool old cars again as we do, thanks to having half as much again extra history. And there'd be loads more rich people in the world by now, so there'd be a bigger total car market, and consequently more room for niche models for enthusiasts.

Oh yes, there's also the minor side-benefit of saving untold hundreds of millions of lives, making billions happier, and so-on, but that's unimportant compared to the possibility of a wider variety of manual diesel wagons.

TheJWT > Jagvar 11/18/2013 at 16:05

0

1. Go to the early 60's

2. Invest to get monies

3. Buy several 250 GTOs

4. Drive the piss out of one and hermetically seal the rest

5. Return to the present and sell said GTOs

Who needs sway bars anyway > Jagvar 11/18/2013 at 16:05

0

Given my current age and interests, travel to 1950, destroy time machine, settle in a small home in Maine, start a family, buy a Jeep and a Station Wagon and be happy.

davedave1111 > CalzoneGolem 11/18/2013 at 16:07

0

Gold. Bullion or jewellery, depending on the amount you want to deal with.

PS9 > Jagvar 11/18/2013 at 16:14

0

I'd take the 1.0L 3 Cyl back to Ford of the Model T days, and sell it for a small fortune. This way, we're already getting 40 MPG well before the oil embargo hits. By the time it does, Malaise era V8s will make 300 HP and get 30 MPG, just as they did a few decades ago today. Since cars are already super fuel efficient, CAFE never happens, and the gas price spike isn't anywhere near as sharp.

I take my 1927 money to the future today and turn my small fortune into a huge one.

Then I step back a little bit further and invest in the usual suspects. I don't try to kill hitler because many time travelers have already died this way. I also try to evade super-big changes (like the one up top? Hurr Durr) because they might have super-big and undesirable consequences, which would send me into an infinite time travel loop hopelessly trying to fix them.

I think my last act as a time traveler would be to go to the far future; I want to see whether or no we humans ever get over our shit and manage genuine interstellar space travel, or die landlocked to out beautiful, but temporary cradle. I also want to see whether or not the universe really does get ripped apart by dark matter, but thats obviously going to be a one way trip.

CalzoneGolem > davedave1111 11/18/2013 at 16:15

0

Ah yes gold, the universal currency. Knows no bounds geographically or chronologically.

davedave1111 > CalzoneGolem 11/18/2013 at 16:19

0

Well, you might have trouble in the future. And there have been times and places with currency transfer restrictions that might cause you some trouble with the authorities, although not many of them are ones anyone is likely to want to visit.

CalzoneGolem > davedave1111 11/18/2013 at 16:22

0

You are a pedantic little cuss aren't you?

davedave1111 > PS9 11/18/2013 at 16:29

0

The problem with picking some technology or other to take back before its time is that they all rely on loads of other tech to build them.

Sure, you could show Henry Ford the engine, and he'd be amazed. He couldn't build copies of it, though, because it's too far out of its time. They didn't have the machining skills to build to such fine tolerances, nor the materials, and they definitely didn't have electronics plants to build the electronic parts, or the ability to manufacture the right kind of spark plugs, or any of a thousand other parts.

You might manage to go back in time and build a better fan belt a few years before it came about, or something like that, but finding knowledge that can transfer back is a lot harder than it looks at first. A lot of stuff is known years before it can be built cheaply enough to put into production, whereas it's rare to find some piece of information which can make a big change in what is done with current materials.

It's not completely unheard of, though. Ground effect in motorsport is an example - it would have worked just as well decades earlier. ORT is another, and much more useful if you ever do happen to find yourself time-travelling.

davedave1111 > CalzoneGolem 11/18/2013 at 16:30

0

I've just spent too long thinking about this. And reading Heinlein on the subject :)

PS9 > davedave1111 11/18/2013 at 16:45

0

It's just a hypothetical based on imaginary technology, dude. Don't over think this.

BATC42 > Jagvar 11/18/2013 at 16:52

0

Get Delorean to put a real engine in the car, or at the very least, a real version of the PRV Engine.

Stevo777 > Jagvar 11/18/2013 at 17:00

0

I would pull a back to the future kind of deal and take a sports almanac back into time and purchase the cars of my dreams!

davedave1111 > PS9 11/18/2013 at 17:07

0

Heh, there's a lot of fiction written about time travel, and all the good stuff spends a lot of time dealing with this kind of thing :)

It's easy to think that as reasonably well educated modern people we could go back in time and suddenly 'invent' all these wonderful things, but that's not really true.

Some of us find it interesting to try and work out what kinds of things you actually could tell, say, Henry Ford that would make a real difference. That's basically the same as asking what the really fundamental breakthroughs in car design have been, rather than the ones that just built on new materials and technologies. There are surprisingly few.

Oh, the safety cell, seatbelts, and passive safety in general. That would be a good one.