Going back in time.

[Hellenic Protectorates]

Hitler was in prison for a time. Its when he wrote Mein Kampf.

But not in 1935. He was already in charge by then.

Hm. Musta got the year wrong. I didn't wiki it before I posted so pretend I put whatever years he was in prison.

[Rambhutan]

Hitler was in prison for a time. Its when he wrote Mein Kampf.

But not in 1935. He was already in charge by then.

brilliantly done

[AiliailiA]

Hitler was in prison for a time. Its when he wrote Mein Kampf.

Exactly. ...I could also tell him the cyanide's a revolutionary cure for writer's block...

His jailers were pretty chummy with him though. I don't fancy your chances of getting out alive.

[Hellenic Protectorates]

Exactly. ...I could also tell him the cyanide's a revolutionary cure for writer's block...

His jailers were pretty chummy with him though. I don't fancy your chances of getting out alive.

That's the beauty of it. As soon as it took it I could use my fancy pocket-sized time machine to make a quit getaway.

And if not, eh. Not big deal. My life in exchange for tens of millions of innocents at the Nazis' hands? I'd make that trade.

[AiliailiA]

The time machine gives you something like prescience.

How to get into the same cell block as Adolph? Well, commit a crime I guess. But you don't have control over what the judge is going to do, or what the prison administration is going to do. But if you still have your time-machine (like, it's tiny and it's implanted in you somewhere) you can just go back a few months in time and behave slightly differently, and repeat until you get it right.

Then once you're in the right cell-block, you have to make friends with Hitler. That might not be too hard, but he was a bit nutty and would take strong and lasting dislikes to people for small matters. It might take three or four tries, using the 'undo' button which is your time-machine, before he'd become so trusting that he'd take a pill you offered him.

So it's something like prescience, but takes a lot of time (in your time frame) and patience on your part. It might be very boring, trying to live out the same experiences with only the one difference you're trying to cultivate to get the right outcome. Like sitting through Back To The Future MMXIX.

[AiliailiA]

Or perhaps it's the common assumption (from Dr Who?) that time machines are also capable of physically delivering you to some place.

If you travel forwards or backwards in time, but remain in the same location by an inertial frame, you'd be almost certain to be out in space somewhere. So it's assumed that when you go back in time, you also reverse the motion of the spinning and orbiting earth.

Thinking about that gets hard fast. So we just assume that when time travelling, we can also teleport.

[Trotskylvania]

Creating steel doesn't need a blast furnace. Steel was been produced in bloomeries for arguably half a millennium or more before the earliest blast furnaces. And, since the first blast furnace technology predates the era I'm talking about by about 500 years, I'm not convinced blast furnace technology is an unreasonable expectation.

Making steel affordably, however, requires very different tech then the Romans were used to. A bloomery is fine if you're making steel weapons or armor. You're only heating one ingot at a time, and then beating it to shape by hand.

It's not going to cut it to make sheet metal. To make sheet metal of a consistent thickness, you need industrial rollers, some way to power them, and then you need to squeeze 1700 degree steel between them. Making sheet metal is rough work, and it requires a lot of capital investment. Making the tools is going to be a bigger endeavor than making the sheet metal itself. Making the type of machines that are used to produce sheet metal takes some complicated machine tools which you'd have to build first. And remember, you don't have any tech more advanced than a blacksmith's forge to do this.

Similarly, you're suggesting nitrocellulose is a big rate-determining step that's going to shut down the whole endeavour... but it's really no big deal. As a chemist, I'm aware that it would be pretty easy to make nitrocellulose in a pretty basic lab, by combining Nitric Acid and something like cotton. I have an advantage over Romans, in that I know how to take 'vitriol' and use it to make Nitric acid (and I would also use vitriol to catalyse the nitrocellulose reaction).

You also benefit from some nice, precise tools that you're probably not going to find in Rome. So you'd have to make them or bring them back with you. Probably both. And you'd have to eventually teach Romans how to do it, and again, here's the key part: not blowing yourself up while doing it.

The early mass production of nitrocellulose was fraught with mishap, and I doubt you could avoid that with hindsight. You'll be working without the benefit of modern tools while you're doing this.

Steel is not the hardship you suggest. Stamping it requires a lot less tooling than you seem to be proposing... I'd probably take an easy route and use a very heavy weight (mechanically lifted) to punch pretty simple template pieces - much like industrialised stamping, but without the industrial machinery. The hardest part of the assembly process would be the welding, not making components - but the earliest (archeologically supported) welding seems to have taken place 300 years before I'm talking about, so I don't really see a problem here, either.

Welding is one thing. Making your welds strong enough to withstand the kind of forces they'll be put under is another.

You're taking for granted just how complicated steel making is. There's good reason that steel wasn't able to be effectively mass-produced until the 1800s. Making steel is a finicky process, and it takes a lot of delicate balancing of the pig iron, the fuel stock, and the amount of air to blow through it. Too little, and you have cast iron. Too much, and you burn off all the carbon, and are left with soft wrought iron. Then you need to deal with slagging to remove other impurities that could end up ruining the strength of your steel.

And you've got to teach a group of people that don't even have algebra, let alone calculus, the chemistry behind this. My first suggestion is bring back math textbooks and then work from there.

The biggest advantage I have over the Romans of the day isn't that I know what I'm looking for already, or that I know stuff they couldn't have known (I don't think that's true, even)... no, my biggest advantage would be that I already know WHERE to find the technology that already existed, to bring it together. (e.g. Anatolia for the bloomery technology or China for the blast furnace technology. (Africa for the cotton technology.) India or Greece for the welding technology. Roman Gaul for Zinc. And so forth.

I never said it wasn't do able. I said it would be difficult. Probably a century long effort, and it'd end up totally transforming Roman society in the process. Unless some patrician has you killed for disrupting their conservative social order.

[Nazis in Space]

I wonder how hard it'd be to convince the Romans to drop their sign value notation in favour of positional notation. The folks had egos, after all, and they were firmly convinced that everything that could be known was already known, hence the tendency towards copying and commenting Aristotle & co, rather than actually bothering to research things themselves.

[AiliailiA]

I wonder how hard it'd be to convince the Romans to drop their sign value notation in favour of positional notation. The folks had egos, after all, and they were firmly convinced that everything that could be known was already known, hence the tendency towards copying and commenting Aristotle & co, rather than actually bothering to research things themselves.

Not much chance I'd say. The Emperor Claudius tried to make Romans use his three new letters ... without much success, and the moment he was gone everyone stopped using them at all.

Even if you were Emperor, you'd have a hard time converting them to Arabic numerals.

[Grave_n_idle]

And you've got to teach a group of people that don't even have algebra, let alone calculus, the chemistry behind this. My first suggestion is bring back math textbooks and then work from there.

And... we're back at 'people a long time ago were stupider than we are'.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

And you've got to teach a group of people that don't even have algebra, let alone calculus, the chemistry behind this. My first suggestion is bring back math textbooks and then work from there.

And... we're back at 'people a long time ago were stupider than we are'.

Which is a very common misconception. They weren't stupider than us (as you well know ). They just lacked the technologies we have. I mean, the power was there, they just hadn't been able to harness it the way we did.

If they were actually stupid, marvelous things like the the Great Wall of China or the Pyramids of Giza wouldn't exist.

[Nazis in Space]

And you've got to teach a group of people that don't even have algebra, let alone calculus, the chemistry behind this. My first suggestion is bring back math textbooks and then work from there.

And... we're back at 'people a long time ago were stupider than we are'.

No, we're back to 'Any given advancement requires a complicated set of philosophical, social, economic, demographic, technological and scientific preconditions interacting with each other, and believing that one can randomly insert a random, immensely limited aspect of LOLMODERN into an utterly alien society existing 2000 years ago and speed development up by an order of magnitude is lunacy'.

Curiously, it's you who appears to believe that people a long time ago were stupider than we are. It's you who believes that they need your wise and benevolent help to advance FASTER, as opposed to believing that under the conditions of the time, they did pretty much as well as they could be expected to.

It's rather entertaining that threads concerning history usually devolve to 'Lets IGNORE history and all its implications!', though.

[Rambhutan]

And... we're back at 'people a long time ago were stupider than we are'.

Which is a very common misconception. They weren't stupider than us (as you well know ). They just lacked the technologies we have. I mean, the power was there, they just hadn't been able to harness it the way we did.

If they were actually stupid, marvelous things like the the Great Wall of China or the Pyramids of Giza wouldn't exist.

They didn't have calculus, that doesn't imply they were stupider just that they didn't have calculus. Best way to teach someone calculus might be with a maths textbook...

[Grave_n_idle]

And... we're back at 'people a long time ago were stupider than we are'.

No, we're back to 'Any given advancement requires a complicated set of philosophical, social, economic, demographic, technological and scientific preconditions interacting with each other, and believing that one can randomly insert a random, immensely limited aspect of LOLMODERN into an utterly alien society existing 2000 years ago and speed development up by an order of magnitude is lunacy'.

Curiously, it's you who appears to believe that people a long time ago were stupider than we are. It's you who believes that they need your wise and benevolent help to advance FASTER, as opposed to believing that under the conditions of the time, they did pretty much as well as they could be expected to.

It's rather entertaining that threads concerning history usually devolve to 'Lets IGNORE history and all its implications!', though.

Isn't it, though? Isn't it weird how threads about interfering with the course of history diverge from what actually happened.

Hey... actually, that kinda makes sense...

*nods*


Serious answer to the semi-spoken question - it's not that they need my benevolent help to advance faster. It's just easier to find a moss-covered three-handled family gradunza when you know what it looks like.

[Grave_n_idle]

Which is a very common misconception. They weren't stupider than us (as you well know ). They just lacked the technologies we have. I mean, the power was there, they just hadn't been able to harness it the way we did.

If they were actually stupid, marvelous things like the the Great Wall of China or the Pyramids of Giza wouldn't exist.

They didn't have calculus, that doesn't imply they were stupider just that they didn't have calculus.

No, but "...And you've got to teach a group of people that don't even have algebra, let alone calculus, the chemistry behind this..." does suggest that we're dealing with people who can't understand basic practical chemistry (despite the fact that we know they did basic chemistry), apparently because they lack our modern mathematical abilities.

[Trotskylvania]

They didn't have calculus, that doesn't imply they were stupider just that they didn't have calculus.

No, but "...And you've got to teach a group of people that don't even have algebra, let alone calculus, the chemistry behind this..." does suggest that we're dealing with people who can't understand basic practical chemistry (despite the fact that we know they did basic chemistry), apparently because they lack our modern mathematical abilities.

No, it did not imply that. For fuck's sake, why else did I suggest bringing back maths textbooks first instead?

[AiliailiA]

And... we're back at 'people a long time ago were stupider than we are'.

No, we're back to 'Any given advancement requires a complicated set of philosophical, social, economic, demographic, technological and scientific preconditions interacting with each other, and believing that one can randomly insert a random, immensely limited aspect of LOLMODERN into an utterly alien society existing 2000 years ago and speed development up by an order of magnitude is lunacy'.

Ancient societies aren't "utterly alien". The time-traveller knows something about them, and can for instance learn the grammar and vocabulary of their language before 'going back'. The time-traveller's accent will be horrible, almost unintellible, but they know things others don't. That's got to help bridge the gap.

Pick an enlightened period, study it carefully to know what knowledge they would benefit from, study present knowledge so you are not just a bearer of textbooks in a truly alien tongue (a future tongue), and knowledge would be your passport.

Hmm. It is dawning on me just how much effort it would take to do an ancient history intervention, and get any kind of good outcome.
Maybe I'm not up for this.

Curiously, it's you who appears to believe that people a long time ago were stupider than we are. It's you who believes that they need your wise and benevolent help to advance FASTER, as opposed to believing that under the conditions of the time, they did pretty much as well as they could be expected to.

It's rather entertaining that threads concerning history usually devolve to 'Lets IGNORE history and all its implications!', though.

This isn't a thread concerning history, it's a thread which invites us to fantasize about messing with history, on the (fantastic) assumption that we could.

It's not a history thread, it's a time-travel thread. Lighten up.

[AiliailiA]

Definitely have to take a computer with me. I can't carry all those textbooks, and there is other current knowledge I will need which I don't currently have. Gonna take Wikipedia on my hard-drive.

And solar panels to power it. And an identical computer to swap out parts which might break. And a printer to so I can share the information in a form others can use. And paper. No, wait. Some kind of printer that can print on really rough paper.

To hell with it. I'm taking a clean pair of underwear and just going already!

[Genivaria]

Something tells me I'm gonna have to bring a professor of Latin with me.

[Tsaraine]

I'd go back to late Republican Rome. I'd give them the biggest nuclear warhead I could take with me. It would be armed.

The Roman Empire was an engine of exploitation and invasion built upon the backs of slaves, with its roots sunk deep into the economic systems of the Republic. Larger landholders bought out smaller landholders, creating slave-run plantation agriculture and driving the landless farmers into the city. The ex-farmers who didn't get sold into slavery joined the Legions, and were sent to conquer neighbouring territories. The populations of those territories became slaves for the plantations, and their land became farms for Legion veterans ... until it was bought up by the plantations, the landless farmers joined the Legions, the borders expanded yet more to provide more slaves and booty for the Empire, and the whole process repeated itself.

This went on until the Roman Empire was too big to effectively govern, even with the attempt to downsize the administration by splitting it into East and West. When it ran out of convenient places to invade, loot, enslave and colonize, the Empire stalled, and soon fell apart. The last thing I want to do is make it easier for them to conquer places.

So no, I'm not particularly fond of Rome (and I didn't even get into the horrible sexual politics of the Romans, or their even-worse buddies the Hellenes). Of any classical civilization the one I'm most fond of is probably the Persians (and they were no bed of roses either).

I guess I might take horses and other livestock to the Americas around 10,000 BC - or just prevent the original American horses from being eaten en masse in the Pleistocene extinction event. That'd drastically alter the history of the Americas, almost certainly accelerate the population, agricultural, and technological growth of the Americas, prevent centuries of colonial dominance by European powers, and - a big plus! - probably prevent the Aztecs from ever existing. Increased population density would let them develop their own indigenous epidemic diseases, and trans-Atlantic contact would lead to waves of plague wiping out the majority of the population in Eurasia as well as the Americas.

You can try to save a particular era, or civilization, or nation if you want; I'm not convinced that any of them deserve the assistance. Instead, I'll remake the Earth. Everything will change! Human nature being what it is, the new timeline will be as full of jerks as the old one, but they will at least be different jerks, and the civilization holding capacity of the Americas will be greatly increased.

Alternately, I might take that great big nuke and plant it on the side of the Chicxulub meteorite. Prevent the K-T extinction and really shake things up.

[Nazis in Space]

Ancient societies aren't "utterly alien". The time-traveller knows something about them, and can for instance learn the grammar and vocabulary of their language before 'going back'. The time-traveller's accent will be horrible, almost unintellible, but they know things others don't. That's got to help bridge the gap.

Pick an enlightened period, study it carefully to know what knowledge they would benefit from, study present knowledge so you are not just a bearer of textbooks in a truly alien tongue (a future tongue), and knowledge would be your passport.

Hmm. It is dawning on me just how much effort it would take to do an ancient history intervention, and get any kind of good outcome.
Maybe I'm not up for this.

They're far more alien than what people imagine. It's not just language, it's the underlying principles of society, its customs and mannerisms - not just court etiquette but everyday life. Frankly, it'd be a lot easier for us to integrate into Klingon society than into Roman society.

Well, I'm exaggerating. Roman is just about doable. Greek or Mesopotamian... That's where shit's seriously broken.

This isn't a thread concerning history, it's a thread which invites us to fantasize about messing with history, on the (fantastic) assumption that we could.

It's not a history thread, it's a time-travel thread. Lighten up.

I realise that. There is, however, a distinct difference between 'Fantastic scenario, feasible outcomes within the premises of said scenario' and 'Fantastic scenario, fantastic outcomes because hey, giggles' and lastly the one I complained about, 'Fantastic scenario, fantastic outcomes that I'll still defend as being perfectly feasible.

[AiliailiA]

I'd go back to late Republican Rome. I'd give them the biggest nuclear warhead I could take with me. It would be armed.

The Roman Empire was an engine of exploitation and invasion built upon the backs of slaves, with its roots sunk deep into the economic systems of the Republic. Larger landholders bought out smaller landholders, creating slave-run plantation agriculture and driving the landless farmers into the city. The ex-farmers who didn't get sold into slavery joined the Legions, and were sent to conquer neighbouring territories. The populations of those territories became slaves for the plantations, and their land became farms for Legion veterans ... until it was bought up by the plantations, the landless farmers joined the Legions, the borders expanded yet more to provide more slaves and booty for the Empire, and the whole process repeated itself.

This went on until the Roman Empire was too big to effectively govern, even with the attempt to downsize the administration by splitting it into East and West. When it ran out of convenient places to invade, loot, enslave and colonize, the Empire stalled, and soon fell apart. The last thing I want to do is make it easier for them to conquer places.

So no, I'm not particularly fond of Rome (and I didn't even get into the horrible sexual politics of the Romans, or their even-worse buddies the Hellenes). Of any classical civilization the one I'm most fond of is probably the Persians (and they were no bed of roses either).

The Romans were successful barbarians. The Greeks weren't much better. Or the Persians.

I approve your plan to nuke them all.

Can you advise me, to help me make my way in the world without any of them, whether I should study the Hindi language, or Mandarin?

You can try to save a particular era, or civilization, or nation if you want; I'm not convinced that any of them deserve the assistance. Instead, I'll remake the Earth. Everything will change! Human nature being what it is, the new timeline will be as full of jerks as the old one, but they will at least be different jerks, and the civilization holding capacity of the Americas will be greatly increased.

Alternately, I might take that great big nuke and plant it on the side of the Chicxulub meteorite. Prevent the K-T extinction and really shake things up.

I for one welcome our new old dinosaur overlords!

[Genivaria]

I'd go back to late Republican Rome. I'd give them the biggest nuclear warhead I could take with me. It would be armed.

The Roman Empire was an engine of exploitation and invasion built upon the backs of slaves, with its roots sunk deep into the economic systems of the Republic. Larger landholders bought out smaller landholders, creating slave-run plantation agriculture and driving the landless farmers into the city. The ex-farmers who didn't get sold into slavery joined the Legions, and were sent to conquer neighbouring territories. The populations of those territories became slaves for the plantations, and their land became farms for Legion veterans ... until it was bought up by the plantations, the landless farmers joined the Legions, the borders expanded yet more to provide more slaves and booty for the Empire, and the whole process repeated itself.

This went on until the Roman Empire was too big to effectively govern, even with the attempt to downsize the administration by splitting it into East and West. When it ran out of convenient places to invade, loot, enslave and colonize, the Empire stalled, and soon fell apart. The last thing I want to do is make it easier for them to conquer places.

So no, I'm not particularly fond of Rome (and I didn't even get into the horrible sexual politics of the Romans, or their even-worse buddies the Hellenes). Of any classical civilization the one I'm most fond of is probably the Persians (and they were no bed of roses either).

I guess I might take horses and other livestock to the Americas around 10,000 BC - or just prevent the original American horses from being eaten en masse in the Pleistocene extinction event. That'd drastically alter the history of the Americas, almost certainly accelerate the population, agricultural, and technological growth of the Americas, prevent centuries of colonial dominance by European powers, and - a big plus! - probably prevent the Aztecs from ever existing. Increased population density would let them develop their own indigenous epidemic diseases, and trans-Atlantic contact would lead to waves of plague wiping out the majority of the population in Eurasia as well as the Americas.

You can try to save a particular era, or civilization, or nation if you want; I'm not convinced that any of them deserve the assistance. Instead, I'll remake the Earth. Everything will change! Human nature being what it is, the new timeline will be as full of jerks as the old one, but they will at least be different jerks, and the civilization holding capacity of the Americas will be greatly increased.

Alternately, I might take that great big nuke and plant it on the side of the Chicxulub meteorite. Prevent the K-T extinction and really shake things up.

Wow......
But seriously, I think they just needed a little make over in the way of their beliefs, make them a little more egalitarian maybe? Slavery, xenophobia, sexism, exploitiation of the work..ing....class.........NUKE THEM ALL!

[Barringtonia]

..but I've heard that the British paratrooper who would have killed the first Nazi on D-Day missed out to the guy behind him, because his Sten gun jammed.

"Well that's just great, this D-Day is just ruined for me now..."

*stomps off in huff*

[AiliailiA]

Ancient societies aren't "utterly alien". The time-traveller knows something about them, and can for instance learn the grammar and vocabulary of their language before 'going back'. The time-traveller's accent will be horrible, almost unintellible, but they know things others don't. That's got to help bridge the gap.

Pick an enlightened period, study it carefully to know what knowledge they would benefit from, study present knowledge so you are not just a bearer of textbooks in a truly alien tongue (a future tongue), and knowledge would be your passport.

Hmm. It is dawning on me just how much effort it would take to do an ancient history intervention, and get any kind of good outcome.
Maybe I'm not up for this.

They're far more alien than what people imagine. It's not just language, it's the underlying principles of society, its customs and mannerisms - not just court etiquette but everyday life. Frankly, it'd be a lot easier for us to integrate into Klingon society than into Roman society.

Knowing the language would still be an advantage. You'd have to learn to pronounce it in a way that was understood, but it would be a big step forward to have grammar and vocab.

You don't think they had idiot savants back then? Get yourself into the hands of scholars not slavers (some gold would help with this) and your "arcane" knowledge would make up for your terrible manners.

Well, I'm exaggerating. Roman is just about doable. Greek or Mesopotamian... That's where shit's seriously broken.

You're probably right.

This isn't a thread concerning history, it's a thread which invites us to fantasize about messing with history, on the (fantastic) assumption that we could.

It's not a history thread, it's a time-travel thread. Lighten up.

I realise that. There is, however, a distinct difference between 'Fantastic scenario, feasible outcomes within the premises of said scenario' and 'Fantastic scenario, fantastic outcomes because hey, giggles' and lastly the one I complained about, 'Fantastic scenario, fantastic outcomes that I'll still defend as being perfectly feasible.

I don't see why anyone should have to defend anything, given the first premise is fantastic.

My antigrav mech kicks your sentient tyrannosaurus in the goolies! Or if it doesn't have goolies, it kicks it in the shins!