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Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages?
81–90 of 104 posts
Re: Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages?
#821000 plus or minus 200 years covers a huge range. 1000 was just about the fulcrum of the medieval period: life in 800 would have been a complete disaster, whereas life in 1200 was in some places a mini-Renaissance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_of_the_12th_century If you really got dropped at a random place, it would probably be grazing land or forest, especially in 800. You'd have to find the nearest tiny…
I think your ideas about this period are similar to ideas that the chinese people have about the U.S - many think that the U.S is overrun by gangsters and terrorists and lots of other dangers. Why is that? Because people only write about the drama. If you actually travel to any existing country where there are small villages, you will see that strangers are always treated with great friendliness and respect. If someo…
Soap = fatty acid + lye. How can anyone not know this? Run water through wood ash, boil a bit to concentrate, then mix with any accessible oil. Use eye protection at all times for those trying his at home.
Re: Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages?
#83Hope for 1200. 800 wasn't that great. Be humble, mute, and helpful. If you know latin, work on learning the current dialect/script -- you'll have a shot at declaring yourself a "wise man from the east" and go for the job of physician. I would be careful with the Prester John references, your mileage may vary. As one commenter pointed out, you should be able to make aspirin from willow bark and penicillin from mold. T…
As to the "man-at-arms thing": if you could bring with you to the past a suitcase or so of initial supplies, what would be the best investment in the long term to become a unopposable warlord (or just an arms dealer with a technological monopoly?) Just "a bunch of guns" wouldn't help once you had given them away, and even specifications wouldn't help because no one could engineer to the required tolerances at the time. I'd think the best investment would be body armor, walkee-talkie radios, and surveillance equipment, personally.
Re: Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Backpack full of seeds. Potatoes, corn, etc etc. The agriculture of that time was pretty much non-existent. You'd get something like 20x the output from your seeds.
Most modern crops have been bred or genetically engineered so that they physically cannot survive on their own. They need petrochemical fertilizers to grow, pesticides to fend off insects & fungi & disease, mechanized tilling to penetrate the ground, and artificial supports so they can stand up and avoid keeling over. In my sustainable agriculture course, I read that modern grain varieties put 60% of their photosynth…
Given the millions of backyard gardeners who produce yields beyond what the most productive mechanized farms of the early 20th century were capable of this claim is demonstably false. Contrary to the BS you are apparently swallowing with little skepticism from this class, modern varieties are not completely dependent upon heavy loads of fertilizer, etc. What makes them different is that when provided these addditional resources they will thrive and produce a large yield instead of shutting down and they can toldate being overcrowded (as well as having the structure to support the he's ier yield).
Re: Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages?
#85What would you do to prepare if you knew the journey back in time would start in one hour?
Backpack full of seeds. Potatoes, corn, etc etc. The agriculture of that time was pretty much non-existent. You'd get something like 20x the output from your seeds.
Not only was the agriculture of the time primitive, but you could bring new-world plants and make a mint... Potatoes are one of the most calorie-rich crops on a per-acre basis and a modern sugar beet or super sweet corn variety would be very popular. If tobacco was not such a diificult plant to cultvate you could make a fortune from just a pocketfull of seeds and a couple of growing seasons :)
Re: Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages?
#86there are a few series that cover that area.(not exact mind you, but close enough) First you have the Assati Shards series(1632, 1633, 1634)...basically a town in Virginia get transferred to Germany in 1632. And then you have the Conrad the Engineer series, where you have a guy transported to 13th century Poland, just before the Mongol invasion. But chances are, no matter where you wind up...you'll be dead within a w…
Strangely, it appears that, on the basis of one year of college Spanish combined with lots of practice from being the closest thing to a bilingual person at a job I had, I would be better off in Spain than England. There's a comparison of El Cid in Old Spanish and modern Spanish at wikipedia (see link below), and they don't appear to be very different. Spain was not conquered by non-Spanish speaking foreigners betwee…
plus they have Real Academia Española to regulate the intake of new words while English doesn't :)
Re: Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages?
#87Re: Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages?
#88"Alright you Primitive Screwheads, listen up! You see this? This... is my boomstick! The twelve-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart's top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about a hundred and nine, ninety five. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That's right. Shop smart. Shop S…
How much ammo would you carry?
It'd be nice to have enough to make an impression on anyone who threatened you. Aside from that, you'd probably never have to use it.
Re: Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages?
#89See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lest_Darkness_Fall
I like(and hate) the author so I try to see if I can get a preview online before I buy and sure enough http://www.scribd.com/doc/8651639/LSprague-de-Camp-Lest-Dark...
Re: Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages?
#90No need for the time travel. Try to survive nowadays within an isolated tribe in the amazonian forest.