173
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by Kookie215@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

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?

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 41 points 2 months ago

If I snapped you back in time 650 years

2025 - 650 =1375

Its the 12th century

1375 is the 14th century. Which do you mean?

Answering the actual question, nothing good would come of it if my location on earth didn't change. Being the only white person in rural northern Japan well before Europeans came in the 1500s would probably not be a good situation for me. The language, at least the written one, was very different. Being the Nanboku-chō era, things would probably be not great since it was in the midst of 60ish years of war with two different people claiming to be in charge. I can't find, at least before my coffee kicks in, exactly what kinda state Mutsu Province, as it was then called, was in at the time.

[-] otp@sh.itjust.works 26 points 2 months ago

English would also be unrecognizable in 1375. At a glance, it seems like it was Middle English, which means you'd probably get as much intelligibility with any other English speakers as a monolingual Dutch speaker would have with a monolingual English speaker today. Maybe a bit closer, but still.

Shakespeare was still hundreds of years away.

...Not that any of this would matter to anyone living in North America.

[-] yoevli@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

Middle English is certainly difficult to understand, but most words still bear some resemblance to modern English. I think it would probably be more like a native German speaker trying to understand a heavy Bavarian dialect, or at worst a Dutch speaker trying to understand the same.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 39 points 2 months ago

Well, I would give you the answer, but since I snapped back as soon as I read the post, I'm now responding what has been 650 years later for me, and I'm too fucking old for this shit a second time. I bypassed getting snapped back this time by just not reading the post and coming straight in to comment.

Now, what will happen if I read the

[-] Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 35 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I'd use my knowledge of the future to do two chicks at the same time

[-] MissJinx@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago

well I'm a woman so anything I do will be witchcreaft. I would probably try to get to north america in some way and warn them "the fuckers are coming".

that would mess up the future lol

[-] Geetnerd@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

"You don't need that knowledge to do two chicks at the same time, man."

"If you want two chicks to double up on a dude like me, you do."

[-] Kolanaki@pawb.social 11 points 2 months ago

"Hey ladies... Ever been with a guy who can read?"

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] PahdyGnome@lemmy.world 31 points 2 months ago

As an Australian I would struggle significantly unless you were to also transport me geographically.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 31 points 2 months ago

I'm on the Gregorian calendar, 650 years ago is the year 1375. I'm in North Carolina, so if I were to snap back in time at my present location I would be a blue eyed white guy in pre-contact North America. And while I think I'm an above average candidate for the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court scenario I'm not realistically able to start "from scratch." I'd probably make it the summer on forage and my own body fat. I don't picture encountering the natives going particularly well, for me or them. I'm not sick and I'm vaccinated against a lot of shit but watch I'll give them 6 centuries worth of influenza updates.

I don't think it would help that much being plunked down in 14th century England; we're talking Geoffrey Chaucer's lifetime here, to them I'd sound insane. Modern English is a few hundred years off. If they didn't trepan me to let the demons out of my skull and I didn't die of smallpox, I'd try to invent the electric motor 500 years early and be burned for heresy or some shit.

[-] lagoon8622@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 months ago

The only non-delusional answer lol

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] rumschlumpel@feddit.org 29 points 2 months ago

I'll probably die of dysentery. Just because I know modern hygiene rules doesn't mean I'll survive interacting with all the other people who don't but are used to local bacteria and viruses.

[-] andrewta@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

This is probably the most realistic answer. Either you die quickly or you’d wind up, spreading some major contagious disease that nobody has a defense against and wipe out a huge section of the population.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] ultranaut@lemmy.world 27 points 2 months ago

Assuming I am physically in the same place, I will fall to my death. If I somehow survive the fall I would be severely injured and alone in the wilderness. Within a few days I would probably die of either my injuries, dehydration, or hypothermia.

[-] SendMePhotos@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago

Scientifically speaking, the earth is constantly moving in an upward spiral. Your exact physical location would put you in some random outerspace area without oxygen or any protection. Just floating in space until you die.

[-] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 18 points 2 months ago

Scientifically speaking, there is no absolute reference frame. So you can be wherever you like depending on what reference you choose.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] biofaust@lemmy.world 27 points 2 months ago
[-] feddup@feddit.uk 13 points 2 months ago

The definition of succeeding just becomes not dying.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)
[-] Bieren@lemmy.world 24 points 2 months ago

Nothing. I’d sit under an tree and enjoy the peace and quiet. No trump. No DC. No MAGA. No reporters. No non stop ads. No social media. No Google. No Elon. No bezos. The list goes on. Sure I’d probably die of some random disease or bandits. But I’d be okay with it at that point.

[-] jj4211@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago

Well you can do that today. Find a tree out in the middle of nowhere and sit under it without any electronic devices. Then you are oblivious to all that stuff. You may be bothered by the fact that the things are still happening, but there are also plenty of horrific things happening in that time period you went to, you just won't be keeping track of them.

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 2 months ago

Double entry accounting system.

I'm an accountant by trade. The double entry system wasn't invented until the 15th century.

I could account for any lords various assets, goods, and livestock in an efficient, reliable and accurate manner

load more comments (2 replies)

I'm in the US and in a place that native Americans didn't have settlements. I'm very familiar with the area and have hunted, hiked, and camped here my entire life. With no preparation or modern equipment I give myself about a week before I get eaten by wolves or a bear, maybe gored by an elk or bitten by a venomous snake. I don't expect that I would see another human during that week. Native hunting parties visited the area so it's not impossible that I would see someone but it's very unlikely.

[-] VinesNFluff@pawb.social 19 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

612 years in the past
In Brazil. So almost a century before the first europeans landed here. I'm assuming I just plop exactly in my relative earth-location, but in the distant past. (... It would be really funny if this was overly literal, because I'm currently in the 12th floor, so I'd thanos snap into the past and immediately fall to my death)

Well

As a person from modern times -- From AFTER the Americas came into contact with Europe, if I went near a person here in the Land of Palms (that's what the natives called Brazil!) from those times we'd both get horribly infected and die a lot due to how antibodies work. Viruses did a lot of the legwork in genociding the natives. Euros would deliberately do things to infect natives so they'd die of illness.

The place I currently live in is slowly turning into a desert, but was a deep jungle back then (... It was still a deep jungle in the 1910s tbqh).

.......... I think I'd just die? Become food for a jaguar or eat a poisonous fungus or sth.

Would love to indulge in the fantasy of giving the Guarani people guns and a warning to shoot white people on sight just to see how history would change, but that ain't happening.

[-] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago

I would pretend to be super-religious. Throughout the whole of human history, pretending to be super-religious has always been a viable path to survival and personal advancement.

Apart from that, I'd probably just die.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] xylogx@lemmy.world 19 points 2 months ago

You would die. There are many, many examples of explorers from “advanced” civilizations getting shipwrecked or stranded in an area where primitive hunter-gatherers live. Unless they are saved by the hunter gatherers, they are doomed, despite their knowledge of science and technology. Joseph Henrich talks extensively about these examples in his book, “The Secret of Our Success”

Check out this video to get an idea -> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jaoQh6BoH3c

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 17 points 2 months ago

I would kill everyone I meet with the plagues I carry which I'm immune to.

[-] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 22 points 2 months ago

You might have a bad time with all the plagues that have gone extinct since then.

[-] Dagwood222@lemm.ee 17 points 2 months ago

I know thousands of songs. Also, musical instruments like the saxaphone haven't been invented yet.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] MisanthropiCynic@lemm.ee 17 points 2 months ago

Die because my medications haven’t been invented yet.

Or be murdered because I’m not christian

[-] Supervisor194@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago

Wait 612 years and buy Microsoft.

[-] Apeman42@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago

Try to find the nearest shaman, apothecary or herbalist and trade my future clothes/pocket contents for some hallucinogens and painless poison. I ain't living through a time before electricity.

[-] untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 months ago

I reread the Bitcoin paper yesterday, so with my newly refreshed knowledge id find the nearest mathimation, explain it to them, implement the protocol with paper records, handwritten hashes, and messages on horseback or something. After a few years when every major economic power realizes how valuable a deflationary currency that Mansa Musa doesn't control (14th century african gold-salt bazzilionare, ~400 bill USD today), the price of my currency would increase vastly, making me super rich.

[-] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

I'd be dead since the Earth wasn't in the same position 650 years ago. Even taking that out of the equation, I'd die since I can't communicate with anyone and don't have the survival skills.

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] palordrolap@fedia.io 14 points 2 months ago

It's 1375 and I'm asphyxiating somewhere in the Milky Way about 600 light years from Earth.

But let's assume that somehow my latitude, longitude and altitude relative to Earth somehow remain the same. Now I'm spawning several feet in the air probably in sight of several villagers. If I'm lucky, they'll think I was sent by God. If not I'm gonna have a real bad time. There's a good chance I'll break a bone in the fall, and that's not going to go well at all.

But let's assume there are trees here. Lots of them. That's actually pretty likely. They hide my sudden appearance and mitigate bone breakages.

Now I'm on the outskirts of a village, battered and bruised and very strangely dressed. I don't speak any language they'll understand despite technically being from that area. Middle English is the language of the day, and I speak something that won't evolve for at least another 200-250 years. Shakespeare is technically modern English and is hard to comprehend sometimes. Here we're talking Chaucer and that's pretty much opaque.

I'm literate, but not in Latin, and that's the language of the Church. I'm numerate, but they haven't got beyond Roman numerals yet.

I'm not even sure where the church is. I know where it is in the modern day, but that building's no more than 200 years old. Maybe it's on the same site. I'd head there for shelter at least.

I know the Lord's Prayer in modern English. Chanting that quietly might spark some recognition in anyone present but then it might count as blasphemy to say it in anything other than Catholic-Church-approved Latin.

Come to think of it, I could probably blow a couple of minds by writing the alphabet they know and then the same with the extra letters that have been added since.

And then I'd be burned as a witch.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] pan0wski@infosec.pub 13 points 2 months ago

I'd die pretty quickly.

[-] blaue_Fledermaus@mstdn.io 13 points 2 months ago

If I time traveled to the same geographical region, considering I'm in South Brazil, if I don't get immediately killed by some jungle animal or tropical disease, I'd probably end up starting a pandemic among the natives.

[-] dotson@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 months ago
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 months ago

Fuck you buddy, I'm barely getting by with modern medicine, you just ended me.

[-] treadful@lemmy.zip 12 points 2 months ago

I'd make some fucking soap.

load more comments (5 replies)
[-] Milk@lemm.ee 12 points 2 months ago

I’d be dead in the vacuum of space. You never mentioned that I’d just go back in time, you forgot the coordinates. Now I’m floating, dead. Thanks man.

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] LordOfLocksley@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

England is in the midst of the Hundred Years war with France and considering I'm ~193cm and the average height of a man in England in the 14th century is about 171cm... looks like in getting my arse drafted and shipped off to France, to act as some kind of intimidating presence. That is until I have to swing a sword, which my body, that's used to sitting in an office looking over excel spreadsheets, absolutely can't do, so I get bum rushed/hit in the face with an arrow and die.

That's the most likely scenario.

Worst case scenario, considering I don't speak middle English or Latin, I'm treated as an enemy and locked up in a dungeon somewhere.

I don't think there is realistically a best case scenario

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Tudsamfa@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

This is something I often wonder about, what could one person even do with all of today's common knowledge? You can't very well just invent the printing press and have the same impact as Gutenberg - you need something what the few people who can read would, and most people can't translate the bible from Latin into renaissance German and/or don't know enough about the catholic church to write scathing remarks on it like Luther.

You can write and read - that's something. Maybe more importantly, you can do math with arabic numerals - boom, easy accounting job. With a bit higher education, you may even just invent calculus once more. You know how long it took for people to figure out you can put pi on the number line? Proving all the formulas in your head is the hard stuff, but you have a head start just by knowing them. We all clown on the wormhole explanation with the paper, but it does prove Euclid wrong 400 years early.

Ah, and you can just become a medical genius by using soap and bandages - "do no harm" is better than most.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
173 points (96.3% liked)

No Stupid Questions

42085 readers
215 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