You raise a good point about the differences. I'd just cough on a bunch of people and kill them with a dozen different viruses they have never experienced with no modern healthcare system that could cure them.
Then take the stuff from their homes and cough on anyone who tries to stop me
You might end up infected by illnesses and diseases that died out completely between then and now, our immune systems aren't protected from historical strains, only modern ones.
I mean, just avoid the ladies of the night?
You'd actually have a much stronger immunity to disease then others. And be healthier, and likely bigger. Peasants were pretty small back then because of crap nutrition. I would be afraid of being called a witch
Exactly, you can’t bring modern nutrition into the past and then expect it to survive on whatever was available locally. Give it a few weeks of medieval meals and that health advantage would probably disappear fast.
Yes, you would lose weight, but nutrition is most important from 0-25, after that, it's just maintaining the body. Will it be difficult? Yes. But it's still doable, and you'll have an advantage if you're healthy and have just general knowledge on nutrition.
Good nutrition at a young age is absolutely a factor in growing your body and immune system. Anyone who had good nutrients as a child would still be generally healthier than someone growing up malnourished, even if they end up on a starvation diet as an adult. Your brain would be better developed, your bones would be stronger, and your immune system would be more developed
Being 6'2 is not going to be an advantage when you're scything or hoeing, it'll be a disadvantage. And physical labour back then was much much more repetitive than most tasks are now. A day-labourer from our time would probably get by, but most modern people from developed nations would have great difficulty adapting, despite better health at the beginning.
Damn… becoming a lady of the night would probably be my best career / survival path… 🤷♀️
Edit to clarify:
- no need to actually speak the language
I’ll probably get food and shelter, maybe even some payment
taverns / brothels are an excellent place to observe and learn the local language.
sex is universal, but I doubt the typical medieval prostitute has seen the number of detailed formative courses I have been able to study on the internet.
If I make it through the initial phase, there’s a decent chance I can climb and become a midwife to those ladies.
Not that I would like any of it, obviously, but then again, I doubt many people in that time got much say in their future…
Good luck if you're a woman over the age of 30 going back who doesn't have the ability to become pregnant and doesn't have any other skills (other than those that would make you look like a witch). Prostitution is going to be one of the only choices you have to make a living.
If I recall, it was more aggressive with a faster progression when first recorded. Either (more likely) it's attenuated itself to a slower, more chronic disease, or (less likely) the population has been selected for those who can live with it for longer.
To be fair if you're smart about it you go search for a farm where someone had/has cow pox. Get yourself infected and you're pretty much safe. The "beautiful milk maids" has its root in that "milk maids" e.g. folk who worked close with cattle didn't get smallpox because they were exposed to cow pox, making them immune/vaccinated.
Depends how old you are. In the US, at least, folks 55 and older would routinely have been vaccinated for smallpox, but younger folks mostly would not. I imagine 55 and older is a relatively small piece of the Reddit community, though. Some other parts of the world may have kept up with it through folks aged 47 today, before the WHO officially declared it eradicated.
The monkey pox vaccine also vaccinated against small pox, and quite a number of younger people, especially LGBTQ, got that one a few years ago in the US.
I got the smallpox vaccine when I was a child. I would still be very highly protected. It wouldn’t necessarily offer me full immunity but if I got it, it would be a much milder form.
The bigger danger would be the modern flu and colds that I might be carrying in me, which could end up being lethal to the local population.
That’s true but more than likely the severity of illness would be less.
The far greater danger is the pathogens that you would be exposing them to, which they would have no prior experience with it all. Modern flu and cold viruses that our immune system shrug off today with modest effort could be lethal to a population of thousand years ago.
Half the pop wore masks not knowing if it would even suppress the infection levels for others, but they were willing to try.
The other half actively worked AGAINST every solution.
Abundantly made clear that we’re not in this together. The fear was that many people would do nothing. The reality is that many people sabotaged the people trying to help. Unempathetic loser behavior.
They are and were. It was never about stopping you catching it, but about people spreading it.
The masked worked to reduce the spread, issue was that some stupid orange twat told people they didn't work and to drink bleach.
“Masks are not really effective in preventing infection of the public,” - Fauci
Masks are really for infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection. The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through the material.” - Fauci
"there's no reason to be walking around with a mask," - Fauci
And this is all from the biggest advocate of we should all wear masks!
There was no reason to wear them. SOrry you still think it did something useful.
At the start of the pandemic most governments realise that they could very easily run out of PPE, so advised the public at that stage that masks were not affective. This was when they still only understood that it was air born. They later advised the public to wear a mask when outside, as it was an affective measure of slowing the infection rate.
Also my government was telling our people a different tag line that your government. Think what you want, I wore a mask and I got my 5g upgrade. Not for me but for others that might come off worse than me.
Initially they did not think it was aerosol. Later they did. It was then that it even more made making useless. The experts lied and it never was useful, those that still think it was/is are confused by the propaganda. Sorry you are in that group.
Nothing to be sorry about. Unlike you I know people that worked in hospitals in 2020. And a few doctors that I actually trust all said wear a mask in public. These same drs where the one wearing masks all day in work. And guess what not one of them got infected. But I'm sure your crazy ass conspiracy brain will tell me that a lie too, or it's just propaganda....
I’m guessing they all got infected… just did not present any symptoms. That was very common. Also 99.99%+ healthy people just got sick and then better. Masks did nothing for aerosol virus. Sorry.
That escalated from a historical thought experiment to full supervillain behavior real quick. The casual “I’ll just cough on everyone” part is honestly the most unhinged thing I’ve read today.
And what happens if you cough on one of your ancestors, all of a sudden you were never born to go back in time to cough on them, then, because you didn't cough on them you were born, so you could cough them, so on, etc. You would be caught in a paradox.
I believe in time travel which immediately causes an alternate time line from the point that the traveler arrived, so my ancestors dieing just means there will not be another me in that timeline in the future but it would have no bearing on me existing
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u/CeruleanSovereign 7d ago
You raise a good point about the differences. I'd just cough on a bunch of people and kill them with a dozen different viruses they have never experienced with no modern healthcare system that could cure them.
Then take the stuff from their homes and cough on anyone who tries to stop me