If you were sent back to the roman era and could only bring a backpack of goods. What would you bring?

EffortlessOps@sh.itjust.works to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 144 points –

If you were sent back to the roman era and could only bring a backpack of goods. What would you bring?

182

A book with pictures detailing all the processes required to make paper, and the schematics for a printing press. I know better than to presume my knowledge of electricity will be of any use, I know better than to think that I understand math better than ancient mathematicians, and I know better than to try to convince them that tiny little creatures are what cause illness. What I can do is jump-start humanity's ascent to modern technology by improving literacy a few centuries early

Dont forget ink recipe. A new type of ink had to be invented for the printing press. Soot, turpentine, and walnut oil should do it.

I want two books: How to Invent Everything and How to Rebuild Everything in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm. I'm good from there.

The reason I bring picture books is because I know that I'm gonna die within a week, and anyone more than a few hundred years old would never be able to read English after I'm gone. But if Ptolemy gets his hands on a printing press? Buddy we're exploring the galaxy by Y2K

Current geological mineral distribution map. A dozen ball screws, some linear rods, bearings, grease. A dozen staters of various sizes, and a few hundred thousand diodes, maybe millions. Then as much enameled copper wire and magnet steel as I could carry. Then a e-paper tablet with a long list of patent documents, along with text books from Primary school clear to graduate level physics, chemistry, and math.

Then I would lug a vintage mini lathe over my shoulder for the few steps I have to take because you didn't specify how far I have to walk.

I should be able to make the industrial revolution from there.

...welcome to 1500 years in the future...now!

I would also make room for some seed packets - potato, tomato, chili, etc.

I want some good food while I prestart the industrial revolution.

I'm either gonna bring a bunch of 'For Dummies' books to speed up development and get executed or make a fortune selling meth and get executed

Lol .... Roman Empire collapses 300 years before it's time because of a meth crisis.

Why not sell psychedelics and change history?

Turning Ceaser and his forces into tweakers won't change history?

they probably would have conquered the New World too.

They would have conquered the New World ....... in their minds!!!

Then by the late Middle Ages we would have had the Holy Roman Pharmaceutical Corporation.

Psychedelics were pretty common back then. However, they were mostly used in religious ceremonies.

And a copy of the army improvised weapons manuals.

Jump start military tech by 1000 years or so right quick

Six weights of charcoal, one of brimstone, and one of saltpetre. Done, you already advanced military tech by 800 years.

The hilarious thing about the meth idea is that they'd run out and be centuries behind on having any clue as to how to get more.

Unless those "For Dummies" books have expanded their catalogue since I've last looked.

If I'm going to be transported to the European peninsula too, besides time travelling, I'd want at least:

  • my laptop. Download everything from multiple Wikipedias, including the Italian one for good measure. (Why Italian? Largest Wikipedia in a Romance language that I'm proficient with.)
  • some charger for the above. I don't even mind if manual.
  • Latin vocabulary printed book. I can speak some but I'm not proficient in the language.
  • Some silver and gold. Money back in Roman times was still based on the value of the coins. And money never hurts.
  • Clothes carefully prepared to not look Roman, but typical enough from the times. The idea is to pass as a cultured barbarian from a tribe that is too far away from Rome to bother.

You're going to need medicine. Penicillin for sure.

Penicillin might be a good idea, but once you set up some simple electricity production, you can generate bleach (electrolyse brine, then input the chlorine back into solution; discard the hydrogen). Being able to bleach your water is huge.

Unless you accidentally get wood splinter and die of gangrene.

I find it uncanny just how close this reply is to an idle thought I've had for many years.

Power has yet to be invented. Once your laptop dies it becomes uselesss. Batteries deteriorate over time and without the latest security patches you'll definitely get infected sooner rather than later.

Power has yet to be invented. Once your laptop dies it becomes uselesss.

That's why I mentioned a charger in the following line.

Batteries deteriorate over time

Sure, that is a concern. For a few years later; the idea is to at least have at hand some knowledge to translate into Latin and put into useful applications.

Also, remember that electricity can be produced with a bar of copper, a bar of iron, and some acid. Such as vinegar or even citrus.

and without the latest security patches you’ll definitely get infected sooner rather than later.

Yeah, because Mark Anthony will totally send me files like cleopatrahotpix.jpg.exe [/sarcasm]

No need to worry, those security patches would be millennia ahead of any contemporaneous trojans.

Yeah you gotta watch out for those ancient roman black hats. Or togas.

Tunicae? "Per Hercle, tunicae nigrae sunt diri - computatrum meum inuaserunt! Merda!" doesn't sound too bad.

without the latest security patches you'll definitely get infected sooner rather than later

By what?

There's a legend that the Roman Emperor Tiberius executed the inventor of flexible glass.

After the inventor swore that he was the only man alive who knew the manufacturing technique, Tiberius had the man beheaded. He feared that the glass would devalue gold and silver, since the material might be more valuable.

So y'all better watch out with any plastic...

If we lived in a world where plastic didnt exist, and some body brought it in. The closest approximation of articulating clear plastic would be flexible glass.

Modern cannabis seeds, because if I'm going to be in Ancient Times I still don't want to smoke schwag.

Not a bad idea, but also, you could definitely still make hash out of schwag.

Bringing the seeds would be easier though.

And since you mentioned seeds, let's go ahead and also bring seeds of modern potatoes, tomatoes, definitely chilis like proper habaneros. Salads, perhaps. Definitely modern brewing yeasts! Bananas, maybe? Tobacco, definitely.

There's even yeast strains which produce opiates instead of alcohol (purposefully made with gmo ofc), but I wouldn't be able to get my hands on those.

Also, medication. Lots of modern medication.

But a backpack full is a lot. So, seeds, electronics (full Wikipedia and other such information), solar charger, tons of meds. A few good blades, a gun, and several reliable methods of making fire. Several good modern bowstrings. Gunpowder, if there's room. (Making bullets isn't too hard and modern smokeless powder would be preferable to basic black powder.)

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A (tape) camera to document how I obliterate the roman empire by spreading pathogens that have yet to evolve but I have developed immunity for.

And something like a time capsule to burry the camera in.

Keep in mind that there were of plenty of pathogens back then that you aren't immune to now. A good example is smallpox

Dont want to be that guy, but the platic softeners inside the tape will most likely evalporate, causing the tape to break up und cruble to dust as soon as you try to play it. The magnetic orientation of the bits will also degarde. Manufacturers give an expected shelf life of 30 years for any magnetic storage medium.

Yeah I was aware of the bits that's why I said tape. I know there's some kind of tape they use for long term data storage so that's why I said tape. There has to be some way to store it that long...

I don't think you would survive either. People wasn't stupid back then and you'd probably quickly get fridged for being a walking curse.

Remember that old reddit post where someone asked "what if a battalion of marines were suddenly zapped back to the roman era with all their gear and stuff, what would happen?" and somebody answered with a full on novel they titled "Rome, Sweet Rome" and some time later some Hollywood dude bought the rights to it?

It was a short story, and the film adaptation has been in development hell for over a decade.

Well that's disappointing

I remember at the time someone warned the writer that this would be the most likely outcome. Most of the things Hollywood buys the rights to don't get made into movies.

Oddly enough, the ending of the latest Indiana Jones movie has something along these lines happen, if you can sit through the boring middle part of the movie. Not a great movie, but the ending was bonkers (in a good way). "You forgot about continental drift!" LOL

The recipe for making soap A general practitioner’s medical book A dummies guide to Latin A compass Water bottle with filter A taser Instructions on how to make a battery Instructions on how to make gun powder The rise and fall of the Roman Empire books

I would take a smartphone with all of wikipedia stored locally on it, and a USB solar panel or two.

IIRC there are these really durable laptops with solar pannels built into the lid that are made specifically to bring internet to people in third world countries. They're naturally rather underpowered but you could still put a high capacity SSD in one and it'd be less likely to break than a smartphone.

20 identical ereaders packed with every book I can fit, solar panels, and batteries.

And the rest of the volume with gold.

I would do the same, except instead of gold I would pack as much Fentanyl as possible. (Not like the cops will find you after you time hop anyway).

I could then, heavily dilute the Fentanyl and sell it and earn way more gold. You could also poison your enemies with pure Fentanyl and no one would understand what sort of poison it is.

With all that money you could probably buy a small castle, a loyal guard, hire the smartest people around and have them start creating weapons, medicines and mechanization from the 21st century before you even die.

The other reason Fentanyl is superior than gold is that if people see gold they will just steal it. If they see bricks of Fentanyl, they probably won't steal it. They might try and see what it is... and likely kill themselves in the process... which would likely dissuade any other thieves associated with them.

That's incredibly big brain, although highly immoral. But thems are slavers you're going to swindle so it's all good I guess.

Not too different from the British strategy in the Opium Wars. They got Hong Kong and lots of tea this way.

Portable power supply

Portable dvd player

Portable display

Bluetooth speakers

A copy of Morbius on dvd

Without doing any research, the answer is "watchmaking tools." Equipment to make small things like watches, and revolvers and what ever you'd need to start a factory. A few things like microscope, binoculars.

They had good craftspeople on hand, just need a little push to start an Industrial Revolution.

You need good quality metal to make precise clockwork. You need to be able to make those metals.

You could bring plans for a high quality forge

The fuel it takes to run a forge wasn't common so you are still stuck.

Charcoal???

That is what they used, but so much is needed that despite being easy to make it wasn't available in large enough quantity. You get it by the basket, what you need is train loads.

This guy is 100% correct. There's no way you will ever be able to start the "industrial revolution". There's not enough people mining coal or metal ores. There's not enough organization to do any of that.

These are the technical dreams of children. The world wasn't organized enough to even support feudalism. The average person was a subsistence farmer who made a little extra grain to turn into alcohol. They lived in family groups and barely knew what the emperor looked like.

You may already know more important ideas that you use in your everyday life. You probably: wash your hands, wash your clothes, bathe regularly in fresh water with soap and wash your hair, filter or boil water to clean it, use the restroom away from where you eat, know that alcohol kills germs, and most importantly know that you should stay away from someone who's sick. These things make you as knowledgeable as the best doctors in Rome.

If you payed attention in elementary school, you may have a better understanding of astronomy than the best Roman minds. You may know enough mathematics to chat with Archimedes himself. You already know a superior numbering system to what the Romans used. Literally anything you remember from school would be priceless.

If you bring anything, just make it a telescope and a book of Roman history. Give the telescope to the emperor.Tell everyone you're a messenger of Minerva or something. They'll put you in a temple where you can invent a sandwich one year and a toasted sandwich the next. Use the book to stay out of trouble.

You don't have to change a million peasants, just one aristocrat. Remember, they would import a boat load of wild animals from Africa for one show at the Circus. That kind of money could buy a lot of top workmen.

You don't need an entire railroad, just a few hundred Napoleonic rifles.

One watchmaker can train fifty more in a lifetime.

Take your example of the telescope. Imagine what one telescope would mean to an army of the time. You could send out scouts with signal flags that could be spotted a day's ride away.

Romans made decent steel, especially in terms of hardness which is what you need to make tooling.

It wouldn’t be the biggest problem you would face in trying to industrialise Rome

Look up the antikythera mechanism.

The Romans could make enough quality metals for a clock.

Nice!

Also seeds for modern veggies. Easier to grow and more nutritious.

Just nothing from Monsanto, as many of their seeds are sterile.

Best to get some modern old stock. Hell just some beef steak tomatoes and corn would be invaluable.

Most seeds are not steril. Farmers wish they were as hybrids never breed true.

Damn, now I'm wondering if my decision to bring plans for a printing press is actually less useful than accurate timekeeping

Accurate timekeeping means you can navigate the deep ocean without hugging the coast.

People were doing that long before there were clocks that worked on ships.

The idea of a printing press was revolutionary but it's just an engraved plate, ink, later and a weight on a lever.

I'm confident I could make a printing press without plans having seen one. I'm not confident I could design an accurate watch.

I might manage a pendulum clock. Just. But that's far less useful.

A bag of dildos to hand out at parties so I can be dildo guy

And will you recollect it after the party ? And give it out again to different people in another party ?

Probably mostly medical supplies. I don’t want to die of a stubbed toe.

A laptop with the essential human knowledge, big enough abtteries to power it, and a portable solar generator to charge its batteries.

Oh, and probably a bunch of gold to hire mercenaries and engineers.

I totally agree! Although I think modern medication would be more useful than gold - pure quantities of modern meds weigh next to nothing. If you save enough lives of the rulers and their families they'll give you all the wealth and resources you need. They'll consider stealing the medication from you but they won't know which medications should be used for which illnesses, until they torture you I guess. I can't really think of a way of making sure they "be nice" rather than forcing you to give them everything you have. They weren't afraid of doing the unspeakable in pursuit of power back then.

The reason I chose gold is because you can make more of it in that era (e.g. thru banking, trading, pilaging) while modern medicine (assuming you mean with all the synthetic chemicals) would be easily exhaustible, not to mention they can expire.

On the other hand, since you'd be carrying modern knowledge, you'd be able to setup some make-shift facilities, applying modern concept to what you can get. And you can achieve quite a lot that way. An example would be sterilization. You can also go a long way combining natural material.

those are all quite intelligent things to want to have with you in such a scenario, but I think you are overestimating how much can fit into a backpack.

Honestly aside from. The gold in confident you could fit it all in a normal sized pack. Bigger pack just means more gold

okay well I am intimately familiar with solar panels and generators and batteries and the only backpack all that's going to fit in is that comically unrealistically huge red one that "shard" posted below. But being able to lift & carry all that (generator and batteries are no joke heavy) good luck

You can buy small foldable solar panels, and it's a laptop so it's not like the battery is big or heavy. I'm not sure why you'd need anything massive for a device that sips power, just take a normal laptop instead of a high end gaming one and it'll draw like 30W.

I'm not talking about the laptop battery. You need a lithium ion battery system and a power inverter for your solar panels. That's heavy stuff.

So how do small foldable solar panels that charge phones and the like work? Because I presume if they can charge a phone they can charge a laptop, given they aren't really different.

I've never tried those, but I can't imagine they'd be very effective. Do you know anyone who's ever tried those?

No, but they seem to be able to charge a phone, or their own internal batteries. As long as the laptop you take is one designed for long battery life I don't see it being an issue for quite some time.

An English-Latin phrasebook, a survival manual explaining how to recognize plants, grow food, handle livestock, set traps, and make simple shelter, e-reader loaded with modern books and a usb solar panel, a multitool, sewing kit, a small dagger, cerium/magnesium flint, first-aid kit, antibiotics, water treatment (Sodium Dichloro-S-Triazinetrione), preservative and neutralizer (sodium metabisulfite), salt, potassium chloride, peanut butter.

But I'd probably be quickly ambushed and killed nonetheless, or hauled off to the slave markets.

Either 1, a bunch of textbooks and encyclopedias. Or 2, a tablet/computer with said texts downloaded, a battery pack for said tablet/computer, and a few fold out solar panels or maybe one of those hand crank things. If I still have space I'd bring a soldering iron, a bunch of tips for it, flux and a bunch of different solders. Maybe a few spare parts for the laptop.

Tablet with tons of downloaded info + solar panels is my answer too. If you were wise about how you used the info you could be a demigod. Just knowing the process of how to refine aluminum could make you the wealthiest person on the planet.

Cipromax, isoproyl alcohol, neosporin, and and as many Band-Aids as I could stuff. I'll make room for an English-latin dictionary.

Maybe one of those "facts about everything" almanacs in the outside pocket, because I'm too stupid to remember my sines and cosines or the difference between sodium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate. I can figure out the rest from there.

A ton of medicine and tampons, a Latin dictionary, my thermos bottle, some valuables to sell, etc.

An Uzi, lots of ammo, some gold, and instructions on how to make steel, precision lathes and mills, lasers, silicone, computer chips, computers, nuclear reactors, internal combustion engines, rifles, the complete works of Sir Isaac Newton, Einstein, Hawkins, and everyone else, translated into Latin, and a bunch of other shit. I'm going to get into Caesar's favor and propel humanity forward 2000 years. Long live Rome!

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The question that must be answered first is: Do I stay where I am or do I come out somewhere else?

Right, I'm in Australia, I'd be boned

I mean, still people there, and the tech and stuff would be helpful even if any translation materials wouldn't be relevant anymore

Do I have to go? They didn’t even have A/C back then :/

For rich people there were passive air cooling systems available. And if you were truly wealthy you could have blocks of ice shipped to you

https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/how-ancient-romans-kept-their-cool/

For rich people there were passive air cooling systems available

Bro for rich people there were active air cooling systems.

Unless you're talking about something like a guy fanning you with a big frond, then i don't think that's true. If you have a specific example please cite it.

Do you know how air conditioning works? Bring a picture book describing the ideal gas law, and you can jump start the invention of air conditioners

Some vacuum packs to seal and save silphium from extinction.

I have heard that they have actually found silphium somewhere in Turkey (?) pretty recently! I'm not fully sure of this tho.

They made a guess that a plant native to Turkey was a good candidate, but it's too far from Cyrene (most major exporter) to establish anything. Archeologists would basically need to find samples to confirm it's identity.

Yeah, as far as I have gathered from others, I work in the botany field, it is likely just another species in the genus.

Maps. Lots of laminated maps of North Africa and the Middle East. Every time I run low on silver pennies to pay my palm frond air conditioner, I sell one more map.

They're going to be pissed off when they can't find this Argleton place, though.

Tablets with a shitload of how to build books on it, several small solar chargers and USB cables.

"Your device is not connected to the Internet so we can't confirm you aren't stealing something so we will just assume you are. Error code: SUCK DICK"

i'd fill it up with a variety of bulk spices

...that's an amazing idea.

Let's go further - seeds for modern crops that grow well in the Mediterranean. We didn't spend thousands of years selecting them for nothing.

Spices, all knowledge I can carry as microfiche tapes, magnifying glass, a domesticated strain of penicillin, and seeds of modern crops.

I will be able to talk to at least some of their merchants for, ahem, reasons. From then on I have at least some chance of survival.

A gun and plenty of ammo. Don't need anything else to be Caesar.

Speaking of Caesar, I think you vastly overestimate how useful a gun is against a bunch of determined guys with knives.

Dude isn't planning on sleeping for the 15 years of life expectancy left.

Et tu, Brute?

I didn't say which gun. I think the right submachine gun would do fine.

Submachine guns eat ammo very quickly. You'll maybe survive one fight or two, depending on your proficiency - and then you're that barbarian with the death stick whose death stick isn't working anymore, but has made a people who are famous for holding deep grudges for years and coming up with very creative punishments for their defeated foes extremely angry.

Also, it's not like Romans don't have ranged weapons. They were experts at using the sling, which can kill you at the same distance as a firearm. They had bows and crossbows, throwing spears, etc. You are not prepared for any of this.

You're not really thinking this through. You started from the premise that this will fail and are only presenting thoughts that support that premise.

The gun gets you whatever you want, including armor and whatever else. Kill one person, hopefully Caesar, and do it in front of as many people as possible. Then your demands start and must be met ASAP.

There are plenty of possible paths to success just as there are to failure and neither is guaranteed.

Not that easy. Sure you could kill ceaser, but you can't kill everyone who might take offense. you can be killed in you sleep. you can be killed by a mob as eventually someone gets through.

You might like a new game i just saw the trailer for called Kingmaker.

Sent back in time, but at the same place as I am now?

How large is the time travel device, does it fit into a backpack?

Now I want to rewatch Primer.

Every time I rewatch Primer, I go in thinking, "This is going to be the time I fully understand this movie!" Then, half way through, I'm thinking "What was so complicated about this? This isn't bad at all." Then I get to the last 20 minutes and I remember.

Then I go watch a 'Primer Explained' video that's almost as long as the movie itself, am satisfied for a while, and then some time in the future the cycle repeats itself.

Are you sure you didn't enter the machine yourself?

Without reading other answers, that certainly makes more sense than mine, I would take a cake. Like the best cake i ever ate in my life and eat it all immediately after being sent in Roman era. Because if I'm getting fucked at least let's enjoy a last meal and nothing else i could take would matter. Guns, medicines,..? It would all run out anyway and it wouldn't make me king of something.

Edit: and also a bottle of good wine because Roman win tasted like vinegar.

Enough gold valuables to cover my funeral expenses since our bodies aren't capable of handling the bacteria in the water and food back then and we'd be dead in a week.

Literally none of the bacteria would be resistant strains.

You could just bring some penicillin instead of gold and actually survive.

And, you know, boil the water. Or bring chlorine tablets or a water filter.

And build up a tolerance by slowly adulterating your filtered water with unfiltered water

Or just make a simple activated charcoal and UV filter and actually enjoy clean water

1 gun and as much ammo as I can carry. I'm gonna need to get some people to work for me if I want to survive.

It better be a solid revolver and your aim better be on point because if that thing jams or you miss too many times you're gonna get rocked, literally.

I'm a gambling man. I'll take those odds. Better than the odds of me making it as a farmer.

Antibiotics. All of the antibiotics. Textbooks, dictionary, precious metals, etc.

Can I order these goods from our time travling agent? Maybe a pocket electron microscope, a bunch of capsule corp products, sanitation pills, maybe the bugout bag of some rich future CEO near the end of capitalism