I’m including !hypotheticalsituations in a game I play with myself sometimes. The bolded parameters were all assigned using a random number generator.
Don’t worry about how you were convinced of it, but you know for certain that you will be transported to 17 August 1888 in exactly one week from right now. This is a one-way trip.
Luckily, you will be able to bring some things with you. You will be able to bring back 2 m3/72 ft3 worth of stuff. For reference, that’s about what can be stored in the bed of a standard pickup without going over the bedrails. Let’s say that you’ve been provided the appropriate number of steamer trunks to fill.
What are you going to do for the next week, what are you bringing back with you, and what will you do once you arrive?
You may bring people/pets back with you, but you must subtract their approximate dimensions from your baggage allotment. You will arrive in 1888 in the same geographic location that you’re in next week.
The realization that we’re headed to 1888 and not 1988 is a bit of a tonal whiplash to say the least. Genuinely not sure that even if you became a very wealthy individual then, that your quality of life would actually be better than a 2020s wage slave even despite everything, but there’s something idyllic about a more disconnected life after we’ve seen the inverse. I believe there’s still a chance to come out on top.
Pretty basic plan I think, but I feel like writing -
Location is the first question I think. I’m on the East Coast in the US, so I’d have to pick between an established city (I’d have a familiarity advantage with Philadelphia, but also NY, Boston, etc) or heading west. Not RDR frontier west, but still somewhere more up-and-coming at that time, a midwestern city like Chicago might afford more of an opportunity to make a better life vs. more somewhere with higher competition, I think.
I did just ask my girlfriend, if given the choice would she go back to 1888 with me or prefer to stay here, and it seems she and her personal effects are taking up some of the truckbed space. Someone to commiserate about the situation with is a tangible benefit though, you might find love there and settle down like Doc Brown, but I think it would get lonely in a way and affect you mentally having zero connection to your old world.
If you discard infant mortality, the average person actually lived to be about 70ish at that time. I would have to plan to be alive through the 1920s or so. With respect to that window of time, I’d spend part of this week doing reasonably thorough research on local politics, economics (obtaining stock exchange data and looking into how you’d even participate, is a big particular focus that might make all other plans moot), obtaining relevant maps etc, reading on what daily life even looked like, just becoming as close to a general expert as possible as to what the big picture was in the late 19th / early 20th century in this city, with the benefit of all this foresight. I’m also wondering if there are near-future-to-them inventions, medical items etc that haven’t been invented yet, that I could bring and capitalize on, this all falls into the research category. One of my trunks might partly / fully contain these types of books / downloaded+printed data.
Along that train of thought, blending in and not seeming like a time traveler / witch is an important thing I think. Showing up in period accurate clothing goes a long way, it might not need to take up too much space, but a couple outfits would not hurt. Maybe some looking into speech patterns of the time. That would take some prep though.
Starting money is an interesting question, showing up broke is not ideal. Carrying contemporary US currency wouldn’t work. My bank accounts today are useless in 1888, so I would drain everything and start buying old coins I guess. Paper currency from that time is prohibitively expensive now, but I’ll have to take whatever I can get within less-than-one-week, and presumably have more money now than I’d be able to spend on old money in a week. As much as possible, rush shipping online, calling around and heading to niche stores etc. Morgan Silver Dollars and things of that nature seem somewhat more available. $1 at that time is about $30 today. I don’t have a good idea as to how much I’d be able to accumulate while still saving time for other preparation, but I think that it realistically could be enough to secure good lodging and starting investment money etc.
I think everything above will take a preponderance of my prep time. I should still have a little bit of space in the truckbed though. After some personal mementos, I’m looking into modern amenities that would be usable back then. There’s a 3D-printed fully functional solar powered Gameboy that exists for instance, it kind of looks like it sucks, but with a flashcart with every ROM, I dunno there are worse ways to live. Some type of durable MP3 device would be great, etc etc. If I have room, I’ll probably bring a guitar.
I guess my plan really involves this stock thing going well. With 40+ years of data in my possession, I fail to see how too much could go wrong, unless my impact becomes so great that it affects how future trading syncs up and makes the data unreliable. By that point, in theory you’re one of the wealthiest people in the city though. Best case scenario, me and the Mrs. can get a mansion in the hills with a bowling alley in the basement, like Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. Worst case, I’m very wrong and have to get a more normal job, but we still can live out a relatively peaceful life I hope. Maybe I use the guitar to see how people then care for the sounds of the Beatles or something.
Anyway- good thought experiment, thank you.
Oh man, I didn’t see this. Awesome!!
One thing a person could consider is visiting the historical society in whatever location your ultimate destination is. Pull newspaper microfilm from 1888–1900 or something, then pay to have every single page printed. That would easily take an entire day, if not two, and the prints would occupy the better part of a steamer trunk. But… information is power.
Another thing I dwell on when it comes to these time travel mind games I play is food safety. We in the west REALLY take clean food and water for granted. Our gut microbiomes are so pathetic that I’d expect to fall ill almost immediately upon arrival. It might even be lethal. For real. I’d bring so much pepto bismol lol. I’d also bring scholarly literature on stuff like foodborne pathogens and water activity. Not that I could use to to any real effect, but perhaps I’d be able to find someone who could.
Watch. I’d end up one of the wealthiest humans on the planet because of my involvement with commercial food production… all because I didn’t want to shit myself to death and/or eat nothing but homegrown carrots.
I know a good amount about food safety in the back country. Assuming you’re far from the tropics (northern US qualifies, southern doesn’t) and far from a factory spewing out mercury or something, just boil your water. You’ll be fine that way. Environmental microbes haven’t changed too much as far as anyone knows, so it’s just a matter of avoiding unhygenic things and practices.
Along that train of thought, blending in and not seeming like a time traveler / witch is an important thing I think.
This is 1888, they have mathematical group theory and Karl Marx is already dead. You’re not going to be accused of witchcraft in Philadelphia.
Hey, returning to this thread to post this amazing author I just found, who’s definitely going in my truck bed for any period before 1900 or so (and definitely before 1800): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Gingery
It’s cool someone made these exact books I was thinking about writing some day. Well, not exact, it sounds like he’s assuming some basic tools and available scraps, while I want to be able to go from sticks and stones. Anyway, if you have to rebuild technology this would be very helpful.
Ooh, I love how specific this is with the luggage capacity and the date.
No people or pets to start. There will be plenty of those when I arrive, and while it might be lonely humans are big. Maybe I’d find someone to tag along if I have room.
What I would take:
Adapters to use local electricity. In 1888 electricity exists, and there’s a handful of central stations. A solar panel, because they don’t have much volume and I can get electricity anywhere that way.
My internet archive disk - which I would quickly update and make a couple copies of. My computer, and some backup computers and parts; enough to last a lifetime. Reference books, which will also cover for where I get the disk information.
Radio equipment. At the very least I could start a radiotelegraphy business with Marconi.
Counterfeits. They don’t know about photoshop or digital printers. I’m going with a lot of bearer bonds, passports and other goodies.
Antibiotics and other cheap but unavailable medicines. I get whatever old-timey vaccinations I can too. Modern penicillin spores to grow my own, if I can get that in a week.
At least one period-appropriate outfit. At this point I’m probably running out of cash. I might be able to fit a person as well, I guess I’ll look for volunteers. Then, I’ll go into a large city for the jump and get on the railroad to New York or Toronto afterwards. Fortune awaits.
You wouldn’t necessarily need to worry about the expense of medicines. You know that you’re going back in time. You know when it’s happening. Like my mom always told me, a little armed robbery strategically planned to occur shortly before permanently disappearing back in time never hurt anybody.
Something I don’t think any of us appreciate enough is precisely how strange we are by Victorian standards. I read once that someone from the 1850s could be dropped into the 1950s and still basically get along just fine. All the social institutions and cultural behaviors they’re accustomed to still existed almost exactly the way they did in their time. It’s just the technology that would give them whiplash.
Alternatively, someone from 1900 getting dropped into 2000 would have far more trouble. Who goes where and who does what is different. Leisure is different. Work is different. Identity is different. It’s weird to think about how much fundamental stuff changed course in the last two generations or so.
The author did a way better job at articulating it than I did just now, but the takeaway is that we’d run the risk of being dangerously different in attitude and demeanor. It would manifest in ways outside of our control, too. We just wouldn’t fit in. And that’s not even taking into consideration the likely experience of BIPOC and queer folks or women. If you’re not a white cis dude, you’d better just bring cash money & research hard the part of town you’re gonna arrive in.
I know my only hope would be to arrive with loads of banknotes and my method for amassing a degree of wealth being successful. That way I could play off extreme eccentricity without getting committed or strung up.
I read once that someone from the 1850s could be dropped into the 1950s and still basically get along just fine.
That seems exaggerated. Just from what I know there was a lot of clothing evolution during that period (1950s clothes were more like 2020s clothes than 1870s clothes), and things like flush toilets, electricity and mass literacy were introduced. The basic point stands, though.
I’m a cis white dude, so that’s squared away. However, one thing that occurs to me is that I have no idea the procedure for boarding a train. Do I need documents? Probably not, fewer people can read. How do I go about finding schedules then? I’m sure there’s a whole terminology everyone but me will know. From family stories I know that livestock got on and off with the passengers even in the 20th century, I have no idea how that would have been managed.
When I get there, how do I sell my counterfeits? I don’t know any shibboleths if I need to get into a gentleman’s area, all I have is looking white and sounding American. If I raise too much suspicion, every culture has a euphemism for a bribe, but my own culture’s has been lost somewhere on the way to me, I will miss it if someone asks.
My saving grace is that nobody’s going to expect a time traveler. I’ll just seem like an aggressively odd man who doesn’t know obvious things. Maybe they’ll suspect I’m drunk or something, which could be an issue early on as my area was then under prohibition, but that’s nothing that can’t be worked out.
The thing about the time traveler going to 1950 vs 2000 was primarily about culture shock. I was an anthropology undergrad (archaeology, actually, but that’s a square/rectangle distinction), and it was from an article explaining how incredibly slow cultureal norms change, and how unique the 1950s through 1990s were in terms of widespread cultural change. A human can more or less wrap their head around some wild new technology that seems like literal magic at first, but even a slightly different social order causes significant cognitive distress. Interesting stuff imo.
Similar to your train thing, one of the times I did this exercise by myself I wound up spending like 3 hours researching how people secured lodging in the 1700s. When arriving in a new place, how does short term room & board work? How do public house bathrooms work? Where and how do I feed myself? How hard is it to buy land or a house? I ended up reading a bunch of old newspapers and put together. whole shtick/cover story that I’d stick to so I could [hopefully] get away with being a complete dumbass for a while as I get my bearings.
Oh yeah, the culture and ideology was totally different. I have family connections to poorer countries, though, and I’ve read a ton of history and anthropology (still obviously less than you), so I feel like I could figure it out pretty quickly. It would be lonely and upsetting, but I could find some radicals to hang out and shoot the shit with eventually.
AskHistorians on Reddit has “ordinary life” questions every once in a while, and it really comes through how there was totally different systems of commerce set up even in the early 20th century.
