Marooned in time

[jake-the-peg]

I'm going to send you back in time - a one way ticket, at least 100 years

To make life a little easier you can take a gold ingot with you 400 troy ounces

What year would you like to go to?

Don't answer too quickly - you'll want to balance the value of gold at that time with the standard of living that it'll give you and what you can do with the knowledge you bring - So you might not want to say 400 AD unless you speak latin!

[jake-the-peg]

What you going to do Zac? hit her on the head with the gold bar?

[mccfluff]

1900, i could play the stock markets and knowing in advance the dates of the wars and crashes etc, i could make a bl00dy fortune.

[jake-the-peg]

Well you'd have to wait 4 years for the first world war to kick in Mccfluff

I guess you could get a house and wait it out with a bit of that capital - what stock precisely would you buy? No fair peaking on line!

[jno]

I suppose if you could get rich with the South Sea Bubble and get out just in time... or be around during the dissolution of the monasteries and buy up large tracts of London... or just become a slave trader.

400AD would be about bottom of my list of choices whatever I spoke.

[mccfluff]

yes but there is still the boer war. i would buy stock in companies that supply arms, and make equipment. invest in wool futures, canning companies

with profits use the money to invest in scientists/inventors looking into bigger and better ways of killing people, invest in the best of those.

[R1Geezer]

I'd take all the sports results for 100 years and go back 100 years and clean up!

By the way this is one theory that says time travel will never be achieved otherwise Ladbrokes et al would not exists!

[jake-the-peg]

Nope Geezer - you're frisked - 1 bar of gold and your memory is all you're allowed.

How's your memory of the 1910 Derby? no peaking - you don't get research time!

[R1Geezer]

well I guess I could short sell the white star line!

[jake-the-peg]

Perhaps - did they let people walk in off the street and short sell then? Stock markets were rather different 100 years ago!

Incidently don't forget things don't always play out the same.

A big new investor on the stock markets will have consequences and those will amplify with time.

Sports events may be influenced by random fluctuations - general trends based on skill are likely to be the same but the lottery balls won't be the same

Titanic was 1912 - given that there's two years between your latest date and that there's a good chance the Titanic might not go down the second time around

[R1Geezer]

I presume you are alluding to the multiple time line theory like back to the future jake.

Anyway what era would you pick?

[heathfield]

No antibiotics, anasthetics, (don't get toothache!), non-iron fabrics, washing machines, refrigerators, decent adhesives, electronics,... the list goes on...and on...and on... Lots of horse manure and smelly people, 10% syphilis rate, and Spanish flu on its way. I think I'll stay here, thank you.

[China Doll]

Can I just go back to either 1920's or when Jane Austen was writing on the basis that I like the clothes or is that too simplistic a reason Jake? ;0)

[jake-the-peg]

Well it's not so much that as simple non-linear dynamics (chaos theory) the smallest changes to starting conditions can be amplified in lots of different systems from the weather to a double pendulum - and as there is a sea of background radiation providing random input it won't take long for many things to turn out differently.

So take steve's 1913 Derby - would that happen again 3 years later the same way - I doubt it.

When would I go back to?

Possibly the late medieval period, probably set up a commercial still and introduce the country to the joys of hard liquour and plough those procedes into kicking off the industrial revolution a few years early.

I should be able to rustle up the odd iron furnace and steam engine I reckon

[sddsddean]

If you go then Zac, you will be 3 million years too early!

[Clanad]

Since the focus of the conundrum is actually the gold (and supposed value), then the simple answer would be to return to the summer of 1968 when gold was selling for under $50 U.S., per ounce and immediately went into a vertical climb in value, peaking at just over $600 per ounce in about 1979. If one held onto the investment in some intervening ups and downs, it would be worth over $1100 U.S. today. Even factoring in inflation, the increase would be astounding for your 400 Troy ounces. By limiting the amount of years one traveled back the problem of drastically changing history would be only somewhat alleviated... the old "I killed my grandfather" enigma...

You must have a lot of time on your hands, jake!

[ludwig]

//Possibly the late medieval period, probably set up a commercial still and introduce the country to the joys of hard liquour and plough those procedes into kicking off the industrial revolution a few years early.

I should be able to rustle up the odd iron furnace and steam engine I reckon //

You're kidding right? All your concern about man-made global warming and you want to kick start the process about 500 years earlier?
Good question though Jake, I like it.

[MarkRae]

Good question!

I don't think I want to go back to the golden age of Rome, even though linguam latinam parlo.

And I don't think I'd fancy the Dark Ages. Nor the industrial revolution.

No, I'd go back precisely 100 years to 12 February 1910. By the time 1914 came round, I'd be too old for the front line, so I'd miss the Somme etc, and thirty years later I'd be able to see Edith Piaf live in Paris.

Problem is, how difficult would it be to resist the urge to find and kill Hitler in his mid twenties? Or Stalin in his mid thirties?