this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
152 points (95.8% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26959 readers
557 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Takes all human knowledge back in time

Starts pillaging villages

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Imagine having mustard gas on Roman conquest 😎

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

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.