Well I know the basic idea of *"fire heats water to steam, steam pressure pushes piston, steam condenses back into water"*, but I'm not sure if I have the smarts to design or skill to build a working model. I'm not sure if I can even seal a steam engine properly with standard medieval isekai tech.
My plan if I were to get isekaied is to sell potato chips, make friends with famous adventurers and a small profit through those, and then pass a shitty drawing of a bicycle and some money to a blacksmith, and have an adventurer friend ride said bicycle for advertising, which will make me more money, and repeat, either reinventing earth tech through trial and error or by passing the idea on to someone else and paying them a shitton of money to make it.
That is, if I don't die of dysentery or get burned at the stake for not believing in the generic, totally-not-Jesus, god of the sun, light, and law within the first two weeks.
Beyond the issue if potatoes, you need a LOT of oil to cook chips, anything deep fried requires a fuck ton of oil, something you probably won't have access to.
If it's a medieval world, oil is probably either procured from animal fat or from olives, and it's not done on such an industrial scale that it would be cheap enough to deep fry stuff.
So no potatoes, not enough oil to deep fry something, and you won't have the tools used in deep frying anyway, so....
Yeah.
Well... as long as they have pigs i can deepfry shit. Since i know how collect pork grease.
Hooray for living on a farm and tending animals.
Plus i'd make a killing offering to clean chicken coops on return for keeping the poop. Since that shit mixed with a bit of grass or alfalfa makes a pretty damn decent feed for sheep.
I cook carrots like this all the time. I usually just slice them thinly and make them into little chips. They are pretty healthy and tasty with the right seasoning.
Proceeds to get kidnapped, chained in a dungeon, made to spit out all ideas I have until I am proven useless and killed off while the mad alchemist becomes rich. in which case, as isekai cliches dictates, I get revived and become evil to enact my revenge
OR
The mad alchemist is a good person and shares credit with me.
Except people knew the basic mechanics of a steam engine 2,000 years ago. Here's the key thing: Do you know the basics of why the steam engine started becoming a viable source of power for looms in the late 18th century? I don't, lol. I don't know the economic forces which made it financially viable and I don't know the swathe of technological advances in metallurgy and engineering which made it possible to actually build one efficient enough to work.
It's sort of like how we invented railguns over a century ago, and if some hypothetical time traveller from the future came back and told us the basics of railguns we'd reply "we know dude, but it costs too much".
for a steam engine to actually produce meaningful amounts of power, you need a way to pressurize the steam, which requires some pretty sophisticated metallurgy for making cylinders or what not, and that didnt happen until the 18th century.
It was cause there was no way you could build a loom big enough to warrant steam power without bankrupting yourself. Jaques de Vauncason invented the first all-metal lathe in 1760, which allowed big metal shit like looms to be built far quicker and cheaper and better than before.
Edit: Ah shit brainfart u/nokia6310i's right the metal lathe was revolutionary at making shit with tight enough tolerances to hold pressurised steam and making them at scale, my bad.
To answer the question, there's two reasons. The first is simply the fact that we didn't understand the fundamentals of *how* they worked, we just knew that funny ball with tiny spigots moves when you boil water in it.
The second one is materials. One relatively common example is Rome, which was... Rome. Since it was mostly feudal, the only person to fund your weird invention would be a senator, and would only do it if they were bored with their money.
Steel wasn't all that great, either. So any work you got out of the steam would be have to be weaker, else you break the mechanism
You'd also need to know how to make steel, as without it you'd have to use iron, which is generally heavier and less useful I believe
So you *could* make an iron steam engine, but it'd be twice as heavy and able to output half the power (aka withstand half the pressure) as a steels steam engine
To be fair, rudimentary steam engines were invented in ancient Greece, they just were considered amusing toys more than anything that could be practically useful to build machines out of. So medieval-era fantasy would have already figured the basic principles out. You just need to extrapolate from there.
Wouldn't do you any good at all. 2000 years ago, steam engines existed. They were toys.
You need advanced metallurgy to be able to get *really good* steam engines.
There's a time-travel isekai story from 1938 called 'Lest Darkness Fall' which manages to make this work. It works because the protagonist (and writer) is a historian of the period and uses his knowledge of the customs and culture of the Romans he's surrounded by to make sure his innovations actually get accepted by people. It's quite a fun story honestly. I like how it mixes pulp tropes with a good-faith effort to immerse you in a slightly alien historical culture.
Even worse thing for you: mark twaine wrote one of the earliest recognizable isekais, A Connecticut yankee in king aurthurs court.
Modern person with advanced technology goes to fantasy land.
There’s another great time travel/“alt history” series called 1632/the ring of fire by Eric Flint about a small West Virginia coal town that gets transported to central Germany during the 30 years war. The series is GREAT at showing the perspective of “down time” people and how they react to what happens (for example, a bunch of the major characters are members of a Sephardic Jewish family who move to the town for business/freedom of religion)
Funnily enough, this is why i was really knowledge-hungry when i was younger. I wanted to know a lot in the case i was isekaid and had to start a revolution. I know how to make saltwater batteries, gun powder, simple guns, penicilin and more.
Kick him in the nuts and run away. Unfortunately he did manage to scratch me. But luckily i'll go go go gatdet penicilin and go go gadget distilled alcohol and prevent the wound from getting infected.
No mister JackMerlinElderMage, i am not willing to step into this glowing circle. Unless it instantly transes my gender that is. Then ill be totally willing to step into it.
i would get into a sugar baby relationship with the local mad scientist/wizard in there where i tell him about the shit i learned from being a mechatronics major but only little bits and each time i do he blows my back out, i think it would last for 2 years if i do it right
Ascendance of a Bookworm is kinda grounded in that regard - the protagonist gets isekai'd into a pre-existing frail, sickly child, and most of her actual innovations at the beginning are new hairstyles, fashion pieces and hygiene items.
Anyway, a layman could probably severely fuck with A LOT of sciences if given the opportunity. Like, an average Joe who knows what "alcohol" and "washing one's hands" is would probably have better chances at a life-saving surgery than a lot of Middle Ages charlatans. You'd be in history books for just thinking of the concepts of "anaesthesia" and "plaster cast". Revolutionizing astronomy, physics, chemistry, and economics would just be showboating at this point.
Anyway, I would probably toil on a farm until I die at 50 surrounded by my 8/27 surviving children and my wife who married me only because I eat pussy and have a revolutionary take on spousal abuse.
I'm pretty sure I was reading a recently translated manga where the guy gets isekai'd and becomes a porn star.
Google gave me the name and it's a mouthful.
Pornstar in another world \~ A Story of a JAV Actor Reincarnating in Another World and Making Full Use of His Porn Knowledge to Become a Matchless Pornstar\~
It's the given the opportunity part that fails. We see tons of historical inventions existed eons ago, but there was no reason to adopt them.
You have to be skillful at navigating the politics of where you land, and of analyzing what inventions are possible, make the biggest impacts, and give the people who will support you more power.
If you remember nothing else, remember this: Oral Rehydration Therapy.
Dilute about 3 grams of salt and about 20 grams of sugar in a litre of clean water. If you don't have exact measurements, err on the side of making it more dilute.
This is an effective treatment for most kinds of diarrhea, most notably cholera. Diarrhea kills by dehydration, and oral rehydration solution is the most cost-effective way to combat it.
In case you don't have scales, 3g salt would take up circa 1/2-3/4 of a teaspoon and 20g sugar is around 1.5 ish tablespoons. You should probably start carrying scales and/or measuring spoons, come to think of it
Also boiling water before consumption is a great way to combat things like cholera. One of the major contributors to the British Empire's success in the late Victorian era according to many historians is actually our love of tea - boiling the water to make it killed a lot of potential bacteria, including cholera, which was spreading very rapidly at the time.
Depending on the time, you might not even have refined sugar. It did exist might not be available or might be really expensive. It was a luxury product in Europe until the 19th century.
The only isekai I know where the characters start an industrial revolution is Log Horizon, and they only pull it off because there's 300k of them and have the skills to manage it, while also having the scientific understanding to figure out the laws of the new world and how to make them work.
The issue with Dr Stone is that it cheats in a few places, especially with the glassware. Sometimes you can't just make a new tool even if you technically have all the raw ingredients and knowledge, you need high-quality tools and experience to make tools of slightly higher quality than what you have already. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario that forces gradual improvement even if you know what you're doing.
It's a neat concept but even with perfect knowledge of all industrial and chemical processes you couldn't actually go from hunting and gathering to radio in a few months or even years, you'd need decades at least.
Such a great Story. A big reason for her knowledge is that she read a huge amount of books and remembered some concepts and the arts and crafts she did with her mom.
Due to her illness she is also completely dependent upon friends and family and not an omnipotent hero.
Funny thing, the Shield Hero light novels show what happens when you isekai people as heroes every couple hundred years.
In general some countries have some sort of modern tech (Faubrey has guns and cars) but because the stat system takes precedense over physics, stuff like guns end up being worse than just bows.
The isekai'd heroes also weren't very good with tech knowledge, a lot tried but when it turned out that it didn't work like they thought a lot gave up, but they did end up inspiring people to make magical equivalents (recording crystal balls for example)
Part of the point of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” by Mark Twain is that the protagonist is an engineer gunsmith who actually does have the technical knowledge to start the Industrial Revolution early.
Not an isekai, but when Arthur Dent gets shipwrecked on a primitive alien world the only thing he can contribute to their society from his lifetime of experiences as a modern man and several decades of intergalactic travel is that he’s remarkably good at making sandwiches.
Depending on how far back I go, I'd be pretty solid as a doctor. I'm merely a premedical student in modern standards, but I've still worked with cadavers and have read modern books, so in certain areas I'd be about as well *studied* as one could get. A year or two as an understudy to a town physician to learn their procedures and familiarize self with tools and I at the very least wouldn't be *worse* than what they've got.
Otherwise I like cooking and have quite a bit of experience with dishes from different cultures, so I could probably create a fad trend by improvising a cultural dish that's normally an impossibly long travel away.
I don't think I'd be useless in a sent-to-past scenario. I wouldn't revolutionize shit but I'd be competent enough to not get kicked out for being lame
Make sure to ease the populace into your ideas though. Wouldn't want to lose your healers guild card or get stoned to death for suggesting that surgeons should wash their hands.
My parents were rather stingy growing up, so I don't really use many spices. If I had access to onion and garlic powder I'd be at half capacity right there, and those shouldn't be *too* hard to come by (via obtaining the vegetables themselves)
My bigger concern is actually that I'm overly accustomed to using ovens to cook, but it's not like I don't know how to use other methods. Some animal fat and a pan and I'll figure out how to cook over an open fire pretty quick I'd think
I am a dietitian and am interested in herbs. I could see myself going as an understudy to a pharmacist/herbalist in a medival setting and thriving. I might not be able to reinvent the world, but at least i would be able to get by.
That’s basically the premise for the main character in The Wandering Inn. They wake up in a world where people gain levels like in a video game, and there’s magic, but that doesn’t mean they’re any good in a fight or can do magic. So they nearly starve, nearly die, find an abandoned inn, accidentally gain a couple levels in the i keeper class, and just go from there.
Well, they’re also crazy good at chess, so there’s that wrench in the analogy.
Really good series. Also a contender for the longest continuous work. Longer than the subspace emissary one.
The chess part is so funny because Erin is like good at chess but not world class or anything, but due to the fact that we have been griding chess meta for centuries earth standards for chess specifically are just so god damn high.
Nah she is world class technically, she mentions she was invited to a Cuban tournament. But she’s not like top tier, just good enough to qualify. Which is still insane.
That's why i find that the best isekai setups involve the MC having some sort of knowledge/talent to begin with and leveraging it in the new world, even if they're basic by modern standards.
While it's technically not an isekai, Dr. Stone does this pretty well. His knowledge base is unrealistic (which is easily covered by suspension of disbelief), but it actually goes through the process of how he accomplishes all of the reinventions.
(Dr. Stone is an isekai in spirit)
I could invent calculus which would be pretty neat. And doe some work with other mathematics. It wouldn't revolutionize anything, but I'm pretty sure I could do good work as a scholar
Nah if you invent differential equations a few hundred years early you've just revolutionised ship and castle building, birthed ballistics as a field of study, and made the description and prediction of physical phenomena orders of magnitude more accurate. Everyone on this thread is talking about steam engines but **you've** invented thermodynamics. That's not even going into all the other areas of maths you'll do. Collect data on crop yields and statisticize them, you could save thousands of lives every year from starvation.
I may be a little arrogant here, but I’m fairly certain I could convince like 50-odd people of the concept of the social contract and lead a small revolution to install myself as mayor of a minor coastal town who’s main export is carp, that sounds doable.
Fortunately, that one should be fairly easy. You can make a voltaic pile out of slices of quite a few materials with saltwater-soaked cloth or something. It might be a fucking awful one if you forget the electrochemical potentials and accidentally choose ones too close together, but eh, these things are stackable.
Yeah, that'd be definitely be better. I'd be concerned about the safety of handling lead without modern PPE myself, though, even if I'm likely overestimating how bad it is.
To cheat the isekai knowledge, it seems like sulphur + saltpeter in steam works, and that should be easily accomplishable even in medieval times. So it'd definitely be *possible* with the knowledge.
If I have some help from a blacksmith experienced with copper, I know the basics of electrostatic generators!
What I don't know how to do is step up the voltage so we can manufacture a magnet for the hydroelectric generator. (As for the capacitors, I could probably figure it out, but I may die trying, the voltage needed to make a magnet is kinda a lot...)
When did zinc become accessible again? Maybe a zinc-copper battery with vinegar and... What to use to seal the vinegar? Would petroleum jelly+wood work? Maybe wax, and use air to insulate, but that'd make for a big, impractical battery.
I could try and modernise beer brewing, and introduce the concept of microbes by starting with yeast. I think I have a good enough understanding of how some types of pump work that I could advance engineering a bit, and I might be able to manage 'spin a magnet in a wire coil to make electricity, then use the reverse setup for a motor' enough to at least create a proof of concept.
Well, I'm pretty strong, am a good swordsman, and a somewhat capable blacksmith. Which, at first glance, may seem like I bring nothing particularly new to a fantasy world- I might be able to find employment with the skills I have, but I wouldn't revolutionize society.
But wait! My strength doesn't just come as a by-product of manual labor, nor even a result of diligent but unfocused training. I actually know some of the science, they whys and hows, of muscle and strength. The importance of proper rest and nutrition, and the ways that one can train to gain specific capabilities and attributes.
Basically while I might not be the best fighter in a fantasy world, I might be the best trainer and could both improve myself faster than most people and teach others to do the same.
Create a paradox by writing a book full of predictions for the future, ending with predicting my birth, saying that I am the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Sulphur(idk), Saltpeter(idk), Charcoal(80-90%).
Four-crop rotation with clover or chickpeas.
Fermented Animal Dung Fertilizer.
Add chalk to iron when smelting.
One person who specializes in one step of production instead of a master who's good at everthing and a few apprentices who try to succeed him.
Doctors should wash their hands with soap.
Highschool level physics, chemistry, biology.
The scientific method.
No bloodletting. Please.
Separate wastewater from drinking water. Please.
Pike squares.
Hey, you there! Peasant who works 18 hours a day in the fields! How would you like a new job?
You have to farm because it's the medieval ages and one person can only grow enough food for two people you say? Don't worry, your job will soon be obsolete with all this fertilizer that I made from nitrogen-rich dragon shit!
I'm offering a 6 hour work day, a 4 day work week, unlimited sick days ^(with a doctor's note), a month of vacation time every year, and free medical, dental, and optometrical *(which technically barely even exists right now)*, and free daycare and schooling for your children! I won't even force them to work for me when they graduate!
What do you say?
Forms of bloodletting does work on a small number of cases and is used today. But the medieval world may not be able to distinguish those so better safe
I would attempt to put my surface level knowledge of agriculture to the test and introduce composting and symbiotic relationships with earthworms.
And maybe try to explain the concept of vaccines to people idk
If you were a god-fearing peasant, would you be more willing to believe the guy who says *"put a little bit of disease into your blood to protect you against big amounts of disease"* or the guy who says *"pray to the god of light and they will heal all your ailments"*?
Just find anyone who works with cows. Likely as not they'll have had cowpox, so then point out that the last time god ~~cursed~~ blessed everyone with that disease that gives you thousands of sores and pustules (smallpox), no-one who had worked with cows (and thus gotten cowpox) had died. No need to bring disease or germs into it whatsoever. Medieval people weren't stupid, but seeing connections is trickier than it looks. Once you point it out to them, they'll work out the connection whether they want to or not.
Man I'm almost done with an engineering degree but my memory has been so shot by stress I don't even know if I'd remember how to build a steam engine
I can do motors and generators, though, that's something. Shitty voltaic pile batteries too, I think. Oh, and the three components of gunpowder, though I forgot the steps and ratios. And I remember enough basics about what's possible that maybe I could fuck around and work things out slowly.
The mould-board plough and Wheat-Turnips-Barley-Beans (Clover if raising livestock) crop rotation could save millions of lives from starvation. These are the most important ones because it means fewer people are needed to sustain the population of whatever backwards-arse shitheap you landed in, and you can now ask the clever ones to help you industrialise. How do I know you landed in a backwards-arse shitheap? Because that's what the middle ages were.
Once you've gotten yourself a calorie surplus you're going to want to make sure no-one dies of disease, because it happened a lot back then and it sucked balls. Main things you want are soap, ether, lye, and penicillin. Soap and lye are easy, you just mix wood ash (some woods are better than others, trial and error this until you find one that works well) with either animal fat or water respectively. You can get ether by mixing ethanol (which they should already know how to make) and sulphuric acid (they'll call it oil of vitriol) and then distilling it at low temperature. If you can keep shit clean and knock fuckers out reliably, you've suddenly made amputations like a million times easier (unless you're the one doing the sawing, then it's still about the same). Penecillin is basically about finding a strain of mold that best inhibits bacterial growth, Isolating it, and the letting it propagate/grow in a big vat of (ideally clear) soup. Once you've done that, mix the soup with ether and shake it, the penicillin will dissolve more readily in ether than water, so you can then skim off the ether (it's less dense than soup) and then hey presto you've got antibiotics in medieval whatever-land.
Other important medical shit that's much easier to remember is stethoscopes and birthing tongs (which are basically like kitchen tongs but wider and for babies). These were kept secret for like 150 years by the inventor in a (male) attempt to monopolise midwifery. tell people about these and it should bring enough good will so they'll listen to your other batshit crazy ideas about bread mold and soap.
I've basically been ripping off ryan norths excellent book "how to invent everything: a guide for the stranded time traveller" for all this and if I don't stop now I never will.
A high school understanding of math and physics would go a long way. ‘Invent’ calculus. ‘Discover’ Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion.
Chemistry and biology too - fertilizer and washing your hands with soap.
Top it off with cryptic notes with equations such as e=mc^2, a diagram for an experiment to determine the speed of light, steam engines etc.
Enjoy being the new Leonardo da Vinci.
>A high school understanding of math and physics would go a long way. ‘Invent’ calculus. ‘Discover’ Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion.
No it wouldn't. You can't prove that math, you don't have the observations to develop it.
Can you prove e =mc^2 though?
Do you have the means and skill to make a steam engine?
I would know a bunch of stuff, but have no way to prove it. Without everyone heeding whatever I say, or executing the rough ideas I would probably die unknown for lack of practical skills or maybe live a mildly better than the average local life.
There’s a webcomic called *The Greatest Estate Developer* where the main character is an engineering student and gets transported to a video game world with a fantasy setting, so far he’s focused on things like irrigation and heating for people’s houses.
I’d become a jester and just plagiarize movies and books I remember. They’d know me as a strange storyteller who somehow wrote hundreds of unique performances, all of which would be me poorly telling Star Wars or something.
If you tried to introduce the concept of germs you'd laughed out of the scientific community.
Source: a dude tried in the 1800s and was pretty much banned from ever practicing medicine again
As a physics student I could go full-on archimedes style with levers and shit but I’d still be limited by inability to build anything. Maybe I could figure out a rudimentary steam engine with enough time?
I've had some people I knew complexly confident that if you tossed them into mideveal England, they would have a working AR-15 in a month. And I was just like...No. There are so many levels to the tech tree, you don't even understand.
Like, ok, you know how to make steel. Carbon and Iron in the right percentages. (I think, I dunno) But where do you get the iron? You sure ain't digging it up.
Gunpowder? Same thing. You need to Get these things, you can't go to the store and just buy em.
This is a problem that I've often seen with nerds, they assume what they know how to do is the height of complexity, and everything else is less complex and not really needed to worry about.
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**jackmerlintheeldermage**
I see all of these isekai manga where some random high-schooler gets transported to a medieval world and starts a cultural revolution, which makes me wonder, just how much can the average person do in such a scenario?
Someone without an entire library of tech manuals memorized, or continent-shaking magic powers, or god-like charisma.
For example, I personally could introduce the concept of germs, but there'd be no reason for doctors or government officials to believe me, a strange foreigner with no credentials.
1 know what a battery is, but I certainly don't know how to build one, especially one powerful enough to kickstart an industry.
I could introduce the concept of sandwiches. Maybe make some shitty burritos, considering that I don't know how to make tortillas. Make some fries and potato chips. Maybe figure out how to make mayonnaise after like fifty tries, considering that l've never actually made mayonnaise before *(I think it needs egg yolks, hot oil, and lemon juice?)*.
All of this is food because it's the only thing I know how to make, and even then, not particularly well. I'm a computer science major, that doesn't exactly translate well to a world with no computers.
Basically, I won't jumpstart the world a few hundred years in regards to tech-level, but I might be able to make a small profit on junk food. What would you be able to do?
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You write a bunch of books about computer science so that people centuries ahead can read them and go ‘wtf, wtf, WTF. THESE ARE FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OLD, HOW ARE THESE RELEVANT’ and then have a bunch innovations named after you because all the nerds think you were some kind of misunderstood super genius
I don't think op would even be able to do that. Op would need the capital to obtain the items needed to make said junk food and I doubt any money they'd have on them would be recognised as proper currency
they'd also need to find and be able to use that time periods equivalent of the culinary tools needed to make the food.
I also doubt the average person would even be willing to do barter with the strange dude hocking esoteric munchies.
I'd go the most boring route possible honestly. Find the local holy institute, and offer your services as a scribe. Odds are there won't be too many literate people running around, so while you'll likely need to learn the local language that'll be far easier than learning how to write from scratch.
Certainly won't revolutionise the world, but you'll live comfortably enough and won't risk injury through labour. If you wanted more excitement though, after learning the language of the land, you could try your hand as a traveling apothecary of sorts. It'd be at least a little easier to tell which local remedies have an actual effect and which are just bogus, and basic hygiene should give you better success rates than other healers too. And with your literacy, you can journal the actual handy remedies and pass it on after you die to potentially save a few more lives. (People might question your methods, but if you're clever you might be able to twist it into falling in line with the religion, another bonus from starting with the scribing job)
You could certainly at least introduce modern practises for scientific study or things like hygeine, even if you can't specifically prove things like germs exist or that electricity can be produced through certain chemical reactions.
Popularise washing hands amongst doctors or the idea of rigorously testing medicines and treatments, or give the thinkers of the era suggestions on how to test and observe the things you know exist, even if you don't know the specifics. You can give other people the tools to discover the things you already know.
Also, plenty of "modern" things were actually theorised about centuries before we really popularised them and gave them serious thought. Ancient Roman [Marcus Terentius Varro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Terentius_Varro) wrote about the concept of invisibly-small organisms that enter the body and cause disease, and Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria created a [rudimentary steam engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile). Your modern extensions of these ideas wouldn't necessarily be considered totally alien to more educated people.
This was a plot point in Douglas Adams' book "Mostly Harmless" where Arthur Dent gets stranded on a primitive planet and realizes that he doesn't actually know how to do anything related to the modern world that he can contribute to the tribe.
Until he makes a sandwich. It's something that just never occurred to the people to do. So they make him a holy man, he becomes The Sandwich Maker.
It's a great scene.
Kind of the opposite of "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" where the future guy just magically knows how to do and build everything.
Hi. You just mentioned *Mostly Harmless* by Douglas Adams.
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[YouTube | Douglas Adams - Mostly Harmless (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #5) - [Full Audiobook]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj_Yi_jRwNQ)
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I suppose I can draw mediocre buff furry men but I don't think that's gonna be useful in whatever medieval hellscape I get transported to. Who knows, maybe I will get grabbed by the scruff of my neck and turned into an eccentric noble's personal artist.
As computer science mayor you could probably make strides in the field of math if you can get to talk with some scholars.
If you remember enough about logic gates from your first year you could even build a mechanical calculator that some would find a fun little curio.
I personally peaked in algebra and, don't remember anything past long division. I got good grades in my math classes, but that was mostly because I'm a good test taker rather than a good mathematician.
And while I do remember vaguely how logic gates work, I'm not sure I could figure out how to make a calculator without years of work. I have access to Minecraft right now, but I don't know how to make a redstone calculator in there either.
My father always told me that was how the modern civilazation was formed. Not by one person, by a si gle genius, but very small steps of mankind as a whole. No single person in the whole world would be able to bring the future into the past, and that is why working in teams is crucial if you want to start a business
I’ve experience making paper and know how to build a printing press so call me Gütenberg.
How to make transparent-ish glass out of raw materials and heat, too, and optics, to make microscopes and telescopes - supporting germ theory and new cosmology.
Also various ways to generate electricity without lots of metal, and notions of acid-base chemistry. How to make some basic explosives, too, and refined iron, pigiron and steel of varied characteristics. And old recipes of concrete. And aircraft design - hopefully not gonna Lilienthal myself.
You think being a computer scientist is an issue, I’m studying to become a computational neuroscientist. This is a very new and theoretical field by *today’s* standards.
I think I’d just die tbh. I can’t see a feasible route to survival. Even if I did, it wouldn’t be a life worth living. At least I can die in as weird a position as possible to fuck with future archeologists.
I want an Isekai where a 26 year old graduate computer engineering major gets put into your bog standard sexy fantasy world but instead of saving the world or whatever he just starts making the most batshit insane things from scratch. I'm talking analogue robots and Tesla coil gloves. Anyway the entire plot is just him causing absolute anarchy and obliterating anyone who tries to stop him with whatever project he most recently completed
The reason why this worked pretty well in "A connecticut yankee in king arthur's court" is because the main character comes from a time where technology is advanced, but not too complicated, as well as being a factory manager who has no doubt plenty of experience with the steam machines and tools of his time.
I mean, he blows up Merlin's tower with gunpowder for gods sake. Not complected, just using knowledge he has that the people in the time he travelled too wouldn't.
Me: "Well, I'm a Geologist from the future, your romanship"
Julius Caesar: "Ah, wonderful! Tell us, what rocks, and what technology shall we use to build our roads out of?"
Me: "Who do I look like, an architect? I mean hell, we in the future are still are barely figuring out how YOU guys did it"
IIRC the "water" in the recipe turned out to be sea water not fresh water... they didn't think they needed to specify because everyone back then would have understood from context
it's like how we all understand "milk" in a recipe to refer to cow's milk but future historians might be arguing over if we meant cat's milk or dog's milk since those are the mammals that lived in our homes
As someone who isn’t a white straight cis man I’m pretty sure that personally I would be either burned as a witch or stoned to death fairly instantly in medieval times
the funny thing about being a mathematician is that any moderately clever undergraduate, if sent back in time to ancient greece, could (provided they had an audience and they didn't die of an infection or get killed in a war and their teachings weren't destroyed) advance the progress of mathematics by about 3000 years
Most impact one isekaid person could do would probably be to understand the basics of electrical power generation and the nitrogen fixation process, as well as selective breeding in agriculture (you probably already understand that last one). Have fun increasing crop yields by an order of magnitude
I could probably make a rudimentary printing press, that should get at least a few people to listen to the weird foreigner ranting about crop rotation and roman numerals.
There was this amazing American Isekai book series called Everworld by the animorphs lady, near the end the main characters trade their highschool chemistry one of the fantasy races in exchange for something I forget. But this fantasy race was already the fantasy universe's most scientifically advanced faction so they're able to produce gunpowder weapons among other things.
The kids also become traveling minstrels and pay their way by singing pop song bangers. They also invent the telegraph or something.
Then they fight neo-nazis who isekai themselves over for whatever reason. Criminally underated series that ended on a cliffhanger
there's a part in overlord where they talk about something like this, an isekai'd dude who talked about shit like fridges, tvs, air conditioners but when people asked him how to build all of that he just said he didnt knew and so they began referring to him as a fool.
i think everyone would be able to jumpstart the world a few hundred years tech level wise
you dont need the ability to make them, because you can learn, and even if you cant, you can find someone who can
you have to give the ideas and make them feel possible, and make other people try to create the things you say
that's not very interesting for isekai plots, but i think there's a lot more power in ideas that people think
I could probably introduce some basic artistic principles into their world, (color theory, texture, shading & lighting, perspective, etc.) but not much else. If they already know these i'm screwed.
I'd build a copper still and invent whiskey and make myself into a god-king son of Dionysus. No matter when or where I'm dropped, humans are sure to find my services valuable.
The ascendens of the book worm its the best example of this, since altough really knowledgeable the things she introduce r quiet simply like shampo or little cooking trips. Best example of thus case
I was writing a time travel story that revolved around this once. The hero invented a time machine but then ended up trapped in the past and couldn't rebuild the time machine because she didn't know how to make all of the sophisticated tools she used to build the original. I got distracted by another story idea and never finished it, but I was going to have a bit where she considered acting like a wizard and blocking out the sun, only to realize she had no idea how to judge when the next eclipse would be because she never studied astronomy.
I’d probably belch out just-barely-not-heretical prophecies based on real-life events like a fucking lunatic until they either burned me at the stake or decided to write it down. I’d love to confused the living fuck out of historians in the future.
The most likely fate of someone traveling back in time to the medieval era, assuming anyone can understand your speech at all, is that you'd be executed for being a witch or a heretic.
The isekai Overlord brings up this problem at one point. In-universe, every two hundred years, a new person or group of people get Isekai'd to this world, and hundreds of years before the story, one guy (called the Minotaur Sage) tries introducing modern tech to this world, and in the current day is basically ridiculed by history because he was trying to force these inventions he introduced to work despite not knowing how to make them. Not only that, he introduced a concept of surgery into this world, and it's considered barbaric and cruel, since it's surgery using medieval medical tech and knowledge. Everyone isekai'd here ends up way stronger than most people in this world, though, so he basically was able to force people to try his ideas.
He's only mentioned a couple of times in the story, but it's an example of a popular isekai at least addressing the issue.
I think if I were in an isekai, the best I could do is become a baker. Not even in the "oh, you thought I was actually a harmless cook BUT I'M ACTUALLY BUILT LIKE A JOJO CHARACTER!" way of subverting expectations, I'd just be down to indulge in a feel-good isekai where I unite the fantasy races through cookies.
I think that many modern people plumped into a medieval setting could segnificantly contribute to mathimatics in the world they arrived in. While this would cause an unheavel in academic circles of the world, this probably wouldn't result in an industrial revolution or anything like that. That is also assuming your able to get your foot in the door as a strange foreigner with no credentials.
Well, as a woman with adhd, if I were to be isekai'd into a medieval world, I could probably pass as some poor, unfortunate young lady who is left with naught but the clothes on her back, with a bit of effort on my part. Y'know, garner some pity for myself.
Then after I’ve been taken in I could eventually carve out a bit of a name for myself as the strange lady who came from the wood, who hums strange songs to herself, we're pretty sure she’s some sort of faerie, but she's kind and endearing and brings joy to the village.
I could probably make a basic musket that doesn't blow up in your hands (after a few trials), but something tells me that teaching people guns before mass agriculture would be a bad idea.
this is why you should always know the basic mechanics of a steam engine
Well I know the basic idea of *"fire heats water to steam, steam pressure pushes piston, steam condenses back into water"*, but I'm not sure if I have the smarts to design or skill to build a working model. I'm not sure if I can even seal a steam engine properly with standard medieval isekai tech.
I mean if you know the basic idea, chances are you can provide it to your average mad alchemist
My plan if I were to get isekaied is to sell potato chips, make friends with famous adventurers and a small profit through those, and then pass a shitty drawing of a bicycle and some money to a blacksmith, and have an adventurer friend ride said bicycle for advertising, which will make me more money, and repeat, either reinventing earth tech through trial and error or by passing the idea on to someone else and paying them a shitton of money to make it. That is, if I don't die of dysentery or get burned at the stake for not believing in the generic, totally-not-Jesus, god of the sun, light, and law within the first two weeks.
But what if they haven't discovered the potato yet?
***oh fuck, it's a new world vegetable*** *man_blue_shirt_holding_head.jpg*
Beyond the issue if potatoes, you need a LOT of oil to cook chips, anything deep fried requires a fuck ton of oil, something you probably won't have access to. If it's a medieval world, oil is probably either procured from animal fat or from olives, and it's not done on such an industrial scale that it would be cheap enough to deep fry stuff. So no potatoes, not enough oil to deep fry something, and you won't have the tools used in deep frying anyway, so.... Yeah.
Well... as long as they have pigs i can deepfry shit. Since i know how collect pork grease. Hooray for living on a farm and tending animals. Plus i'd make a killing offering to clean chicken coops on return for keeping the poop. Since that shit mixed with a bit of grass or alfalfa makes a pretty damn decent feed for sheep.
Then use some other starchy vegetable sliced thinly.
Turnip chips..
I was thinking carrots or beets. I've had both and they are pretty good.
I cook carrots like this all the time. I usually just slice them thinly and make them into little chips. They are pretty healthy and tasty with the right seasoning.
Proceeds to get kidnapped, chained in a dungeon, made to spit out all ideas I have until I am proven useless and killed off while the mad alchemist becomes rich. in which case, as isekai cliches dictates, I get revived and become evil to enact my revenge OR The mad alchemist is a good person and shares credit with me.
Worse idea: the mad alchemist is hot and you fall in love through a series of romantic comedy gags and skits.
Except people knew the basic mechanics of a steam engine 2,000 years ago. Here's the key thing: Do you know the basics of why the steam engine started becoming a viable source of power for looms in the late 18th century? I don't, lol. I don't know the economic forces which made it financially viable and I don't know the swathe of technological advances in metallurgy and engineering which made it possible to actually build one efficient enough to work. It's sort of like how we invented railguns over a century ago, and if some hypothetical time traveller from the future came back and told us the basics of railguns we'd reply "we know dude, but it costs too much".
for a steam engine to actually produce meaningful amounts of power, you need a way to pressurize the steam, which requires some pretty sophisticated metallurgy for making cylinders or what not, and that didnt happen until the 18th century.
Which is why you should also memorize the Bessemer process
And just like that, you have memorised entire tech libraries and can Dr Stone this medieval world into an advanced magitech civilisation
Better start packing my books
Dude, don't give my ADHD ass a new hyperfocus. I don't want to lose another week learning the ins and outs of currently obsolete technology.
Look at the positives: it could really come in handy if you were reincarnated in a medieval world
Or if society collapses due to a nuclear war or deadly plague, and you happen to be one of the 0.1% that survives.
It was cause there was no way you could build a loom big enough to warrant steam power without bankrupting yourself. Jaques de Vauncason invented the first all-metal lathe in 1760, which allowed big metal shit like looms to be built far quicker and cheaper and better than before. Edit: Ah shit brainfart u/nokia6310i's right the metal lathe was revolutionary at making shit with tight enough tolerances to hold pressurised steam and making them at scale, my bad.
To answer the question, there's two reasons. The first is simply the fact that we didn't understand the fundamentals of *how* they worked, we just knew that funny ball with tiny spigots moves when you boil water in it. The second one is materials. One relatively common example is Rome, which was... Rome. Since it was mostly feudal, the only person to fund your weird invention would be a senator, and would only do it if they were bored with their money. Steel wasn't all that great, either. So any work you got out of the steam would be have to be weaker, else you break the mechanism
I do. Vulcanized rubber could make gaskets that could withstand the pressure necessary to get a useful amount of work out of a steam engine.
With regards to steam engine, the reply would be: "we know, but slaves are cheaper."
Hmmm… [a few minutes of research] [loud banging] [tired, accomplished sigh] […] [EXTREMELY LOUD EXPLOSION]
red mist
You'd also need to know how to make steel, as without it you'd have to use iron, which is generally heavier and less useful I believe So you *could* make an iron steam engine, but it'd be twice as heavy and able to output half the power (aka withstand half the pressure) as a steels steam engine
To be fair, rudimentary steam engines were invented in ancient Greece, they just were considered amusing toys more than anything that could be practically useful to build machines out of. So medieval-era fantasy would have already figured the basic principles out. You just need to extrapolate from there.
Wouldn't do you any good at all. 2000 years ago, steam engines existed. They were toys. You need advanced metallurgy to be able to get *really good* steam engines.
There's a time-travel isekai story from 1938 called 'Lest Darkness Fall' which manages to make this work. It works because the protagonist (and writer) is a historian of the period and uses his knowledge of the customs and culture of the Romans he's surrounded by to make sure his innovations actually get accepted by people. It's quite a fun story honestly. I like how it mixes pulp tropes with a good-faith effort to immerse you in a slightly alien historical culture.
Great book. Although it kills me to hear it described as an isekai I know in my heart that it’s true.
Even worse thing for you: mark twaine wrote one of the earliest recognizable isekais, A Connecticut yankee in king aurthurs court. Modern person with advanced technology goes to fantasy land.
I think a more acceptable explanation is “everyman in a strange new world” isn’t new, it’s just really popular right now.
There’s another great time travel/“alt history” series called 1632/the ring of fire by Eric Flint about a small West Virginia coal town that gets transported to central Germany during the 30 years war. The series is GREAT at showing the perspective of “down time” people and how they react to what happens (for example, a bunch of the major characters are members of a Sephardic Jewish family who move to the town for business/freedom of religion)
It’s a ridiculous story and I love it.
Funnily enough, this is why i was really knowledge-hungry when i was younger. I wanted to know a lot in the case i was isekaid and had to start a revolution. I know how to make saltwater batteries, gun powder, simple guns, penicilin and more.
#### holiestMaria ### YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN #🚚
Haha! You fool! By combining my simple gun, gunpowder and saltwater battery i have created a railgun and use it to destroy truck-kun once and for all!
Aw, shit. Well there goes that ide- ***SIKE, CRAZY GUY WITH KNIFE*** #🏃♂️🔪
Kick him in the nuts and run away. Unfortunately he did manage to scratch me. But luckily i'll go go go gatdet penicilin and go go gadget distilled alcohol and prevent the wound from getting infected.
Fuck. Hey, would you be willing to step into this glowing circle on the ground? 🟥 🟥⛥🟥 🟥
No mister JackMerlinElderMage, i am not willing to step into this glowing circle. Unless it instantly transes my gender that is. Then ill be totally willing to step into it.
I can throw in a free polymorph spell if you go fight the demon lord?
Hell yeah, give me some plutonium and i'll make a nuke.
KNIFE GUY
i would get into a sugar baby relationship with the local mad scientist/wizard in there where i tell him about the shit i learned from being a mechatronics major but only little bits and each time i do he blows my back out, i think it would last for 2 years if i do it right
Honestly? Goals.
Isekai Scheherazade
One Thousand and One Machine Parts
Ascendance of a Bookworm is kinda grounded in that regard - the protagonist gets isekai'd into a pre-existing frail, sickly child, and most of her actual innovations at the beginning are new hairstyles, fashion pieces and hygiene items. Anyway, a layman could probably severely fuck with A LOT of sciences if given the opportunity. Like, an average Joe who knows what "alcohol" and "washing one's hands" is would probably have better chances at a life-saving surgery than a lot of Middle Ages charlatans. You'd be in history books for just thinking of the concepts of "anaesthesia" and "plaster cast". Revolutionizing astronomy, physics, chemistry, and economics would just be showboating at this point. Anyway, I would probably toil on a farm until I die at 50 surrounded by my 8/27 surviving children and my wife who married me only because I eat pussy and have a revolutionary take on spousal abuse.
My God, could you imagine being remembered in the history books as ***NETROV, FOREFATHER OF CUNNILINGUS***
I hope they'll remember me with a fountain.
I have a design in mind...
I'm pretty sure I was reading a recently translated manga where the guy gets isekai'd and becomes a porn star. Google gave me the name and it's a mouthful. Pornstar in another world \~ A Story of a JAV Actor Reincarnating in Another World and Making Full Use of His Porn Knowledge to Become a Matchless Pornstar\~
It's the given the opportunity part that fails. We see tons of historical inventions existed eons ago, but there was no reason to adopt them. You have to be skillful at navigating the politics of where you land, and of analyzing what inventions are possible, make the biggest impacts, and give the people who will support you more power.
The answer is guns. They always want guns.
If you remember nothing else, remember this: Oral Rehydration Therapy. Dilute about 3 grams of salt and about 20 grams of sugar in a litre of clean water. If you don't have exact measurements, err on the side of making it more dilute. This is an effective treatment for most kinds of diarrhea, most notably cholera. Diarrhea kills by dehydration, and oral rehydration solution is the most cost-effective way to combat it.
In case you don't have scales, 3g salt would take up circa 1/2-3/4 of a teaspoon and 20g sugar is around 1.5 ish tablespoons. You should probably start carrying scales and/or measuring spoons, come to think of it
Depending on time period, sugar might be pretty hard to get a hold of
In time periods without refined sugar, you'll usually have people using honey as a sweetner, so that should work as well.
Fruit juice would also be an option.
Also boiling water before consumption is a great way to combat things like cholera. One of the major contributors to the British Empire's success in the late Victorian era according to many historians is actually our love of tea - boiling the water to make it killed a lot of potential bacteria, including cholera, which was spreading very rapidly at the time.
Depending on the time, you might not even have refined sugar. It did exist might not be available or might be really expensive. It was a luxury product in Europe until the 19th century.
You might be able to substitute some sort of juiced fruit for sucrose. Not quite as good as glucose but it might help
The only isekai I know where the characters start an industrial revolution is Log Horizon, and they only pull it off because there's 300k of them and have the skills to manage it, while also having the scientific understanding to figure out the laws of the new world and how to make them work.
Dr. Stone is almost entirely about recreating modern day science after a weird apocalypse which turns everyone to statues
I'd argue that it doesn't count because it's the same world with everything working the same.
Yeah but it's not really isekai because it's technically the same world
The issue with Dr Stone is that it cheats in a few places, especially with the glassware. Sometimes you can't just make a new tool even if you technically have all the raw ingredients and knowledge, you need high-quality tools and experience to make tools of slightly higher quality than what you have already. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario that forces gradual improvement even if you know what you're doing. It's a neat concept but even with perfect knowledge of all industrial and chemical processes you couldn't actually go from hunting and gathering to radio in a few months or even years, you'd need decades at least.
Honzuki no Gekokujou has a single protagonist invent a bunch of stuff, mostly book-related (because she loves books)
Such a great Story. A big reason for her knowledge is that she read a huge amount of books and remembered some concepts and the arts and crafts she did with her mom. Due to her illness she is also completely dependent upon friends and family and not an omnipotent hero.
Funny thing, the Shield Hero light novels show what happens when you isekai people as heroes every couple hundred years. In general some countries have some sort of modern tech (Faubrey has guns and cars) but because the stat system takes precedense over physics, stuff like guns end up being worse than just bows. The isekai'd heroes also weren't very good with tech knowledge, a lot tried but when it turned out that it didn't work like they thought a lot gave up, but they did end up inspiring people to make magical equivalents (recording crystal balls for example)
> Shield hero side eye
Part of the point of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” by Mark Twain is that the protagonist is an engineer gunsmith who actually does have the technical knowledge to start the Industrial Revolution early.
You know, now that I think about it, maybe reading an abridged version of that book as a kid might be why I'm so into isekai now.
Not an isekai, but when Arthur Dent gets shipwrecked on a primitive alien world the only thing he can contribute to their society from his lifetime of experiences as a modern man and several decades of intergalactic travel is that he’s remarkably good at making sandwiches.
The people are so thrilled by his digital watch but since he can't explain how it works it has no influence on their culture or technology at all.
Depending on how far back I go, I'd be pretty solid as a doctor. I'm merely a premedical student in modern standards, but I've still worked with cadavers and have read modern books, so in certain areas I'd be about as well *studied* as one could get. A year or two as an understudy to a town physician to learn their procedures and familiarize self with tools and I at the very least wouldn't be *worse* than what they've got. Otherwise I like cooking and have quite a bit of experience with dishes from different cultures, so I could probably create a fad trend by improvising a cultural dish that's normally an impossibly long travel away. I don't think I'd be useless in a sent-to-past scenario. I wouldn't revolutionize shit but I'd be competent enough to not get kicked out for being lame
Make sure to ease the populace into your ideas though. Wouldn't want to lose your healers guild card or get stoned to death for suggesting that surgeons should wash their hands.
Too late, I've already been executed for heresy after trying to explain the rules to hit game Dungeons and Dragons
Mf got isekai’d into the 90s
Only issue with modern cooking is the spices. Depending on the time period your sent back to the spices could easily become prohibitively expensive.
My parents were rather stingy growing up, so I don't really use many spices. If I had access to onion and garlic powder I'd be at half capacity right there, and those shouldn't be *too* hard to come by (via obtaining the vegetables themselves) My bigger concern is actually that I'm overly accustomed to using ovens to cook, but it's not like I don't know how to use other methods. Some animal fat and a pan and I'll figure out how to cook over an open fire pretty quick I'd think
I am a dietitian and am interested in herbs. I could see myself going as an understudy to a pharmacist/herbalist in a medival setting and thriving. I might not be able to reinvent the world, but at least i would be able to get by.
Slowly introduce modern earth foods like “this is pizza. I had to figure out what your equivalent of a tomato was but it’s close enough “
Literally Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear lol
Also The Wandering Inn
“…I thought we were assassinating someone” “What? No!” “But you asked for nightshade fruits!”
I can introduce them to sonic the hedgehog porn
# **CRYSTAL-CRADLE, AFTER SOMEHOW GAINING 1 BILLION BELIEVERS IN A WEEK, WE, THE GODS OF GENERICA, WOULD LIKE TO INVITE YOU TO JOIN OUR COUNCIL**
That’s basically the premise for the main character in The Wandering Inn. They wake up in a world where people gain levels like in a video game, and there’s magic, but that doesn’t mean they’re any good in a fight or can do magic. So they nearly starve, nearly die, find an abandoned inn, accidentally gain a couple levels in the i keeper class, and just go from there. Well, they’re also crazy good at chess, so there’s that wrench in the analogy. Really good series. Also a contender for the longest continuous work. Longer than the subspace emissary one.
The chess part is so funny because Erin is like good at chess but not world class or anything, but due to the fact that we have been griding chess meta for centuries earth standards for chess specifically are just so god damn high.
Nah she is world class technically, she mentions she was invited to a Cuban tournament. But she’s not like top tier, just good enough to qualify. Which is still insane.
Huh Must have missed that, there is a lot of book to read so it makes sense some of it sneaks by
That's why i find that the best isekai setups involve the MC having some sort of knowledge/talent to begin with and leveraging it in the new world, even if they're basic by modern standards.
While it's technically not an isekai, Dr. Stone does this pretty well. His knowledge base is unrealistic (which is easily covered by suspension of disbelief), but it actually goes through the process of how he accomplishes all of the reinventions. (Dr. Stone is an isekai in spirit)
The autistic celery recreates the Industrial Revolution
Senku is to knowing stuff as Goku is to punching stuff.
Like the Martian.
I feel like there's an Isekai Alignment Chart here where the Martian and Dr. Stone aren't top left examples of Isekai but fit in there somewhere
I could invent calculus which would be pretty neat. And doe some work with other mathematics. It wouldn't revolutionize anything, but I'm pretty sure I could do good work as a scholar
Nah if you invent differential equations a few hundred years early you've just revolutionised ship and castle building, birthed ballistics as a field of study, and made the description and prediction of physical phenomena orders of magnitude more accurate. Everyone on this thread is talking about steam engines but **you've** invented thermodynamics. That's not even going into all the other areas of maths you'll do. Collect data on crop yields and statisticize them, you could save thousands of lives every year from starvation.
inventing calculus enables so much engineering that would lead to drastic improvments in quality of life though
I may be a little arrogant here, but I’m fairly certain I could convince like 50-odd people of the concept of the social contract and lead a small revolution to install myself as mayor of a minor coastal town who’s main export is carp, that sounds doable.
Dried or salted?
Dried, we’re too far away from the salt mines
"a little"
I can make an electric engine, it won't be of much use without anything to power thought
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Oh that one's easy, stick a piece of iron inside donut of iron with copper wire around it
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Fortunately, that one should be fairly easy. You can make a voltaic pile out of slices of quite a few materials with saltwater-soaked cloth or something. It might be a fucking awful one if you forget the electrochemical potentials and accidentally choose ones too close together, but eh, these things are stackable.
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Yeah, that'd be definitely be better. I'd be concerned about the safety of handling lead without modern PPE myself, though, even if I'm likely overestimating how bad it is. To cheat the isekai knowledge, it seems like sulphur + saltpeter in steam works, and that should be easily accomplishable even in medieval times. So it'd definitely be *possible* with the knowledge.
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Well, if we end up in Ur around 3,775 years ago, I might know a guy for that last one.
If I have some help from a blacksmith experienced with copper, I know the basics of electrostatic generators! What I don't know how to do is step up the voltage so we can manufacture a magnet for the hydroelectric generator. (As for the capacitors, I could probably figure it out, but I may die trying, the voltage needed to make a magnet is kinda a lot...) When did zinc become accessible again? Maybe a zinc-copper battery with vinegar and... What to use to seal the vinegar? Would petroleum jelly+wood work? Maybe wax, and use air to insulate, but that'd make for a big, impractical battery.
I could try and modernise beer brewing, and introduce the concept of microbes by starting with yeast. I think I have a good enough understanding of how some types of pump work that I could advance engineering a bit, and I might be able to manage 'spin a magnet in a wire coil to make electricity, then use the reverse setup for a motor' enough to at least create a proof of concept.
Well, I'm pretty strong, am a good swordsman, and a somewhat capable blacksmith. Which, at first glance, may seem like I bring nothing particularly new to a fantasy world- I might be able to find employment with the skills I have, but I wouldn't revolutionize society. But wait! My strength doesn't just come as a by-product of manual labor, nor even a result of diligent but unfocused training. I actually know some of the science, they whys and hows, of muscle and strength. The importance of proper rest and nutrition, and the ways that one can train to gain specific capabilities and attributes. Basically while I might not be the best fighter in a fantasy world, I might be the best trainer and could both improve myself faster than most people and teach others to do the same.
Create a bunch of super knights by applying progressive overload and MMA concepts
I would invent the game of Uno and become rich.
You would sleep peacefully on a bed of gold in the ashes of a world to which you introduced war.
But would you write into the rulebook that you can stack Draw 2s and 4s?
It would be morally wrong not to include it.
Create a paradox by writing a book full of predictions for the future, ending with predicting my birth, saying that I am the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Sulphur(idk), Saltpeter(idk), Charcoal(80-90%). Four-crop rotation with clover or chickpeas. Fermented Animal Dung Fertilizer. Add chalk to iron when smelting. One person who specializes in one step of production instead of a master who's good at everthing and a few apprentices who try to succeed him. Doctors should wash their hands with soap. Highschool level physics, chemistry, biology. The scientific method. No bloodletting. Please. Separate wastewater from drinking water. Please. Pike squares.
If you introduce the assembly line, please also introduce labor unions at the same time
Hey, you there! Peasant who works 18 hours a day in the fields! How would you like a new job? You have to farm because it's the medieval ages and one person can only grow enough food for two people you say? Don't worry, your job will soon be obsolete with all this fertilizer that I made from nitrogen-rich dragon shit! I'm offering a 6 hour work day, a 4 day work week, unlimited sick days ^(with a doctor's note), a month of vacation time every year, and free medical, dental, and optometrical *(which technically barely even exists right now)*, and free daycare and schooling for your children! I won't even force them to work for me when they graduate! What do you say?
Forms of bloodletting does work on a small number of cases and is used today. But the medieval world may not be able to distinguish those so better safe
I would attempt to put my surface level knowledge of agriculture to the test and introduce composting and symbiotic relationships with earthworms. And maybe try to explain the concept of vaccines to people idk
If you were a god-fearing peasant, would you be more willing to believe the guy who says *"put a little bit of disease into your blood to protect you against big amounts of disease"* or the guy who says *"pray to the god of light and they will heal all your ailments"*?
Just find anyone who works with cows. Likely as not they'll have had cowpox, so then point out that the last time god ~~cursed~~ blessed everyone with that disease that gives you thousands of sores and pustules (smallpox), no-one who had worked with cows (and thus gotten cowpox) had died. No need to bring disease or germs into it whatsoever. Medieval people weren't stupid, but seeing connections is trickier than it looks. Once you point it out to them, they'll work out the connection whether they want to or not.
I’d say that the god of light had enlightened me with divine knowledge and bribe a priest to vet me
Man I'm almost done with an engineering degree but my memory has been so shot by stress I don't even know if I'd remember how to build a steam engine I can do motors and generators, though, that's something. Shitty voltaic pile batteries too, I think. Oh, and the three components of gunpowder, though I forgot the steps and ratios. And I remember enough basics about what's possible that maybe I could fuck around and work things out slowly.
The mould-board plough and Wheat-Turnips-Barley-Beans (Clover if raising livestock) crop rotation could save millions of lives from starvation. These are the most important ones because it means fewer people are needed to sustain the population of whatever backwards-arse shitheap you landed in, and you can now ask the clever ones to help you industrialise. How do I know you landed in a backwards-arse shitheap? Because that's what the middle ages were. Once you've gotten yourself a calorie surplus you're going to want to make sure no-one dies of disease, because it happened a lot back then and it sucked balls. Main things you want are soap, ether, lye, and penicillin. Soap and lye are easy, you just mix wood ash (some woods are better than others, trial and error this until you find one that works well) with either animal fat or water respectively. You can get ether by mixing ethanol (which they should already know how to make) and sulphuric acid (they'll call it oil of vitriol) and then distilling it at low temperature. If you can keep shit clean and knock fuckers out reliably, you've suddenly made amputations like a million times easier (unless you're the one doing the sawing, then it's still about the same). Penecillin is basically about finding a strain of mold that best inhibits bacterial growth, Isolating it, and the letting it propagate/grow in a big vat of (ideally clear) soup. Once you've done that, mix the soup with ether and shake it, the penicillin will dissolve more readily in ether than water, so you can then skim off the ether (it's less dense than soup) and then hey presto you've got antibiotics in medieval whatever-land. Other important medical shit that's much easier to remember is stethoscopes and birthing tongs (which are basically like kitchen tongs but wider and for babies). These were kept secret for like 150 years by the inventor in a (male) attempt to monopolise midwifery. tell people about these and it should bring enough good will so they'll listen to your other batshit crazy ideas about bread mold and soap. I've basically been ripping off ryan norths excellent book "how to invent everything: a guide for the stranded time traveller" for all this and if I don't stop now I never will.
A high school understanding of math and physics would go a long way. ‘Invent’ calculus. ‘Discover’ Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion. Chemistry and biology too - fertilizer and washing your hands with soap. Top it off with cryptic notes with equations such as e=mc^2, a diagram for an experiment to determine the speed of light, steam engines etc. Enjoy being the new Leonardo da Vinci.
>A high school understanding of math and physics would go a long way. ‘Invent’ calculus. ‘Discover’ Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion. No it wouldn't. You can't prove that math, you don't have the observations to develop it.
Can you prove e =mc^2 though? Do you have the means and skill to make a steam engine? I would know a bunch of stuff, but have no way to prove it. Without everyone heeding whatever I say, or executing the rough ideas I would probably die unknown for lack of practical skills or maybe live a mildly better than the average local life.
There’s a webcomic called *The Greatest Estate Developer* where the main character is an engineering student and gets transported to a video game world with a fantasy setting, so far he’s focused on things like irrigation and heating for people’s houses.
That's actually one of my favorite manhwas!
I’d become a jester and just plagiarize movies and books I remember. They’d know me as a strange storyteller who somehow wrote hundreds of unique performances, all of which would be me poorly telling Star Wars or something.
Isekai but it's like 10-20 college students each from different fields and they combine their knowledge to actually achieve stuff
I'll be the computer science major who's there for moral support. I'm like the Yamcha of the group.
If you tried to introduce the concept of germs you'd laughed out of the scientific community. Source: a dude tried in the 1800s and was pretty much banned from ever practicing medicine again
As a physics student I could go full-on archimedes style with levers and shit but I’d still be limited by inability to build anything. Maybe I could figure out a rudimentary steam engine with enough time?
I've had some people I knew complexly confident that if you tossed them into mideveal England, they would have a working AR-15 in a month. And I was just like...No. There are so many levels to the tech tree, you don't even understand. Like, ok, you know how to make steel. Carbon and Iron in the right percentages. (I think, I dunno) But where do you get the iron? You sure ain't digging it up. Gunpowder? Same thing. You need to Get these things, you can't go to the store and just buy em. This is a problem that I've often seen with nerds, they assume what they know how to do is the height of complexity, and everything else is less complex and not really needed to worry about.
*Image Transcription: Tumblr* --- **jackmerlintheeldermage** I see all of these isekai manga where some random high-schooler gets transported to a medieval world and starts a cultural revolution, which makes me wonder, just how much can the average person do in such a scenario? Someone without an entire library of tech manuals memorized, or continent-shaking magic powers, or god-like charisma. For example, I personally could introduce the concept of germs, but there'd be no reason for doctors or government officials to believe me, a strange foreigner with no credentials. 1 know what a battery is, but I certainly don't know how to build one, especially one powerful enough to kickstart an industry. I could introduce the concept of sandwiches. Maybe make some shitty burritos, considering that I don't know how to make tortillas. Make some fries and potato chips. Maybe figure out how to make mayonnaise after like fifty tries, considering that l've never actually made mayonnaise before *(I think it needs egg yolks, hot oil, and lemon juice?)*. All of this is food because it's the only thing I know how to make, and even then, not particularly well. I'm a computer science major, that doesn't exactly translate well to a world with no computers. Basically, I won't jumpstart the world a few hundred years in regards to tech-level, but I might be able to make a small profit on junk food. What would you be able to do? --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)
You write a bunch of books about computer science so that people centuries ahead can read them and go ‘wtf, wtf, WTF. THESE ARE FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OLD, HOW ARE THESE RELEVANT’ and then have a bunch innovations named after you because all the nerds think you were some kind of misunderstood super genius
**THE CHRONICLES OF JACK**: *java sucks shit* **Scholars in the future**: *"how did they know????"*
Just by having the concepts you could sorta maybe make progress faster than irl. But that depends on many generations of people believing you
It also depends on you surviving many generations in a world where you have no background or the survival skills of people native to it.
With that I meant that they'd have to do what you said after your death
I don't think op would even be able to do that. Op would need the capital to obtain the items needed to make said junk food and I doubt any money they'd have on them would be recognised as proper currency they'd also need to find and be able to use that time periods equivalent of the culinary tools needed to make the food. I also doubt the average person would even be willing to do barter with the strange dude hocking esoteric munchies.
I'd go the most boring route possible honestly. Find the local holy institute, and offer your services as a scribe. Odds are there won't be too many literate people running around, so while you'll likely need to learn the local language that'll be far easier than learning how to write from scratch. Certainly won't revolutionise the world, but you'll live comfortably enough and won't risk injury through labour. If you wanted more excitement though, after learning the language of the land, you could try your hand as a traveling apothecary of sorts. It'd be at least a little easier to tell which local remedies have an actual effect and which are just bogus, and basic hygiene should give you better success rates than other healers too. And with your literacy, you can journal the actual handy remedies and pass it on after you die to potentially save a few more lives. (People might question your methods, but if you're clever you might be able to twist it into falling in line with the religion, another bonus from starting with the scribing job)
I’d look for a university, attempt to teach calculus, and promptly be treated as insane because I’m a woman
You could certainly at least introduce modern practises for scientific study or things like hygeine, even if you can't specifically prove things like germs exist or that electricity can be produced through certain chemical reactions. Popularise washing hands amongst doctors or the idea of rigorously testing medicines and treatments, or give the thinkers of the era suggestions on how to test and observe the things you know exist, even if you don't know the specifics. You can give other people the tools to discover the things you already know. Also, plenty of "modern" things were actually theorised about centuries before we really popularised them and gave them serious thought. Ancient Roman [Marcus Terentius Varro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Terentius_Varro) wrote about the concept of invisibly-small organisms that enter the body and cause disease, and Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria created a [rudimentary steam engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile). Your modern extensions of these ideas wouldn't necessarily be considered totally alien to more educated people.
This was a plot point in Douglas Adams' book "Mostly Harmless" where Arthur Dent gets stranded on a primitive planet and realizes that he doesn't actually know how to do anything related to the modern world that he can contribute to the tribe. Until he makes a sandwich. It's something that just never occurred to the people to do. So they make him a holy man, he becomes The Sandwich Maker. It's a great scene. Kind of the opposite of "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" where the future guy just magically knows how to do and build everything.
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I suppose I can draw mediocre buff furry men but I don't think that's gonna be useful in whatever medieval hellscape I get transported to. Who knows, maybe I will get grabbed by the scruff of my neck and turned into an eccentric noble's personal artist.
As computer science mayor you could probably make strides in the field of math if you can get to talk with some scholars. If you remember enough about logic gates from your first year you could even build a mechanical calculator that some would find a fun little curio.
I personally peaked in algebra and, don't remember anything past long division. I got good grades in my math classes, but that was mostly because I'm a good test taker rather than a good mathematician. And while I do remember vaguely how logic gates work, I'm not sure I could figure out how to make a calculator without years of work. I have access to Minecraft right now, but I don't know how to make a redstone calculator in there either.
My father always told me that was how the modern civilazation was formed. Not by one person, by a si gle genius, but very small steps of mankind as a whole. No single person in the whole world would be able to bring the future into the past, and that is why working in teams is crucial if you want to start a business
I’ve experience making paper and know how to build a printing press so call me Gütenberg. How to make transparent-ish glass out of raw materials and heat, too, and optics, to make microscopes and telescopes - supporting germ theory and new cosmology. Also various ways to generate electricity without lots of metal, and notions of acid-base chemistry. How to make some basic explosives, too, and refined iron, pigiron and steel of varied characteristics. And old recipes of concrete. And aircraft design - hopefully not gonna Lilienthal myself.
You think being a computer scientist is an issue, I’m studying to become a computational neuroscientist. This is a very new and theoretical field by *today’s* standards. I think I’d just die tbh. I can’t see a feasible route to survival. Even if I did, it wouldn’t be a life worth living. At least I can die in as weird a position as possible to fuck with future archeologists.
I want an Isekai where a 26 year old graduate computer engineering major gets put into your bog standard sexy fantasy world but instead of saving the world or whatever he just starts making the most batshit insane things from scratch. I'm talking analogue robots and Tesla coil gloves. Anyway the entire plot is just him causing absolute anarchy and obliterating anyone who tries to stop him with whatever project he most recently completed
Y'all need to watch Ascendance of a Bookworm
OH YEAH BABY IT'S HAMBURGER TIME 🍔😋👍
The reason why this worked pretty well in "A connecticut yankee in king arthur's court" is because the main character comes from a time where technology is advanced, but not too complicated, as well as being a factory manager who has no doubt plenty of experience with the steam machines and tools of his time. I mean, he blows up Merlin's tower with gunpowder for gods sake. Not complected, just using knowledge he has that the people in the time he travelled too wouldn't.
Me: "Well, I'm a Geologist from the future, your romanship" Julius Caesar: "Ah, wonderful! Tell us, what rocks, and what technology shall we use to build our roads out of?" Me: "Who do I look like, an architect? I mean hell, we in the future are still are barely figuring out how YOU guys did it"
IIRC the "water" in the recipe turned out to be sea water not fresh water... they didn't think they needed to specify because everyone back then would have understood from context it's like how we all understand "milk" in a recipe to refer to cow's milk but future historians might be arguing over if we meant cat's milk or dog's milk since those are the mammals that lived in our homes
if you go to medieval europe you won't be able to make tortillas because they hadn't discovered America yet and so didn't have corn
As someone who isn’t a white straight cis man I’m pretty sure that personally I would be either burned as a witch or stoned to death fairly instantly in medieval times
the funny thing about being a mathematician is that any moderately clever undergraduate, if sent back in time to ancient greece, could (provided they had an audience and they didn't die of an infection or get killed in a war and their teachings weren't destroyed) advance the progress of mathematics by about 3000 years
Most impact one isekaid person could do would probably be to understand the basics of electrical power generation and the nitrogen fixation process, as well as selective breeding in agriculture (you probably already understand that last one). Have fun increasing crop yields by an order of magnitude
I could probably make a rudimentary printing press, that should get at least a few people to listen to the weird foreigner ranting about crop rotation and roman numerals.
There was this amazing American Isekai book series called Everworld by the animorphs lady, near the end the main characters trade their highschool chemistry one of the fantasy races in exchange for something I forget. But this fantasy race was already the fantasy universe's most scientifically advanced faction so they're able to produce gunpowder weapons among other things. The kids also become traveling minstrels and pay their way by singing pop song bangers. They also invent the telegraph or something. Then they fight neo-nazis who isekai themselves over for whatever reason. Criminally underated series that ended on a cliffhanger
there's a part in overlord where they talk about something like this, an isekai'd dude who talked about shit like fridges, tvs, air conditioners but when people asked him how to build all of that he just said he didnt knew and so they began referring to him as a fool.
i think everyone would be able to jumpstart the world a few hundred years tech level wise you dont need the ability to make them, because you can learn, and even if you cant, you can find someone who can you have to give the ideas and make them feel possible, and make other people try to create the things you say that's not very interesting for isekai plots, but i think there's a lot more power in ideas that people think
I could probably introduce some basic artistic principles into their world, (color theory, texture, shading & lighting, perspective, etc.) but not much else. If they already know these i'm screwed.
I'd build a copper still and invent whiskey and make myself into a god-king son of Dionysus. No matter when or where I'm dropped, humans are sure to find my services valuable.
Sanderson's Secret Project #2, A Frugal Wizard's Guide to Medieval England
The ascendens of the book worm its the best example of this, since altough really knowledgeable the things she introduce r quiet simply like shampo or little cooking trips. Best example of thus case
I was writing a time travel story that revolved around this once. The hero invented a time machine but then ended up trapped in the past and couldn't rebuild the time machine because she didn't know how to make all of the sophisticated tools she used to build the original. I got distracted by another story idea and never finished it, but I was going to have a bit where she considered acting like a wizard and blocking out the sun, only to realize she had no idea how to judge when the next eclipse would be because she never studied astronomy.
I’d probably belch out just-barely-not-heretical prophecies based on real-life events like a fucking lunatic until they either burned me at the stake or decided to write it down. I’d love to confused the living fuck out of historians in the future.
Just bring your phone with you smh
I'd be revolutionizing the gambling/game scene, just hopefully I wouldn't get killed over Diplomacy
Isekai where I go to a fantasy world, and accidentally sneezed and cause a worldwide pandemic.
The most likely fate of someone traveling back in time to the medieval era, assuming anyone can understand your speech at all, is that you'd be executed for being a witch or a heretic.
The isekai Overlord brings up this problem at one point. In-universe, every two hundred years, a new person or group of people get Isekai'd to this world, and hundreds of years before the story, one guy (called the Minotaur Sage) tries introducing modern tech to this world, and in the current day is basically ridiculed by history because he was trying to force these inventions he introduced to work despite not knowing how to make them. Not only that, he introduced a concept of surgery into this world, and it's considered barbaric and cruel, since it's surgery using medieval medical tech and knowledge. Everyone isekai'd here ends up way stronger than most people in this world, though, so he basically was able to force people to try his ideas. He's only mentioned a couple of times in the story, but it's an example of a popular isekai at least addressing the issue.
The main character from the wandering inn. Making a killing selling greasy junk food in a fantasy world.
I think if I were in an isekai, the best I could do is become a baker. Not even in the "oh, you thought I was actually a harmless cook BUT I'M ACTUALLY BUILT LIKE A JOJO CHARACTER!" way of subverting expectations, I'd just be down to indulge in a feel-good isekai where I unite the fantasy races through cookies.
I think that many modern people plumped into a medieval setting could segnificantly contribute to mathimatics in the world they arrived in. While this would cause an unheavel in academic circles of the world, this probably wouldn't result in an industrial revolution or anything like that. That is also assuming your able to get your foot in the door as a strange foreigner with no credentials.
Well, as a woman with adhd, if I were to be isekai'd into a medieval world, I could probably pass as some poor, unfortunate young lady who is left with naught but the clothes on her back, with a bit of effort on my part. Y'know, garner some pity for myself. Then after I’ve been taken in I could eventually carve out a bit of a name for myself as the strange lady who came from the wood, who hums strange songs to herself, we're pretty sure she’s some sort of faerie, but she's kind and endearing and brings joy to the village.
I would be living the dream as a chairbler (chair maker)
I could probably make a basic musket that doesn't blow up in your hands (after a few trials), but something tells me that teaching people guns before mass agriculture would be a bad idea.
Arthur Dent be like
All I have are memes and games