Survival tips if you find yourself in the Middle Ages?
kottke.org
kottke.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_of_the_12th_century
If you really got dropped at a random place, it would probably be grazing land or forest, especially in 800. You'd have to find the nearest tiny village and convince them you weren't dangerous. The stuff you had on you would seem miraculously fine, so could be valuable in trade if it wasn't stolen from you first. But the best way to extract value from your stuff would be to give it as a gift to some powerful protector; money wouldn't be any use unless you could protect yourself against robbers. So it would be all about finding a powerful protector.
In 800 you'd want to find the most enlightened bishop nearby, present yourself as a traveller from some obscure pocket of Nestorian Christians in the far east (drop hints about Prester John), and get work helping to administer his estates. This wouldn't work everywhere, though: a lot of Europe was still pagan in 800. If you landed in the north or the east, you'd have to try to find some enlightened local warlord instead. Hard to say what use you could be to him, though; probably your only hope would be that he'd keep you around as an adornment to his court.
In 1200 you might still want to find a bishop, but if there was a town nearby (especially a great one like Florence or Venice) you could also find work in a bank or for one of the great wool merchants.
Generally: Be compulsively clean, and keep your opinions to yourself.
Unfortunately, another commentor recognized that firewood would be difficult to access, and cow poo doesn't fire hot enough.
Perish the thought that anyone might think either of those more important than making money, of course...
Still, there's an argument to be made that people can be better convinced of a need if there's something they think they have to buy.
But come to think of it, you could also make tons of money. An ordinary educated person today knows way more about medicine than medieval doctors did. So your optimal career goal should probably be to become a court physician. You could become as rich as minor nobility doing this, and (most importantly) without having to take sides in power struggles.
The fireplace chimney as it wasn't introduced before the 13th century and fire smoke is a major cause of lung ailments.
Why is that? Because people only write about the drama.
If you actually travel to any existing country where there are small villages, you will see that strangers are always treated with great friendliness and respect. If someone walks in to break the monotony of your cow herding, your instinctive reaction will not be to kill him.
It's the same with robbery - there are a lot of stories about robbery, but in reality, human societies don't function when people steal a lot. It's not true now anywhere, and I doubt it was true back then. So robbery will likely not be a problem.
(Remember also, those who wrote history where those who rode in fine carriages, and such people likely thought a lot more about robbery than the common guy)
Warlords in the north did not have an information apparatus - you could live for a while before they would become aware of you, and even then the interest shown in you would probably be more benign than not.
Cleanliness is something you really would not be able to maintain. Imagine the process:
1. Wake up 2. Get a bucket 3. Walk a kilometer to the next well 4. Walk back holding 10 kilograms of water 5. Bath yourself with this freezing water (be careful not to catch pneumonia) 6. Somehow either invent soap or buy some expensive soap 7. Do the same, but for your clothes 8. Avoid being too close to any children or anybody who is in any way grubby, because they will instantly void your work 9. Be considered wierd for doing this everyday
Cleanliness is not that easy in a cold climate, and it's not that neccessary compared to a warm climate.
By present standards, society didn't function in most of medieval Europe, especially in 800. That's why the flourishing trade of the Roman era was replaced by subsistence farming. Banditry had replaced pax Romana.
The rich didn't ride in carriages in the period we're talking about. The roads were too bad. Carriages didn't come into widespread use till centuries later.
Pax Romana had little to do with common muggery. The Eastern Holy Roman empire, a.k.a Byzantine was still doing OK. And for that matter the barbaric peoples at it's border, like the ones I am descendant from were as the above poster described, mostly peaceful and friendly.
It'd be nice to have enough to make an impression on anyone who threatened you. Aside from that, you'd probably never have to use it.
-- Bruce Sterling, http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/1-25/Note%2000001.txt
"Historically, nitre-beds were prepared by mixing manure with either mortar or wood ashes, common earth and organic materials such as straw to give porosity to a compost pile typically 1.5 meters high by 2 meters wide by 5 metres long.[3] The heap was usually under a cover from the rain, kept moist with urine, turned often to accelerate the decomposition and leached with water after approximately one year. The liquid containing various nitrates was then converted with wood ashes to potassium nitrates, crystallized and refined for use in gunpowder.
Urine has also been used in the manufacture of saltpeter for gunpowder. In this process, stale urine placed in a container of straw hay is allowed to sour for many months, after which water is used to wash the resulting chemical salts from the straw. The process is completed by filtering the liquid through wood ashes and air-drying in the sun. Saltpeter crystals can then be collected and added to brimstone and charcoal to create black powder.[4][5][6][7][8]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate#History_of_pr...
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PAL/is_/ai_n15630934
Be humble, mute, and helpful. If you know latin, work on learning the current dialect/script -- you'll have a shot at declaring yourself a "wise man from the east" and go for the job of physician. I would be careful with the Prester John references, your mileage may vary. As one commenter pointed out, you should be able to make aspirin from willow bark and penicillin from mold. These two alone, plus hygiene, should make you a miracle-worker. Be prepared to saw a lot of limbs off. You could also be the first to use opiates in medicine, which could alleviate a lot of suffering in that time.
After 1100 or so, the crusades are well under way. Most of the nobles will be coming and going to the various crusades. They started in the Levant and ended up being next door as crusades were eventually preached against heretics. As physician, try to attach to the church -- they're on the ascent. Perhaps with some luck you can get noticed by the pope and end up with a (relatively) cushy job in Rome.
Don't do the man-at-arms thing. You'll suck at it. Don't try for any kind of social revolution -- people were pretty tolerant during that time, but by 1200 the church was getting very sensitive about outliers. You don't want to show up on their radar. Stay away from southern France -- the Cathars were nice folks but trouble is on the way for them.
If I had the choice of picking a city (besides the Rome-physician thing), I'd go for Genova, Pisa, or Venice. Great cities with fast growth and more of an open culture. They made out like bandits transporting nobles and supplies during the crusades.
My basic plan would be: Convince a small village I'm God and chose them to build my kingdom, improve their farming and sanitation enough to produce some labor surpluses, and then work my way up the tech tree.
The basic sketch of that would involve fireworks, a single assault rifle, and a low-power device storing lots of specifications.
The trick, as a sibling commenter pointed out, is that you could easily spend 99% of your time getting water, finding food, learning to communicate, etc. You have to find a way to move beyond that point -- and that's a non-trivial barrier.
It'd be much better as a team of seven or so.
First you have the Assati Shards series(1632, 1633, 1634)...basically a town in Virginia get transferred to Germany in 1632.
And then you have the Conrad the Engineer series, where you have a guy transported to 13th century Poland, just before the Mongol invasion.
But chances are, no matter where you wind up...you'll be dead within a week. Why? Simple...language barrier. You won't be able to understand a thing....even if you wind up in the most civilized English speaking country. So you'll probably wind up getting burned as a demon who is speaking in tongues
For example...this is what Beowulf's first few lines look like in original english.
Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,I wonder if there are any places with languages that haven't changed that much?
Do you think I might be able to get along in the Middle East in 1000 AD if I knew modern Hebrew?
Spain would've probably been the best possible place to land during the Ummayad/Abbasid Caliphates (before about 1085 or so), but it was a very rough place afterward (the Almoravid/Almohad Caliphates were not known for tolerance, and the reconquest was even worse)
There's a comparison of El Cid in Old Spanish and modern Spanish at wikipedia (see link below), and they don't appear to be very different. Spain was not conquered by non-Spanish speaking foreigners between 1000 and now, so it's not surprising that the language has changed less than English.
Also, knowing more math might help me make coinage with some simple engraved code that needs to be combined with the name of the bearer in order to be verified (only feasible for inter-medieval banks). This would be impetus for trade across greater distances.
In my sustainable agriculture course, I read that modern grain varieties put 60% of their photosynthesized energy into growing the fruit (the edible portion of the grain). Wild varieties put more like 3% into the fruit. There's your 20x difference in yield. But it comes at the expense of every other survival mechanism of the plant: modern grain varieties yield so much grain because they don't have working systems for anything, be it support, storm resistance, disease resistance, or general hardiness. They give us food because we supply them with a good amount of fossil-fuel derived work.
This, among other reasons, is why grain ethanol was such a scam.
The worst mechanical processes, by contrast, usually get at least 10-15% efficiency. That's what photovoltaics can do, for example. Gasoline engines have a thermal efficiency of about 30%, diesel about 45%. Granted, you lose energy in the extraction/refining/transportation steps, but it's still an order of magnitude more efficient than photosynthesis.
The primary [photosynthetic] reactions have close to 100% quantum efficiency (i.e., one quantum of light leads to one electron transfer); and under most ideal conditions, the overall energy efficiency can reach 35%. Due to losses at all steps in biochemistry, one has been able to get only about 1 to 2% energy efficiency in most crop plants. Sugarcane is an exception as it can have almost 8% efficiency.
It's somehow similar venture capital. It's a resource produced in older times that allows you to get temporary advantage compared to somebody that uses just in-time generated resources.
The thing I'd be most worried about is dental hygiene. How do you look after yourself if you don't have a toothbrush and floss? I suppose there'd be less white sugar, which would help. What food you could get would taste bland and generally be awful.
This machine was not invented yet at the time, but could have been made by any decent medieval carpenter. I could probably do it with an axe and a saw. It would have been quite valuable at the time, and could make you rich if you played your cards right.
Of course, that doesn't help solve the problem of immediate survival in a world where you don't speak anybody's language...
First I'd go to the local book store and buy as many survival guides as I can get my hands on.
Then I'd buy some high quality tools - knives, leathermans, nail clippers, matches, first aid kits, etc..... Many of these would be priceless for that era.
I'd try to buy a small waterproof tent. Maybe a sleeping bag if it's not too large to carry. If not a sleeping bag, at least pack some warm water-resistant clothes.
If there's time I'd print out some Wikipedia articles about agriculture techniques, subsistence farming, natural medicines and fertilizers. Maybe find some information about edible insects and plants. Basically anything that helps you survive in the beginning.
Yes this is all stuff in my house at the moment.
If I had more time I'd buy a 9mm revolver, load up a Kindle with reference books from demonoid and start working out.
http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/yank/86-h.htm
Audio book: http://librivox.org/a-connecticut-yankee-in-king-arthurs-cou...
The Normans are my lock of the week.
Well I'd hope I'd be pushed forward a few hundred years into the late 12'th - early 13th century and dropped into Western Europe. The UK or France.
Why late 12th/early 13th century France or UK?
Well for one thing the "Hundred Years' War" is just starting and it probably is the most turbulent time in UK/French history and with this comes warfare and opportunity. It turns out this period of history is where the linage of the French House of Capet was broken and King of England (John - Henry III) had gone from owning more land than the King of France to loosing almost the lot.
The consequences of these new weapons meant
that the nobility was no longer the deciding
factor in battle; peasants armed with longbows
or firearms could gain access to the power,
rewards, and prestige once reserved only for
knights who bore arms.
The first problem you'd have is language. I'd either have to bring a book (latin) or wing it on my language skills but where to learn latin? Anything but a classical education makes me stand out as an uneducated heathen. As for a job if you are fit enough you could either join up as a foot soldier but a more lucrative path might be to hack the warfare technology of the time and work on improving them. One problem at the time was training enough archers to use the longbow efficiently. It took a lot of training from an early age - all English boys from the age of 12 years had to train to use the longbow & all men from the ages of 15-60 carried such weapons.
I'd be looking out for Yeoman ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeoman#Middle_Ages
I'd say we have a better shot at living a longer period of time (over a year) since we could take basic precautions against disease and germs. The Middle Ages guy/gal would probably die of our modern germs within a few days (similar to the Indians when they met European explorers).
What did this guy do for fun in high school? Saltpeter, charcoal, sulfur in a 75-15-10 ratio.
Saltpeter + sugar in a 6-4 mix and then caramelized is more fun though. It would also aid your getaway when the angry knights came to hunt the heretic who just invented gunpowder.
This is a time when people were still sealing wounds with boiling oil.
So yes, even if you have no formal first aid training you can be a great healer.
Rubella, mumps, chicken pox, lockjaw etc were all common diseases then. Today, we vaccinate against them, even in the third world. You, like all adults, have probably relied on herd immunity to compensate for your fading resistance.
Intestinal disease was common in this era. It's very rare today. You would suffer from it for the same reason that modern tourists suffer in the third world. Tourists, soldiers, and aid workers grin and bear it in comfortable quarters with plenty of clean water. You would be bearing it... elsewhere.
Disease might not take you out, but it would certainly be more of a problem for you than for the natives.
It's simple. Go to China & learn KungFu!