Basically the title, you need to use the skills you have now and be a productive member of society.
I don’t mean go back and show the wheel or try invent germ theory etc.
For example I’m a mechanic i think I could go back to the late 1800s and still fix and repair engines and steam engines.
Maybe even take that knowledge further back and work on the first industrial machines in the late 1700s but that’s about it.
I put all my skill points in computers so I could go back to the 70’s maybe. The computers made before the ibm pc still seem close enough to be usable by me.
I could also go to neolithic era as rock-on-stick-skull-crusher
Some of the original plastic reactors still run where I work so 1950’s is the oldest operational unit and wasn’t modernised. No computer. The corpses of the older stuff remain abandoned and in place. Not much different, just much less production rate and smaller.
1940’s I suppose.
I’d be fine in any time period where I could still understand English spoken however. I don’t care what I do for a living. Can’t remember how far back that would be, Rob Words surely has a video about this.
With my work skills I won’t be particularly useful before the first high level programming languages started coming in the 60s. But I also gained some handiwork knowledge over time so I won’t be a lost cause if someone sends me further back.
Weaving, pottery, gardening, spinning. Yea it’d take a while to adjust to the culture and way of life but I could probably go all the way to Sumer if I wanted and language & diseases weren’t a problem.
I’m a musician, so my skills have always been in demand, although the wages have always been in dispute for as long as there has been music. People love music, they just don’t like to pay for it.
I could be an excellent prostitute, so checkmate motherfuckers.
As a kind of generalist (risk analysis-mitigation, engineering and NGOs), I think I could go back some centuries in time as an advisor or leading teams to improve their quality of life.
I’m not even sure I can survive with my skills now.
that’s kind of what I’m thinking right now lmao
and be a productive member of society
I just write useless software for a useless company. I’m not a productive member of society today, I wouldn’t be one at any point in the past. 🤷♂️
You’re a Microsoft Excel developer?
Obviously not.
There are no microsoft developers these days.
Only copilot spewing slop.
That’s why every single update breaks some fundamental feature that had been working for ages.
And no one can fix it, because they fired everyone who knew anything about how their software works.
If I had access to good quality copper, I could invent electricity and do very well for myself.
So long as I can avoid Ur in the 18th century BC, I could go back pretty far.
Don’t buy it from Ea-Nasir, he’s got a complaint.
As a supply chain guy, I’m confident my procurement skills of bitching at vendors about off spec shit goes back to the days of Ea-Nasir.
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My skills travel pretty far. But with my gender id not be allowed to use them.
Hmm. Before the end of the 19th century you’re going to run into non-standardised/completely bespoke parts problems. How are you on a lathe, or doing blacksmith work? Hot riveting was a separate trade which you wouldn’t have to do, at least.
I’m kinda obsessed with what I call technological bootstrapping, and so I have useful book knowledge about every step along the way. Doing it in practice is another thing, though; the locals are going to run circles around me unless I can invent stuff. (And even the scenario rules aside, not starving or being “disturbed” while I work on whatever project is a thing)
So, I think I have to echo the “it’s not going great in 2025” answer.
Lathe work I’m pretty good at, all be it a modern lathe.
Blacksmithing i have some experience given my involvement in HEMA but it certainly wouldn’t get me far
Well then you’d probably be fine all the way back to premodern times, assuming you can convince clients to trust you with their mine water pump or whatever. As long as you could get along without devoted replacement parts.
Once you reach that point, the modern lathe thing becomes an issue, a commercial foundry might not be around for cast parts, and the technology to cast ferrous metals at all isn’t guarenteed. The ability to perfectly eyeball things and use relatively primitive materials becomes a major constraint. If you master that, you can probably hack it all the way back to early civilisation building crossbows or animal-powered pumps.
Baking bread goes back pretty far. Think I’d rather just jump of a cliff, though.
Shhhh no talk only bake.
In a modern oven, sure. I make great bread from flour, water, salt. But without the ovens I understand? Without the fine ground flour? I dunno.
sometimes you gotta start from the ground floor
I promise you the lack of modern oven wouldn’t be the worst part. Making do with a wood-fire oven would be fine. It’s the proofing process that would be a pain in the ass. When raising bread, time, temperature, and humidity are all pretty much ingredients, and things can get finnicky. A proofer helps immensely with keeping bulk batches of bread a consistent quality day after day. The cooking bit is the easy part. But imagine just having a change of weather fuck with things and then you have to adjust the environment as best you can so the bread’ll rise right, and keep it stable for hours.
I baked as a living for 5 years, and I’m in the midwest USA, so I dealt with all 4 seasons varying. And on top of that a lot of the shop was glass windows, so you can bet the weather messed with things. Even with the proofer. So without, man, it’s annoying just to think about. Would probably have to seal a room up aside from a chimney, keep a fire going, and take a boiling pot of water off and on the fire to keep the air the right humidity.
I don’t use a proofing oven, or rely on consistent temperature, even now but it does mean I’m sitting here at midnight baking the rye so it can cool overnight because it wasn’t ready to bake earlier so yeah even here in the subtropics I notice the difference in the winter, bread is slower to rise.
I had friends who moved to the bush and built a clay oven and they said all they could successfully bake was popovers because the oven started hot then cooled off, there was no way to keep it constant.
Yeah that’s what my wife said, she’d be a cook and I said on a fire no stove gutting chickens etc all on your own. Then she rethought it and settled on housewife and not a great one haha
It does, but by how far back does it go as an only skill?
I guess you can only go far as far as there are dedicated bakers in the community and flour available. I guess that only takes you as far back as mills are available?
Only a few thousand years. Beats my skillset of SQL and Linux.
Considering the Aztecs developed hydroponic technology without other advanced technology, I could probably go back to the beginning of humanity with my knowledge, even if I only get to bring one skillset and not the whole of my knowledge. And boy would things change from there!
I don’t even got skills for today
