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beccaelizabethAgain.
Because it's a fun puzzle. It's like deciding what's most important in life, and how to carry the most of it with the least fuss.
Desert island discs don't make sense any more, you can fit a terabyte in your pocket easy, probably several, and carry a solar charger for your devices, so you've pretty much got all the media forever.
But deciding which books to take is still a compelling puzzle.
I have made no progress figuring out what's the better version of the GURPS Infinite Worlds suggestions for time travellers: "Don’t neglect guides to low-TL medicine and chemistry. The Way Things Work, A Barefoot Doctor’s Manual, and Henley’s Formulas can start you off."
I am not a librarian and also I keep getting distracted by shiny books I already own.
Searching for best books for time travellers just gets you books about time travel. Google skills aren't going to help on this one.
If you're going to an alternate universe that is the same Earth then you need as many good maps as you can conveniently carry. That ought to be easy, but GPS is not going to be relevant. Really excellent maps make such a difference though. I was reading a tumblr exchange along the lines of 'how to history people get lost so much LOL' with examples, and they really couldn't grok that you can't just look or look things up, you needed to have the view at ground level memorised. Pack my compass and a bunch of maps, got a head start on many things.
I don't currently own a swiss army knife. Because I'm scared of knives. But when I went to the Victorinox site to see about remedying this (a) it crashed my browser and (b) I got lost in all the options. So many configurations. I want one with scissors and a magnifying glass, but it turns out those are pretty rare. Also they sell ones with USB attachments to remember things for you but they have like 32Gb? That's not much. Well, it is, but it isn't. Also I don't think your knife is the best place to keep your data, on account of you're going to hit things with it. And do I want a swiss army knife or one of the other multitool possibilities? A lot of them though are just different size screwdrivers and hex whatsits, which might not work so well in other societies. Probably you want one with a couple sizes of knife and the little saw and a file and suchlike.
You don't really need one with a built in pen, on account of those costing rather a lot more than a packet of ballpoints that will last longer. You do want to pack a lot of pens, in case that universe hasn't invented them.
I do sort of stumble when I reach the thought that I, personally, have no relevant skills, and if dropped in an alternate universe, even a relatively high tech one, will probably just starve and die.
That's a bit no fun though.
I know survivalists have a lot of pages of suggestions on stuff for surviving the end of the world. I know this because I was much more paranoid in the 90s. It's probably helpful and relevant if you can scrape the... survivalism off it, because there's a lot of weird ideology to go with the practical solutions. But there's also an epic underestimation of how much society does for you. I mean, I read somewhere recommending a water filter for after the end of the world, because it has a 25 year guarantee. Which is all very well, but I'm planning to live more than 25 years. Also it has a maximum number of litres it's going to work for. Also some models are for salt, and some for chemicals, and some for biological bits, but finding one for everything is not so much simples. You need to know exactly what's wrong with the water before you know if that whatsit will purify it. And even though the latest inventions are much superior to 90s versions, it's still not a way to rebuild civilisation, not with the numbers I saw. Same with the plans for how much beans and so forth you need to eat. And the self sufficiency threads about seeds. They underestimate how much skill needs to go into it, how many resources are required that aren't going to last as many meals as you think, and exactly how local the solutions are going to be. I hadn't thought until I saw Ursula Vernon say about it, but gardening is really super local, and they're talking about gardening for survival forever, but without practising it first. Not going to work.
I however know that I can't cook or garden, so I have a different not going to work problem.
Plans for what to carry to the new universe come in different sizes. Like, if you surprise step through the fog, you might be carrying just your handbag, or just the stuff you'd take to a convention or on holiday, or you might be driving. If you're moving across country you get the excuse to load the most stuff, but that's almost the least fun. And the difference between this version and the deliberate colony planning is that this is just stuff you could plausibly have on you, if the universe blipped.
So I'd have a snack and a drink and my torch and some stuff to listen to but not, at the moment, a solar charger. Who has solar chargers? Or wind up ones. People can charge on the bus, now, why carry fancy chargers? So plausibility speaks to character too. ... if I rewind my response to anxiety to 90s level I could plausibly be carrying a whole wilderness survival kit, but that would say a lot about me to the hypothetical reader.
Driving a car to a new house with the bulky stuff to follow: I reckon you'd get mostly tools. There's the car tools, obviously, and the garden tools, because you either box them in fancy sized boxes or chuck them in the boot. You can fit a couple toolboxes in the foot space in the back seat, one for DIY and one for craft. If it's me I'd have to figure out where the shopping trolley goes, but probably it fits on one side behind a seat and the toolkits behind the other. A sewing kit, of course, and some knitting. And a box of kitchen things, definitely including your favourites. Then your computer stuff gets strapped in your front seat, backpack full of laptop and raincoat and warm thing in the footwell. Trunk full of all your clothes, or some of your clothes and some of your blankets. And all your jewellery would travel with you, no letting that out of your sight. Everything in your regular handbag, plus everything in the glove compartment, so that's two sizes of first aid kit and a bunch of different size torches, some looking like sonic screwdrivers. And if you're an outdoors sort of person you'd have your survival type backpack too. Plus weapons if you happen to own any, those being difficult to explain to the removals men, even if the explain is something to do with Highlander. That's all stuff which is packed already in containers with handles that'll be clean and tidy. Well, except the garden stuff maybe. But that you could wrap in a big plastic.
But again, once you've got all of that, you've got most contingencies covered.
It's most fun for the character if they've packed well and wisely for the long term, but it's most drama if they just went for a quick walk in the sunshine and somehow ended up through the wardrobe.
There are some technologies very nearly here that'll make a big difference. Solar's a bit of a trick right now, and batteries will wear out with repeat charges, but they're both getting better rapidly. There's cars getting in the news with solar panels on them, though they're hybrid rather than all electric. Nudge the tech just a little and you can go exploring new worlds like a mars rover, put your solar panel wings out and keep rolling.
And water purification is improving in leaps and bounds.
But it's still very tricky to be a one person civilisation.
I keep looping back to the Pratchett & Baxter Long Earth books, because they poked this exact problem extensively, after putting in the twist about specific metals you can't bring.
Reading the Infinite Worlds books I kept wanting to make them go read that series, though chronologically they couldn't have.
I like a long string of empty earth because it's a way of testing survivalist fantasies without going all post apocalyptic on homeline.
Going to the kind of alternate that is an alternate history can get you all sorts. You might pack real careful for a low tech soc and then get very high tech civ that thinks you're a dancing monkey.
But usually the suggested alts are based so much on European history it's really ridiculously implausible. I mean, I just got distracted reading GURPS Low Tech again and everything up through TL4 was invented in either Asia or the Near East, or sometimes Africa. We didn't invent things, we were centuries behind. In some things China was a thousand years ahead! So that's thousands of years of civilisation where all the really big changes aren't going to come out of the barbarian white people places, they're going to be tweaks to bits of history I never read about. I need to read more history.
Also TL5, the age of steam, really must have changed everything. I feel the right spin on the Industrial Revolution is very Science Fiction.
It seems like Rome chewed up a lot of places and spat them out in pieces that did a Dark Age instead. I don't know, history isn't my strong point. Suggested alts are often 'but what if Rome only more' and I'm far more interested in 'how about not-Rome'.
I need to read an entirely different set of history books. England was not that interesting for a really long time and I have a very small window on a whole lot of history.
Because it's a fun puzzle. It's like deciding what's most important in life, and how to carry the most of it with the least fuss.
Desert island discs don't make sense any more, you can fit a terabyte in your pocket easy, probably several, and carry a solar charger for your devices, so you've pretty much got all the media forever.
But deciding which books to take is still a compelling puzzle.
I have made no progress figuring out what's the better version of the GURPS Infinite Worlds suggestions for time travellers: "Don’t neglect guides to low-TL medicine and chemistry. The Way Things Work, A Barefoot Doctor’s Manual, and Henley’s Formulas can start you off."
I am not a librarian and also I keep getting distracted by shiny books I already own.
Searching for best books for time travellers just gets you books about time travel. Google skills aren't going to help on this one.
If you're going to an alternate universe that is the same Earth then you need as many good maps as you can conveniently carry. That ought to be easy, but GPS is not going to be relevant. Really excellent maps make such a difference though. I was reading a tumblr exchange along the lines of 'how to history people get lost so much LOL' with examples, and they really couldn't grok that you can't just look or look things up, you needed to have the view at ground level memorised. Pack my compass and a bunch of maps, got a head start on many things.
I don't currently own a swiss army knife. Because I'm scared of knives. But when I went to the Victorinox site to see about remedying this (a) it crashed my browser and (b) I got lost in all the options. So many configurations. I want one with scissors and a magnifying glass, but it turns out those are pretty rare. Also they sell ones with USB attachments to remember things for you but they have like 32Gb? That's not much. Well, it is, but it isn't. Also I don't think your knife is the best place to keep your data, on account of you're going to hit things with it. And do I want a swiss army knife or one of the other multitool possibilities? A lot of them though are just different size screwdrivers and hex whatsits, which might not work so well in other societies. Probably you want one with a couple sizes of knife and the little saw and a file and suchlike.
You don't really need one with a built in pen, on account of those costing rather a lot more than a packet of ballpoints that will last longer. You do want to pack a lot of pens, in case that universe hasn't invented them.
I do sort of stumble when I reach the thought that I, personally, have no relevant skills, and if dropped in an alternate universe, even a relatively high tech one, will probably just starve and die.
That's a bit no fun though.
I know survivalists have a lot of pages of suggestions on stuff for surviving the end of the world. I know this because I was much more paranoid in the 90s. It's probably helpful and relevant if you can scrape the... survivalism off it, because there's a lot of weird ideology to go with the practical solutions. But there's also an epic underestimation of how much society does for you. I mean, I read somewhere recommending a water filter for after the end of the world, because it has a 25 year guarantee. Which is all very well, but I'm planning to live more than 25 years. Also it has a maximum number of litres it's going to work for. Also some models are for salt, and some for chemicals, and some for biological bits, but finding one for everything is not so much simples. You need to know exactly what's wrong with the water before you know if that whatsit will purify it. And even though the latest inventions are much superior to 90s versions, it's still not a way to rebuild civilisation, not with the numbers I saw. Same with the plans for how much beans and so forth you need to eat. And the self sufficiency threads about seeds. They underestimate how much skill needs to go into it, how many resources are required that aren't going to last as many meals as you think, and exactly how local the solutions are going to be. I hadn't thought until I saw Ursula Vernon say about it, but gardening is really super local, and they're talking about gardening for survival forever, but without practising it first. Not going to work.
I however know that I can't cook or garden, so I have a different not going to work problem.
Plans for what to carry to the new universe come in different sizes. Like, if you surprise step through the fog, you might be carrying just your handbag, or just the stuff you'd take to a convention or on holiday, or you might be driving. If you're moving across country you get the excuse to load the most stuff, but that's almost the least fun. And the difference between this version and the deliberate colony planning is that this is just stuff you could plausibly have on you, if the universe blipped.
So I'd have a snack and a drink and my torch and some stuff to listen to but not, at the moment, a solar charger. Who has solar chargers? Or wind up ones. People can charge on the bus, now, why carry fancy chargers? So plausibility speaks to character too. ... if I rewind my response to anxiety to 90s level I could plausibly be carrying a whole wilderness survival kit, but that would say a lot about me to the hypothetical reader.
Driving a car to a new house with the bulky stuff to follow: I reckon you'd get mostly tools. There's the car tools, obviously, and the garden tools, because you either box them in fancy sized boxes or chuck them in the boot. You can fit a couple toolboxes in the foot space in the back seat, one for DIY and one for craft. If it's me I'd have to figure out where the shopping trolley goes, but probably it fits on one side behind a seat and the toolkits behind the other. A sewing kit, of course, and some knitting. And a box of kitchen things, definitely including your favourites. Then your computer stuff gets strapped in your front seat, backpack full of laptop and raincoat and warm thing in the footwell. Trunk full of all your clothes, or some of your clothes and some of your blankets. And all your jewellery would travel with you, no letting that out of your sight. Everything in your regular handbag, plus everything in the glove compartment, so that's two sizes of first aid kit and a bunch of different size torches, some looking like sonic screwdrivers. And if you're an outdoors sort of person you'd have your survival type backpack too. Plus weapons if you happen to own any, those being difficult to explain to the removals men, even if the explain is something to do with Highlander. That's all stuff which is packed already in containers with handles that'll be clean and tidy. Well, except the garden stuff maybe. But that you could wrap in a big plastic.
But again, once you've got all of that, you've got most contingencies covered.
It's most fun for the character if they've packed well and wisely for the long term, but it's most drama if they just went for a quick walk in the sunshine and somehow ended up through the wardrobe.
There are some technologies very nearly here that'll make a big difference. Solar's a bit of a trick right now, and batteries will wear out with repeat charges, but they're both getting better rapidly. There's cars getting in the news with solar panels on them, though they're hybrid rather than all electric. Nudge the tech just a little and you can go exploring new worlds like a mars rover, put your solar panel wings out and keep rolling.
And water purification is improving in leaps and bounds.
But it's still very tricky to be a one person civilisation.
I keep looping back to the Pratchett & Baxter Long Earth books, because they poked this exact problem extensively, after putting in the twist about specific metals you can't bring.
Reading the Infinite Worlds books I kept wanting to make them go read that series, though chronologically they couldn't have.
I like a long string of empty earth because it's a way of testing survivalist fantasies without going all post apocalyptic on homeline.
Going to the kind of alternate that is an alternate history can get you all sorts. You might pack real careful for a low tech soc and then get very high tech civ that thinks you're a dancing monkey.
But usually the suggested alts are based so much on European history it's really ridiculously implausible. I mean, I just got distracted reading GURPS Low Tech again and everything up through TL4 was invented in either Asia or the Near East, or sometimes Africa. We didn't invent things, we were centuries behind. In some things China was a thousand years ahead! So that's thousands of years of civilisation where all the really big changes aren't going to come out of the barbarian white people places, they're going to be tweaks to bits of history I never read about. I need to read more history.
Also TL5, the age of steam, really must have changed everything. I feel the right spin on the Industrial Revolution is very Science Fiction.
It seems like Rome chewed up a lot of places and spat them out in pieces that did a Dark Age instead. I don't know, history isn't my strong point. Suggested alts are often 'but what if Rome only more' and I'm far more interested in 'how about not-Rome'.
I need to read an entirely different set of history books. England was not that interesting for a really long time and I have a very small window on a whole lot of history.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-21 08:41 pm (UTC)Which is likely because that subject I *do* know about at least in some areas, unlike gardening. The real conclusions here are probably that there's a reason humans are a social species. Everything gets a lot more doable if you assume you're hanging around with even one more person who has expertise in different areas from you.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-05 09:22 pm (UTC)social is key