Would you make the "Long Jump"?

samzeman

samzeman

Junior Member
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Kairos said:
You probably cannot eat anything. You would lack enzymes to process the food, and this wasn't long after the Cambrian explosion, so it's not going to be very exciting anyway.

Sign me up for North America or Gondwana in the late Jurassic, fam. Let's go and get the space program started so we can divert the asteroid and save the dinosaurs. But we are bringing our domesticated crops and animals to farm, and we are definitely going on safaris.

In fact, right here in glorious Appalachia is the best possible location for Time Fortress Jurassic.
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You'd have to bring crops and animals, but almost anywhere would be easy to survive in if it wasn't during an ice age and if there was enough oxygen. I was aiming to write a book about how to survive if accidentally transported back in time (never managed to get far, though someone else did one), and the good news is I asked an immunologist/environmental studies major and they said that we are probably derived/adapted/evolved enough that we would have nothing to worry about from micro-organisms, and might even be able to digest native plants. I mean, has anyone tried to domesticate ferns to produce crops? It might be possible. Grass wasn't edible until we turned it into grain.

There are fruits that would be edible, and fungus is almost always just as edible as it is now (aka: sometimes very deadly, sometimes very edible).

The original way that our ancestors figured out which crops we could domesticate would always work, as well as animals, although like North Americans you could just be out of luck and not find any domesticate-able animals or crops. Standard survival techniques like you'll find in any guide or on any cool website would always work to figure out what's poisonous.

Enzymes are naturally produced by the body anyway, from raw protein(s), so you don't need supplements. Though in any case, going back in time and eating ancient ferns or whatever is definitely going to at least mess with your digestive system for a while.

I think the major danger is animals. Palaeontology doesn't actually know that much about dinosaur behaviour. The earliest animal we could predict accurately is probably a mamoth, and then most stuff before then is guesswork. We know what they ate, but we can't tell if they're hunters or scavengers or what. And can't tell how aggressive herbivores are either, which is scary. Insects don't fossilise well usually, so there are probably a whole ton of unknown insects that spread nasty bacterial infections (which we will always be a little bit susceptible to, even if we are more immunologically derived by a long way). They probably have annoying poisons and stuff, and there are some chemicals that biology doesn't use much anymore that you would discover you are allergic to.

I love thinking about this kind of thing tbh. I'd do it, but only after a ton of research.
 

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