You're Immortal - Must Travel Back in Time 1 Million Year - Would You?

[markos82]

It wasn't stated how it would work down to the most minute details. Immortality doesn't mean you are invincible, it just means you won't die from something, usually natural causes. If you assume some kind of divine protection from any harm you might as well assume you get max. level mental fortitude as well, then it would be just boring for a couple hundretd thousand years.

This is a common problem with these kind of scenarios. The way it would actually work is crucial to the outcome yet it is never stated to that degree. Unless you know everything it is best to assume the least OP version though, which is usually the one that breaks reality the least. That usually means that your cells work perfectly and don't mess up when replicating, therefore stop aging, heal more and better, etc. All of that is somewhat realistic yet. Though I guess you could argue that the OP stated food wouldn't be an issue either, so that already goes beyond that. For that to happen you'd definitely get energy from some other source as well.

Well Op said nothing kills you and if you are stuck you can un-stuck ......

[Cosmic Janitor]

Well Op said nothing kills you and if you are stuck you can un-stuck ......

There are still plenty of ways to make that work: Rapid regeneration (wolverine style), slow regeneration that just kickstarts you again once you've recovered the required degree (harkness style), respawning, fate-shifting (for the lack of a better word), invincibility, phase shifting (to various degrees), heck even reincarnation could technically work here depending on what you define as "killing" and "you". You could argue that maybe you are just not alive in the first place after you are send back, so you are only a ghost. Our species has explored the possibilities for ages in fiction, "nothing kills you" leaves alot of room for interpretation.

[cubby]

end of time is frightening and also interesting.... also a prediction: the age of life in the universe will be so short it is totally irrelevant some planets harboured life in whatever form. a short hot period in the beginning and then most of its time cold and empty.

"the rest is silence" Hamlet's last words

I've seen this before - fascinating. Watched the entire thing through. The amount of time in encompasses is something that no human can truly understand though.

[ranzino]

if you are truly immortal those million years of the past are a waste of your time. to be blunt: human civ is not interesting if you are immortal and therefore will survive the red giant state of sun and everything before and much much more time after.
said immortality is also a lie in the end; you will perish if "big freeze" of universe is the future: as soon everything left is at zero Kelvin, it is over. all atoms your body previously was made of will be gone by then.
and it is a lonely time until that happens, trillion of trillion of trillion years beyond extinction of every life in universe you'll still be there.

you will curse your immortality long before that point in time, dont even think you will like it !

[cubby]

Nope. I suppose in some weird plot twist of B movie writing I might be the only person who could be given this form of immortality and sent back to save the world, but I'd consider it pretty much a suicide mission. My body would, by the conditions of the question, survive -- I doubt my sanity would, and whatever was "in there" after a few thousand years wouldn't be recognizable as bungee.

He looks recognizable enough if the reconstruction is at all close, but consider:

Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0126134643.htm

That's just going back a few thousand years.

Assume that this is a "tell a good story" science fiction scenario -- that somehow I don't have to worry about my teeth wearing down or the effect of thousands of years of sun on my eyes. Let's even imagine that I somehow keep my sanity and manage to handle the problems of thousands of years of memory. In a million years, the people who went back with me will evolve, both physically and culturally. After a few thousand years, I just don't see myself picking up cute girls in the bars and in 100,000 it would probably be like having a chimp walk up to them and start trying to flirt. Dating aside, at some point their culture and bodies would diverge significantly from mine. I might be cared for like a well worn teddy bear, but I have no reason to think I'd be relevant.

I'm a few weeks short of 60 yet (if I don't let the Chinese calculate my age), but I've already seen enough changes across the years that immortality holds no interest for me.

That's an interesting point, one that I think would be addressed by digital and quantum advancement. Assuming that after going back you were able to "restart" society, then digital singularity and download wouldn't be too far off, relatively speaking. So the evolution of humans might not happen the way it's described above, and the "left behind" scenario more than likely wouldn't happen.

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No of course I wouldn't. You'd screw up everything! And what fun is a world without dinosaurs and half a million years before Neanderthals appear? There's nothing to do, no events that I'd really like to see, nothing. The people and stuff you could bring with you, you'd have here too, so the only thing 'extra' is being immortal. I'd do it if cryosleep existed. I'd just bury myself in a frozen state, to be waken up a few thousand years in our current future. That'd be interesting, the future.

You'd also, if successful, end up redoing everything. Given 1,000,000 years of human development, whatever is here now wouldn't exist after that 1,000,000 years passed.

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My bigger concern is about general injury. If NOTHING can kill me, what about being dismembered? Like, could you be chopped up into Monty Python's Black Knight and still live? Can you be torn to shreds by a savage animal? Do you regenerate? Do you just respawn? Do you just live, torn to bits?

Good question - I updated the OP to reflect more clarification on immortality.

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If nothing kills you, you could skip a few thousand years getting frozen in the ice age. Temp should besivly bring you low enough to slip through happy in a coma till the big thaw.

You're the second or third person to suggest this. I'm not sure people are thinking this through. Being immortal you would not "slumber" in any kind of coma (although you would wake/sleep - my rules ), which means if you're trapped in a glacier or whatever, you'd still be awake, you just couldn't do anything. The "unstick" rule would get you out at any time of course.... I just don't see the benefit of doing this - perhaps I'm missing something.

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50 people could be enough to sustain and grow a human population, and since I love playing grand strategy games it could be interesting to do it in a more realistic setting.

I would love to play something like this on a grander scale. Civilization is kinda the old-school/simple version of this idea. Even Civ 6 doesn't really do the concept justice.

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i'd do it if it was 100k years orso.

but 1m years basically means you would go insane from boredom while waiting some 750k years for modern humans to evolve.


though on the other hand, if you can bring 50 humans with you it might be doable. if you can keep early deaths in those 50 to a minimum it should be barely enough to get a small community going without genetic side effects, and with some luck they can mate with w/e human ancestor was around by then.

You wouldn't/shouldn't be idle. The point of bringing back gear/people was to rebuild society. Hopefully that will keep you busy for a bit. But if that burns out and fails, then yeah, you'd be bored for a LOOOOONG fucking time.

those are useless if you can only bring back 50 people.

you want most of them to be farmers, with some basic level training in other general fields.
a blacksmith trained to make a furnace will be more useful than an engineer.
a medic with herb/survival remedies will be more useful than a doctor.

overly specialized people will not be able to transfer their knowledge to future generations due to the subsistence lifestyle you will be forced to adapt initially.

the really interesting question to me is: can you jump start a small community fast enough before any written down knowledge you bring with you becomes useless. (either because the storage medium decays, or because the language has become too different).

I think a combination of "basic" and "advanced" skills would be a good mix. A software engineer who is also a blacksmith kinda thing. I'm not trying to "cheat" and bring back people with triple specialties or something, but in the guise of "The Martian", you can have people with multiple skills.

[markos82]

There are still plenty of ways to make that work: Rapid regeneration (wolverine style), slow regeneration that just kickstarts you again once you've recovered the required degree (harkness style), respawning, fate-shifting (for the lack of a better word), invincibility, phase shifting (to various degrees), heck even reincarnation could technically work here depending on what you define as "killing" and "you". You could argue that maybe you are just not alive in the first place after you are send back, so you are only a ghost. Our species has explored the possibilities for ages in fiction, "nothing kills you" leaves alot of room for interpretation.

Well I assume that means nothing can harm you, an asteroid falls on your head, you don't get killed or instantly vaporized just get buried under tons of rock and like he said you can instantly get un-stuck.

[Fincayra]

if you are truly immortal those million years of the past are a waste of your time. to be blunt: human civ is not interesting if you are immortal and therefore will survive the red giant state of sun and everything before and much much more time after.
said immortality is also a lie in the end; you will perish if "big freeze" of universe is the future: as soon everything left is at zero Kelvin, it is over. all atoms your body previously was made of will be gone by then.
and it is a lonely time until that happens, trillion of trillion of trillion years beyond extinction of every life in universe you'll still be there.

you will curse your immortality long before that point in time, dont even think you will like it !

I would definitely prefer the LOTR elven style of immortality, where you live a very long time but can be killed by swords/starvation and the usual means. Live as long as you want/can, and then say farewell when you're done, just like the elves do in LOTR.

[ParanoiD84]

Chances are anyone doing that would become insane and slaughter us all to the last man when it's time.

[Sunseeker]

Good question - I updated the OP to reflect more clarification on immortality.

Ah so you can just be horribly savaged until the animal gets bored that it can't eat you.

Really the answer is KISS. That 100x100m area will be mostly filled with construction tools and basic farm equipment. Fuck electronics, you don't need 'em. You need nails. Some hammers. You need at least one person per relevant scientific category (animals, plants, rocks, water, health) preferably two, and some doctors. Beyond that you really just need people who are clever and healthy.

The game isn't "build a modern society a million years ago". The game is survive a couple generations and THEN build a modern society slightly less than a million years ago. You might bring back a few books on how to produce plastic, refine metals, and build complex devices, not for your group, but for people 2-3 generations down the road.

Best case is you get everything working and you're jump-starting to early industrial era. You've still got 100-150 years to go before you reach modern times. If not, maybe 500 years.

[Hellobolis]

I think a combination of "basic" and "advanced" skills would be a good mix. A software engineer who is also a blacksmith kinda thing. I'm not trying to "cheat" and bring back people with triple specialties or something, but in the guise of "The Martian", you can have people with multiple skills.

the amount of "skip the line" skills you can bring back is proportional to how much people/supplies you can take back. with only 50 people and 100m3 supplies it's not going to be much at all. that software engineer is definitely not going to be using those skills in his lifetime.

now if you could take back a few thousand people and some heavy machinery with enough supplies to last a few decades you can really jumpstart stuff, but without those kind of things it's going to be survival mode for quite some generations.

[ranzino]

the opening post is still not clear about the storage. if it is 100m x100m we talk 10000m² base, every stackable items counts more.
if it is 100m² only: forget it.

so we better go with a scenario with a warehouse full stocked + those 50 ppl. should be enough to jump start pretty society.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Best case is you get everything working and you're jump-starting to early industrial era. You've still got 100-150 years to go before you reach modern times. If not, maybe 500 years.

Even industrial era is very optimistic as far as actually making your own stuff goes. There are simply no supply chains, there is no infrastrcutrue. Even if you handpick your starting zone and you manage to find one that is save, has water, allows for farming, has enough forest for woodworking and mining and smelting, you still will run into alot of problems to make the machines you need to make other machines yourself. Even if you bring all the best equipment, maintaining stuff like a milling machine requies the whole supply chain and I doubt you have a realistic chance to maintain all your tools long enough to build one that can even keep the level of the industrial era.

That is ignoring all the human resources needed to actually utilize all these. You only have 50 people in total. To operate a mine realistically you will probably need at least 12 to be even remotely efficient. You pretty much want people to start fucking immediately as well so that you can increase your work force, which also leaves you crippled with half your workforce only operating at 50% efficiency for the first couple of years and you pretty much want them to pass on all their knowledge as well, which essentially means you won't have access to your new workers for another 15-25 years depending on the profession.

Edit: My point is no matter what and who you bring, it's not much advancing you will be doing, it's mostly watching your tech level decline until you have enough population and groundwork done to build it up again. And 2-3 generation isn't even in the ballpark here. Your 500 years sound more realistic tbh, and that is the point when you actually can start playing the game .

[Shadowferal]

Ah so you can just be horribly savaged until the animal gets bored that it can't eat you.

Really the answer is KISS. That 100x100m area will be mostly filled with construction tools and basic farm equipment. Fuck electronics, you don't need 'em. You need nails. Some hammers. You need at least one person per relevant scientific category (animals, plants, rocks, water, health) preferably two, and some doctors. Beyond that you really just need people who are clever and healthy.

Reminds me of this novel:

[cubby]

the opening post is still not clear about the storage. if it is 100m x100m we talk 10000m² base, every stackable items counts more.
if it is 100m² only: forget it.

so we better go with a scenario with a warehouse full stocked + those 50 ppl. should be enough to jump start pretty society.

Let's clarify to 100mx100m at 10m high.

Essentially a large warehouse.

Visually speaking - it's basically two american football fields laying side by side, 30 feet high.

[ranzino]

Let's clarify to 100mx100m at 10m high.

100 000 m³ of needful thingies.... now this should get us started.
for those still stuck with imperial units: ~3,5million feet³

[cubby]

Ah so you can just be horribly savaged until the animal gets bored that it can't eat you.

Really the answer is KISS. That 100x100m area will be mostly filled with construction tools and basic farm equipment. Fuck electronics, you don't need 'em. You need nails. Some hammers. You need at least one person per relevant scientific category (animals, plants, rocks, water, health) preferably two, and some doctors. Beyond that you really just need people who are clever and healthy.

The game isn't "build a modern society a million years ago". The game is survive a couple generations and THEN build a modern society slightly less than a million years ago. You might bring back a few books on how to produce plastic, refine metals, and build complex devices, not for your group, but for people 2-3 generations down the road.

Best case is you get everything working and you're jump-starting to early industrial era. You've still got 100-150 years to go before you reach modern times. If not, maybe 500 years.

I agree to a certain point. However, I think it would go a little faster than what you're suggesting. The real issue will be power - how fast can the new society build up a lasting/sustainable/renewable form of power. Once that's solved, and the required supply "trains" are running to maintain it, then you're good.

How long would it take to create a factory that generated solar panels? Or to find enough uranium/plutonium (already knowing where it was buried) to build out your nuclear plant. Or to take a few back with you to jump start that process.

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100 000 m³ of needful thingies.... now this should get us started.
for those still stuck with imperial units: ~3,5million feet³

Essentially a large warehouse.

Visually speaking - it's basically two american football fields laying side by side, 30 feet high. A lot, for sure, but that's it. No going back.

[Cosmic Janitor]

How long would it take to create a factory that generated solar panels? Or to find enough uranium/plutonium (already knowing where it was buried) to build out your nuclear plant. Or to take a few back with you to jump start that process.

50 people will never let you run the processing required for either of these, even if you forgo all other neccessary technology sectors in your population. Building and maintaining a nuclear powerplant alone is not a job you can do with 500 people, even if you wait a couple of generations (why would you even run something within the ballpark of 1GW output for less than 100k people?), you won't be running clean energy. You may use solar cells you bring along to power your initial stuff, but from there it's all about getting some reliable stuff you can actually produce and maintain, most likely going back to coal. Edit: In the first place, you will want to aim for industrialization level tech, which means steam and mechanical power for your production. The best you might be able to get is some watermill if you have a river with good foundations nearby.

The amount of chemicals you'd need to refine to make solar cells, energy storage or process uranium is out of this world if you don't already have a supply chain for them. Finding stuff like uranium is not much of a problem (well for most places), the issue is the EXTREMELEY costly refining process of the fuel. And while I'm at the chemistry requirements, even extremely simple things like sulphuric acid won't be trivial - unless you happen to be close to some volcanic lakes which in turn raises the question of long term stability in the region you choose.

[cubby]

50 people will never let you run the processing required for either of these, even if you forgo all other neccessary technology sectors in your population. Building and maintaining a nuclear powerplant alone is not a job you can do with 500 people, even if you wait a couple of generations (why would you even run something within the ballpark of 1GW output for less than 100k people?), you won't be running clean energy. You may use solar cells you bring along to power your initial stuff, but from there it's all about getting some reliable stuff you can actually produce and maintain, most likely going back to coal. Edit: In the first place, you will want to aim for industrialization level tech, which means steam and mechanical power for your production. The best you might be able to get is some watermill if you have a river with good foundations nearby.

Couple of great and interesting points. I'm going to relist each one to address.

1. Building and maintaining a nuclear powerplant alone is not a job you can do with 500 people.
That's not entirely true. Building one, for sure, that would take considerable resources, people, skill sets, etc. But running one, that takes very few people - especially for the low output nuclear reactor a society so small would need (as you so very accurately point out).

2. [W]hy would you even run something within the ballpark of 1GW output for less than 100k people?
Good question and excellent point. You wouldn't need a lot of power right away, but you might need it in 100 years. There are some very simple designs that could last 100 years (given proper maintenance, which I'll admit immediately might not be available in this scenario). And if a full small-scale nuclear reactor won't work, there are other varieties of nuclear-ish power (@Skroe would kill me for that reference) that might work even more effectively, for the requirements. The Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator is a good example. Tons of output for hardly any maintenance.
But why indeed. I think the reason is because if you can have more output than you need, rather than need more than you have, and you can maintain it given the scenario, it's worth having.

3. [B]ut from there it's all about getting some reliable stuff you can actually produce and maintain, most likely going back to coal.
If I understand the basics of coal, it's a very labor inducing process. I don't think that would be an effective source of energy given how few people would be available and how many more tasks would need attending/developing.

The amount of chemicals you'd need to refine to make solar cells, energy storage or process uranium is out of this world if you don't already have a supply chain for them. Finding stuff like uranium is not much of a problem (well for most places), the issue is the EXTREMELEY costly refining process of the fuel. And while I'm at the chemistry requirements, even extremely simple things like sulphuric acid won't be trivial - unless you happen to be close to some volcanic lakes which in turn raises the question of long term stability in the region you choose.

Fucking good point. I didn't even think about the complex chemicals and processes need for those power sources.

[xChurch]

Absolutely yes. Most human progress has happened in the last 200 years and we didn't get very far at all in the 28000+ years before that so to have all that time would mean you could make a vastly superior civilization than we currently have. One thing that would be an absolute must would be as much information as you could find on prehistoric places you could get easy oil.

[Kokolums]

If you're immortal and can't be killed what do you do when the planet dies? Or when the universe dies?

We don't really know what happens to the universe long term. Currently, we believe the universe will expand forever at an increasing rate until everything rips apart. But that's only based on data we have. At some point, there could be some other force that halts the expansion, reverses it, or does something else entirely. All we can do is extrapolate on the current setup.

We currently think the universe is flat based on our measurements. But it *could* actually be a curve that wraps back around on itself in a circle if that circle is so tremendously enormous that our slice of the curve measures as flat.