# You are Suddenly Transported in Time



## WechtleinUns (Oct 13, 2013)

You are suddenly and swiftly transported back to the year 1985. All of your clothing, and everything on your person is transported back with you, which includes a Samsung Galaxy 5 Smart Phone, a wallet with your identification, birth date, and three photographs(you choose which). In addition, you have 2 other items on your body, excluding your clothing, makeup, hairstyle, etc.

You know the general course of history from 1985 to the present day, as well as any specific events that you know about from this time period.

What do you do?


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## escorial (Oct 13, 2013)

keep away from the ex-wife.


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## BobtailCon (Oct 13, 2013)

I'd enjoy buying a bag of chips that isn't half full......


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## FleshEater (Oct 13, 2013)

Breathe a sigh of relief, look for a job, and hope I'm dead before having to live through the 2000's again. 

Returning to the 50's or 60's would be far better though. The 80's sucked.


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## Gargh (Oct 13, 2013)

Sell the Samsung phone to Apple and watch the future/history melt.


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## The Tourist (Oct 13, 2013)

WechtleinUns said:


> What do you do?



Nothing out of the ordinary.  Most of my clothing, the hobbies I have, and the skill sets I've acquired go back to the 1960s.

For me, 1985 is "cutting edge."  The music was dismal, however, and discarded disco clothing would not biodegrade due to the high polyester content, but those are minor issues.

I suppose the biggest adjustment for me would be to scan a crowd and see fewer obese people.


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## Kevin (Oct 13, 2013)

Real estate. I'd be like that big oaf in Back to the Future with the book of sport's world records, knowing about the crash(es), when to buy, sell etc., trends like Costa Rica (which would be/ would've been, time travel always confuses... a bee-utiful place to perform my labors, *cowabunga*), confidence in finding big-time investors because _I know.... _All for oodles of money...Mm-hmm...yep...GREED, because that's all that matters first...everything else is secondary. Watching Opree taught me that, over and over...Namaste.


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## The Tourist (Oct 13, 2013)

Kevin, did you ever hear of the "kill your grandfather" theory?  It's a staple of time travel novels.

Kind of like a continuum-butterfly effect.  One of the elements of any success is timing.  If a section of land became valuable, not only was it in the right place, but it was there at the right time.

Once you interrupt the flow of events then you have created a new reality.  Maybe a stretch of land became valuable to a builder perhaps it was due to the price the speculator wanted to pay.  If you jack up the price or bog him down in longer term negotiations, perhaps he changes his plans.

You've heard of Denver I suspect.  But have you ever heard of Auraria?


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## Bruno Spatola (Oct 13, 2013)

Make predictions of the future, wait 'til they come true, and convince the world I am Jesus, then be worshiped as a god, obviously.

Oh, and tell everyone they look absolutely ridiculous, burn their clothes, records, and bathe the '80s out of their skin. Then I'd manufacture a heap-tonne of Valium, drug the world's water supplies, and change all the eights on calendars to nines, thus erasing the Earth's most embarrassing decade. Even more than the one when we used to get in barrels and roll down Niagara Falls.


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## Myers (Oct 13, 2013)

FleshEater said:


> Returning to the 50's or 60's would be far better though. The 80's sucked.



I agree, but no earlier than the 60's for me. I don't want to go back to a time before air conditioning and the widespread use of deodorant.


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## FleshEater (Oct 13, 2013)

Myers said:


> I agree, but no early than the 60's for me. I don't want to back to a time before air conditioning and the widespread use of deodorant.



You make a solid point.

I didn't even think of land. Kevin, that's genius. 100 acres of land in the 80's in my area sold for roughly $75-$100 per acre. Today, 100 acres sells for $100,000,000. And, that's not counting all the money the land owners have received from timber, coal, limestone, oil, and now, Marcellus-Shale. 

Anyone in this area that purchased 100+ acres in the 80's for cheap, are now millionaires.


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## squidtender (Oct 14, 2013)

Catch Billy Ray Cyrus asleep and give him a vasectomy. Find E. L. James and cut off her hands. Move to Seattle, start a record label and sign Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains.


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## Kevin (Oct 14, 2013)

...prior knowledge of the trade center, the train station, the bus...but what could you do? they'd lock you up as a crazy man.


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## The Tourist (Oct 14, 2013)

FleshEater said:


> Anyone in this area that purchased 100+ acres in the 80's for cheap, are now millionaires.



Here's an odd dichotomy.  Everyone always looks at these stories and theories of "prior knowledge" and mentions investment and the profits gained from rising values.  Yet, it's hard to get younger folks to save and invest.

I made investments, saved as I could, and retired early.  I bought some "toys" carefully after research and made profits.  Obviously the concept works.

Considering that we are writers and know the plots of time traveling novels, why isn't every young writer squirreling away money and checking gold and real estate options daily?


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## David Gordon Burke (Oct 14, 2013)

Along the lines of giving someone a forced Vascetomy - first I thwart the plans of the 2011 terroritists but.....George Sr. gets the vascectomy just to be on the safe side (have to go backc to earlier than 1985 but...) and while the doc has the scalpel in a tender spot, I convince him to let Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf take the soldiers all the way into Baghdad and get the job done the first time.  (Gulf War 1 - Desert Storm)

Oh, and Take out Stephen Harper (Canada's PM) just for good measure.
Do the literary world a favor and throttle Stephanie Meyer in her crib.  

David Gordon Burke


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## Pandora (Oct 14, 2013)

I would see Robert Palmer perform many times, I never made the chance. I would try to meet him 
and tell him to please stop smoking. I miss him. I would find John Belushi and tell him to stay away from
Cathy Smith, to get himself help. That his sweetness, creativity, art doesn't rely on drugs and alcohol.
That we ain't seen nothing yet and we want more. 

Journey on John and Robert.

I'm not much for changing history, my own especially. My path has brought me to who I am and who and what I love.
What ever I've done, what ever I'll do there is a reason for and my other side depends on this.



And I still got the same hairdo from the 80's :friendly_wink: Shoulder pads are retired though.


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## FleshEater (Oct 14, 2013)

The Tourist said:


> Here's an odd dichotomy.  Everyone always looks at these stories and theories of "prior knowledge" and mentions investment and the profits gained from rising values.  Yet, it's hard to get younger folks to save and invest.
> 
> I made investments, saved as I could, and retired early.  I bought some "toys" carefully after research and made profits.  Obviously the concept works.
> 
> Considering that we are writers and know the plots of time traveling novels, why isn't every young writer squirreling away money and checking gold and real estate options daily?



Because the price of these two investments are so far out of reach for the average Joe (not too mention that the U.S. has no gold to give you) that it isn't worth playing catch up. There is a time and place for a good investment, and most younger folks are ten years too late. 

I save money like it's going out of style. However, I never had any guidance growing up on investments. When I was a teenager, everything was about the stock market, no one told me land could be worth so much. Had they, I would have passed on buying a $22,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee, and bought a piece of land when I was 19.



On a side note. I'd relish in the Punk Rock movement and travel the country to see The Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, The Circle Jerks, Discharge, 7 Seconds, T.S.O.L, etc. As well as the thrash movement.


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## JermShar (Oct 14, 2013)

FleshEater said:


> not too mention that the U.S. has no gold to give you



Derp. You don't need any gov't to give you gold. Heck, I'm sitting on a decent amount of gold right now in my safe. 

Electronics have gold in them. As well as platinum and even titanium. I go junking (dumpster diving) in my spare time and run across all sorts of things. Of course I have my own little station in the back yard to melt stuff down and chemicals to 
extract the metals from the circuit boards, but its not too hard to get a hold of. 

Go to 80's and Bang Madonna when shes still fertile. Make her barefoot and preggo for a good decade. See how a droopy breasted flabby bellied Madonna would turn out. Also give Cindy Lauper some inspiration from the original future Madonna songs. Make Cher STOP before she Could Turn Back Time and Believe in Life After Love...Give those songs to some other good female artist. Prevent Nikki Minaj...period. 

Eliminate the celebrity drugs. Just might keep some peoples alive a bit longer. Let Micheal Jackson know turning white is a really really bad idea. Only problem is death. Where there is death, there will always be death. So the people we save would still die, just in different ways. Also shame on yall for not mentioning John Candy. That would be one to prevent as well.  Try to prevent the Molesting in Hollywood from happening. Maybe a Goonies and breakfast club part 2. 

The smartphone would have to be well hidden and let loose when the tech is close enough to produce one, otherwise you start some kind of "its Aliens" stuff.  Invent Internet myself, skip token ring and dial up and start off with Ethernet and DSL first. Give Unix guys Ubunto. Run Microsoft bankrupt before they can corrupt. Give the general idea of L.E.D. and O.L.E.D. to a company. Don't forget wifi. Create and release, the wireless charging station. Yes, i know how it works and the circuit is stupidly super easy. Could have been done in the '20s. Afterall its based on Tesla's work. Make modern Hybrid and Electric cars.  So much tech stuffs i know about! 
Also stop Gov't lobbying before it gets too bad, while being the biggest lobbyist my self lol. Only to make the gov't pass better laws. Try to make and pass some irrevocable laws that would keep the U.S. from spying on people and censoring crap. Make sure music turns out less violent and sex ridden.  Gun laws to strictly regulate guns. Only handguns, shotguns and rifles are allowed. Sniper, simi-auto, automatics are banned from civilian use. We really don't need them anyway. 
Lobby to keep prayers and religion in schools, just teach more tolerance. 

My 2 pictures would be of my kids, because i would never get to see or spend time with them ever again. It would be my drive. I'm doing this to make a better world for them.


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## Myers (Oct 14, 2013)

^ So is part of the premise that you have some special contacts or powers that allow you to access celebrities so you can have sex with them and give them unsolicited advice? I guess they didn't have very good stalking laws back then, so who knows?


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## Bilston Blue (Oct 14, 2013)

I think I'd head into Walsall's small and (then) thriving town centre, Bridge Records in particular, and snap up a copy of The Smiths' great second album, _Meat is __Murder. _Afterwards, I'd encourage a health and safety style inspection of Bradford City's football ground, and the years upon years of litter which have gathered below the wooden grandstand would be deemed a fire hazard and all games would be postponed until the litter had been cleared, thus, when a supporter in that stand discarded a cigarette which fell through the boards, there would be nothing to act as an ignition and therefore no fire would sweep through the stand to kill over fifty supporters.

Apart from that, I'd probably begin some kind of crusade against the progression of technology, so that in the future, my future, my life wouldn't be dominated by being able to know almost everything happening in the world at any given time of the day via an assortment of different but equally as quick as each other media. God! Wasn't it interesting when we needed to buy a newspaper to find out world news from a few days prior, when newspapers told news and didn't resort to speculative and over-dramatized non-stories in order to compete with aforementioned modern fingertip media.


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## Andyfuji (Oct 14, 2013)

As much as I care to think I know about '80s or '90s history, I don't think I would interact with it.  I could very well choose to become a prophet for 30 years.  But I can't imagine wanting to.  In all honesty, I wouldn't even care to watch TV, or listen to the radio, read newspapers in any attempt to reassure that I _know_ what is going to happen.  I couldn't bear it.  However irresistible or seductive it would most certainly be to exploit my precognition for money or what-not, I just, in good conscience, could not do it.

The cellphone would go into the hands of the first person willing to trade a car, a good car, for it.  That seemingly alien looking brick that, in all likelihood, would be entirely non-functional and useless without WiFi or any way to charge it; I couldn't see any common person to even _want_ it.  Not for a car, anyway.  But assuming I did, I'd simply take that car and drive to anywhere.  Stop, talk to a few people willing to talk, and move on to the next anywhere.  Something I could arguably do without it being the '80s, but the idea of meeting people with a relatively limited viewpoint on the world, of what they see or read on TV or in magazines, rather than the cosmopolitan everyone we have now; It makes it interesting enough to try.


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## The Tourist (Oct 14, 2013)

FleshEater said:


> Because the price of these two investments are so far out of reach for the average Joe (not too mention that the U.S. has no gold to give you) that it isn't worth playing catch up.



It isn't always "gold" that winds up exceeding the costs of inflation.

For example, I know of a piece of fine grained rock--*no* diamonds, rubies or emeralds in it--about the size of brick from your average house that sold for 40,000 dollars.  It's quarried from a site in Japan, now closed, where the Samurai got their polishing stones.  Needless to say, I have garnered several thousand polishing stones and about two dozen pieces of special glass made until about 1901.  Those polishing tools have quintupled in price since I secured them.

You study markets, and take a gamble on commodities.

Yeah, I've made some errors.  When first produced I passed on a Pasadena "A" .44 AMP AutoMag.  it was priced at 350 bucks, lots of money then.  They now go for 3,000 dollars.  I made it up when I bought one of the first Bren Tens--and I owe Don Johnson dinner for his contribution!

Some of the first home computers are collectible.  I have old PEZ dispensers that defy logic with what they're worth.  And I have sold ZT0302 knives to clients for five times what I paid  for them.  (The knives became a cult classic when Leroy Jethro Gibbs carried them on NCIS.)

There is always a way to make money if you invest prudently.


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## Bloggsworth (Oct 14, 2013)

Gargh said:


> Sell the Samsung phone to Apple and watch the future/history melt.



How would you convince them it worked, you couldn't phone anyone...


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## D. E. Forester (Oct 14, 2013)

I'd enjoy all the pop-culture I heard about in retrospect as it premiered, and stock up on some iconic gadgets to sell later for a comfortable swathe of cash. I'd also take some time out of my life to involve myself in my own development and get the new me to be a little more friggin' motivated in life, paradoxes be damned.


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## Kevin (Oct 14, 2013)

> On a side note. I'd relish in the Punk Rock movement and travel the country to see The Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, The Circle Jerks, Discharge, 7 Seconds, T.S.O.L, etc.


  It was fun. Living in the big city, they came to us... Even then I had bills.


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## midnightpoet (Oct 14, 2013)

Actually, I'd like to go back to 1969, before I married my first wife, so I could live the rest of my life not knowing that (you know what), otherwise known as Runaround Sue. Then I'd get as rich as possible, move to my private island, and spend the rest of my life lolling on the beach, reading and listening to music (on second thought, I'd probably get bored).


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## The Tourist (Oct 14, 2013)

For me, I would go back to 1979, the happiest summer of my life.  Lost the woman I loved.  Maybe I could do better with a mystical mulligan.


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## WechtleinUns (Oct 14, 2013)

Woah. This thread took of pretty quickly. Glad to know people are responding. 

As for me, going back to 1985 would put me just a little bit before I was born. Truth be told, the only reason why I chose that date was because I am a huge fan of Back to the Future. So naturally, this would make things a little bit difficult for me, because I would have absolutely no contacts, possessions, or land/property that I could call home. For all intents and purposes, I would have absolutely no link with anyone as of yet.

Having said that, I'm sure I could come up with some interesting things. Although, the safest bet for me would probably be to use the Samsung Galaxy Smart-phone to get me looked at very closely by the authorities. I'd probably walk into a police station and say that I was a russian spy or something.

After all, 1985 was during the height of the Cold War. Without the phone, I'd just be another mexican nobody. But with the phone, I'd be able to get contacts with the department of defense. And from there, I'd have a better shot of convincing some people higher up that I have knowledge that is valuable to them.

Think about it another way: What was the computational capacity of the average mainframe computer in the year 1985? A TI-82 has more processing power than those dinosaurs. I'm pretty sure the DoD would forgive the lack of telecommunications equipment and the ability to call people. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to get a charging cord manufactured, and from there you'd have something that amounts to a Top Secret Weapon.

Think about it. An Iphone has more processing power than the super-computers that the DoD used to launch the rockets to the moon. I'd be the only one who knew how to use it(the Samsung, not that Apple Garbage), and with the right modifications, I could probably jumpstart technology by about 20 years.


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## JermShar (Oct 16, 2013)

I just thought of something. We talk of jump starting technology. Oh crap. Ok we take a galaxy s4 to 1985. They figure it out and make something similar to a s1. So that tech is out automatically the s4 would be 15 year old tech.(give them time to reverse-engineer then re-engineer.) So now automatically you brought back a newer higher tech phone from 2013 that normally(in our current timeline) 2028 would have had. Then it would take longer for them to figure it out due to the even more advanced tech. Maybe even materials that were never discovered yet. Now you bring back something that would normally be in year 2022.  But it keeps repeating until we reach their technological limits and they can't figure it out at all. Then it would just sit there and everything resets back to normal. Your phone that would normally be released in 2045, turns back into a galaxy s4 again and here starts the cycle all over.  Hopefully ya'll get what I mean.


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## mg357 (Oct 16, 2013)

instead of going back to the year 1985 i would go back to March 4th 1923 and witness my grandma being born, She died several years ago and i miss her very much.


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