NB: This was liberally inspired by Cracked.coms
"6 Time Travel Realities Doc Brown Didn't Warn Us About"
http://www.cracked.com/article_18564_6-time-travel-realities-doc-brown-didnt-warn-us-about.html
It's a total copy really. But it was still fun to write.
Consider for the sake of argument you have a time machine. A few things to consider before firing it up
1: Your stuff won't work
If you are planning to impress those primitives back in the past with your amazing future technology then remember that all of your treasured gadgets will be useless in isolation. Anything that plugs into an alternating current electrical supply will be dead before the 20th century, and probably well into the 20th century too, as standard electrical supplies took a while to get going. No problem, you say, I'll take a portable wind turbine or a solar panel with me. Assuming you can get these devices working, your smartphone and computer will still be without a network to connect to. Wireless internet and mobile phone masts do not exist in mid-1950s America, or even in mid-1990s America come to that. A car could be of use for a short time, about as long as it takes for something to break on it or for you to run out of fuel. It depends on how far back in time you go. Tarmacaded roads are a 20th century thing so it might be a good idea to take an SUV or pickup truck - and bring some spare tyres.
2: You've got one hell of a secret to keep
Going back in time will turn any ordinary person into a god. The time traveller will know everything that is about to happen - every major disaster, every unexpected death, every major sports result. With a bit of digging into the public records this expands to just about everything that will happen to anybody anywhere. Except no human could possibly remember all of that information without at least writing some of it down, or better still taking a few reference books back in time with them (remember, no Wikipedia in 1965!). The second option would seem to solve the problem, but consider the implications of personally owning several books that correctly predict the future, or a few pieces of paper that map out the details some ordinary Joes' unexpected death. If you think that you worry about keeping your wallet or keys safe imagine how stressful keeping the the most amazing thing on the entire planet secret is going to be. As Back to The Future II demonstrated, keeping your personal "Sports Almanac" safe will be a 24 hour job.
Then consider the practicalities of your knowledge. Perhaps the first time you mention to people that you hope President Kennedy "isn't shot by some crazy person today" or that you have a funny feeling the Titanic won't make it to America it would be fun to see the reactions of people when your 'prophecy' comes true. But the novelty will wear off fast, leaving you worried that somebody's going to look under your bed and discover the 'Complete History of the 20th Century'. Unless of course you were thinking of changing the future, which leads us to...
3: You will destroy the present
Everybody is familar with the 'Butterfly Effect' - the idea that a single tiny event (such as the flap of a butterfly's wings) can ripple out and have potentially huge consequences. And everybody has also heard of the 'Grandfather paradox' - the problem of the time traveller who prevents his own existence (like Marty McFly in Back to The Future stopping his mother and father meeting). The potential for great harm to be done either to humanity or to one's own life by the careless time traveller recklessly changing history is well understood. That's why the responsible time traveller is only going to do good things - bump off Hitler before his rise to power, save John Lennon from being shot, tip-off the police about the 9/11 hijackers. All noble and worthy deeds that will make the future a better place and save millions of lives. Well... maybe. Ever hear of 'unintended consequences'? Perhaps taking out Hitler will cause a different dictator to rise - a dictator with better tactical brains and whose 'Thousand Year Reich' lasts longer than twelve years. Even if all goes well and a world war is averted what will be the result? A safer world? Who can say; humanity learns a great deal about it's failings during times of war, disaster and death. There is certainty on a personal level though; returning to the present time you will not find your friends and family. They will be gone, replaced by people who look the same, but have never heard of this 'Second World War' thing you keep on about. Or 'September 11th'. And to them John Lennon is that embarassing old guy who played the Superbowl Half Time show last year and hasn't recorded anything good for years.
4: It's a dangerous place to be
We live in a dangerous world. At least that's what our leaders and the newspapers often tell us. And they are right, there is danger out there, lots of it. Would it be safer to go and live in the past?
Let's consider the average life expectancy in 1900 compared to 2010:
Then: 49
Now: 78
Much of that figure is skewed by infant mortality. Let's take a look:
Then: 165 per 1000
Now: 5 per 1000
But if you're an adult you've made it past the dangerous infant stage and look set for a long life. Unless you are struck by any serious illness that is:
Pneumonia 200 people per 100,000, compared to 16 in 2010.
Tuberculosis 195 people per 100,000. Today TB is vaccinated against.
Other major killers in 1900 that now kill a fraction of what they once did; interstinal infections, diptheria and vascular diseases. Not to mention the great swine 'flu epidemic of 1918 that killed more people than the First World War. Now only cancer and heart disease claim similar numbers as they once did. In fact we've come to think of cancer and heart attacks as the two big killers because so many of the other threats have been nulled.
Progress is a double edged sword isn't it? All that technological progress that fights off disease also creates additional death in other ways... right? True there were 36 road deaths in the USA in 1900 compared to 25,000+ in 2012. But then there were also 25,000+ vehicle deaths in 1945, despite a hundred-fold increase in car journeys since then. And the car's predecessor, the train, wasn't exactly a paragon of safety when it was used far more heavily than today. In 1904 for example there were nearly 10,000 deaths in train crashes in the USA.
Well big deal, you say, at least I'm not going to upset anybody. Speaking of which:
1900 murder rate in the UK: 0.96 per 10,000 people
2000 murder rate: 1.71
And from studying ancient records we can estimate that the murder rate in 13th century England was 20 people per 10,000 people. In the 16th century it was up to 40 murders per 10,000 people. Even in the more civilised 'golden' era of Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare it was 5 people per 10,000. As you can see, plenty of people were murdered in the olden days.
5: They won't take kindly to your type round these parts.
Any time traveller with their wits about them knows that the people in the past will be a bit different. They won't have heard of modern technology or any of the leaders, thinkers and celebrities of the future. They will probably have some rather backward ideas about the social order too and may not be entirely friendly to the time traveller, especially if the time traveller is any of the following; female, black, Chinese, Jewish, Irish, disabled in any way, homosexual, an epileptic, a transvestite, a magician, a scientist, too tall, too short, red-haired, bearded, tattoed, wearing glasses, born out of wedlock, or just from an inferior social class. This alien culture will take some getting used to, even for a fully functioning WASP male. But try as you might it will be really hard to fit in. As The Jam once put it in the song 'Strange Town': "You'll be betrayed by your accent and manners".
6: You won't (officially) exist
Think of all the pieces of paper and numbers you need to function in society; bank PINs and account numbers, drivers licences, insurance documents etc. Now think how on earth a time traveller is supposed to get hold of these things in a place where their date of birth is in the future. No problem, you just won't bother. It was only going to be a short jaunt to the 18th century, and cash will suffice. Except exactly what are the people in the 18th century going to make of money from the 21st century? Well, they will either laugh at your creativity and front and maybe even give you a free beer for your trouble, or they will throw you in nearest jail for counterfeiting. Really *bad* counterfeiting. Then there's the small matter of where on earth you have been for your whole life? Unless you want to pretend you were raised by wolves the prepared time traveller will need a backstory and will need to rehearse the backstory.
7: You are still getting older
Having a time machine will make going on holiday a lot more interesting. Instead of going for two weeks on Mauritius in our time, why not go for two weeks in the time when the Dodo still roamed the island? Plus, if you program your return to the present to an instant after you left then the holiday is a 'free' holiday. In fact, it's effectively a limitless holiday, isn't it? Only as long as the time traveller doesn't mind explaining to their colleagues next day how their hair has grown much longer and their skin has become noticably tanned in the space of one evening in front of the TV. Any time spent in the past is still passing time, and the time traveller is still ageing. They are effectively wasting their allotted time in the present. In fact, time travel is like smoking; every jaunt takes a few minutes off the user's life. Spending too much time in the past and will lead to the time travller ending up dying of old age in a hospital while the doctors and nurses wonder why their notes say that they are twenty-five years old.
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