If you had a one-way ticket to Jan 1, 1999 that departs on Jan 1, 2024, and you are allowed to bring whatever fits into a backpack with you, what would you bring to use to take over the world, and how would you use it?

Assume that the future can change based on your actions, so any historical information that you bring along with you from the intervening 25 years may quickly drift out of the new realities history.

Edit: also assume that you can be given a healthy 21-year-old body if you want or take your previous self's place.

Further, identification will be provided for you if you were not born at that time.

Luci,
@Luci@lemmy.ca avatar

A current download of Wikipedia.

JakenVeina,

Grays Sports Almanac

BlueEther,
@BlueEther@no.lastname.nz avatar

Not a bottle of Vodka and Champagne, I mixed both of those to excess the last time around - never again

lntl,

A Lenovo P series with deepfacelab. I would work public perception of Dubya (and Jeb) to avoid the decades of war crimes.

FunkyMonk,

Pingy Putty and Reaganism would all still be in heavy effect, I can't think of a way any one person is going to bring down 3 nuclear super-war-states. We don't have any anti nuke tech eminence in shadow but nice writing prompt for potential suffering trying.

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

Pingy putty? I've never heard of this before.

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

Also, nothing comes up when I search it on DuckDuckGo or start page

FunkyMonk,

Putin and Xi Ping would still be serious threats to trying to take over the world even from 1999 perspective.

theUnlikely,

Eminence in Shadow? I only know the term from the anime. What does it mean here?

FunkyMonk,

Trying to Isekai to 1999 to take over the world brain.

TheGalacticVoid,

My phone, laptop, charging cables, ethernet cables, tons of SSDs to use with said laptop, Kali, and a bunch of cyber-sec resources.

Having a $2000 2023 gaming/workstation laptop would be an insane amount of computing power in 1999. Being able to use modern-day exploits and discoveries in 1999 would probably allow me to gather as much intel as I needed from my targets while not being discovered. If something gets patched by a Windows XP service pack, I’ll still have an endless list of exploits that work. Hell, I’d even have access to something like Spectre and Meltdown, and that’s something that still must develop organically.

Imgonnatrythis,

A healthy 21 body and 1999? Fuck taking over the world, and I don’t need your stinking backpack, just tell me where to get that ticket and where to show up, I’m not going to miss this! I’m taking a cyanide pill though when 2020 rolls around; I’m not doing this shit again.

Centillionaire,

So prevent it from happening!

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

One of the reasons why the coronavirus vaccine was created so quickly was that the work was already 90% done.

If you orchestrated things that you would be a billionaire by the 2010s, you could purchase the company that designed the vaccine and make sure that they are appropriately funded so that the vaccine for coronavirus would already exist at the time the pandemic struck.

theUnlikely,

And billionaires didn’t have to isolate in a studio apartment.

livus,
livus avatar

I'm squashing my partner into a very large backpack and taking them with me.

I don't think I could take over the world so I choose love. But I can't resist the new body part which is why I'm not just staying here.

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

Don't worry, they can get a ticket and a new body too, but between the two of you you can still only take one backpack.

livus,
livus avatar

@Bizarroland thanks, that's great!! I think we'll probably put a couple of reasonably modern computers, components, and drives containing information into it, and paper printout backups of the things I need most, and whatever pharmaceuticals I can get my hands on for retroengineering.

A 24 year jump on scientific and tech research might not help me take over but it could at least make the world a better place. ART for HIV in developing nations for starters.

I'm guessing the butterfly effect probably applies to lottery numbers, but the stock market's likely still good to go, and that can fund me (along with a few non essential drugs I can sell to pharma) so I can be more influential.

I was already an adult in 1999 so I will know my way around just fine.

squiblet,
squiblet avatar

I read this as 'new part of the body' and was wondering what new part you'd get (like is it also an optional gender switch? Or perhaps you're an amputee?) but then I figured out oh, okay, you mean the part about the new body.

livus,
livus avatar

@squiblet yeah I could have worded that better!

LemmyKnowsBest,

I would have no inclination to take over the world. But if I could go back to that date, I would make a million different decisions over the next few years to steer my life in a much wiser direction.

val,

I’ve got no motivation to take over the world, nor am I sure it’s really possible in a life time. I don’t really have a non-boring answer to this hypothetical.

If the ticket is available anyway I’d happily take it, I’m single at the moment with no dependents and being younger and healthier would be huge. There are lots of ways to make money with the knowledge of future history, even if it’ll change when you start impacting it, and any one of them could make me wealthy enough to never have to work again in my life and do so wherever I please.

I’ve never really understood the need of the rich to continually amass wealth or how they spend it.

Froyn,

Future weed.

squiblet,
squiblet avatar

That's true, a big sack of super dank 30% seeds would go a long way. Funny thing is we'd be just as happy with some of those old strains, so you could win again by freezing seeds from true NL5, Skunk #1 and so on in 1999.

squiblet,
squiblet avatar

Can I fill it with whatever I can think of or only things I actually have right now?

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

Anything you can acquire, legally or not, and have in your possession on Jan 1, 2024.

If you end up incarcerated or dead between now and then, the ticket is null and void.

squiblet,
squiblet avatar

Oh well, so much for filling my backpack with rhodium.

peanuts4life,
@peanuts4life@beehaw.org avatar

To take over the world? I’d take the records of every international technology and medical patent. And, a cell phone. I’d get the local news interested in my new handheld PC, find the least scrupulous tech company which reached out to me, and hatch a plan to create a trillion dollar tech empire.

YoBuckStopsHere,
@YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world avatar

1989 would be better. 2000s were pretty terrible.

PeepinGoodArgs,

You have to prevent 9/11. Then you can still walk your grandma to the terminal when she flies to the Bahamas.

YoBuckStopsHere,
@YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world avatar

Prevent Gore losing

Bizarroland,
Bizarroland avatar

All you'd have to do is generate money with the information you brought back and then campaign for Gore in Florida like nobody's business. None of this hanging chads bullshit.

That and preventing 9/11 would completely and utterly change the world most likely for the better.

rhythmisaprancer,
rhythmisaprancer avatar

Reflecting on my own actions and the folks I met on the way, taking a better attitude would help a lot. I was young and had good conversations with different types of people but did nothing with that for close to another 15 years.

We had much of the information then, IMO. And I remember talking with much older folks who were willing to listen to teens/young adults about a variety of topics. I just wasn't willing to say anything. Even to my peers.

I would take a better attitude.

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