Coming Soon

The Time Travel Survival Guide

Introduction from The Book

“Man … can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way.”

– H.G. WELLS, The Time Machine

Survival guides seem to be popping up everywhere. Zombies, vampires, alien invasions, robot uprisings, the apocalypse, babies—you name it. But where’s the Time Travel Survival Guide? Which seems more probable, time travel or brain-eating zombies? The answer is obvious. I had a mission—to create the quintessential guide for surviving, even thriving, after a sudden thrust into the past. The result is in your hands.

The premise of this guide is simple: One day, either by chance or by design, you may be thrust back in time. You might not have control over when you leave or when you arrive. If this happens, you must be prepared before you go, or your survival odds are low. What you know now (Internet, cell phone usage, Excel) will probably be useless. Remember, “dig a well before you are thirsty.” Seriously, remember that. Someday you might find yourself in a time without plumbing.

Do not consider this guide as your sole source of information. It’s a compact guide focusing on time travel’s unique issues. You can find details on specific survival techniques online. I’ve included resource lists to help you expand your survival skills, so you can prepare for the many possible scenarios of traveling into the past.

Time travel is a hotly debated topic among scientists and laymen. But I don’t get into that debate here. You won’t find any scientific mumbo jumbo about paradoxes, wormholes, or quantum spitballs. I know you don’t care either, because, having read this far, you’ve shown you believe it could happen to you. We’ll let the physicists debate theory until they get thrust into a time they are ill-prepared for, while we succeed in the past through preparation.

“Time travel was once considered scientific heresy. I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labeled a crank. But these days I’m not so cautious. In fact, I’m more like the people who built Stonehenge. I’m obsessed by time. If I had a time machine I’d visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens. Perhaps I’d even travel to the end of the universe to find out how our whole cosmic story ends.”

– STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine

This guide focuses solely on traveling to the past, not the future. Forward time travel is our default. We’re doing it right now. A cryogenic sleep can send you hundreds of years into the future, but speculation won’t prepare you for the unknown. Preparing for future time travel is for those visiting us from the future.

The guide starts with an overview of time travel survival with “The Ten Time Travel Survival Steps.” It then moves to “The Top 10 Ways to Thrive in the Past,” explaining how to leverage your modern knowledge through gambling, inventing, crime, investing, being a god, and other options.

The guide finishes with a series of miscellaneous topics, like “Five-Minute Time Nudges,” and leaping back to your own body at a younger age. Without preparation, these opportunities could be squandered. Imagine reliving your teen years and blowing it again!

You don’t have to read this guide in order. Skip to what interests you the most, or what you deem most important, in case you’re thrust back in time before you can finish it.

Chuck Lasker’s Email Address calasker@gmail.com