June 9, 2009
The Well-Dressed Time Traveler
It might be the most important consideration before you take off in your time machine: What should I wear?
Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics has this suggestion:
This t-shirt contains all of the information you could need to ensure not only your survival but perhaps wealth and success as well. Electricity, atoms, pendulums, flight, pasteurization, antibiotics, insulin, longitude, radar, vaccination, just to name a few.
When I mentioned this to some friends, though, they asked: What if time travel burned your clothes off? Well, there is another option—the information also comes as a poster to hang in your time travel machine. However, my friends had their own solution: memorize all of the information so you won’t have to worry about losing it.
But I foresee another problem. Time travel would likely be a fairly traumatic experience, leaving you groggy, maybe with some short-term memory loss. Any idea what could be done then?
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Hmmm…orange colored down vest, flannel shirt, high-top Nike basketball shoes, now I just have to get to Doc Brown at the Mall parking lot before the Libyans….
When I hop through time, I may have to opt for the Marty McFly “life vest.”
I believe the solution for the clothing optional time traveler is tattoos.
It’s a cute idea but the information is relatively impractical. I want to see gunpowder, distilling, how to organize an army (hint: it’s all in the General Staff and the logistics), natural fertilizer and the three-field rotation, the zipper, matches, heating and cooking stoves. Flight? Way ahead of what you need.