You will be sent back in time in five minutes. To return, you must complete the above poster's task!

[Ultimate Steve]

Welcome to the Time Travel game!

How it works:

One poster says "In five minutes, you will be sent backwards to the year *insert year/date.* From the time you arrive, you will have *insert amount of time* to *insert task.* If you fail, you are stuck in *insert time period* forever. The next poster will detail what they take with them and how they complete a task. Then, they leave a challenge for the next poster.

Rules:

1) You are teleported back in time with whatever you are wearing/holding.

2) You may not go up to a skyscraper and "hold" it. The limit is anything you can realistically lift up. For example, you could probably lift a chair, but not a sofa. Not that you would want a sofa.

3) You always have five minutes to prepare. This is from where you are while you are reading the challenge. For example, if you are reading this on mobile and are in school eating lunch or something, assume what you can grab at school within five minutes.

4) Assume you are deposited onto a random inhabited piece of land. Inhabited means not the ice caps, not on tiny islands, and not in the ocean.

5) No impossible tasks, please. For example, you cannot realistically get a million dollars in five minutes.

6) Assume we live in a universe where paradoxes won't result in the universe exploding.

7) Don't be too unrealistic with your completion of the task.

8) The task may also specify a specific location you will time travel to.

9) If your timeframe is 80 years or so, and you are 80 years old, assume you get teleported back and your age is adjusted so you won't die of old age.

10) if you complete your task successfully you will be teleported back to present day, the same age as you were when you left.

 

Example:

Poster 1: In five minutes, you will be teleported back to a random location in the USA on January 26, 1986. In order to return safely to the present day, you must prevent the Challenger disaster. If you fail to complete this task within three days, you are stuck in that time period.

Poster 2: Five minutes? Um, I quickly grab my supply of emergency cash, download the Wikipedia article on the Challenger disaster, and grab my 80's nerd outfit. I grab my laptop and charger, and stuff that and a few other outfits into my suitcase. *WHOOSH!* Oh, cool! I ended up in Colorado! I'll use my cash to pay for a quick airplane ticket to Florida and buy a good winter coat. It will be interesting explaining to the cashier my 2012 dollars... Now, I change into my nerd outfit and sneak into Cape Canaveral (or was it Kennedy?) and casually raise concerns about the O rings. If this doesn't work, I'll do my best to find one of the astronauts alone and tell them I was from the future, and that they are about to meet their doom. I would cite my laptop as proof I was from 2017. If that did not work, I would run out onto the launch pad a few minutes before launch and hopefully someone would notice me and stop the countdown and I'd tell them about the O-ring issue. If this didn't work, well, then I'd be locked away, and a day later I'd be proven right, I guess... If I happened to be stuck back in time, I'd go and watch Europe perform "The Final Countdown!" for the first time, provided I got out of jail.

If five minutes, you will be teleported back to December 17, 1902. You have one year to make sure Samuel Langley is the first person to invent the airplane. This craft must fly successfully for at least ten seconds and be controllable.

 

Fairly straightforward once you read it all. Let's begin!

 

In five minutes, you will be sent back in time to July 20, 1969 at a random location in the USA. You will have twenty years to land a man on Mars. If you fail, you will be stuck in the past. Your five minutes to prepare starts... Now!

[quasarrgames]

Hey this sounds cool.

I quickly print out everything i can about rocket technology invented past 1969, grab anything valuable and any electronics i can find, and travel to the past. From there i hitchhike to orlando florida, where i sell most of my valuables (which should give me enough money to live for a year or two) and enroll in the unversity of central florida as an aerospace engineer (perhaps completing some qualifying exams beforehand). While i study and work to support myself, i keep the post-1969 rocket schematics a secret and patent them. Once i get my undergraduate degree, i reveal the rocket plans i have found, earning me enough respect in the aerospace field to get work in the Kennedy Space Center. After a few years, i create an amalgamation of various mars transfer plans (perhaps an SLS booster to send an ion-transfer staged merlin lander to the moon) and present it to NASA's advisory board. I might also send some rocket info to the russians before the soviet union collapsed to kickstart their buran program, to fuel political tensions and make the space shuttle look like  much worse idea. If that didn't work, i'd also say that i was from the future and make up some story about the russians and about how humanity's survival depended on going to mars, using my technology as proof (or i might just do that anyway to speed up the process). 

The first mission would be an unmanned ion orbiter to the moon and back, launched on an early shuttle launch, to demonstrate the technology worked. The mars mission would have to be small, maybe only two people, and it might have to be a one-way mission, but that should be enough. If not, i'd still have fun selling all my other technology to the highest bidder to give me a life of 70s luxury

 

In 5 minutes you will be sent to somewhere in england in the year 1925. You have fifteen years to prevent world war 2, or at least postpone it until after 1940. Good luck!

[qzgy]

I find my history textbook and find papers detailing the atomic bomb and take all my important stuff with me. I then "leak" this to the british govt and have them pay attention to germany. Bringing the US to work on nuclear weapons, I set up a cold war situation where the allies threaten to annihilate the Germans if they don't stand down.

In 5 minutes, you will be sent to November 20 1963 US to prevent the assassination of JFK. Good luck!

Edited April 12, 2017 by qzgy

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

48 minutes ago, qzgy said:

I find my history textbook and find papers detailing the atomic bomb

 

49 minutes ago, qzgy said:

I then "leak" this to the british govt

Probably, you're trying to postpone British A-bomb invention.

 

[qzgy]

3 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Probably, you're trying to postpone British A-bomb invention.

What? No, I'm trying to accelerate it

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

7 minutes ago, qzgy said:

No, I'm trying to accelerate it

With a schoolbook picture? What an elegant cruelty.

 

[qzgy]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

With a schoolbook picture? What an elegant cruelty.

No, with the papers (you know, like the ones in scientific journals) The textbook is there as a historical record