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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

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.

169 comments
  • I would bring Wednesday 6th January 1999's winning lottery numbers, five books chronicling the last 25 years of British history, history of businesses, history of the tech industry between 1998 and 2023, modern military history, and the history of Blackrock. Also I would choose a healthy 21-year-old body.

    The plan is... win the lottery for some immediate starting capital, make well-informed investments, effectively become the Warren Buffet of Britain and weasel my way into the world elite, befriending figures like David Cameron, Tony Blair, Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton, etc. I would make timely investments into new startups like Facebook, Twitter, etc, jump on the Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Ethereum bandwagons early and make it my aim to become the richest man in the world. With that wealth I'd then buy more shares in Blackrock, Blackwater and Lockheed Martin, seemingly be at the top of my game as head of a PMC. I would assist in conflicts that maintain the status quo as best as I could.

    I would also do a tonne of work with African military forces, make loads of private investments in African firms and , and beat China to the punch.

    With the exception of Blackwater, I would not aim to be a majority shareholder in any of these companies. I'd keep maybe... 5 to 10 percent of shares in the really successful companies, lose a bit of money in falls to not arouse too much suspicion, but I would otherwise climb to the top of the PMC ladder and put my fingers in as many NATO pies as possible.

    That's what I'd do if my aim as a time traveller was to take over the world. In actuality, I'd rather just win the lottery, diversify my investments and retire comfortably. I don't desire world domination.

  • 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.

  • A modern desktop PC full with top of the line deep learning graphics cards.

    I will flood the internet with helpful comments, exploits, anything that will take down the banking grid. I will sway online and print media discourse towards progressive politics. I will take down Murdoch media and ensure that he never again makes a cent spreading his rhetoric.

    I will start a consulting company using my AI models as my employees and make unspeakable amount of money, whilst ensuring that large contracting firms never take off.

    I will buy up large linear strips of country, and build railroads and rail stations everywhere, whilst building free accommodation above and below the tracks to ensure that the homeless always have somewhere to sleep, and to ensure that buy-to-let landlords can never return much on their investment.

    I will crash weapon trading stock markets, exploit the emails of corrupt politicians and their billionaire donors. I will wage financial war on the 1% until the world gini index reaches 0.5

  • 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.

    • 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.

      • @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.

    • 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.

  • I assume I get ID for a person born in '78 if I choose the adult body? I was born, but very young.

    Hard drives of data compatible with old computers, and a few modern laptops for good measure. Maybe some electronics equipment too in case I really need to interface with something obsolete or proprietary. Some period-appropriate cash to live on before my first "job". The 2000's won't know what hit them.

    I'm not going to be able to take over the world (shit, even taking over Afghanistan proved to be too hard), but I sure as hell can be a shadowy hacker figure that steers the course of history. I'll probably avert 9/11 assuming I can get up and running fast enough, and try to steer China towards reform and detente with the West. Russia's probably intractable. I wonder if I could tip the Florida election towards Gore, in order to get global warming taken care of faster. Giving a bump to renewables research could also help things along.

    Edit: So, there would be a lot of phases to this, as I gradually shift from being anonymous to a hot item. Once I reach some point at or after present day, I'll publish my archives so the world can decide for itself, and I'll leave proof early on that it's genuine, for example as hashes of data in things like newspapers that are well archived. Then I'll dismantle my cabal and retire.

  • 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.

  • I would bring a laptop with a good CPU and GPU, an ASIC Bitcoin miner and 10,000 in cash in case for some reason the miner broke or didn't work.

    I would bide my time at pizza delivery jobs for 10 years paying rent living on ramen and buying small amounts of gold and silver coins. As soon as the first btc client was released by Satoshi I would start mining. I would be selling things on the cheap and performing services as much as humanly possibly. Id have a small gold and silver for BTC company, selling $50 gold coins for the equivalent of $25 in BTC at the time. I would not stop until I had at least 1,000,000 Bitcoin, or January 2017, whatever came first. As soon as the BTC rush of 2017 starts, I start selling my BTC en masse at the peak. Mail order, cash, in person, whatever. Claim what I need to on taxes. Sell the rest via an exchange before it's regulated as a security and needs to be taxed.

    Now I am a big time multi-billionaire and no one even knows my name besides my financial advisors and closest friends from my pizza delivery days who now work for me doing "whatever the fuck they want" work for 100k per year.

    I keep investing in companies who sell the most in online communications services (zoom, Microsoft, etc), mask production, hand sanitizer, laptops, gold and silver, and whatever else I can remember. As a ride out COVID, I've increased my 5-10 billion to 20-30 billion.

    Now I live a happy "do whatever the fuck I want" life at roughly the same age I am now, only now I have total freedom and power because of "20 years of hard work and foresight -- I started as a pizza delivery boy, and you can too ;).”

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

    • 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.

  • Like the other person mentioned their family, I would say that about my friends and other relations. I don't think it's possible for me to redo my life in a way that my decade old friendships would be the same (or even better) than what they became. I don't even know if I will feel the same about my friends if I decide to relive my life as memory is a precarious thing and I can't rely on how I feel about them to last until I meet them again and live life interacting with them while trying to change the world.

    I could consider a 21yo body but as a millennial I would end up overaged for the people who were important in my life to have any meaningful relation with them.

    I have considered the scenario of reliving my life, correcting my mistakes and maybe making some massive changes along the way, if I could somehow guarantee keeping the things that matter to me the same.


    I forgot to write what things I would do, so here are some ideas:

    • Investing is an obvious one which everyone else has also mentioned.
    • I would download all the open source stuff, all leaked files, maybe even scour the dark web for stuff
    • Buy NeXt to hire jobs as the CEO of my tech company (also any other corporations that I could buy back then, like Google)
    • I'll create a note with ideas that were killed too soon or didn't last due to tampering by big corps, and products which got enshittified and implement them when there's no competition or wait for when I have enough money to not worry about people getting in my way.
    • I'll create a note with mention of all the important events (multiple notes, encrypted, to prevent someone from using that information)
    • Put an offline LLM and other AI on my phone (along with very reliable chargers and replacement batteries).
    • (Kind of a sub point of above, but it got big) I'll try to take a phone with replaceable batteries and sturdy design. It would be great if it could fit in that time, I'll disable the touch screen to that effect and only use a stylus, and other changes to make it seem worse or maybe take a "bad" phone from the start. I'll also claim it's an experimental product if someone asks me about it.
    • A list of my favourite recipes, so that I can be a food trailblazer
    • Start my own music company and invest in artists which I know will be big in the future, give them better terms than my competition and use that roster to prepare for streaming. I'll already have Jobs and Ive to design iPod and take over that period.
    • With RISC-V as my chip, I'll buy one of the fabs which went under back then and use it to establish myself as a chip manufacturer and once I have built up enough lead in the fab business with knowledge gathered before going back I'll open source RISC-V as an act of benevolence according to the world (I'll discuss the future fab knowledge with the researchers I will acqui-hire with the fab, they should be able to create something in a few years with whatever knowledge I can provide, I'll just have to act as a layman with more knowledge and if I go with my age they'll think I'm a smart kid)
    • I didn't mention crypto because that might change with the chip info I bring back, so I'll see if that happens again and invest early and secretly to have enough of it to have a hand in that too.
    • I'll also try to keep my identity hidden so that I can live the important parts of my life again as they were, and once I have lived those I'll consider if I need to be known to the world.
    • I'll prepare media organizations to fight disinformation
    • I'll bring back innovations in renewables that I'll slowly release into the world.
    • Forgot to mention in the edit, so adding as a new comment:

      I'll bring back my story ideas and complete them and publish them as books, it'll let me pretend that I have an active imagination as a writer and that I just got lucky with the lottery and used it to put money in tech that fascinated me and just was good at imagining tech.

      I'll do a fast forward course of comp-sci to present RISC-V based on that and use common terminology to explain it as much as possible.

  • A few useful books about electronics, devices and new inventions and all of the electronics I can fit into my backpack.

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

169 comments