Would you go back in time and stay? When?

As a historian and general history nerd, I get asked this question all the time.
My simple and emphatic answer is NO.
I like sanitation too much.
There are a thousand different events I'd like to go back and witness. There are eras I'd go back and spend a few days like Marty McFly, but to stay... no thanks.
I can live without technology. I'm adept at cooking over an open fire and riding a horse. I am, though, very much a fan of soap, running water, toilet paper, fresh clean clothes, and razors for both men and women.

 

Agreed. I am not going to an era without TV, Internet or plumbing. I am not going to an era with racially segregated anything.

 

I have occasionally thought about what it would have been like to be born 10 or 20 years earlier than I was (Feb. 9, 1972).

Other than catching some of my favorite classic rock acts as they were happening rather than during their money-grubbing reunions, I am glad to have been born when I was.

And I absolutely am glad I grew up and was a young adult before the internet and social media became so dominant.

 

Agreed. I wouldn’t have minded living a bit earlier to take advantage the Summer of Love.

 

I could live without TV. I go days without even turning it on. I could manage without internet. I'd be happy if all phones and the designs to build new ones were launched into the sun. Plumbing is the issue. I'm old enough to remember using a legit outhouse and taking a bath in a metal tub at my grandmothers. I'm old enough to have helped install her indoor plumbing in '82 or '83.

 

I'd probably be OK with going back to live in the '60s, maaaaybe the '50s, but I doubt if I'd want to go much more than that. I'd probably thrive in the early '70s Key West.

 

Knowing what I know now, so I could be rich as hell, buy a downtrodden baseball franchise, get lots of great players before anyone knew they'd be great, and also somewhat of a social trailblazer? It's tempting.

The Philadelphia A's would still exist under that scenario. 'Cause I'd buy them and make them great.

 

Mack to the Future

 

I’d go back to pre-colonial America. Just me and the natives.

I’d find a plot of my own far from any other humans, and live off the land.

Think Thanos’s final scene in Infinity War, except without the mass genocide.

 

I was born in 1984 and would choose to be born in about 1950, assuming no butterfly effects change the Cuban missile crisis outcome. Can’t promise I’d be in the U.S. during the Vietnam draft, though.

 

Yeah, the VNW was bad for guys born from about 1947-52. The lottery was down to the low 40s for those born in 53 and there was no draft for those of us from the class of 1954.

Then again, you'd know you just had to get a doc to phony up a bone spurs diagnosis and you'd get deferred. Or join the Air Force reserves and spend your service time being drunk in Alabama.

 

I’d rather stay where I am, but I’d like to be able to go back in time for a few days. Especially to watch some sporting events in stadiums and arenas that no longer exist.