| Winston Smith | 14 Dec 2017 12:01 p.m. PST |
I asked this once before, but it's lost in the mists of time. Suppose I use a Wayback Machine to go back to when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
And a solenoid connected to the doohickey goes "SPROING" and the nearest Radio Shack is right around the corner, if I can wait 85 million years.
I'm stuck. I brought a week's worth of rations, two weeks if I stretch it. What can I eat? Will proteins have evolved into my time to make raptor flesh inedible? (Let's assume that the power plant to charge my plasma rifle is fine. It's the flux capacitor that is broken.)
Same thing with seemingly edible plants.
Would I be poisoned?
On a brighter note, if the raptors eat me, will THEY be poisoned? And what about germs? |
| Stealth1000 | 14 Dec 2017 12:05 p.m. PST |
I like the way you think. |
| Mardaddy | 14 Dec 2017 12:09 p.m. PST |
At first this sounds like a government grant application in the making, but someone beat you to it: link More to your edibles, to be safe you might have to go vegan… link |
| 14Bore | 14 Dec 2017 12:37 p.m. PST |
I read things humans ate in the 1500 – 1800 and wonder if modern processing wouldn't make their food inedible. |
| DColtman | 14 Dec 2017 1:41 p.m. PST |
Probably safer to stick to animals, and since birds are dinosaurs, those little raptors probably taste like chicken. Plants on the other hand produce lots of noxious herbivore-defense compounds, so I'd be more cautious about those and tend away from anything with waxy leaves. And definitely avoid the mushrooms… You should be relatively safe from germs. No close relatives around for them to be adapted to. |
| Cacique Caribe | 14 Dec 2017 2:10 p.m. PST |
Well, according to the scene 38 minutes into the 1975 film the Land That Time Forgot, aquatic reptile steaks are edible: YouTube link Dan |
| Winston Smith | 14 Dec 2017 2:20 p.m. PST |
Well, if the Historical Documents say it's OK….. |
| Dynaman8789 | 14 Dec 2017 2:58 p.m. PST |
Germs could be a problem, something being poisonous too. I've read or heard somewhere that Germs should not be a problem going back in time (we have developed resistance to old ones) but that leaves out the very real chance that something back then mutated into something less deadly today (germs do not want to kill the host after all). So you have to do what the early humans supposedly did, eat a LITTLE bit of something to see if there are any bad reactions – which helps with poison but not so much for Germs. And cook the hell out of it. |
Dn Jackson  | 14 Dec 2017 3:34 p.m. PST |
"And cook the hell out of it." Typical westerner, cooking that much gets rid of all the nutrients. :) During WWII the Japanese would watch monkeys in the jungle. If they ate something the soldiers knew it was safe. Sooooo, bring a bunch of monkeys with you, just in case. |
| Dynaman8789 | 14 Dec 2017 6:14 p.m. PST |
Spare me the Nutrients diatribe! |
| platypus01au | 14 Dec 2017 8:56 p.m. PST |
Dinosaurs taste like chicken… Cheers,
JohnG |
| platypus01au | 14 Dec 2017 9:07 p.m. PST |
I'll be a bit more serious. Birds are dinosaurs. Birds have not evolved for humans to eat, it's we who have evolved to eat them (and lots else besides). Already we can eat animals that were around then (various sharks, fish, etc), so there is no reason at all to assume we can't eat any vertebrate flesh in the Jurassic. But could _some_ be toxic? Maybe. There are very few birds that are toxic to humans, such as the hooded pitohui. These animals get their toxins from what they eat. So it is possible that some dinosaurs may be toxic, but certainly many would not be*. So do what the Pacific Islanders use to do with Red Bass. Feed some to a dog or your grandmother. If they survived, you can eat it… On the other hand, you are perfectly edible. Cheers,
JohnG
*Bioaccumulative toxins usually have an evolutionary effect, such as protection against predators. If you see a raptor chowing down on some plant-eater, you have a good chance you could eat it as well. But take your grandmother just in case.. |
| platypus01au | 14 Dec 2017 9:16 p.m. PST |
Germs? Any you will catch will be zoonoses, so 1) rare and 2) unpredictable. Cheers,
John |
| Winston Smith | 14 Dec 2017 9:47 p.m. PST |
You know, maybe the asteroid had nothing to do with it.
Maybe a time traveler disagreed with something that ate him. |
TimeCast  | 15 Dec 2017 3:17 a.m. PST |
ALWAYS pack a spare Doohickey and solenoid. ..and a can of anti SPROING spray. Prior preparation and all that… :-) |
| Mugwump | 15 Dec 2017 6:17 a.m. PST |
My question would be the lack of flowering plants & fruits. Where are you going to get vitamen C from? There are a host of other things that didn't evolve back then: Grasses & Grains for example. I think you would be looking at defiency diseases over the long run. |
| M C MonkeyDew | 15 Dec 2017 7:40 a.m. PST |
I suspect if you eat any dinos. cave social media will hound you for being a murderer. Make sure no one sees you do it* Also cover yourself in raptor dung at first opportunity to disguise your scent. *yes no humans around to judge you then. |
 StoneMtnMinis | 15 Dec 2017 8:47 a.m. PST |
From the article: "The new 'chimeric' bacteria has mutated rapidly – and some have become stronger and healthier than today's germs." Wonderful. just what we need. Dave
'www.WargamingMiniatures.com |
| StoneMtnMinis | 15 Dec 2017 8:48 a.m. PST |
And to answer the question, no the food would eat you first. |
paints a legend from the Trojan Wars.
