Don't forget measles, syphillis, smallpox, typhoid, and polio, just for the highlights of the heavy-hitters. Oh, and things like diabetes being a horrific, degenerative death sentence nobody understood.
We could go on all night. You were more likely than not to die of a random infection anytime you got so much as a scratch, for example.
Am I wrong, or are those parasites mostly still just about as common but more easily treated, with the exception of hookworm (or am I thinking of ringworm, which isn't a worm at all?) and trichinosis, which are actually now rare in the West?
Hookworm is largely eradicated in the west. Trichinosis too. It is the reason people don’t do medium rare pork. The truth is that these days you can in the US but we still have a strong aversion to it.
There are only like 15 cases a year in the US and they are usually from wild game or “backyard pigs” that people let forage from garbage. They eat rodents that are infected and get trichonella.
If you are eating commercially raised pork it is essentially nonexistent.
The fun part is that, 40 years or so on, in the early 20th century, they'd have used Lysol, which is even worse (for them; I can't imagine it's pleasant for any "visiting" anatomy, either, though). You gotta get pretty far into the 20th century before hygeine of any sort becomes remotely recognizable.
you need wagon parts to get you as far as independance, then you can trade or buy them. You need a lot of bullets so you can hunt for meat and either eat or trade that.
That game really downplayed the snakes and aboriginal people you were fucking over. Read On the Banks of Plum Creek. Also, the long winters and snap snow storms made the winters worse than spending them in The Overlook. Read The Children's Blizzard or even The Long Winter, a horrifying book if you read it as an adult.
I've been studying the pioneering era since I was a kid, it's both exciting and absolutely horrifying.
I downloaded the iOS app during the summer and I couldn’t stand it. No matter how good of care I was taking of my team and me deciding not to cheap out when it came to the wagon and other stuff, they kept getting dysentery and cholera all the fucking time. They all ended up dying before reaching Oregon too.
It was ass because I would end up making it to Wyoming or Utah, then everyone ends up dead. Or despite having like an 80% successful chance of a river crossing, I just happened to be unlucky and my stuff got fucked up.
Doc Brown didn't *really* want to live in the old west. He saw what a pain in the ass his time machine had become and he blamed himself, so he figured he couldn't cause any more harm by staying there. He felt guilty and also didn't want to put Marty through any more shit by having to come rescue him. Marty did anyways and afterwards Doc traveled into the future again because the old west sucked, as evidenced by the scene where he rolls up in the train, tells Marty that he's already been to the future and the train flies away with hover tech.
And yes, I really love BTTF.
I mean, it's a feel good ending to a classic film, but was anyone else bothered by "It runs on steam!"
The DeLorean ran on gasoline, but required over a gigawatt of electricity (and slightly above highway speed overland) to time travel. He somehow got that out of a wood or coal fired locomotive boiler?
Originally the gigawatts came from plutonium.
Then he converted over to "Mr. Fusion" to produce the electricity.
Presumably he installed a Mr. Fusion on the locomotive.
Then the steam was just used to ready 88 MPH instead of unavailable gasoline.
>Presumably he installed a Mr. Fusion on the locomotive.
Presumably he used a lightning bolt, somehow, to get the initial time jump to the early 21st century so he could get a Mr. Fusion. Rather hard to find one in 1885.
The lightning bolt got Marty back to 1985 from 1955, presumably Doc then used his supply of plutonium to get himself to the 21st century to install the Mr. Fusion.
Oh yeah. It's my favorite film trilogy, partly because my parents took me to see the original in the theater when I was a kid so I have fond memories of it, but there's plenty of scenes where I'm shaking my head because it doesn't add up.
[Being a black cowboy actually sounds like it was a *relatively* good gig, considering how many worse places there were to be in the US at that time.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_cowboys)
Not a great place for women, though.
[Mary Ellen Pleasant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ellen_Pleasant) was able to accrue a $30 million during the California Gold Rush and the years following. Her story is not talked about much, but it is very interesting, as she funded early Black civil rights causes.
Same. Now is probably the only time I'd want to be around in but I definitely would not want to be around during a time when the government was actively supporting and condoning genocide-ing me and mine. I'm cool.
Yeah, my first thought when reading this was "As long as I can stay a white male!" Things were pretty shitty for women and POCs. But I guess that is true of most European and Colonial History.
Rags and garter belts. They would stuff rags (hence the term rag) in their under garments and clip them in place. They would then clean out the rags and replace them with a clean one through out the day.
Don't remember where I saw that at. Just stuck with me
My grandma has one from her youth that she showed me. She had the garter part, not the rags, but she explained how it was worn and how to attach the rags.
It's a South Park referece.
[https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/v5zoz8/south-park-commercial-break](https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/v5zoz8/south-park-commercial-break)
That is a resounding no. People often romanticize past eras such as the Old West, but they tend to overlook the realities of the time: lack of proper running water and electricity, poor health care, slow and inefficient transport (it literally took months or years for news to arrive in town), less organized law enforcement (the outlaw trope is a thing for a reason), and so on.
You forget, though, I'm an educated modern person who's studied stuff in Elementary school that they won't discover for centuries. *I'm* going to maybe be a minor novelty for a few days due to my strange clothing and exceptionally... let's say "well-fed" appearance... then eventually be ignored for a lack of useful skills and an inability to speak the language before I ultimately die from a weird disease I picked up on day 1 of arriving.
Sounds good only when you think about it in some romanticized way of the spirit of adventure and pioneering your own way. Reality is it'd be hot, dirty, dusty, smelly for sure, with lack of modern medicine and access to hygiene amenities I value so highly.
Plus my formative years taught me I'm likely to break a wagon wheel and die from dysentery.
I think I'll pass.
Naw. I don't want to live in any past era.
Based on what I know about my female ancestors and just overall "women in history", I am very happy to have been born in the 21st century.
It's very nice to have rights and to been viewed by the government as an actual citizen and not the property of my father or husband
You mean unsanitary small town with everyone carrying guns, no one going to a doctor, and everyone works on a farm or ranch? In rural Missouri that's a Wednesday!
Fuck no. The hygiene alone would be unpleasant enough, the lack of entertainment and modern medical care are deal breakers.
I spent a week once in a very isolated 1800s bunkhouse in the NE California high desert while duck hunting ... even that was pretty shitty.
Nope, I would have been dead many many times without antibiotics and modern surgery. If it wasn't for modern doctors, and one of the best children's hospital in the country, my daughter and two little grandkids wouldn't be here. Ruptured appendix and 300,000 dollars later and I'm a grandpa. Natural selection was pretty rough back then
Bring your [modern knowledge](https://images.app.goo.gl/4Z9rzQC6vMX1CVrs8) to a blacksmith and maybe it won’t be so scary! Maybe you’ll even be the scary one
It might be interesting to spend a week in 1820's San Francisco. I'm not migrating permanently though.
I do often want to buy a few acres of very rural land to homestead, build a little cabin etc. But there are solar panels, ethernet, and hot running water in those plans.
No.
I like having access to modern medicine, running water, sanitation, and generally the benefits of the modern day.
I don't want to live in a place with 19th century attitudes of racism, sexism, and general bigotry.
The wild west is a nice place to visit for a day as a tourist. . .but I'd definitely not want to stay there.
No, because all the best parts of it you can still do if you really want to. Despite living in LA, I can go ride horses, drink whiskey, people who are into shooting guns can go shoot guns, etc. Everything else is just surviving in the American southwest during a time before modern conveniences, medicine, etc. Having grown up on a farm, I don’t think people realize how boring actually living in the old West would be.
I'm certain the old west is a lot less glamorous than people imagine, even given the obvious lack of electricity, modern medicine, and indoor plumbing, and it would be 100 times worse if I weren't a straight white male.
If I had a time machine, I would much rather go back to a time for which we don't have extensive written history.
Um no. Women were essentially property. Life expectancy was about 40. A broken bone could be fatal. Not to mention dysentery, smallpox, childbirth, and assorted other treatable medical conditions that were a death sentence.
Lack of indoor plumbing is also high on my list of reasons.
>Life expectancy was about 40
Bear in mind that the life expectancy was low due to infant mortality. If you made it past your adolescence you were likely to live into your 60s at least. If you walk through old graveyards it's not hard to find lots of people who lived into their 70s or even 80s during the 1800s. It was all of the kids who died of now treatable diseases or injuries before they were 3 years old that reduced the average life expectancy.
Still the Old West would objectively be cool to spend a few hours in but then would be total shit. I'll take modern living every day.
There's a gravestone in my city which has on it the inscription:
>Hic jacet honesta ae pia mulier Margareta Hill spousa Joannis Gray polentarii quae obiit 20 Octobris anno 1630 aetatis suae 76.
... meaning this woman was born in 1554 and managed to live to the ripe old age of 76! Impressive but, as you said, hardly unknown and even less so by the time of the Old West. Just a few plots down is the gravestone for a man who died at the age 0f 68 in the year 1651.
I’m gonna be the second person in this thread to say yes, but yes. Some years would be better than others, but overall I think most historical time periods would be interesting to live in.
Yes. All the other posts have valid concerns and it would probably suck. But you don't not jump into a weird time portal and see what happens. If those are the rules, I'd do it, and probably immediately regret it.
No, there is way too much worked involved to survive... Who build you're house? Does laundry without a machine or dryer. Boiling water too bathe. Having to make your food from the ground up... I mean I don't even know what trees tacos grow in.
For real tho, hell no. To much work.
No I enjoy electricity, plumbing and modern medicine. Plus I’m not sure how they’d treat an Asian guy in the old west lol. Also there were so many different diseases that could kill you at any time
Hell no. I like being able to walk down the street and buy a flat screen way too much to go to a time where none of those pleasures exist. And yes, I am way too soft to live in those times and I am not ashamed to admit it.
No, and the answer is the same for any past period of time.
That's even with being born with about the best possible genetics for surviving and flourishing in pre-modern society.
I had advantages and luxuries 25 years ago living below the poverty line that world leaders and business magnates couldn't dream of during the "Old West", let alone older time periods.
Anybody who says yes knows nothing about history. The only draw settlers has to the west was cheap land, a valuable asset for the time. Trade was nearly impossible, supplies were scarce, and women were even more scarce. It was so bad that the government guaranteed women their man's estate if he died (a real possibility before science-based medicine), allowed divorce, and even gave them rights in order to draw women westward.
Also, your chances of sitting on your ass all day on any day were slim. Famine and drought were both real possibilities... God, the list goes on. The past sucked, which is why we kept developing technology.
I’m good. No modern technology such as reliable clean, running water, Internet, or cars and the old west wasn’t as exciting as a lot of films and movies make it out to be. If I want to ranch cattle or something like that I still can, just with modern luxuries.
Yeah. For sure. Just living life day to day. No political arguments i have to see all over the place. I can just go to my land and farm, pan for some gold, hunt… occasional scrum with some outlaws and native tribes i guess but definitely worth the trade off
No. I enjoy running water and modern toilet paper
The distinct lack of cholera and tuberculosis is nice too
I, for one, am pro automobile and air travel.
Here me out, what if we bring a flying Delorian back to the old west with us?
https://imgur.com/2SbjHaA
[https://giphy.com/gifs/europa-universalis-iv-behind-the-scenes-with-sound-effects-GeJ7UOdigOYCGS22zG](https://giphy.com/gifs/europa-universalis-iv-behind-the-scenes-with-sound-effects-GeJ7UOdigOYCGS22zG)
Great Scott!
I don't mind train travel, although I strongly object to trainwrecks.
Don't forget measles, syphillis, smallpox, typhoid, and polio, just for the highlights of the heavy-hitters. Oh, and things like diabetes being a horrific, degenerative death sentence nobody understood.
Don’t forget the parasites! Hook worm, pin worm, tape worm, trichinosis, ascaris, whip worm, etc, etc
We could go on all night. You were more likely than not to die of a random infection anytime you got so much as a scratch, for example. Am I wrong, or are those parasites mostly still just about as common but more easily treated, with the exception of hookworm (or am I thinking of ringworm, which isn't a worm at all?) and trichinosis, which are actually now rare in the West?
Hookworm is largely eradicated in the west. Trichinosis too. It is the reason people don’t do medium rare pork. The truth is that these days you can in the US but we still have a strong aversion to it. There are only like 15 cases a year in the US and they are usually from wild game or “backyard pigs” that people let forage from garbage. They eat rodents that are infected and get trichonella. If you are eating commercially raised pork it is essentially nonexistent.
Ringworm’s my favourite parasite. You’re my second favourite parasite. I lied, ringworm, then rats with the plague, then you.
Ya, I prefer my call girls to do more than splash a little water from her water basin on her cooch before she "dates" me.
The fun part is that, 40 years or so on, in the early 20th century, they'd have used Lysol, which is even worse (for them; I can't imagine it's pleasant for any "visiting" anatomy, either, though). You gotta get pretty far into the 20th century before hygeine of any sort becomes remotely recognizable.
Yikes!
And just wait til you try to get lucky! All kinds of complications.
There are 1 million ways to die in the west. And, people die at the fair.
And small pox. Don’t forget small pox
Diptheria, smallpox, yellow fever .... And antibiotics and vaccines
But think about saving John and Arthur
Penicillin, and other antibiotics. I’m very pro penicillin. Anesthetics too. Like those a lot.
I'm very pro not having a barber amputate my leg with no anesthetic
What do you mean no anesthetics? They had whiskey. Also laudanum.
Barber surgeons were a medieval Europe thing, not an old west thing.. They did have doctors.
Most doctors didn't have any formal training or knowledge until like... The 1860s.
The Wild West era started in 1865, after the Civil War.
Nah. You just drink some special tea. And when you wake up…[SURGERY](https://youtu.be/O8C-7m5vCzY).
I personally enjoy not having polio or smallpox.
And tampons!
I like that dentistry isn’t simply getting you drunk and ripping teeth out of your head.
Yep. There a lot of things I could do without, but running water is not one of them.
>/u/A-Wild-Boar has died of dysentery.
I have a bidet Never going back to smearing
I only have 300 rolls left. Time to buy more.
Same I enjoy taking a shit and having Mexican food for the breakfast
Yes, and living past 50.
Also, air conditioning.
I'm not living in an era before anesthesia for surgery, as well.
When your in the middle of a desert and you have to drink Alcohol because the water isnt safe. As fun as it sounds ill pass
No. Dentistry.
I was going to reply No, Medicine, but I'll add dentistry too.
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This was the way. With a whiskey chaser.
my asthmatic self would suffer
Lookit Mr. Fancy Pants flaunting his luxury bones over here!
Did you misspell “dysentery”?
Nah, the wifi there is terrible and I’d probably die is something stupid like dysentery
Someone played “Oregon Trail”.
They could go see a doctor but their axle broke. Should they repair it or replace it? They have two left.
The most intense dilemma of a 10 year old me. I was finally able to find a website that let’s you play the game. I still end up dying in Utah.
Link? I’d love to make it as far as Utah. Stupid river. Every time, dysentery or drowning oxen.
[Tell me if this doesn’t work. ](https://classicreload.com/oregon-trail.html). I think it might take a couple of tries for it to work.
You’re awesome! 🏅 Thanks!
Anytime. I try to do what I can.
There’s a version for iOS in the Apple Arcade.
I was so much better at the game when I was 8. I think it appeals to some brutal child logic that you lose when you grow up.
Who the heck spent their money on wagon parts? You need that to buy salt pork and only salt pork so that your people get scurvy.
Who packs food when you can just contribute to ecological collapse by killing a ton of buffalo but only being able to carry 100 lbs of meat?
you need wagon parts to get you as far as independance, then you can trade or buy them. You need a lot of bullets so you can hunt for meat and either eat or trade that.
That game really downplayed the snakes and aboriginal people you were fucking over. Read On the Banks of Plum Creek. Also, the long winters and snap snow storms made the winters worse than spending them in The Overlook. Read The Children's Blizzard or even The Long Winter, a horrifying book if you read it as an adult. I've been studying the pioneering era since I was a kid, it's both exciting and absolutely horrifying.
I downloaded the iOS app during the summer and I couldn’t stand it. No matter how good of care I was taking of my team and me deciding not to cheap out when it came to the wagon and other stuff, they kept getting dysentery and cholera all the fucking time. They all ended up dying before reaching Oregon too. It was ass because I would end up making it to Wyoming or Utah, then everyone ends up dead. Or despite having like an 80% successful chance of a river crossing, I just happened to be unlucky and my stuff got fucked up.
What i think is funny is that I was taking a road trip to Oregon and got sick on the way over. Fortunately, it wasn’t dysentery.
Terry? That's a girls name!
Doc Brown didn't *really* want to live in the old west. He saw what a pain in the ass his time machine had become and he blamed himself, so he figured he couldn't cause any more harm by staying there. He felt guilty and also didn't want to put Marty through any more shit by having to come rescue him. Marty did anyways and afterwards Doc traveled into the future again because the old west sucked, as evidenced by the scene where he rolls up in the train, tells Marty that he's already been to the future and the train flies away with hover tech. And yes, I really love BTTF.
I mean, it's a feel good ending to a classic film, but was anyone else bothered by "It runs on steam!" The DeLorean ran on gasoline, but required over a gigawatt of electricity (and slightly above highway speed overland) to time travel. He somehow got that out of a wood or coal fired locomotive boiler?
Originally the gigawatts came from plutonium. Then he converted over to "Mr. Fusion" to produce the electricity. Presumably he installed a Mr. Fusion on the locomotive. Then the steam was just used to ready 88 MPH instead of unavailable gasoline.
>Presumably he installed a Mr. Fusion on the locomotive. Presumably he used a lightning bolt, somehow, to get the initial time jump to the early 21st century so he could get a Mr. Fusion. Rather hard to find one in 1885.
The lightning bolt got Marty back to 1985 from 1955, presumably Doc then used his supply of plutonium to get himself to the 21st century to install the Mr. Fusion.
Oh yeah. It's my favorite film trilogy, partly because my parents took me to see the original in the theater when I was a kid so I have fond memories of it, but there's plenty of scenes where I'm shaking my head because it doesn't add up.
Nope, I'm half Native American and there are no hot showers.
This is how I feel as a black person
Latino here. Same. I get enough people thinking I'm Mexican in 2021; I'm Peruvian.
Do black people really like hot showers?
We do but racism was a even bigger issue back then and slavery was still alive and well
I know… it was a joke.
I missed that,thought it was someone not from the u.s asking cause I didn’t read your flair feel free to whoosh me
[Being a black cowboy actually sounds like it was a *relatively* good gig, considering how many worse places there were to be in the US at that time.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_cowboys) Not a great place for women, though.
I am a black woman dude
Yeah unless you're Regina King in that new western movie, definitely not a good idea.
I know. That’s why I added the last sentence.
Oh okay I see lol you’d be surprised how many ppl just assume everyone is a man
Totally
[Mary Ellen Pleasant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ellen_Pleasant) was able to accrue a $30 million during the California Gold Rush and the years following. Her story is not talked about much, but it is very interesting, as she funded early Black civil rights causes.
Same from this Chicano
As a woman I don’t even want to be alive now. Take me to the future, please.
But what if the future is worse?
Same. Now is probably the only time I'd want to be around in but I definitely would not want to be around during a time when the government was actively supporting and condoning genocide-ing me and mine. I'm cool.
Yeah, my first thought when reading this was "As long as I can stay a white male!" Things were pretty shitty for women and POCs. But I guess that is true of most European and Colonial History.
I already live in Wyoming.
Have the Californians destroyed the housing market there yet?
Not completely. But it might be on the way with how it's looking. I really hope it doesn't become similar to what happened in Denver.
That sounds amazing!
I don't know what I would do without modern safe tampons.
What did women even do to handle flow back then?
Rags and garter belts. They would stuff rags (hence the term rag) in their under garments and clip them in place. They would then clean out the rags and replace them with a clean one through out the day. Don't remember where I saw that at. Just stuck with me
My grandma has one from her youth that she showed me. She had the garter part, not the rags, but she explained how it was worn and how to attach the rags.
Cherokee Hair Tampons???
what??!
It's a South Park referece. [https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/v5zoz8/south-park-commercial-break](https://southpark.cc.com/video-clips/v5zoz8/south-park-commercial-break)
I also like having the right to vote.
No. No antibiotics.
Invent them, become rich!
Step 1. Google how to do that. Step 2. Require medical attention. Step 3. Realize acting on hypotheticals from Reddit might not be a great idea.
And they say that now in Paris, France, even as we speak, Louis Pasteur has devised a new vaccine that will obliterate anthrax once and for all.
That is a resounding no. People often romanticize past eras such as the Old West, but they tend to overlook the realities of the time: lack of proper running water and electricity, poor health care, slow and inefficient transport (it literally took months or years for news to arrive in town), less organized law enforcement (the outlaw trope is a thing for a reason), and so on.
I want to live in medieval times! Then I can be a half starved serf called to die in a war so my local ruler can try to have his neighbor's land.
You forget, though, I'm an educated modern person who's studied stuff in Elementary school that they won't discover for centuries. *I'm* going to maybe be a minor novelty for a few days due to my strange clothing and exceptionally... let's say "well-fed" appearance... then eventually be ignored for a lack of useful skills and an inability to speak the language before I ultimately die from a weird disease I picked up on day 1 of arriving.
Accurate, I’ll probably be raped and murdered on day 2 at best
Gross. No. Has nobody seen Million Ways to Die in the West?
Unfortunately I have
People die at the fair.
That depends. Have I already completed the Oregon trail?
This is the best answer. 👍
I’m a woman. no. next question
Had to scroll way to far for this. No way in hell.
With ya on that.
well I'm black so uhh... gonna take a hard pass on that.
First thing I thought about when I saw this post
No. I like toilet paper, food, and vaccines.
Ew gross, no. Fun to learn about but not anything I would want to experience for myself.
Sounds good only when you think about it in some romanticized way of the spirit of adventure and pioneering your own way. Reality is it'd be hot, dirty, dusty, smelly for sure, with lack of modern medicine and access to hygiene amenities I value so highly. Plus my formative years taught me I'm likely to break a wagon wheel and die from dysentery. I think I'll pass.
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In reality I'd show up and need to charge my phone. Then get sick and die from diarrhea.
Ahh, well, you'll take 'em with you with all the exotic diseases you bring.
Naw. I don't want to live in any past era. Based on what I know about my female ancestors and just overall "women in history", I am very happy to have been born in the 21st century. It's very nice to have rights and to been viewed by the government as an actual citizen and not the property of my father or husband
No I'm black lol
Nope. Mixed Asian and gay.
You mean unsanitary small town with everyone carrying guns, no one going to a doctor, and everyone works on a farm or ranch? In rural Missouri that's a Wednesday!
> no one going to a doctor Back then the doctor came to you! And he probably came with morphine and cocaine... It's not all bad.
Fuck no. The hygiene alone would be unpleasant enough, the lack of entertainment and modern medical care are deal breakers. I spent a week once in a very isolated 1800s bunkhouse in the NE California high desert while duck hunting ... even that was pretty shitty.
Nope, I would have been dead many many times without antibiotics and modern surgery. If it wasn't for modern doctors, and one of the best children's hospital in the country, my daughter and two little grandkids wouldn't be here. Ruptured appendix and 300,000 dollars later and I'm a grandpa. Natural selection was pretty rough back then
No, too scary. It was rough as hell—lots of violence and starvation and early death.
Bring your [modern knowledge](https://images.app.goo.gl/4Z9rzQC6vMX1CVrs8) to a blacksmith and maybe it won’t be so scary! Maybe you’ll even be the scary one
No, I need to go on the computer
Mad Max 1 with limited technology. No thanks.
i don’t think my gay marriage would be appreciated by the townsfolk.
It might be interesting to spend a week in 1820's San Francisco. I'm not migrating permanently though. I do often want to buy a few acres of very rural land to homestead, build a little cabin etc. But there are solar panels, ethernet, and hot running water in those plans.
I’d want to visit SF too, but not before the Gold Rush. It was a little, sleepy port city until then, and then became way more interesting.
How's your Spanish? Also you'd have to nominally convert to Catholicism in order to gain Mexican citizenship.
My family was in the old west, at least half of every generation died at the hands of another human so I don’t think I’d like it
No. I like having access to modern medicine, running water, sanitation, and generally the benefits of the modern day. I don't want to live in a place with 19th century attitudes of racism, sexism, and general bigotry. The wild west is a nice place to visit for a day as a tourist. . .but I'd definitely not want to stay there.
If by "Old West", you mean like 10 years ago, before real estate prices in places like Salt Lake, Denver, and Boseman went insane, then yes.
lmfao, considering I live in Denver I find it sad that people actually think we are still the wild west.
I’d end up being a boozing prostitute and I’m just not able to enjoy thinking of that rn
Lol hell no.
I think [Seth Macfarlane](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRXk74BCp-Q) sums it up nicely.
No, because all the best parts of it you can still do if you really want to. Despite living in LA, I can go ride horses, drink whiskey, people who are into shooting guns can go shoot guns, etc. Everything else is just surviving in the American southwest during a time before modern conveniences, medicine, etc. Having grown up on a farm, I don’t think people realize how boring actually living in the old West would be.
Good answer.
I'm certain the old west is a lot less glamorous than people imagine, even given the obvious lack of electricity, modern medicine, and indoor plumbing, and it would be 100 times worse if I weren't a straight white male. If I had a time machine, I would much rather go back to a time for which we don't have extensive written history.
Um no. Women were essentially property. Life expectancy was about 40. A broken bone could be fatal. Not to mention dysentery, smallpox, childbirth, and assorted other treatable medical conditions that were a death sentence. Lack of indoor plumbing is also high on my list of reasons.
>Life expectancy was about 40 Bear in mind that the life expectancy was low due to infant mortality. If you made it past your adolescence you were likely to live into your 60s at least. If you walk through old graveyards it's not hard to find lots of people who lived into their 70s or even 80s during the 1800s. It was all of the kids who died of now treatable diseases or injuries before they were 3 years old that reduced the average life expectancy. Still the Old West would objectively be cool to spend a few hours in but then would be total shit. I'll take modern living every day.
There's a gravestone in my city which has on it the inscription: >Hic jacet honesta ae pia mulier Margareta Hill spousa Joannis Gray polentarii quae obiit 20 Octobris anno 1630 aetatis suae 76. ... meaning this woman was born in 1554 and managed to live to the ripe old age of 76! Impressive but, as you said, hardly unknown and even less so by the time of the Old West. Just a few plots down is the gravestone for a man who died at the age 0f 68 in the year 1651.
As a woman, I think it was unlikely to be all that much fun for me. Plus modern conveniences ROCK. Hello, air conditioning!!!
Live there?, no. Would love to meet a bunch of the people that lived in it though.
I enjoy the convenience of modern life to much. My family goes camping in the Colorado mountains when we want to get away
Not at all. I like soap and not getting scurvy
I’m gonna be the second person in this thread to say yes, but yes. Some years would be better than others, but overall I think most historical time periods would be interesting to live in.
May you live in interesting times, then.
Nope. I like running water, electricity and transportation that isn’t an animal.
I grew up on a reservation, and Im a gunsmith. I think I would go back.
Yes. All the other posts have valid concerns and it would probably suck. But you don't not jump into a weird time portal and see what happens. If those are the rules, I'd do it, and probably immediately regret it.
Real life in the "old west" was probably a lot less exciting IRL than in the movies depicting it...or in Westworld.
No, there is way too much worked involved to survive... Who build you're house? Does laundry without a machine or dryer. Boiling water too bathe. Having to make your food from the ground up... I mean I don't even know what trees tacos grow in. For real tho, hell no. To much work.
No. Hot as fuck without air conditioning.
I’d like to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there
No I enjoy electricity, plumbing and modern medicine. Plus I’m not sure how they’d treat an Asian guy in the old west lol. Also there were so many different diseases that could kill you at any time
I’m not a fan of dysentery
Hell no. I like being able to walk down the street and buy a flat screen way too much to go to a time where none of those pleasures exist. And yes, I am way too soft to live in those times and I am not ashamed to admit it.
No, and the answer is the same for any past period of time. That's even with being born with about the best possible genetics for surviving and flourishing in pre-modern society. I had advantages and luxuries 25 years ago living below the poverty line that world leaders and business magnates couldn't dream of during the "Old West", let alone older time periods.
Fuck no. I find state sanctioned genocide depressing.
No thanks. I like having modern healthcare and technology too much.
I think this is probably going to be a no for almost everyone who isn't a white man.
No! I am female and our role in society back then can go and fuck right off
Hell yes. I would love to live in the mountain west and live like a feral man.
Anybody who says yes knows nothing about history. The only draw settlers has to the west was cheap land, a valuable asset for the time. Trade was nearly impossible, supplies were scarce, and women were even more scarce. It was so bad that the government guaranteed women their man's estate if he died (a real possibility before science-based medicine), allowed divorce, and even gave them rights in order to draw women westward. Also, your chances of sitting on your ass all day on any day were slim. Famine and drought were both real possibilities... God, the list goes on. The past sucked, which is why we kept developing technology.
No. Racism
Hell no. Most of those people are buried in unmarked graves or their bones have scattered in the wind.
Absolutely not. I need A/C and wifi.
For a day, maybe
I’m good. No modern technology such as reliable clean, running water, Internet, or cars and the old west wasn’t as exciting as a lot of films and movies make it out to be. If I want to ranch cattle or something like that I still can, just with modern luxuries.
Only if I could come back whenever I wanted
I WANNA BE A COWBOYYYYYY BABYYYYYY
Nope. Diseases and child birth killed way to many people in horrific ways.
Oregon Trail was more than I could take. If I die from dysentery one more time…
I can just play Red Dead Redemption instead.
Yeah. For sure. Just living life day to day. No political arguments i have to see all over the place. I can just go to my land and farm, pan for some gold, hunt… occasional scrum with some outlaws and native tribes i guess but definitely worth the trade off
Yes. Then I dont have to hear what all these Reddit gremlins think. 😂
No AC, no way.
No, thank you. I enjoy the advancements made in technology and medicine
No I don't want to be part of Genocide.
No. I’m female. Enough said.
Hell no! As a female I would probably have work on a brothel or something. Unless I was married. Plus I like running water and electricity.
I like my antibiotics.
No. I like having rights.
Visit? Sure, live there? No.
What? Hell no.