Premise: Pretend that human hibernation/cryostasis is a real technology that's both mature and affordable. You can choose to go into hibernation and wake up at some point in the future to resume your life. It's a safe and reliable process.

You choose when to enter hibernation (could be now, could be 50 years from now or more), and you set your exit either for a certain date or on some condition(s) that you dictate in advance.

You can expect that you'll be taken care of during that time and your rules for being awakened will be followed.

What I'm interested in hearing about:

1. Would you choose to do it? Why or why not?

If you would decide to do it, some follow-ups:

2. How would you decide when to enter hibernation? Would you base it on your age? On specific events in the world?
3. How would you decide when to exit? Would you base it on time, or on certain conditions? Why?
4. What preparations would you take? How would you help your family and friends understand this decision?
5. What would you hope to see or experience once you awaken?
6. How would you plan on adapting to a world that might be completely different from ours on many different fronts (e.g. technology, language, culture, identity, etc.)?

Even though the situation is hypothetical, I want you to base your answers on your actual experiences and life. So, the question is about whether you, as you are living right now, would choose hibernation (either now or in the future).

In a meeting this morning, someone said, "Vampires don't tend to live in castles. Count Dracula lived in a castle because he was a count, not because he was a vampire." Then things got silly, but I got to ask one of my favourite unknowable questions.

Can you kill a vampire with a sharp carrot?

Additional questions:

• what about a bamboo stake?
• a stake made of palm tree?
• other flora?

In my province, there's a little old amusement park that's up for sale at that price.

Attractions include a Go-Kart track with 14 two-seater karts, an 18-hole mini golf course, a space train ride, a batting cage, & a bumper car ride with ten cars

Owners can live on-site in a 2-bedroom apartment

What would you do if you lived at your own mini amusement park?

(I'm not affiliated in any way to this listing, I just live in the same province and like to browse real estate listings for fun)

It's been a while since we had a lighthearted talk on here about something silly, and this question has been bouncing around my head for years now. Figured it'd be fun to ask and see what people come up with!

So, you can take one person from any time period and send them to any historic event for a duration of your choice. You can go for serious stuff, like sending a bodyguard to save someone from an assassination, or yourself to some moment in history you're curious about... Or you could send Stephen Hawking to his own time traveler party. Maybe throw some conspiracy theorist at Roswell 1947 or let some ancient king crash Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee.

The options are literally limitless. I'm just interested to see what everyone comes up with!

From Baddy Wrong Legs on Tumblr:

It is the middle of a Sunday afternoon. You have nothing on, and aren't expecting visitors, deliveries or post.
Unexpectedly, there is a knock at the door.
Which of these would surprise you more to find on the doorstep?

This started as a post on asking about how long you think you could survive a massive supply chain disruption and associated collapse of authorities ability to intervene.

But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to paint a picture of a postwar context. Post-Yugoslavian War, post-Korean War, etc. Also, I don’t know if we’ve had any recent memories of sudden, total plunges into anarchy.

I wonder if the modern economy has lengthened the farm-to-table too much that no one could reasonably expect to sustain themselves for any longer than they have food in storage.

What strategies would you use/did you use to survive? Did society break down into roving gangs? If such a thing happened now, do you feel like you could weather the storm?

You can thank my being snowed in the last few days and watching World War Z, The Last of Us, Book of Elijah, Elysium, the Alone TV series and the Band of Brothers for inspiring this post.

The definition of a lot of money and what would qualify as indulgent is an exercise left to the reader, but assume you're otherwise in good financial shape and you got whatever investments, donations, and balances out of the way.

The rules are you have a magic remote, and you are immediately transported to a location of your choice. You can use it as many times you want, but it will only go to the one location. Where do you put it?

I wish there was a more concise way to phrase that question. I've asked it a couple times and always get some interesting answers.

This is inspired by all the "isekai" stories in anime and manga where a hero is summoned to help fight the demon king, along with the LitRPG genre. They use game-like interfaces to track stats and skills. Not just the typical combat ones like magic or weapons, but mundane skills like cooking, cleaning, walking, resting, drawing, lying, etc. Naturally, higher level skills tend to surpass basic physical limitations found on Earth. You could run faster than a train if your speed is high enough, or sculpt an exact replica of Michaelangelo's David in just a few days with a sculpting skill.

So imagine you got summoned to such a world and went through the whole "defeat the demon king" quest, and could choose one skill to take back to Earth. This includes anything from some specific magic ability like weather control and invisibility, to trained skills like archery and blacksmithing, to even basic stats like strength and stealth. Anything is fair game, but you can pick only one.

So, what skill would you choose and why?

Just wondering how many average 10 year olds you think you can fight off before being overwhelmed. Here are the basic terms of fighting: the kids are very angry at you, each one will fight you until they get hurt enough to quit or become unconscious, you are unarmed, and you are in a gated school playground as the battle arena. The playground is about 50 feet around, closed gate around in an octagon and closes up top like a dome. First one kid comes at you, then it adds one each time you defeat a group. Defeat 1 and 2 come, defeat the 2 then 3 come, and so on. Each group arrives by sliding down a pole into the middle playground and sliding down the slide. From there, they rush at you full force.

I feel confident in my abilities to fight. I'm pretty sure I can get to group 13, so that would be roughly give or take 70 kids if I can take a few out in that round.

What do you think?

People often propose the question of if you were trapped in a video game world which would be best, but which one would be the absolute worst possible one. Really think about it too cause like being in like a zombie apocalypse or under a brutal dictatorship would be bad, but it could definitely get worse.

Stories involving dragons tend to be in medieval periods so maybe we can try to extrapolate forward in time a bit. Dragons could be from any mythologies or fictions of your fancy!

For my take, a dragon is a flying fire-breathing giant lizard with the size and toughness of a big building. I believe a critical factor is how tamable dragons are. If not at all, they'd go from something humans fear and run away from, then being hunted for glory and materials, then being protected in conservation areas to prevent going extinct. If they can be fully domesticated (like dogs), they could expedite for warfare, transportation and industrialized metalwork. The most interesting scenario imo is the in-between where they could only be partially trained. Maybe a skilled trainer can get them to behave 80% of the time but there's a low but significant chance that they get agitated and wreck havoc. How do we make use of them while ensuring safety and intervenability?

On the cultural side, we might not have as many myths and legends about dragons anymore. We might find the idea of giant flying fire creatures utterly mundane (phoenixes might be less interesting by relation even if they still don't exist in this universe). What would we mythologize about instead?

like, say I've invented a magic trick that I don't know how it's done. What is my moral obligation to report novel phenomena? If a divine singularity spontaneously opens up in my living room, or in my kidney, and somehow I harness it and taught myself to fly -- do I have to tell people, or do we think it would be too scary? It seems really obscene and disruptive to announce something so premise-shattering. Shouldn't I labor in secrecy? Do I have to expose my abilities to some sort of mandate before I can start?

What I meant is a world without any barriers whatsoever for the circulation of people. Each country would have border checks for things like explosives, heavy drugs, and weapons, but apart from that everyone would be allowed in, always. I'm not sure about economy measures, trade barriers, and circulation of goods, though.

But please, feel free to interpret "world without borders" however you wish! ;)

You're guaranteed to have at least the same level of comfort and subsistence you currently have. Anyone in the present that depends on you financially will be taken care of. Other than that there are no guarantees whatsoever. You cannot go back. It's definitely a gamble. Can you resist the curiosity?

This is a scenario question similar to the "You are stranded on a deserted island, what do you bring?" question. The following guidelines I offer stem from my planning and experiences, I begin my 4 months shortly.

• There is no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, no cell phone service nor internet service.
• US Postal Service is available.
• It is about 45 minutes away from the nearest town and is located on United States Forest Service owned land.
• You will be sharing the cabin with several other like-minded people that you've never met before in a roommate dynamic.
• The accommodations are free through the program.
• This program runs a 9 days on, 5 days off work schedule. For the 9 days on, you will be camping along trails you are maintaining and not be at the cabin.
• Basic food storage (coolers), a solar shower, washboards and tables will be provided.

What do you bring? For functionality? To maintain comfort and/or sanity? Entertainment purposes? Keep in mind the point of this experience is to remove yourself from the grid, expose yourself to the rawness of nature and the elements. While it's tempting to say you'd bring a $10k solar/battery array, download all the things, and just host 5 day binge watching sessions with the bears, that's not the purpose. ;)

The mission

You have been tasked with the mission to kill Hitler. The mission is mandatory and you cannot decline it. You have access to a state of the art time machine: a simple Casio wristwatch in which you enter the time, date and location where you wanna travel to. It can travel to any point in past Earth's history, and it is programmed to automatically and safely return you to the present time as soon as the mission is completed.

You have access to all weapons available to humankind in the present day, but you can only take what you can carry.

You also have access to technology that will make you look ethnically German complete with Nazi uniforms, and a perfectly functioning universal translator.

How this thread will work

I will try to come up with a negative outcome for every answer in jackass genie style. Others are welcome to do the same!

I didn't know tildes has trending topics.

I'd either pick the rise of the bolsheviks in Russia (You can replace them with the mensheviks, who wanted to abide by democracy.), The division of the HRE (A united germany in 900CE would be very consequential.) And the rise of the hapsburgs in what would be Austria-Hungary, since it meshed a dozen linguistic groups together.

Admittedly highly unlikely ... but also becoming less inconceivable by the day. She is 2nd in line after Pence.

So, let's just say, 3-5 months from now, They swear in Pelosi as the next POTUS. What does that do to both Repub and Dem Primaries? What does it mean for the next election? Does the US keep itself together long enough to have an election?

Heck, while I'm asking, what about a President Pence in 3-5 months. That's at least an order of magnitude less unlikely. How would that play out?

PS: Somebody recently started a 'what do you daydream about' thread ... so, you-know ... this.

hey everyone! found this interesting post on /r/6perks, and i wanted to share it here and see what ideas get shared.

You wake up in a chemist's lab. In front of you is a table with 10 different-coloured pills. You may only choose 3. A warning label notifies you that taking more than 3 will cause instant combustion.

Which do you choose, and why?

🔵 Future Pill 🔵

You can see 10 years into the future or any time sooner, whenever you want. You can see any part of the world.

🔴 Xray Pill 🔴

You gain the ability to see through anything as far as you can normally see. Works at any layer.

🔸 Fly Pill 🔸

You can fly. You start at a slow speed and require time to speed up to a maximum of 100mph (161kph). You are not immune to low oxygen or harsh temperatures.

🌿 Drug Pill 🌿

You gain the ability to automatically be affected by any drug that exists as much as you want, no bad side effects.

❤ Sex Appeal Pill ❤

Anyone you want is instantly attracted to you, you are cured of and immune to STD's. Anyone who you "do" also becomes immune, and son on. Cure the world?

💠 Disease Immune Pill 💠

Gives you the ability to become immune to all harmful diseases.

💰 Money Pill 💰

You don't become rich, nor have infinite money, but it's like you do. Every time you want to do or have something, your bank account/wallet has exactly as much money as you need.

💮 Wish Pill 💮

Gives you the ability to wish for one of two things: any existing object to be teleported in front of you, or for you to be teleported wherever you want. Can only be used once a week. You get a free return ticket if you teleported somewhere. You cannot wish for other pills.

♠️ Death Pill ♠️

Gives you the ability to have any person of your choice killed, with no risk of consequence. Can only be used once every 5 weeks.

🌟 Painproof Pill 🌟

You are tougher than Wolverine after drinking green tea or eating spinach. You can still get hurt but you have Olympian-like physique, the skills of the greatest martial artists in the world, you are twice as fast, and your wounds regenerate very quickly.

If the cookies never stop being produced, then it is logical to assume that, if unchecked, uneaten cookies will eventually choke the earth, leaving us uninhabitable. What is your plan, and how long do you think we'll last in this cookie apocalypse?

As for some general rules, the machine is impossible to break, and it can inexplicably produce cookies infinitely without having to refill on ingredients.