'It's utterly unspoilt'

[oursin]

A day or so ago I came across a Twitter thread exploring the horrors that might eventuate from time-travel tourism - having to take the equivalent of Ryanair to get to your chosen epoch, vast crowds in Renaissance Florence and other hotspots -

So I thought, wouldn't you then get the other thing, the whole 'the Sun-King's Versailles is the new Benidorm', and people going for that really chic, utterly unspoilt, little nook of historical time?

No tourists, nobody there but the Real People of the Day -

(Only then, probably, word of it gets about and it gets Spoilt.)

The other thing was, the people who do Extreme Holidays would probably also do Extreme Time Travel (storming the Bastille? riding with the Golden Horde? the possibilities are many.)

I'm also wondering about the insurance implications: and having one's vaccination certificates up to date. I remember having to have a smallpox vaccination certificate when, I think, it had actually just been declared extinct but certain countries had not yet updated their entry requirements (no, it was in fact after the last naturally occurring case but before WHO declared official global eradication). But if you were going back pre 1980, maybe you should get that done? Anti-vaxxers not permitted to travel in time???

Comments

[antisoppist]

It's the John Wyndham short story when the streets keep filling up with floating platforms covered in advertising full of tourists from the future trying to spot their ancestors. In the end the present day people start selling advertising to get people to come and gawp and point and laugh at people from the future and eventually they don't like this taste of their own medicine and go away.

[regshoe]

At least there's a lot of time to go around, if we're including all the (pre-)historical past—personally I'd be jetting off to the Precambrian, as long as I have a way of breathing the air, I suppose...

Insurance would certainly be interesting! I'm imagining having to take out insurance against accidentally changing the future or causing paradoxes. :D

[caulkhead]

To say nothing of teenagers on well-meaning gap yah trips, who think they can just time machine in and Fix whatever the pandemic of the moment is by introducing Principles of Modern Hygiene/Crop Rotation/Rights of Women or [insert current fixaction here] whether or not these are practically acheivable.

[brokenallbroken]

I've always said if I find myself accidentally thrown into the past, I am much less worried about stepping on a crucial butterfly than about finding a poxy cow to cuddle.

[oursin]

You would be okay with the cow - cowpox conveys immunity to smallpox - vaccination originally specifically meant, with cowpox to prevent smallpox, following Jenner.

[brokenallbroken]

That was exactly my reason!

[sartorias]

I always thought time travelers would have to be invisible--people of the time would walk right through you. But would you get full sensurround? Like, the overwhelming stench of Versailles? Voltaire's letters complain bitterly of people peeing and pooping right outside the cubby he was given which had no windows . . .

[oursin]

It's a while since I read them, but as I recollect, in Kage Baker's 'Company' series, the immortal cyborg time travellers in spite of their immunity are absolutely grossed out by the food hygiene practices (not) of the eras they find themselves in ('are they really going to dare eating that????').

[sartorias]

Oh yeah, that's right!!!

[mirlacca]

Imagine someone trying to run "time-travel vacations" as a scam, creating "eras" for tourists and trying to convince them that it's the real thing.

The administrators are losing their minds trying to keep costs down.

And then it *is* the real thing...

[threeringedmoon]

I remember being very annoyed by an acquaintance who wanted to see the "real" Mexico in a Mexican border town. I couldn't even quite articulate why.

[silveradept]

I am reminded us the science fiction short story about the dinosaur hunters and their liability requirements including killing someone who goes off the specific path, just to make sure the timeline stays intact.

[owl]

Reminds me of this short story I read as a child: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Go_to_Golgotha!