so you find yourself in 272 bc....

[Andy1984]

I'd probably start gambling, visit prostitutes, drink myself almost to dead and definitly not help whatever emperor.

Given nobody knows you there, who's going to blame you for it?

[satalexton]

or, use your superior knowledge of science and nature to make yourself a king...assuming you actually paid attention and remember all those stuff ur taught in high school....and know how to apply it.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Sodding hedonists...

I actually remember the stuff they teach you in high school, in addition to the copious amounts of books I already read. Yeah, I will teach Greek Fire, black powder, and nitroglycerine to the Romans. All three are quite easy for me to make (I know, the recipe we know for Greek Fire is not the original, but hell, it is close enough).

In any case, I want power. Oh yeah. Lots of it. Not just some smelly barbarian chieftain or saddle-sore nomad khan. No, while I am in Antiquity, I may as well wish for the moon. I will become the Emperor of the Roman Empire with my knowledge and then on a single night, execute all the Praetorians. Just like Hitler and the Sturmabteilung (SA), a.k.a. Brown Shirts.

After that I will introduce the Bessemer process to mass-produce stainless steel (with nickel), and then invade what is now modern-day Ukraine to mine titanium, and see if it will be possible to work with it, using the newly-designed furnaces. I will teach the Romans how to build trebuchets if the cannons prove to be weak, although I could rifle them too (but that would mean it would take very long to reload them, as I do not know how to make an effective breech-loading cannon). Then I will introduce oil and coal as energy sources. The list goes on... With coal I can make sulphuric acid, which I do not doubt will become a superb wall-defence weapon. Ahh, chemistry was always my favourite science after astronomy.

Continuing, I would introduce vaccination and antibiotics (I know of a couple of natural sources of antibiotics which perhaps I could isolate) to make my empire impervious even to the plague which will hit it (supposing I come before Marcus Aurelius). Not to mention my meagre medical knowledge would nevertheless revolutionise medicine, and of course, I would ban the use of lead and mercury in sensitive places.

Heh, I could write a book about this...

[satalexton]

OR, use that knowledge to 'enlighten' a village of idiots, make yourself a king through your 'divine blessings', defeat any oppsition with superior technology, then take over the world.

I'd burn Barbaropolis down first if I were you, then wipe out the Seres before they grow too rich/smart/intelligent to rival you.

[Azathoth]

Unfortunatly AP, you won't be able to accomplish all that because:

a. You need acid for nitroglycerine (why would you want it anyway?)
b. There's no industrial base so mass-producing anything will take decades.
c. Sulfuric acid as a wall defence weapon? With Greek Fire and gunpowder available? That's kind of, uh...
d. How are you going to use, or even obtain, oil? Conquer the Arabian Peninsula, and then you have to actually build all the engines that use oil, which I don't think you can do.
e. Maybe you can vaccinate against smallpox, but the plague? We don't even have a vaccine for that now.

In short, your dream could be accomplished by the time of your grandchildren, but probably long after you are dead (unless you are the Yankee in King Arthur's court on steroids).

[J.R.M]

I´d probably found the city of Bartix, then with time make it an empire, then the world would be mine

[Ibrahim]

Unfortunatly AP, you won't be able to accomplish all that because:

a. You need acid for nitroglycerine (why would you want it anyway?)
b. There's no industrial base so mass-producing anything will take decades.
c. Sulfuric acid as a wall defence weapon? With Greek Fire and gunpowder available? That's kind of, uh...
d. How are you going to use, or even obtain, oil? Conquer the Arabian Peninsula, and then you have to actually build all the engines that use oil, which I don't think you can do.
e. Maybe you can vaccinate against smallpox, but the plague? We don't even have a vaccine for that now.

In short, your dream could be accomplished by the time of your grandchildren, but probably long after you are dead (unless you are the Yankee in King Arthur's court on steroids).

well, I know a weapon that can be produced in a manner that can be applied to ancient foundaries

and the ancient people were capeable of producing the materials needed (lead, iron/bronze, wood, saltpeter, sulfur, brass/copper, leather, linen, papyrus (or more linen ), and coal. mix them in the right proportions, and dress the soldiers in proper clothes, and we get this: )

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

'nuff said.

EDIT: yes, its within the technological capeabilities of most advanced cultures-though I'd prefer to start out in China, since they were of the perfect economic potential.

[Andy1984]

Since you have no instructors and your soldiers lack even the most basic knowlegde of gun-warfare, it would take decades to train your army. There is litterally no-one who has even a remote clue how to aim, fire and reload a gun. Let alone he'd do it when being charged by some gaesaetae. You'll need to have some accuracy and firepower to make volleys deadly. You'll still have to armour your soldiers (since your opponents will use missiles), which almost forces your soldiers to reload these guns when fully armoured. I really want to see that happen. You can no longer have any kind of decent shield. You'll have to equip your soldiers with something that is capable to break a charge of heavy cavalry...

To me, the introduction of guns seems at best possible in some very specific situations: you need to be able to train your units (no berserkers please) and to have a proper battlefield (no northern-european ambushes, no quick skirmishing raids,...). You'll need to have decent accuracy and enough manpower in order to make your volleys deadly (just imagine being encircled, being heavily outnumbered, or being utterly butchered in man-to-man fighting). You'll need to be capable to find ammunition, to keep your powder dry, to have decent supplies of powder and ammunition (swords can be repaired if needs be)... When you finally assembled your army you should avoid barbarians living in trees or opponents who rely on archers or any kind of heavy shock unit - whether infantry of cavalry.

[bobbin]

Sodding hedonists...

I actually remember the stuff they teach you in high school, in addition to the copious amounts of books I already read. Yeah, I will teach Greek Fire, black powder, and nitroglycerine to the Romans. All three are quite easy for me to make (I know, the recipe we know for Greek Fire is not the original, but hell, it is close enough).

In any case, I want power. Oh yeah. Lots of it. Not just some smelly barbarian chieftain or saddle-sore nomad khan. No, while I am in Antiquity, I may as well wish for the moon. I will become the Emperor of the Roman Empire with my knowledge and then on a single night, execute all the Praetorians. Just like Hitler and the Sturmabteilung (SA), a.k.a. Brown Shirts.

After that I will introduce the Bessemer process to mass-produce stainless steel (with nickel), and then invade what is now modern-day Ukraine to mine titanium, and see if it will be possible to work with it, using the newly-designed furnaces. I will teach the Romans how to build trebuchets if the cannons prove to be weak, although I could rifle them too (but that would mean it would take very long to reload them, as I do not know how to make an effective breech-loading cannon). Then I will introduce oil and coal as energy sources. The list goes on... With coal I can make sulphuric acid, which I do not doubt will become a superb wall-defence weapon. Ahh, chemistry was always my favourite science after astronomy.

Continuing, I would introduce vaccination and antibiotics (I know of a couple of natural sources of antibiotics which perhaps I could isolate) to make my empire impervious even to the plague which will hit it (supposing I come before Marcus Aurelius). Not to mention my meagre medical knowledge would nevertheless revolutionise medicine, and of course, I would ban the use of lead and mercury in sensitive places.

Heh, I could write a book about this...

All that would be nearly impossible to do, sure you could probably make greek fire and black powder relatively easily but nitroglycerine? there won't be tubs of nitric acid, sulphuric acid and glycerol just lying around you'd need to know how to make those, and how to make/extract the reactants to make them. Extracting nickle? very difficult. Ditto the titainium, extremely hard to do.
Making things like that without the support base of technology we have today would be almost impossible for one person to do.

Things you could do would be to introduce ideas like the dangers of lead and mecrury, vaccination etc those would still make a massive difference.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Making things like that without the support base of technology we have today would be almost impossible for one person to do..

Umm, you would think I knew how to make all those things if I mentioned them... I did not mention what I could not do, and when I did (nickel and titanium), I informed the readers that it was unlikely.

All that would be nearly impossible to do, sure you could probably make greek fire and black powder relatively easily but nitroglycerine?

First of all, not probably, but certainly. Back in Russia I produced black powder and then made bombs from it to test it. I used nitrates, ground anthracite and lignite (to test the difference) coal (I had no charcoal unfortunately, but it is easy to make), as well a sulphur of course. 6:2:2 was the precise formula, with nitrates being the "6".

Oh, and I used grainy gunpowder which was invented in the late 17th century, which increases the power of the black powder by at least tens and even hundreds of times. Not only this, but the grainy gunpowder is highly resistant to moisture and is much easier to load, as it is no longer a powder but more like large-grained sand. To produce it, you need to wet regular powder, make balls from it, dry them, and then break them apart. That is pretty much all.

I even made a cannon from an old, thick pipe, and then soldered the end, and to make sure it held, I made some concrete and built a base for the cannon, as well as pouring some concrete on the breech end of the cannon, as I obviously did not trust the solder to hold it. Then I fired the cannon of course, by a remote firing using a kerosene-soaked cord. It was unforgettable

As for nitroglycerine, I read the Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, where he meticulously described how to make nitroglycerine just from the things you can find lying around anywhere in nature. Not hard.

there won't be tubs of nitric acid, sulphuric acid and glycerol just lying around you'd need to know how to make those,

Easy. Acids are not difficult to make, and I have read how to produce them. Seriously, how do you think they made they made sulphuric acid in the 8th century? I will use coal to obtain the sulphuric acid (not awfully efficient, but pretty simple), and then use the sulphuric acid on copper nitrate to produce nitric acid.
and how to make/extract the reactants to make them.

Extracting nickle? very difficult. Ditto the titainium, extremely hard to do.

First of all, it is not "nickle", but nickel!!! The former one is unobtainable as it does not exist. But yeah, those two I said that I "may" do if I could. It all depends on how hot of a furnace I can make. They are not essential. I will teach Romans how to make steel, and if I can get them to produce stainless steel, well, that is a bonus. And titanium was rather wistful thinking. At best, I can extract it in an exceedingly impure form. Which is why I did not guarantee the success of that operation.

a. You need acid for nitroglycerine (why would you want it anyway?)

I already know hot to make it. The reason I am going to make it is because nitroglycerine is the most powerful explosive I know how to produce. I will use it to mine and detonate enemy walls in a way my simple gunpowder cannot. It will also be of great aid in civilian technologies.

b. There's no industrial base so mass-producing anything will take decades.

Unlike Americans, I am a patient person, and do not want everything "fast" and "easy". Not to mention, there is no dire need for industrial production of nitroglycerine. Black powder will do, as it is simple as hell to make, and as I ahve said, nitroglycerine will only be used in rare sieges.

c. Sulfuric acid as a wall defence weapon? With Greek Fire and gunpowder available? That's kind of, uh...

You need much less of it than Greek fire to disable targets. Hence its usefulness in missile weapons.

d. How are you going to use, or even obtain, oil? Conquer the Arabian Peninsula, and then you have to actually build all the engines that use oil, which I don't think you can do.

I will conquer the Mesopotamia where the oil has been extracted through wells for millennia. Romania, or Dakia, also has very substantial oil deposits (Ploesti fields). I never said I will build cars or other machines that use oil. I cannot do that, build those engines, nor refine oil. I will simply substitute oil for where wood is used.

e. Maybe you can vaccinate against smallpox, but the plague? We don't even have a vaccine for that now.

Of course not, who do you think I am? An idiot? I read enough NG to know what bubonic plague is. In any case, the Ha! is on you. If you read even a paragraph on the Antonine Plague, you would know that according to descriptions of Galen, the most renowned doctor of that time, it was either smallpox or measles. EPIC FAIL. That plague was not bubonic at all. Just because it is called a "plague" does not make it bubonic. A plague is any highly infectious disease that kills enormous amounts of people in the old times (no one officially called the flu of 19187 a plague). Smallpox is not very difficult to vaccinate against, especially given that Jenner made one in 18th century with relatively little scientific strain.

In short, your dream could be accomplished by the time of your grandchildren, but probably long after you are dead (unless you are the Yankee in King Arthur's court on steroids).

Heh, good book it was. Especially the Gatling-gun the knights. In any case, I would choose Romans or Classical Greeks above any culture in the history of mankind to institute those changes, as IMHO, they woudl be the most receptive. And since Classical Greeks were such a tiny, and geographically isolated civilisation, with little resources, the Romans are certainly the better choice. It will be difficult, but the most crucial military changes will catch on pretty quickly, as their benefits are the most clear and present ones. I will start the change, and by the time I am dead, the machine will be already in motion.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

It surely would not take decades to train an army in using firearms. Using firearms is a lot more easier than using a bow, or let alone a sling. Melee-fighting also requires lots of skill (and balls, of course), much more than simply using firearms. Firearms did revolutionize the military because of the effectiveness, that means, once you could aim at your target and actually hit it, they replaced all other ranged weapons because they were so easy to produce and to be used.

So the main problem in AP's idea is the construction and mass production of those firearms, which I really doubt would be doable within any reasonable limits (AP's lifespan). Training would be simple, first you personally train ten officers, then each trains another ten, and so on.

I think what I really would do is simply re-building my EB-empire in history. Then I would have my slaves build the biggest palace ever made by man for me. I would be the only male in this complex, save for the guards. In the basement would be a giant swimming pool inhabited by thousand of crocodiles which I would use for ritual executions on a weekly basis.

I would promote my prostitutes and sometimes my cats into the Senate, and everytime I visit the Senate, I would humiliate the upper class by asking my cats if they agree with any proposals by the Senatores, and when these meow, say "Oh, no, pussy says she has a better proposal on that matter." Anybody who thinks he's too good to listen to pussy goes to the crocodiles.

[Azathoth]

Why don't you go pitch the concept to Turtledove?

So the main problem in AP's idea is the construction and mass production of those firearms, which I really doubt would be doable within any reasonable limits (AP's lifespan). Training would be simple, first you personally train ten officers, then each trains another ten, and so on.

I think what I really would do is simply re-building my EB-empire in history. Then I would have my slaves build the biggest palace ever made by man for me. I would be the only male in this complex, save for the guards. In the basement would be a giant swimming pool inhabited by thousand of crocodiles which I would use for ritual executions on a weekly basis.

AP knows how to use guns?

And you're starting to sound like an ancient Bond villain, CN.

[A Very Super Market]

He wouldn't be too out of place in the East....

[bobbin]

As for nitroglycerine, I read the Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, where he meticulously described how to make nitroglycerine just from the things you can find lying around anywhere in nature. Not hard.

heh didn't know about that, wouldn't recommend trying to make it though it's severely unstable stuff.

Easy. Acids are not difficult to make, and I have read how to produce them. Seriously, how do you think they made they made sulphuric acid in the 8th century? I will use coal to obtain the sulphuric acid (not awfully efficient, but pretty simple), and then use the sulphuric acid on copper nitrate to produce nitric acid.
and how to make/extract the reactants to make them.

Oh i know sulphuric acid is easy to make, but nitric acid...where would you get copper nitrate from in 272bc? a better source of nitrate would be saltpetre which is much easier to produce given the technology at the time

First of all, it is not "nickle", but nickel!!! The former one is unobtainable as it does not exist. But yeah, those two I said that I "may" do if I could. It all depends on how hot of a furnace I can make. They are not essential. I will teach Romans how to make steel, and if I can get them to produce stainless steel, well, that is a bonus. And titanium was rather wistful thinking. At best, I can extract it in an exceedingly impure form. Which is why I did not guarantee the success of that operation.

Yeah my bad there simple spelling mistake, i really think your underestimating the amount of knowledge and expertise that goes into making these things, there's more to making steel that blowing air through molten iron.

[Aemilius Paulus]

heh didn't know about that, wouldn't recommend trying to make it though it's severely unstable stuff.

Unstable only if sudden pressure is applied. You do not think making grainy gunpowder is dangerous, much less testing it??

but nitric acid...where would you get copper nitrate from in 272bc? a better source of nitrate would be saltpetre which is much easier to produce given the technology at the time

Well, as I said, I only mentioned stuff that I already know. I know it would be easier to obtain nitric acid from saltpetre (think of the gargantuan guano deposits of Chile) but alas, I do not know how to make nitric acid from that. I only read about producing it from copper nitrate, especially since I already have sulphuric acid. But I can always read more, and learn how to make it from saltpetre!

i really think your underestimating the amount of knowledge and expertise that goes into making these things, there's more to making steel that blowing air through molten iron.

Well, duh, of course you are correct, but the "duh" is there because you are sounding as if you did not read both of my previous posts. I never said I knew how to extract and work with titanium and nickel. I just said I will try, and see if it works. I have no idea how to work with them. But I do know the Bessemer process though. I studied it

[Andronikos]

As for nitroglycerine, I read the Mysterious Island by Jules Verne, where he meticulously described how to make nitroglycerine just from the things you can find lying around anywhere in nature. Not hard.

That description is a little bugged. I have seen a chemistry olympiad whith that text and tasks were about small mistakes. But actually, you would obtain the products.

OTOH I see a bigger problem, the nitroglycerin is unstable and can explode during production or handling. With poor equipment aviable the probability of explosion only rises.

[The_Mark]

I'd team up with Archimedes to produce all kinds of superweapons and advanced maths and such, making Syracuse an impenetrable fortress (along with the rest of Sicily). If Roman hordes still get in, I'll pack up as much advanced tech created there as well as followers and migrate with them to modern-day Finland, creating a mighty northern kingdom - might take a while, but if find myself in 272BC I could as well as be immortal as well, so when the dark ages hit the rest of Europe, a great Finno-Greek civilization is ready to pour in and conquer the world.

[APX]

Unlike Americans, I am a patient person, and do not want everything "fast" and "easy".

Excuse me? Generalization much?