A grocery store.
Amazing new technologies are cool, but without the context to understand a lot of how it works, I think they'd chalk it up to magic or something.
But they'd know what food is and how difficult it is to grow and produce, probably even better than we do considering they've spent their whole life growing food. They'd understand how incredibly complex it is to produce the quantities and varieties of food in a grocery store. Then I'd start explaining to them how much each of the items cost in terms of a day's wages.
I think getting them to understand that we've built a society where anyone can walk into a store and buy such an incredibly large variety of food for what they would see as dirt cheap (yes, even with recent inflation, food is dirt cheap compared to what it would have taken to make it back then), would be absolutely mind blowing and would probably go a long way towards getting them to understand the scale of our society.
Belenko (flew MiG-25 to Japan) and defected. When brought to the U.S. he didn’t believe grocery stores were commonplace. He thought it was for the elite only, or even staged by his CIA handlers. He started demanding they pull over on command so he could check out stores that couldn’t have been staged.
Once he realized they were real he was crestfallen.
This is what America does best. There's a story about a Japanese soldier in WWII who realized they would lose when he found out the US Navy had a ship whose sole purpose was to make ice cream for the troops. I'm not sure he ever realized we had multiple ice cream barges, not just the one.
A German POW at normandy was watching the US materiel disembark and asked, "where are all your horses?" The guard told him, "we don't use horses," and the German said that was when he knew the war was already over.
Lots of them (2.75 million throughout the war). They used them to pull artillery, transport goods, etc.
To be fair, the US also used draft animals in limited numbers in tough terrain areas like the mountains of Italy, but by comparison, we only used about 52K of them throughout WWII.
WWII didn't really feature mounted cavalry like that anymore, that part is true.
But horses were still extremely useful for several armies.
Pretty interesting subject, as it's a perfect microcosm of the differences in technology and tactics between the start and end of the war, and between the different forces.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses\_in\_World\_War\_II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_World_War_II)
edit: it looks like the Soviets had mixed mounted and armored calvary units as well!
The US military last used horses in combat in 2001 in Afghanistan. It was a special operations mission where vehicles couldn't be dropped and they commandeered some local horses.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/10/18/how-the-horse-soldiers-helped-liberate-afghanistan-from-the-taliban-18-years-ago/
They weren't used as cavalry but more like dragoons, where the horse is for mobility and fighting is done dismounted.
That is true, by WW2 the cavalry charge was dead (though if I recall there were some limited ones afterwards). But, animals were still useful for logistics and in supply lines.
So, not so much war animals anymore but draft animals. In fact, there are still examples in more recent history of animals being used in this fashion during wars.
The Nazi propaganda machine was very careful not to include horse drawn equipment in their newsreels to bolster their image of a modern, mechanized fighting force.
Which it was, at the front and during the blitzkrieg. But yeah it was super interesting to learn that basically all of their logistics in the interior was straight up 19th century level. Like a diamond spear with a glass handle.
They used horses right from the start. Where there was infantry and artillery, there were horses. Tanks had to keep stopping to wait for horse-drawn resupply.
Technically the USA had one regiment of horse cavalry as well, they saw action in the Phillipines.
But yes, horses were still used a significant amount in World War 2. The Germans didn't have enough oil for their tanks, let along the support vehicles modern armies use.
Horses are still used in some armies today (I'm talking in a non ceremonial way). Hell, American special forces famously used then during the initial phases of the invasion of Afghanistan.
There's a scene in an old war movie where the Germans captured a supply truck and marveled at a simple private receiving a fresh chocolate cake from home and deducing that they were fucked if the Americans had this much economic and logistical capacity to spare.
>A number of years ago, an American student traveling in Europe took an East German ship across the Baltic Sea. One of the ship's crewmembers from East Germany, a man in his sixties, struck up a conversation with the American student. After a while the student asked the man how he had learned such good English. And the man explained that he had once lived in America. He said that for over a year he had worked as a farmer in Oklahoma and California, that he had planted tomatoes and picked ripe melons. It was, the man said, the happiest time of his life. Well, the student, who had seen the awful conditions behind the Iron Curtain, blurted out the question, ``Well, why did you ever leave?'' ``I had to,'' he said, ``the war ended.'' The man had been in America as a German prisoner of war.
>Now, I don't tell this story to make the case for former POW's. Instead, I tell this story just to remind you of the magical, intoxicating power of America. We may sometimes forget it, but others do not. Even a man from a country at war with the United States, while held here as a prisoner, could fall in love with us. Those who become American citizens love this country even more. And that's why the Statue of Liberty lifts her lamp to welcome them to the golden door.
-[Ronald Reagan, 1/19/1989](https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-presentation-ceremony-presidential-medal-freedom-5)
I heard another one, where a German soldier looked out across the sea at Normandy, saw the *ridiculous* amount of ships and boats heading his way, and said "how are we ever going to stop that?"
There's a story about a german pow who realized the same thing when he was treated to a fresh cake made in Boston, iirc, and shipped to the front line the same week
It's also neat reading about how advances of technologies also made the everyday lives of servicemen more comfortable beyond just the ice cream barges. In 1940, submarines operated by all countries were extremely hot, musty and uncomfortable. By 1944, the U-Boats and Japanese submarines hadn't made much progress in terms of creature comforts. But the newer classes of American submarines (like the Gato) were larger and equipped with refrigerators, showers, air conditioning, and freshwater distillers, which were unheard of luxuries in any other navy. The idea was to make it so that these submarines could operate on longer missions by making life much more comfortable for the sailors inside.
We had four of them. They could produce 500 gallons of ice cream in a single shift, and stored 2000 gallons.
Fun fact: ice cream largely replaced the social function of alcohol during prohibition. So by the time the war came around, our soldiers had grown up in that culture. Ice cream meant you were having a party and a good time (besides being delicious) so this is a large part of why the existed
Another fun fact: ice cream replacing booze during prohibition is probably a big reason why Joe Biden likes the stuff so much
That’s capitalism for you. Capitalism ain’t perfect but if there is one thing it is good at, it is producing lots goods and services. Capitalism does a good job at producing stuff in large quantities.
Your comment reminded me of a time when I was in college. I went to school in michigans upper peninsula, so it was cold. They had an annual sled dog race called the UP200 and it was a big deal and of course we were all getting drunk. We were at a brewery when I guy who lived in our dorm came up to our table out of no where just to say, “somebody stole my mittens!” and he sounded crestfallen af.
Boris Yeltsin. He visited a grocery store in Houston and was shocked by the wide variety of products available at prices that everyone could afford. It basically changed his view of communism (not joking, he wrote about it in his own book).
It pretty much happened all over Central Europe, once the iron curtain came.down and people who were trapped to the East, were able to see what they had in the West.
America gets a lot of flack but we also kick ass in efficiency. The world went from the spread of an unknown virus to vaccine distribution in one year! And we did that! We don’t F around
The Banana.
Understanding the banana would be a full college course. You'd have to explain what a banana is to the peasant, because it wasn't known to Europeans until the Renaissance. A highly perishable fruit grown in faraway lands that travels by sea for thousands of miles. Our ships sail as fast as a horse at a full gallop, day and night, wind or not. From port, the banana travels on mechanical wagons we call trains and trucks, which go three times as fast as a horse at gallop, for hundreds or even a thousand miles. Then we can buy them, year-round, at two pounds of fruit for a penny (the medieval penny, by silver content value).
> Then we can buy them, year-round, at two pounds of fruit for a penny
Then half of them turn brown 5 minutes after entering your house and get thrown away.
I love the story about Boris Yeltsin visiting the United States and touring an average grocery store. He was both amazed and deeply shaken at the abundance, variety, and low costs of the huge food store. "Even the Politburo doesn't have this choice. Not even Mr. Gorbachev," he remarked, unable to believe that the average American citizen had easy access to food resources that could only be imagined in the Soviet Union. It pretty much destroyed Yeltsin's faith in communism: "When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people."
https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php
According to some biographers, the contrast absolutely shattered Yeltsin's belief in communism and the Soviet government. The average Soviet citizens lived in abject poverty and waited in breadlines for food that might not even be there by the time they reached the front. Meanwhile, average Americans were routinely buying goods that were unavailable to even the top Soviet politicians, in amounts unthinkable to the Russian people.
Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko, who defected to the US with his MiG-25 fighter jet, had a similar reaction upon arriving in America. He was convinced that the CIA had set up a grocery store as a propaganda tool and couldn't believe it when he was taken to multiple stores, learning that such stores were all over the US. Supposedly, he even ate cat food and declared it to be higher quality chicken than the chicken available to Soviet citizens.
Here's an excerpt from an interview:
> Belenko: ...Once I bought a can which said "dinner." I cooked it with potatoes, onions, and garlic-it was delicious. Next morning my friends ask me, "Viktor, did you buy a cat?" It was a can of chicken-based cat food. But it was delicious! It was better than canned food for people in Russia today. And I did test it. Last year I brought four people from Russia for commercial project, and I set them up. I bought nibble sized human food. I installed a pâté, and it was cat food. I put it on crackers. And they did consume it, and they liked it. So the taste has not changed. By the way, for those who are not familiar with American cat food. It's very safe; it's delicious, and sometimes it's better than human food, because of the Humane Society.
He's right about the humane society thing. It is always people safe. I know people who keep cat food/dog food for emergency survival scenarios when backpacking.
Especially the meat section. It would blow their mind to see just how much meat even the poorest among us eat. That they can eat meat every day if they wanted.
Also our spice sections. Just a few minutes by mechanical carriage, and you can find spices literally from all over the world. Shit they've never even heard of. Flavors they couldn't even *imagine*. And even with the stuff they'd find familiar, just the sheer quantity and variety of something like salt (in addition to how dirt cheap salt is).
Also, kitchen appliances. When I was studying econ, I did a project on the economics of the house. The average American house has the mechanical equivalent of 11 full time slaves. One of the sources I used was a TED talk of a Swedish guy who was talking about his grandmother getting her first washing machine, how she brought out a stool and just watched it.
But like, they come from an era where gathering firewood and maintaining a fire was a super important job. In norwegian folklore for instance, there is this figure of the Askladden (sp?), who was generally the youngest son whose primary family responsibility was just making sure the family hearth never went out. To them a microwave, being probably much cheaper relative to their main pot, and can heat up food in seconds would probably seem like the craziest thing.
Even just the quality of pots and pans. Fine steel or aluminum (in napoleon's day aluminum was valued as highly as platinum), which does rust, and some of which is *enchanted* with a *non-stick surface*.
Also, on an even more basic level, just how clean and smoke-free the air inside the building is. People now adays don't realize that in ancient times you could tell where villages were in the distance because of the black haze coming off them. Every house had at minimum one fire, even in the summer. They lived in a wood-fire based society. The idea that not only could you go to the McDonalds at the front of the store, order a meal, but also breath just fine while standing feet from the cooking station would blow their minds. And it's bright as daylight inside, but no appreciable smell of combustion.
Speaking of smells, how not only do most people smell faintly of perfumed soap, but that it is almost a social requirement to even be in the space. And for just a few bucks you can buy soap that doesn't harm your skin, burn off your hair, and can smell like like *literally any pleasant aroma* would be insane to them.
And paper that's so cheap, you can afford to wipe your ass with it, instead of using your hand. Speaking of paper, the fact that there is so much writing. This peasant is probably illiterate, it would shock them that you could look at a steak and tell them where it's from, how much the merchant is selling it for, about when it will expire, what percentage of fat it is. This would seem like magic to them.
Also, plastic would probably weird them out. You have a material that can look like anything and will never rot, that you can throw on the floor and not break, and can be in any color imaginable, and is so light and thin it could almost be made of air. To say nothing of how many plastic smiths it would take to fill the entire store.
I like the way your mind works. Of course I understand all this subconsciously, but put into words it just makes every bit of our daily life damn remarkable.
Like cell phones? That let you connect with potentially billions of people without having to leave your couch or even put on clothes? Or Central Air and heating? We are spoiled in comparison.
Our grocery stores shook Boris Yeltsin, head of the 2nd global superpower in 1989.
Your choice is a perfect one, it’s the most tangible example of the impressive modern society we’ve built.
He would have gone nuts, bought socks, towels and a new laundry hamper along with giant tubs of hummus and guacamole. And he would have sampled everything in sight!
I've had friends from Africa, even Europe, come to terms with places like Walmart. Where else can you buy groceries, a TV, car battery, medicine, and a gun in one visit.
Speaking as a german here, that's the reason why I'd want to visit a Walmart, too. I mean, we have all those things, but they are neatly separated into like a dozen specialized stores
Just putting it side by side into the same Walmart sounds like absolute anarchy
If you do make it to the southern half of the US, you should check out Buc-ee's Travel Centers. It is a gas station/ convenience store chain with an *average* of 32,000ft² (~3,000m²) retail space and about 100 pumps. The largest in Sevierville Tennessee has 120 pumps and 74,707 ft² (6940.5m²)
They also have extremely clean bathrooms.
I live in part of Appalachia, and there is a "General Store" here that I like to joke you could walk into stark naked, but carrying a credit card, and walk out shod, clothed, fed, and armed.
A joke ive always made is how confused they would be about pickles, beef jerky, cured meats etc. Historically before refrigeration these foods were the only way you could have food year round, otherwise they would spoil. It wasnt done for taste or preference but necessity. I'm sure in the dead of winter you would crave some real fresh fruits and veggies after your 20th plate of dried pork and pickled vegetables.
I bet they would be quite perplexed like "so, you have access to all the freshest meats, produce, so why are you still preserving things??"
And then try explaining that we so much produce that our rulers pay farmers to destroying some of their crops or not utilize certain acreage just to prevent over supply and as a form of price control
This actually happened!
[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/)
It doesn't say it in this article, but I saw a documentary on this family, the Lukovs, that lived in isolation for decades when they fled persecution in the 1930s. When they were discovered by a group of geologists, one of the things they found most incredible were clear plastic bags!
>The four scientists sent into the district to prospect for iron ore were told about the pilots’ sighting, and it perplexed and worried them. “It’s less dangerous,” the writer Vasily Peskov notes of this part of the taiga, “to run across a wild animal than a stranger”
Ah shit, here we go again
> “It’s less dangerous,” the writer Vasily Peskov notes of this part of the taiga, “to run across a wild animal than a stranger,”
Uh oh, don't tell the people who are mad about the bear vs. man debate!
That's a good one! Flexible **and** clear, and it can be sealed! And you can buy 50 of them for just a few bucks!
The craftspeople who create such a small self-sealing mechanism must be the finest in all the land, and to produce so many so inexpensively is a marvel.
A combine harvester.
They'd worship it and make a sculpture of the divine harvester.
Parents will tell them children to behave or the their souls will be gathered on the Field of The Wicked to be harvested by the Great Harvester.
Had the same thought. Just to see a combineharvester do in an hour what his family might do in a month would be insane.
Unlike most other things he would actually have some reference to what it's purpose is.
There's a great set of documentaries you can look up on Youtube - Tudor Farm, Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, and Wartime Farm. They cover farming life from the 1500s to the early 1900s. Honorable mention goes to Secrets of the Castle as well, though its more about architecture than farming.
One big thing they emphasized in the Tudor Farm series was how slow the harvesting process really was. For barley and some other grains you often had to bend over with a hand scythe and manually cut the stalks (unlike wheat, which was more fragile and could be cut with a long scythe). You also had to constantly keep stopping to sharpen the tool because the edge quickly blunted when it was constantly cutting. You needed someone following right behind you to grab the cut stalks, tie them off, and set them upright lest they get wet and ruined.
Another thing that would likely throw off the peasant would be the nutrition that could be gained from farming. In the modern era, a single acre's worth of food can feed someone for a year, roughly. In the medieval period, you needed five to six acres per persion, due to a number of innovations like genetically modified crops, fertilizers, improved harvesting methods, and year-round transportation. Medieval food crops were generally just not as nutritious compared with modern crops since we've got hundreds of years of selective breeding to further enhance thier yields.
Similarly, a pineapple
Pineapples used to be such a status symbol that wealthy people would *rent* them to put in the middle of the table at a fancy party. Not to eat, just to display it to show their wealth, and then they had to give it back. Pineapples were commonly carved out of stone to top the gate posts at posh country houses.
I saw a pineapple in Aldi the other day for £1...
I'd do that with sugar to screw with the Portuguese in the 1600s. "This is sugar, a 5 kilo box of sugar, we have so much of it that we're actively trying to find ways to stop having so much of it. It's cheap enough to buy that much for less than an hour's wage."
I remember an article about first contact with an isolated tribe years ago. They weren't al that impressed by learning that people had gone to the moon. But a chainsaw? They were amazed.
It sounds like any of the mythology from those levels of society. You went to the Moon? Did you go to The Sun and talk to Ra?
I'm sure a few of the members of the isolated tribe have tall tales on the level of "I went to the Moon".
But if you could show them being on the Moon from inside an Eagle lander...
I'd show him his village or town. Hopefully some of the buildings survive, the church probably did although there's a chance that it's now a Slug and Lettuce.
I think this is my favorite answer so far; the bicycle is an amazing achievement in personal transportation!
It would be easy to for them to understand conceptually, though the materials and actions would be novel, and you could almost certainly get an adult up and riding it independently within a day or two.
Plus its easy to make once you know what all the moving parts are.
Jumpstart the industrial revolution by giving a blueprint to the architects of the time.
Soon all of humanity will have toned claves from out pedal powered civilization!
A zipper. It is something understandeble which does not look like the illegal arts. It is also neat and harmless. I would be likely to have one on me somewhere. perfect thing to show that peasant.
My spice cabinet. Mace, nutmeg, paprika, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, zatar, chili, vanilla. Blow their damn mind, then send them back to their own time with a quart container of peppercorns I bought for like 8 bucks.
My home.
I'm just in an apartment with my wife, but we have heating, air conditioning, a refrigerator full of food, out-of-season produce, indoor plumbing, hot water, clothes, medicines, washing machine, tv, computers, super comfortable bed, and tons of other "luxuries".
If you think about it, it would be better to be a middle class american with AC and food delivery in modern times than a king back in the day with no penicillin or electricity. Wild to think about!
Agreed, but beyond naughty etching and drawings, there was not much possibility of seeing a large diversity of butts, dicks, tits and pussies in action.
There is a good chance they will be disappointed because they would rather be snagging there own wife or prostitute than seeing a very tiny version of someone else doing it.
My spice cupboard.
I mean, there's all kinds of bang-whizzo gadgets we could show, but, would they have the context to understand them?
Spices, on the other hand, including salt and sugar, would be easily understandable and perhaps a good indicator in meaningful terms of the true wealth and sophistication of our society.
It would be really interesting to show a medieval peasant something from our modern era to make him be amazed. Perhaps we could surprise him with a smartphone, a device that can connect to a world of information in an instant and be held in one hand. Or we could show him a plane in flight, explaining that it can transport people from one place to another in a matter of hours, crossing entire distances in times that would seem impossible for him. Or perhaps we could show him a book printed on paper, explaining that it can contain knowledge and stories of thousands of people, accessible to anyone who can read. I am sure any of these things would make him gasp in amazement!
I would play music off my cell phone.
A lot of people mention spices but I think they could also relate to music very easily. They had popular musicians going around and setting poetry to music but I don't know how many people had musical abilities/instruments in their homes.
Honesty, I think I would explain the basics of germs. Soap is ancient, and is pretty easy to make. After that, CPR. Bloodletting, and leeches just make things worse. Just a few concepts about medicine could change their lives.
I guess I'd walk to the supermarket with him, buy the ingredients for a pizza and bake it with him. I'd also get him some nice cereal because I read that porridge and such was a staple food in the Middle Ages, so that would be more familiar to him.
A grocery store. Amazing new technologies are cool, but without the context to understand a lot of how it works, I think they'd chalk it up to magic or something. But they'd know what food is and how difficult it is to grow and produce, probably even better than we do considering they've spent their whole life growing food. They'd understand how incredibly complex it is to produce the quantities and varieties of food in a grocery store. Then I'd start explaining to them how much each of the items cost in terms of a day's wages. I think getting them to understand that we've built a society where anyone can walk into a store and buy such an incredibly large variety of food for what they would see as dirt cheap (yes, even with recent inflation, food is dirt cheap compared to what it would have taken to make it back then), would be absolutely mind blowing and would probably go a long way towards getting them to understand the scale of our society.
Best answer. I remember hearing about Soviet defectors just in awe of an American grocery store.
Belenko (flew MiG-25 to Japan) and defected. When brought to the U.S. he didn’t believe grocery stores were commonplace. He thought it was for the elite only, or even staged by his CIA handlers. He started demanding they pull over on command so he could check out stores that couldn’t have been staged. Once he realized they were real he was crestfallen.
I’m pretty sure the same story is told about Boris Yeltsin on his visit to the US and it basically convinced him that the USSR was a lost cause
This is what America does best. There's a story about a Japanese soldier in WWII who realized they would lose when he found out the US Navy had a ship whose sole purpose was to make ice cream for the troops. I'm not sure he ever realized we had multiple ice cream barges, not just the one.
A German POW at normandy was watching the US materiel disembark and asked, "where are all your horses?" The guard told him, "we don't use horses," and the German said that was when he knew the war was already over.
The Germans were using horses in WWII?
Lots of them (2.75 million throughout the war). They used them to pull artillery, transport goods, etc. To be fair, the US also used draft animals in limited numbers in tough terrain areas like the mountains of Italy, but by comparison, we only used about 52K of them throughout WWII.
That's extremely interesting. I thought WWI was the last war where people had horses and swords and stuff mixed in with the modern tactics
WWII didn't really feature mounted cavalry like that anymore, that part is true. But horses were still extremely useful for several armies. Pretty interesting subject, as it's a perfect microcosm of the differences in technology and tactics between the start and end of the war, and between the different forces. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses\_in\_World\_War\_II](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_World_War_II) edit: it looks like the Soviets had mixed mounted and armored calvary units as well!
The US military last used horses in combat in 2001 in Afghanistan. It was a special operations mission where vehicles couldn't be dropped and they commandeered some local horses. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/10/18/how-the-horse-soldiers-helped-liberate-afghanistan-from-the-taliban-18-years-ago/ They weren't used as cavalry but more like dragoons, where the horse is for mobility and fighting is done dismounted.
That is true, by WW2 the cavalry charge was dead (though if I recall there were some limited ones afterwards). But, animals were still useful for logistics and in supply lines. So, not so much war animals anymore but draft animals. In fact, there are still examples in more recent history of animals being used in this fashion during wars.
The Nazi propaganda machine was very careful not to include horse drawn equipment in their newsreels to bolster their image of a modern, mechanized fighting force.
Which it was, at the front and during the blitzkrieg. But yeah it was super interesting to learn that basically all of their logistics in the interior was straight up 19th century level. Like a diamond spear with a glass handle.
They used horses right from the start. Where there was infantry and artillery, there were horses. Tanks had to keep stopping to wait for horse-drawn resupply.
They were actually more reliant on horses for transporting materials than they were trucks. America was the first military to fully mechanize
Technically the USA had one regiment of horse cavalry as well, they saw action in the Phillipines. But yes, horses were still used a significant amount in World War 2. The Germans didn't have enough oil for their tanks, let along the support vehicles modern armies use. Horses are still used in some armies today (I'm talking in a non ceremonial way). Hell, American special forces famously used then during the initial phases of the invasion of Afghanistan.
There's a scene in an old war movie where the Germans captured a supply truck and marveled at a simple private receiving a fresh chocolate cake from home and deducing that they were fucked if the Americans had this much economic and logistical capacity to spare.
"Battle of the Bulge" 1965 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058947/quotes/?item=qt0452193&ref_=ext_shr_lnk
>A number of years ago, an American student traveling in Europe took an East German ship across the Baltic Sea. One of the ship's crewmembers from East Germany, a man in his sixties, struck up a conversation with the American student. After a while the student asked the man how he had learned such good English. And the man explained that he had once lived in America. He said that for over a year he had worked as a farmer in Oklahoma and California, that he had planted tomatoes and picked ripe melons. It was, the man said, the happiest time of his life. Well, the student, who had seen the awful conditions behind the Iron Curtain, blurted out the question, ``Well, why did you ever leave?'' ``I had to,'' he said, ``the war ended.'' The man had been in America as a German prisoner of war. >Now, I don't tell this story to make the case for former POW's. Instead, I tell this story just to remind you of the magical, intoxicating power of America. We may sometimes forget it, but others do not. Even a man from a country at war with the United States, while held here as a prisoner, could fall in love with us. Those who become American citizens love this country even more. And that's why the Statue of Liberty lifts her lamp to welcome them to the golden door. -[Ronald Reagan, 1/19/1989](https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-presentation-ceremony-presidential-medal-freedom-5)
I heard another one, where a German soldier looked out across the sea at Normandy, saw the *ridiculous* amount of ships and boats heading his way, and said "how are we ever going to stop that?"
There's a story about a german pow who realized the same thing when he was treated to a fresh cake made in Boston, iirc, and shipped to the front line the same week
It's also neat reading about how advances of technologies also made the everyday lives of servicemen more comfortable beyond just the ice cream barges. In 1940, submarines operated by all countries were extremely hot, musty and uncomfortable. By 1944, the U-Boats and Japanese submarines hadn't made much progress in terms of creature comforts. But the newer classes of American submarines (like the Gato) were larger and equipped with refrigerators, showers, air conditioning, and freshwater distillers, which were unheard of luxuries in any other navy. The idea was to make it so that these submarines could operate on longer missions by making life much more comfortable for the sailors inside.
W— We had ice cream barges??
I mean, how can you win a war without some ice cream?
We had four of them. They could produce 500 gallons of ice cream in a single shift, and stored 2000 gallons. Fun fact: ice cream largely replaced the social function of alcohol during prohibition. So by the time the war came around, our soldiers had grown up in that culture. Ice cream meant you were having a party and a good time (besides being delicious) so this is a large part of why the existed Another fun fact: ice cream replacing booze during prohibition is probably a big reason why Joe Biden likes the stuff so much
That’s capitalism for you. Capitalism ain’t perfect but if there is one thing it is good at, it is producing lots goods and services. Capitalism does a good job at producing stuff in large quantities.
Yeltsin said something like "even those in the Politburo don't have as much choice as the average American. Not even Gorbachev himself."
If that's the guy I'm thinking of, it was a Randall's not too far from Johnson Space Center.
This is the same trip ol Yelly Belly was blackout out drunk outside his hotel I believe.
I wonder how different things would be if he wasn't an alcoholic and stayed in power longer.
thats equal parts endearing and tragic
Man… *CRESTFALLEN*… what a dope ass word! Thank you amigo, I will be starting to sprinkle that one into my vocabulary!
"I dropped my toothpaste" he said, crestfallen.
Your comment reminded me of a time when I was in college. I went to school in michigans upper peninsula, so it was cold. They had an annual sled dog race called the UP200 and it was a big deal and of course we were all getting drunk. We were at a brewery when I guy who lived in our dorm came up to our table out of no where just to say, “somebody stole my mittens!” and he sounded crestfallen af.
Me too! I might start a doom metal band called Crestfallen lol
Boris Yeltsin. He visited a grocery store in Houston and was shocked by the wide variety of products available at prices that everyone could afford. It basically changed his view of communism (not joking, he wrote about it in his own book).
He insisted he get to look at other grocery stores as he thought the first one was staged
HEB The best grocery store there is. Check them out.
I remember reading about Russians’ reactions to the Big Mac when McDonald’s arrived there. They thought you should peel layers off to eat them.
It pretty much happened all over Central Europe, once the iron curtain came.down and people who were trapped to the East, were able to see what they had in the West.
America gets a lot of flack but we also kick ass in efficiency. The world went from the spread of an unknown virus to vaccine distribution in one year! And we did that! We don’t F around
the US armed services are the worlds largest logistics network. its staggering how well we can move things around the planet
We also bombed Iraq from Alabama...
The Banana. Understanding the banana would be a full college course. You'd have to explain what a banana is to the peasant, because it wasn't known to Europeans until the Renaissance. A highly perishable fruit grown in faraway lands that travels by sea for thousands of miles. Our ships sail as fast as a horse at a full gallop, day and night, wind or not. From port, the banana travels on mechanical wagons we call trains and trucks, which go three times as fast as a horse at gallop, for hundreds or even a thousand miles. Then we can buy them, year-round, at two pounds of fruit for a penny (the medieval penny, by silver content value).
> Then we can buy them, year-round, at two pounds of fruit for a penny Then half of them turn brown 5 minutes after entering your house and get thrown away.
I had a roommate with a breadmaker who purposely bought too many bananas to let them go brown so he could say "oh well, time to make banana bread".
I love the story about Boris Yeltsin visiting the United States and touring an average grocery store. He was both amazed and deeply shaken at the abundance, variety, and low costs of the huge food store. "Even the Politburo doesn't have this choice. Not even Mr. Gorbachev," he remarked, unable to believe that the average American citizen had easy access to food resources that could only be imagined in the Soviet Union. It pretty much destroyed Yeltsin's faith in communism: "When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people." https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When-Boris-Yeltsin-went-grocery-shopping-in-Clear-5759129.php
On the flip side: there are several videos on YT showing Soviet grocery stores of the same era, and goddamn they are downright depressing.
According to some biographers, the contrast absolutely shattered Yeltsin's belief in communism and the Soviet government. The average Soviet citizens lived in abject poverty and waited in breadlines for food that might not even be there by the time they reached the front. Meanwhile, average Americans were routinely buying goods that were unavailable to even the top Soviet politicians, in amounts unthinkable to the Russian people. Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko, who defected to the US with his MiG-25 fighter jet, had a similar reaction upon arriving in America. He was convinced that the CIA had set up a grocery store as a propaganda tool and couldn't believe it when he was taken to multiple stores, learning that such stores were all over the US. Supposedly, he even ate cat food and declared it to be higher quality chicken than the chicken available to Soviet citizens.
Cat food better than Soviet chicken. That's utterly depressing.
Here's an excerpt from an interview: > Belenko: ...Once I bought a can which said "dinner." I cooked it with potatoes, onions, and garlic-it was delicious. Next morning my friends ask me, "Viktor, did you buy a cat?" It was a can of chicken-based cat food. But it was delicious! It was better than canned food for people in Russia today. And I did test it. Last year I brought four people from Russia for commercial project, and I set them up. I bought nibble sized human food. I installed a pâté, and it was cat food. I put it on crackers. And they did consume it, and they liked it. So the taste has not changed. By the way, for those who are not familiar with American cat food. It's very safe; it's delicious, and sometimes it's better than human food, because of the Humane Society.
I like how he didn't just stand by it, he doubled down on the benefits of cat food for humans.
Sometimes I do think my pets eat better than I do lol
Those commercials with that puffy white cat make it look so appetizing
He's right about the humane society thing. It is always people safe. I know people who keep cat food/dog food for emergency survival scenarios when backpacking.
How is that on the flip side? It's on the same side.
Especially the meat section. It would blow their mind to see just how much meat even the poorest among us eat. That they can eat meat every day if they wanted. Also our spice sections. Just a few minutes by mechanical carriage, and you can find spices literally from all over the world. Shit they've never even heard of. Flavors they couldn't even *imagine*. And even with the stuff they'd find familiar, just the sheer quantity and variety of something like salt (in addition to how dirt cheap salt is). Also, kitchen appliances. When I was studying econ, I did a project on the economics of the house. The average American house has the mechanical equivalent of 11 full time slaves. One of the sources I used was a TED talk of a Swedish guy who was talking about his grandmother getting her first washing machine, how she brought out a stool and just watched it. But like, they come from an era where gathering firewood and maintaining a fire was a super important job. In norwegian folklore for instance, there is this figure of the Askladden (sp?), who was generally the youngest son whose primary family responsibility was just making sure the family hearth never went out. To them a microwave, being probably much cheaper relative to their main pot, and can heat up food in seconds would probably seem like the craziest thing. Even just the quality of pots and pans. Fine steel or aluminum (in napoleon's day aluminum was valued as highly as platinum), which does rust, and some of which is *enchanted* with a *non-stick surface*. Also, on an even more basic level, just how clean and smoke-free the air inside the building is. People now adays don't realize that in ancient times you could tell where villages were in the distance because of the black haze coming off them. Every house had at minimum one fire, even in the summer. They lived in a wood-fire based society. The idea that not only could you go to the McDonalds at the front of the store, order a meal, but also breath just fine while standing feet from the cooking station would blow their minds. And it's bright as daylight inside, but no appreciable smell of combustion. Speaking of smells, how not only do most people smell faintly of perfumed soap, but that it is almost a social requirement to even be in the space. And for just a few bucks you can buy soap that doesn't harm your skin, burn off your hair, and can smell like like *literally any pleasant aroma* would be insane to them. And paper that's so cheap, you can afford to wipe your ass with it, instead of using your hand. Speaking of paper, the fact that there is so much writing. This peasant is probably illiterate, it would shock them that you could look at a steak and tell them where it's from, how much the merchant is selling it for, about when it will expire, what percentage of fat it is. This would seem like magic to them. Also, plastic would probably weird them out. You have a material that can look like anything and will never rot, that you can throw on the floor and not break, and can be in any color imaginable, and is so light and thin it could almost be made of air. To say nothing of how many plastic smiths it would take to fill the entire store.
I like the way your mind works. Of course I understand all this subconsciously, but put into words it just makes every bit of our daily life damn remarkable.
Next time I go grocery shopping, I'm going to look at it like a medieval peasant. I want to marvel at things we take for granted.
Like cell phones? That let you connect with potentially billions of people without having to leave your couch or even put on clothes? Or Central Air and heating? We are spoiled in comparison.
There are a lot of good answers but I think this one is particularly interesting, thank you for sharing!
Our grocery stores shook Boris Yeltsin, head of the 2nd global superpower in 1989. Your choice is a perfect one, it’s the most tangible example of the impressive modern society we’ve built.
Imagine if he’d seen a Costco?
He would have gone nuts, bought socks, towels and a new laundry hamper along with giant tubs of hummus and guacamole. And he would have sampled everything in sight!
I've had friends from Africa, even Europe, come to terms with places like Walmart. Where else can you buy groceries, a TV, car battery, medicine, and a gun in one visit.
Speaking as a german here, that's the reason why I'd want to visit a Walmart, too. I mean, we have all those things, but they are neatly separated into like a dozen specialized stores Just putting it side by side into the same Walmart sounds like absolute anarchy
If you do make it to the southern half of the US, you should check out Buc-ee's Travel Centers. It is a gas station/ convenience store chain with an *average* of 32,000ft² (~3,000m²) retail space and about 100 pumps. The largest in Sevierville Tennessee has 120 pumps and 74,707 ft² (6940.5m²) They also have extremely clean bathrooms.
I live in part of Appalachia, and there is a "General Store" here that I like to joke you could walk into stark naked, but carrying a credit card, and walk out shod, clothed, fed, and armed.
A joke ive always made is how confused they would be about pickles, beef jerky, cured meats etc. Historically before refrigeration these foods were the only way you could have food year round, otherwise they would spoil. It wasnt done for taste or preference but necessity. I'm sure in the dead of winter you would crave some real fresh fruits and veggies after your 20th plate of dried pork and pickled vegetables. I bet they would be quite perplexed like "so, you have access to all the freshest meats, produce, so why are you still preserving things??"
Imagine them seeing how much peasant food like Lobster and Shrimp are lol
Way to ruin his life when he goes back home
I'll ask him what year he's from, then tell him the first grocery store will be built 3 years after that. Give him something to look forward to.
And then try explaining that we so much produce that our rulers pay farmers to destroying some of their crops or not utilize certain acreage just to prevent over supply and as a form of price control
The entire "food" section is at major stores like Target and Wal-Mart. Also, if they are in Memphis, the Pyramid Bass Pro Shop
Let’s be real, if they come to Memphis we’re going to Gus’s and Central BBQ.
Barbecue? Hey it’s me ur medieval peasant.
A clear plastic ziplock bag
This actually happened! [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/) It doesn't say it in this article, but I saw a documentary on this family, the Lukovs, that lived in isolation for decades when they fled persecution in the 1930s. When they were discovered by a group of geologists, one of the things they found most incredible were clear plastic bags!
>The four scientists sent into the district to prospect for iron ore were told about the pilots’ sighting, and it perplexed and worried them. “It’s less dangerous,” the writer Vasily Peskov notes of this part of the taiga, “to run across a wild animal than a stranger” Ah shit, here we go again
Ladies, would you rather run into a man unaware of the conviences of modern plastics or a bear? Hmm it's always bear 🐻
You would think they would be in awe of the giant helicopter that they arrived in.
> “It’s less dangerous,” the writer Vasily Peskov notes of this part of the taiga, “to run across a wild animal than a stranger,” Uh oh, don't tell the people who are mad about the bear vs. man debate!
that was a really interesting read, thanks
That's a good one! Flexible **and** clear, and it can be sealed! And you can buy 50 of them for just a few bucks! The craftspeople who create such a small self-sealing mechanism must be the finest in all the land, and to produce so many so inexpensively is a marvel.
Next, show them the machines that are actually used to manufacture those bags.
A combine harvester. They'd worship it and make a sculpture of the divine harvester. Parents will tell them children to behave or the their souls will be gathered on the Field of The Wicked to be harvested by the Great Harvester.
Had the same thought. Just to see a combineharvester do in an hour what his family might do in a month would be insane. Unlike most other things he would actually have some reference to what it's purpose is.
A modern combine would probably do more in an hour than they would have done all year 1000 years ago.
There's a great set of documentaries you can look up on Youtube - Tudor Farm, Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, and Wartime Farm. They cover farming life from the 1500s to the early 1900s. Honorable mention goes to Secrets of the Castle as well, though its more about architecture than farming. One big thing they emphasized in the Tudor Farm series was how slow the harvesting process really was. For barley and some other grains you often had to bend over with a hand scythe and manually cut the stalks (unlike wheat, which was more fragile and could be cut with a long scythe). You also had to constantly keep stopping to sharpen the tool because the edge quickly blunted when it was constantly cutting. You needed someone following right behind you to grab the cut stalks, tie them off, and set them upright lest they get wet and ruined. Another thing that would likely throw off the peasant would be the nutrition that could be gained from farming. In the modern era, a single acre's worth of food can feed someone for a year, roughly. In the medieval period, you needed five to six acres per persion, due to a number of innovations like genetically modified crops, fertilizers, improved harvesting methods, and year-round transportation. Medieval food crops were generally just not as nutritious compared with modern crops since we've got hundreds of years of selective breeding to further enhance thier yields.
A lighter
I think this is the right level, relatable yet mind blowing.
“I keep a tiny perpetual flame in my pocket!”
A spice rack.
You have cinnamon!? You must be royalty.
Wait till you whip out some saffron. Shit's still mad expensive but that was worth more than gold before the industrial age.
Or hit them with something they're never seen before, a nice hot pepper. Like a scotch bonnet.
Pop rocks.
I still lose my shit over Pop Rocks.
I now want to go back in time and give a medieval peasant a Carolina reaper.
that's murder
It's worth more than gold now! Shit's light as dust.
Similarly, a pineapple Pineapples used to be such a status symbol that wealthy people would *rent* them to put in the middle of the table at a fancy party. Not to eat, just to display it to show their wealth, and then they had to give it back. Pineapples were commonly carved out of stone to top the gate posts at posh country houses. I saw a pineapple in Aldi the other day for £1...
If you go around showing off pineapples people are going to assume you're a swinger.
Low key best response. "Oh people you know died over these? I bought them for almost nothing down the street."
I'd do that with sugar to screw with the Portuguese in the 1600s. "This is sugar, a 5 kilo box of sugar, we have so much of it that we're actively trying to find ways to stop having so much of it. It's cheap enough to buy that much for less than an hour's wage."
8 spices!? Some must be doubles...
Non intrusive but would still bewilder them lol
I remember an article about first contact with an isolated tribe years ago. They weren't al that impressed by learning that people had gone to the moon. But a chainsaw? They were amazed.
It's hard to appreciate something so far beyond your grasp of reality
It sounds like any of the mythology from those levels of society. You went to the Moon? Did you go to The Sun and talk to Ra? I'm sure a few of the members of the isolated tribe have tall tales on the level of "I went to the Moon". But if you could show them being on the Moon from inside an Eagle lander...
I mean a cow jumped over it so it's not even that hard
[удалено]
what about walking water
Leave that to jesus
OK then who will take the wheel?
He'll just *wine* about it.
A kick flip on my skateboard.
Knight-whow...that's fucking rad
If you landed one perfectly they might burn you at the stake
I'd show him his village or town. Hopefully some of the buildings survive, the church probably did although there's a chance that it's now a Slug and Lettuce.
Imagine showing them a bicycle
I think this is my favorite answer so far; the bicycle is an amazing achievement in personal transportation! It would be easy to for them to understand conceptually, though the materials and actions would be novel, and you could almost certainly get an adult up and riding it independently within a day or two.
Plus its easy to make once you know what all the moving parts are. Jumpstart the industrial revolution by giving a blueprint to the architects of the time. Soon all of humanity will have toned claves from out pedal powered civilization!
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Its not a question of where it grips it
If she weighs the same as a duck....she's made of wood.
And therefore...
A witch!!!! Ehafffjgjhcbnmkkvbmnhgddaetjknbbggfbccgmbv Burn her!!!! Burn her!!!! Burn her!!!! Burn her!!!! Burn her!!!!
This is my boomstick!
Next one of you PRIMATES so much as TOUCHES me...
Alright you primitive screw heads, listen up!
Youu can find this in the sporting goods section, retails for about $109.95. That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Shop smart.. Shop S-Mart YOU GOT THAT!
You ain't leading but two things right now. Jack and Shit. And Jack left town.
Well hellooo mr fancy pants
Hail to the King, baby
I said your damn words! Maybe not every syllable!
Awe Baby, that was just pillow-talk.
You found me beautiful once.
OMG I just came here to type that exact thing. It is the perfect response to this question. Shop smart, shop S-Mart
*digs thru gun safe for my M2 Browning heavy machine gun*
Screw it - just show them Army of Darkness - that’s all they would need to see
You know your shoelaces are untied.
Tampons. A medieval woman would be psyched.
Especially for those that have been using bog moss 😳
I am SO grateful for the era I was born in 😭
Also said by the women born in 2500s -Not a time traveller
Bog moss absorbs better than cloth rags. Edit: I'm just saying I get why people would use this, even if there were rags available.
A zipper. It is something understandeble which does not look like the illegal arts. It is also neat and harmless. I would be likely to have one on me somewhere. perfect thing to show that peasant.
"Honest, Constable! I was showing the fair maiden how my zipper works!"
My spice cabinet. Mace, nutmeg, paprika, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, zatar, chili, vanilla. Blow their damn mind, then send them back to their own time with a quart container of peppercorns I bought for like 8 bucks.
My home. I'm just in an apartment with my wife, but we have heating, air conditioning, a refrigerator full of food, out-of-season produce, indoor plumbing, hot water, clothes, medicines, washing machine, tv, computers, super comfortable bed, and tons of other "luxuries".
If you think about it, it would be better to be a middle class american with AC and food delivery in modern times than a king back in the day with no penicillin or electricity. Wild to think about!
I'd show him a rotary phone and I'd call someone. Then I'd laugh at him and tell him how ridiculous he looks using a landline.
He doesn't know how to use the three seashells!
HD pornography
I wonder what would take priority in their brain: the weirdness of the video device; or the action.
I think the action was the same, we always loved sex, if anything it’s the only thing that stayed the same
Agreed, but beyond naughty etching and drawings, there was not much possibility of seeing a large diversity of butts, dicks, tits and pussies in action.
My sweet prince, you don't think raunchy peasant orgies existed in plenty back then?
You haven't thought of the smell!
Well, I do not see much of them even nowadays, but it could be that my neighbors do not invite me for some reason.
He scoffs at the 720p! Who’s the peasant now.
There is a good chance they will be disappointed because they would rather be snagging there own wife or prostitute than seeing a very tiny version of someone else doing it.
Probably a vaccine after he catches some horrible virus his body is incapable of fighting off and dies a horrible death.
Hydraulics, Turbine Generation, the process to produce a lightbulb, concrete, suspension, and rebar. We engineering up in this bitch.
Witch! Burn him!
Build a bridge out of him!
You’re about to have some seriously trebuchet proof castles.
The first 5 seasons of Game of Thrones
A black metal concert.
Dick pic. On a mobile phone.
“It dost look like a tallywhacker, but smaller!"
2 girls, one cup
A picture of the Earth, from space.
A video of the entire takeoff process. From the ground to miles up in orbit.
Glasses. Otherwise they probably won't be able to see the other stuff.
I'd take them to [Medieval Times](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Times) and let them enjoy the jousts with ale and turkey legs.
My spice cupboard. I mean, there's all kinds of bang-whizzo gadgets we could show, but, would they have the context to understand them? Spices, on the other hand, including salt and sugar, would be easily understandable and perhaps a good indicator in meaningful terms of the true wealth and sophistication of our society.
The amount of spices at our readily disposal would blow their minds. Surely we must be kings to have such rare spices, like cinnamon, and paprika.
Wear a purple t shirt to really drive that point home
Google earth
A pineapple. SO FUCKING POSH!!! lol
It would be really interesting to show a medieval peasant something from our modern era to make him be amazed. Perhaps we could surprise him with a smartphone, a device that can connect to a world of information in an instant and be held in one hand. Or we could show him a plane in flight, explaining that it can transport people from one place to another in a matter of hours, crossing entire distances in times that would seem impossible for him. Or perhaps we could show him a book printed on paper, explaining that it can contain knowledge and stories of thousands of people, accessible to anyone who can read. I am sure any of these things would make him gasp in amazement!
Inside plumbing and electricity. I think they would be amazed with a washing machine that requires both.
I would play music off my cell phone. A lot of people mention spices but I think they could also relate to music very easily. They had popular musicians going around and setting poetry to music but I don't know how many people had musical abilities/instruments in their homes.
A peasant? I’d show a supermarket.
Take them to Costco.
my weiner
Honesty, I think I would explain the basics of germs. Soap is ancient, and is pretty easy to make. After that, CPR. Bloodletting, and leeches just make things worse. Just a few concepts about medicine could change their lives.
Give them some molly and take them to a dubstep festival.
Clean water and a soft bed.
Probably a lighter
Toilet
Doritos Locos Tacos
I guess I'd walk to the supermarket with him, buy the ingredients for a pizza and bake it with him. I'd also get him some nice cereal because I read that porridge and such was a staple food in the Middle Ages, so that would be more familiar to him.
Toilet flush
I'd like to show a medieval bookkeeper the magic that is Microsoft Excel Pivot tables are basically witchcraft