100 years back in time

[Skaperen]

you suddenly get transported back in time to the year 1919 with your usual clothing and your fully charged smartphone. what will you do?

[jetsam]

Am I in the same place I started from? 1919 was one of those very bad years, I think. Spanish flu...

[Skaperen]

you might be in the same place. what would you do if you were? what would you do if you were in some other place like the town one of your direct ancestors was in at that time?

[jetsam]

Well, I think I'd sit right down and have myself a good think about things! Also, I'd take stock of my possessions. Am I wearing pants? If I was near civilization, I think I'd stuff all the modern money in my shoe so I didn't get arrested for having fake currency.

Does the cell phone work? Is there a signal? Can I call out / call home? Does it still play Angry Birds and that stupid fruit slicing game? Uhh.... and flashlight! It can be a very complex flashlight if it fails all of the other tests...

Edit: ...and here's the plan. Go towards the biggest most anonymous city in the region and try to find pick-up labor or a menial job and a lodging house for short term needs. For the longer term, I might head to the university and present myself as an assistant to the professor of electrical engineering and/or pharmacy. If I could find a sympathetic person I could be honest to about my plight: we could debate the ethics of inventing or not inventing antibiotics and semiconductors 10 years and 35 years before their time... then there's nuclear physics, which I know little about, but more than enough to cause much havoc in the world.

[Artim]

Turn the phone off, it's no good here except as a camera. My best foster dad was 5 years old in 1919... I think I would go see how his childhood was, and try not to get polio along the way.

I might try to warn leaders about the second world war, the nuclear age, etc. And try not to be thrown in an asylum along the way!

[sdsurfer]

Get a job somewhere and scrape together whatever I could, then invest it all in Ford Motor Company and General Electric. Then I would take that phone to a patent office and register a patent.

[uRock]

I would make a lot of money. Everything else that I would do would be too political to talk about here.

[Frogs Hair]

I would make a lot of money. Everything else that I would do would be too political to talk about here.

Make lots of money in the stock market and convert it into cash before 1929. I would have foreknowledge various events that could be profitable.

[uRock]

Make lots of money in the stock market and convert it into cash before 1929. I would have foreknowledge various events that could be profitable.

Yup. There'd be a lot of people scratching their heads when the young me got millions, if not billions, when he turned 21 from a random trust fund.

[Shibblet]

Three words. "Grey's Sports Almanac."