Poof you are in 1947 and on a secure installation where you don't belong.

[Joan d'Arc]

Just watching some Eureka (love the show) and I am watching season 4 and they have this episode that made me ponder this question for you guys.

How would you establish that you were from the future, and not a spy (because in 1947 everything was a world of paranoid) if you were discovered to have several of todays unexplainable devices on you ie a cell phone, or some form of tech that would sure wow them in 1947.

I know nothing of sports, so quoting statistics would not help me there. And while quoting history sounds clever, it also could back fire if you seemed to know things that only made them more suspicious.

I'd be falling back on science myself.

What about you?

[JasonRimmer]

I enjoy Eureka aswell. Though haven't watched it for awhile. As for proving your from the future that would be difficult. Unless you knew the time very well indeed so you can predict events in the forth coming days you'll have a hard job I think. Or unless you know some sort of scientific revelation, though that could end up being dangerous and speeding up knowledge etc.

[Kemmo]

Not sure proving your from the future would be such a good thing,you would probably end up in a small room "helping" the goverment.As for eureka great show,pity series 5 is the last one to be made.

[Joan d'Arc]

Well it's all about... you can't go back, you can't not provide an explanation any other way, and you are about to be executed as a spy, so basically your hands are tied, think fast, what do you actually know, that you couldn't possibly know, if you were telling the truth.

Yeah the government might suddenly consider you suddenly very 'valuable', but of course once you start introducing events that had never happened as you would be making them happen your own supposed future would be more or less gone.

I think I would select some events I knew, that had no military significance, and yet were things that were still major events.

I know of numerous science break throughs that were not really military applications, just had not become part of our knowledge base yet.
Plate Tectonics is a pet favourite, as it is a science that was born about the same time as me. My trouble would be thinking of things that had not yet become part of our world, that I actually understood. Who here actually knows how to explain the internet and how it works? Could you beat Bill Gates to Windows?

[SLAAKMAN]

1947. That would be an easy one. First things first. Elizabeth Taylor would be made my concubine immediately. Then we would be over Mt Ranier on June 24 with plenty of camera footage to prove that the flying saucers were real. Then we would fly directly to Mac Brazels ranch so that we could witness the crash of one of those craft which made Roswell so famous in early July. http://ufoevidence.org/cases/case511.htm Then the fun would begin. Id apprehend the Soviet spy ring known as the Cambridge Five, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Five especially Victor RothSchild & proceed to personally beat the living shit out of all of them on a daily basis for the rest of the year. Then I would disclose as many details of the Communist spy ring inside the West as disclosed by the Venona including names of Communist agents; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._United_States Also the details of the Soviet nuclear program would be disclosed including the identities & location of their personnel and facilities; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_atomic_bomb_project Then I would disclose locations of the Soviet uranium mines in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, North Koria Russia & Bulgaria so that SOE could sabotage them. Then I would file claims on all the emerald, gold, copper, silver & platinum mines in AZ, NV, MT, UT, CA & NC. After completion of this task I would reveal it to my captors. Then I would purchase all the land I could get my greedy paws on in northern Louisiana, east Texas & souther Arkansas which contains the largest natural gas deposits in the US known as the Hainesville Shale reserve. With all of this wealth I would fund Tuckers automobile factory & subsequently send Detroit packing. Hughs Aircraft would then be my next target for a merger so I could build 300 Hercules "Spruce Goose" flying boats for NATO. Walt Disney would be my partner and I would hunt down all the jerkoff Communist gangbanger douchebags in Hollyweird, send them to Devils Island & work them to death in the hot equatorial sun for decades. Oh what fun it would be if only I had a time machine!!

[doomtrader]

Eureka is my favorite series. I still didn't finished to watch second part of the fourth season, cause my wife wanted to see all the Friends once again (238 episodes)

[Joan d'Arc]

Unfortunately for Slaak he missed the point, he's apprehended, under close guard for being a suspected spy, and facing a likely execution. Which would make a lot of his post not an option.

Revealing information on real world Soviet spies might just speed up his exit, or possibly it might just make him a target of the Soviets, which would mean he'd have even more people trying to kill him I am not sure he'd be buying up much land at the time

Slaak would end up looking like a double agent with a death wish.

Now if he were to put a couple of soviet agents into the hands of the government as a bargaining chip, he might buy himself a bit of time. After all, people turn all the time, he could just pass for a Soviet that wanted out.

[SLAAKMAN]

How would you establish that you were from the future, and not a spy (because in 1947 everything was a world of paranoid) if you were discovered to have several of todays unexplainable devices on you ie a cell phone, or some form of tech that would sure wow them in 1947.

(You didnt specify the 'discoverer'). ;-p

[Joan d'Arc]

(You didnt specify the 'discoverer'). ;-p

That's because it isn't a wannabe witch hunt Slaak, it's a test of your creative thinking. What would the point be in naming a specific discoverer?

[SLAAKMAN]

If the date of my arrival is on Jan 1st 1947 then I would tell them that New York governor Tom Dewey was going to be nominated by the Republicans in 1948 but lose the election to Harry Truman. Also the World Series would be between the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers, with the Yankees winning the Series in seven games. Also that a black man (in 1947 vernacular, a "Negro") would participate in the series with the Brooklyn Dodgers as the first black man to do so. Afterward I would pursue the agenda stated in my posts above.