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from the answer-"cloudy"-try-again-later dept.
Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive'
Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he's got an answer: "536." Not 1349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. In Europe, "It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year," says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.
A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536–539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.
[...] At a workshop at Harvard this week, [a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono] reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in Antiquity this week.
Alpine ice-core evidence for the transformation of the European monetary system, AD 640–670 (open, DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2018.110) (DX)
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @06:59PM (3 children)
I'll back him up on producing penicillin. I don't even know much about it but it's easy to make a reasonable visual guess on any given moldy piece of bread. Next you take some inoculate a clean culture and then you inoculate a sweet boiled liquid with lactobacillius until it produces a faint oder (I don't even know how to spell it). Add your possible penicillin and see if it kills off the lactos. You'll know if it fails to develop a rich bubble of smelly h2s in the top of the bottle.
Since I admittedly know jack shit on the subject but am apparently a little more creative than the average bear. I'd probably feed some to the local whore and see if she clears up.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @09:38PM (1 child)
Really?
Oh, you mean you admittedly don't know much about the topic and have never tried it before but you still believe that it would be trivially easy to accomplish within the first week of being teleported to 536CE.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 03 2018, @10:07PM
Why does anyone even pay hospitals for penicillin? I just leave my toast out overnight then by breakfast I'm protected for the day!
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday December 03 2018, @10:54PM
Assuming this description is correct, you'd still need to accumulate sufficient capital - and work for sufficient time. This would not be quick, or easy, but it might be doable.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?