Just For Fun: If You Could Go Into Stasis For 50 Years...

Let's say a company offered you a chance to go into stasis for 50 years. Would you do it?

For myself, 50 years is a lot, but it's not like you would wake up and not know anyone. For example, my brother and sister would be around 75 years old, so they'd still be living.

And how would you even prepare for life when you woke up? I have some gold in storage, but in 50 years, perhaps they would have found a way to make gold, plunging its value. Putting money into a savings account may not protect against some idiot president printing out a shit ton of money and also highly devaluing it.

And what type of world would you expect to wake up into? Myself, I picture a world where everything is done virtually, and only a few people, besides the 3rd world, bothering with reality. We'd also have robots taking care of most of our physical needs, as well as soldier robots waging a war on some tinpot dictator in Africa. Because so few people go out, we'd let nature take back our roads and buildings, so we'd essentially be lying in our unkept houses, wired in to whatever entertainment we wanted.

As for the question of would I do it? I dunno. I'd be missing out on a lot of things I'd like to go to, like my siblings and friend's weddings, seeing their kids grow up, my parent's funerals, and how technology changes over time. I'd be waking up to a world where all the people I know have lived their lives and are entering the twilight of their existence.

Would you do it? And what world would you expect when you woke up?

I wouldn't worry about money. I could go around the talk show circuit as the Cyrogenic Man and make some bank.

I'd be too worried something would go terribly wrong, and I'd end up in the hands of the Atheist Alliance ala Eric Cartman.

I would love to see the future, but I doubt it would end as hillariously as Fry's adventures.

If I was single, probably.

albeit it seems to me the biggest fear is a catastrophic failure of the power source that keeps you alive.

Still, there are worse ways to go.

Hmmm......I already bitch about how "these kids today" never experienced
blank, blank + blank.

Now add another couple of generations and you'd never shut me up!

Fuck yes, no hesitation. Leave my investments in the hands of a capable broker and come back loaded. I doubt humanity will ever abandon reality as you outlined - some introverts might, but the extravert majority will always need it.

Sure, why not?

Just have my shiny robot body waiting for me when I wake up.

:delete:

In 50 years the world will have changed, but probably not by so much that it's worth bypassing so much of the lives of the people I know in order to have the chance to see it. Take a person from 1960, plop him down in today's world, give him a week long introductory class on how to use computers/electronics and a very brief overview of important historical changes, and he'd be essentially good to go. And, if genuinely revolutionary change comes, chances are that in the short to medium term it's at least as likely to be catastrophic change as it is to be positive.

Now if I had the chance to jump 500 years into the future, that would be a tougher call. The chances of positive, or at least interesting, revolutionary change probably increase more rapidly than the chances of catastrophic change, and the chances that the world is more-or-less the same but a bit more advanced drop considerably.

I am there now. You should be prepared for the clerical error. Though your new petite female body is considered top of the line, including premium flamethrower.

I'm pretty sure Uncle Albert wouldn't even think about passing up the chance to come back in 50 years as Hit Girl.

50 years? Mankind will have completely retreated from space exploration. The only thing up there will be communications, weather and GPS satellites.

Islam will have taken over all of Europe, and Mexico will have taken over all of North America. Terrorists will have blown up any building over 10 stories tall, and the airline industry will have collapsed under the weight of its own security practices, returning long-distance transportation to trains and boats.

Religious fundamentalists will have eliminated science from all schools worldwide, and it will be illegal to espouse any non-religious viewpoint in public.

Politics will be based purely on two criteria: do nothing that upsets anyone who isn't white; and do nothing that can be construed as polluting the planet.

Miranda rights will have an added sentence: "The police force apologizes if being arrested offends you in any way."

Gun ownership will be banned worldwide, and anyone found to possess so much as a family heirloom Civil War musket that hasn't been fired in 200 years will be arrested and committed to a mental institution for criminal evaluation. Except criminals found with guns will be apologized to for society's evils and released like an undersized bass.

People will still be whining about oil drilling, but will still be unwilling to give up their 3 ton SUVs, and hydrogen and electric still hasn't achieved any kind of success in replacing fossil fuel engines.

Wind and solar power remain the inefficient non-solutions they are today, but liberals still scream if anyone suggests building more nuclear plants. Green activists blew up the first fusion plants out of ignorant fear, causing government funding to be dropped for any future plants, condeming the world to continue with coal-burning plants, and windmill farms that cover three entire central US states (changing weather patterns over the entire country).

The US Air Force consists of three remaining B-52s, Five B-1Bs, a single B-2, One squadron each of F-15Es and F-16Cs (Block 60s repossessed from the Kuwati AF), and six F-22s. The USN has had to decommission all but two carriers - the Clinton and the Obama - and each carrier airwing consists of only 12 F-18Es. (The F-35 was cancelled by congress when it went overbudget and fell 5 years behind schedule). At any given time only 70% of these are airworthy. Russia has six times as many combat planes, and China ten (their bases on recaptured Taiwan have more aircraft than our whole force), but neither country feels the US is worth invading any more, since every city is mostly slum.

Seoul, Jerusalem and Mecca are all glassy craters. Suicide bombers with dirty suitcase nukes have rendered Central areas on NY, London, Madrid, Toronto, Geneva, San Diego, and many other cities uninhabitable for five to ten years.

But hey, communications, entertainment and computer tech will be awesome!

^ will there be porn?

Marso's Buck Rogers.

I really think in 50 years, most, if not all of our needs will be taken care of by robots. The dawn of robotics is already here.

In 20 years, we went from having the Apple IIe in the classrooms to having the sum of all human knowledge available to download in our cell phones. We are already way beyond the "Apple IIe" phase of robotics. If you woke up in 50 years, you'd be greeted by Jessica Alba and Scarlett Johansson ready to bathe the cryogenic goo off you, and only very minor differences, like a skin graft here and there to access the controls would give away that they are actually robots!

Cloning would've come a really long way by then as well, so whatever health problem you have today would be treated, often just growing a new "you" in some slime and harvesting the organs. Or better yet, just transferring your brain into the new body, although that might be more than 50 years into the future.

The extroverts could just party online, in a reality indistinguishable from a real bar or club. You would get the same human interactions, but none of the dangers of being mugged in the alley or having a chick slip a date rape pill into your drink then harvesting your organs.

Hmm...would crime even be possible in the future? It seems it would be way too easy to get caught, and not worth the risk unless the payout was really big.

Idiocracy doesn't paint that rosy a picture

its pretty accurate though. i mean that kicked in the crotch show is EXACTLY what we'll be watching soon.

You're forgetting someone in this virtual reality can slip you a virus, take your info, and buy shit with it.

Idiocracy might as well be a documentary.

Nope!

I hate the world now. I'm sure I would thoroughly despise it in 50 years.

But surely in fifty years the Confederacy will have finally managed to rise again?

In that case, I wouldn't want to miss anything.

Sign me up!!

I'd better be armed to the teeth since I'd awake in a post nuclear war wasteland inhabited by zombies.

So remain stationary and leave my security in the hands of others for fifty years?

Yeah, no.

On the other hand, one or both might have died in a carcrash.

Or one might have ended up with a terminal degenerative illness, and the other might harbour bitterness to you for the years they spent caring for them whilst you were in statis.

Personally, not for me.

Make it 100 then.

twenty thousand so i can watch dune unfold.

What will fifty years hence be like?
Venezuela will have banished all Chavezistas and will be run by self-professed neo-NAZI's (or neo-neo-nazis?).
America will be a socialist haven with cults of Ralph Nader being very popular.
England will still be the place with the funny accents where simon cowell will be supreme overlord and be dictator for life (which is forever since he has reserved the right of whatever genetic and medicinal advances have been made).
France and Germany will have been at war AGAIN, but they will have sorted their differences out over a very punctual, no-nonsense, and straight to the point cuisine. most importantly, FRANCE DID NOT SURRENDER.
China will have used the great wall to propel that weird chinese kicking guy (what's his name? Jackie Chan) into space to kick away an asteroid that was going to wipe out human civilisation. China is therefore renowned around the world as indisputably the greatest nation ever to have existed.
What an utopia!

Do I want to see the future? Based on what has happened over the PAST 50 years, I'd likely be horrified by what I'd see in the NEXT 50 years, unless somebody grabbed the military, overthrew the government and instituted back to basics divine right rule. Then, maybe, I'd be interested. But I'd much rather go home to God our Father in either scenario.