You've been transported to ancient greece, Persia is gonna attack within 20 years. How will you realistically use your modern knowledge to destroy their army? Is getting a ton of chlorine gas your best bet?
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with 20 years to prep, probably best to simply improve the economy by an enormous amount via any relevant labor saving innovations your modern technical knowledge can bring. With a bigger economy Persia wont bother wasting their time attacking you because they know you have more resources to waste killing them.
You fricking idiot, don't you know that chemical weapons fricking suck? We banned them because they fricking sucked. How are you synthesizing chlorine at scale? Just build guns and cannons. Black powder is 75% potassium nitrate, 10% sulfur, and 15% charcoal by weight. 20 years is a long time, and you could probably bootstrap quite a bit of the industrial revolution in that time.
a cheat code to a bigger economy almost overnight is chemical dyes. Dyes are immensely valuable and there is already a market for them in the ancient world. Everyone always talks about perkin's synthetic purple, but the real innovation was alizarin. The market for natural dye basically disappeared over night once chemists determined how to make it.
if you can remember enough industry to do ECM, you can probably remember enough matsci to make decent steel. Didn't you pay attention in history class? Bessemer conversion allowed steel to be made at scale
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessemer_process
How am I going to make chlorine gas given the materials of the time?
You could electrolyse brine, but how to produce a current? Guess you could use an iron+vinegar electrochemical cell, but it's going to take a lot of metal and vinegar to produce usable chlorine.
Making wires sounds possible, and you can insulate with tree sap. Can't you make a simple generator with a lodestone, and then use the current from that generator to power electromagnets within a better generator, and then have a feedback loop in that generator to power the electromagnets with some of the electricity you generate to have an ok tier generator? And then run the current from that into saltwater to get chlorine gas?
>Can't you make a simple generator with a lodestone, and then use the current from that generator to power electromagnets within a better generator, and then have a feedback loop in that generator to power the electromagnets with some of the electricity you generate to have an ok tier generator
this sounds like a troll physics comic
>but how to produce a current?
you make a dynamo out of copper and magnetite, in 20 years you should be able to solve it.
Make million of caltrops.
You have 20 years, which is more than enough time to invent basic firearms and teach the Greeks how to mass produce them.
If you are a chemist it should be able to produce most lab equipment and chemical plants to produce ammonia with the haber Bosch process and then make salpeter acid from it or use the birkeland eyde process if you find some way to make electricity. Then you could skip the whole process of making black powder by scraping Natrium nitrate from farm house walls and directly go for smokeless powder. I think the main problem would be the barrel because the tooling back then was shit and was lacking precision. With the start of firearms they were using rolled metal sheets of iron/"steel" and they were welded together. This means the barrel would be heavy and not good. You have to make some precise tooling and long drills with sufficient rpm. Also to get good steel is harder. Or maybe one could try to not use drills but electrochemical machining which some guys use to make barrels for their 3d printed guns. But tbh for a war with the Persians bombs and a few hundred guns should be enough.
Next to this you could try using more advanced military tactics(gurillia warfare) and upgrade their current weapons like making English long bows which should penetrate their shields.
>Haber-Bosch
lmao
Step one, get a greek smith to make you a chemical reactor that operates at 200bar+ and 400°C+
Good luck with that.
You can forget about smithed barrels too. The metallurgy simply isnt there. If you are lucky, you might get some cast bronze canons to work in time. Next best bet would be simple grenades and rockets. Nitroglycerin is not too hard either, but good chance you blow up your lab before the persians arrive.
Bro what are you talking about? You can just make nitre from potash or just dig some up. From there charcoal + some sulfur you can make gunpowder. Making steel wouldn't be that difficult either, you just need enough fuel to heat iron for long enough, so maybe go mine some coal. From there you just cast the barrel.
You wouldn't be able to make modern firearms, obviously, but it wouldn't be that difficult to make a medieval era gun.
You can't make nitrate from potash. Potash only contains alkali and erd alkali minerals mit not nitrate. Nitrate normally forms through biological processes from urea. Ofc you could try to dig and find salpeter in the ground. Also some source which you could build up in 20 years is bird shit.
I Mean not me only but a team of engineers and chemist should be able to do that even in the stone ages from ground up within 20 years.
>because the tooling back then was shit and was lacking precision
build increasingly precise lathes until the desired precision is obtained. The simplest lathe can be built out of wood, rope and stone.
In 20 years is a lot possible. Good steel and I think even steam engines should be possible. At least the people there don't have to work from the ground up but know efficient engine and steam engines design. They will also try to make proper ammo and not just powder and bullets which should give a significant tactical advantage.
The antikythera mechanism suggests that greeks were using lathes and were able to construct high precision geared machines with low tolerances.
no need to, the Greeks managed to do it with iron age technology anyway
literally not my problem
I would start to stockpile petroleum and bitumen and learn how to distill them. Then I would make petrol bombs and burn the Persians to the ground! Hahhahhahhahhahhaa!
would defect to persia. frick literal greek homosexuals
>frick literal greek homosexuals
You'd have a better chance to frick a greek homosexual in greece though
I send in specially trained feminist agitators.
kill all the israelites
Why? The greeks won anyway and I'm neither. Not my problem.
Invent hygiene
Invent crossbows
only use precious iron to replace ballistas with artilleries...
to use on ancient Israel
I use my modern knowledge of history and sit back knowing it'll all work out
i would:
>1, teach them about germ theory
>2, give them an accurate map of the world
>3, teach them one-time pad encryption
>4, tell them to import coal from western europe
>5, tell them about the metals on cyprus (who they should trade with)
>6, introduce coppicing if not already in use
>teach the greeks how to make napalm, chlorine and 18th century artillery with cannonballs and the aforementioned chemicals
>enjoy victory
Convice Euclid and Archimedes to follow my lead with some basic maths unknown in there era :
Solving quadratic equation, calculations at limits, use of constant e and ln for basic economy and easy calculations, building a Newtonian telescope with bronze mirrors, .. etc.
With all that stuff, and the researches that would obviously result, all those brilliant ancient Scientists would be able to overcome anything in the next 20 years.
If they dont frick up, with bet Greece would be on the Moon around 500 AD.
>How will you realistically use your modern knowledge to destroy their army?
I'd nothing because thanks to my modern knowledge I already know the outcome and my intervention just endangers that.
Black powder, make bronze guns, spread that among the greeks and there you go.