Congratulations you have successfully perfected time travel, if you wish to survive you must address three major issues; if you don’t you will become a prisoner, face a gruesome death, or cease to exist. The first issue you will face will be getting stuck or stranded in time. The next problem you may face will be the dangers of that specific time period. The final and most important issue is disrupting the past and changing history. Anything you do in the past can have adverse effects on the world as you know it. Traveling through time presents a great deal of risk and responsibility. You must heed these warnings to achieve a successful time travel.

Getting stuck in time would be extremely inconvenient and in some cases fatal. When dealing with advanced technology such as a flux capacitor or the continuum transfunctioner, you must know how to repair and operate these devices at a moment’s notice. Since you will have limited resources in the past or future, you may also have to improvise in order to get back home. You may need the assistance of a worm hole, a lighting storm, or even unstable amounts of uranium. It would be catastrophic to get stuck in time, you would be in a different world dealing with foreign languages and customs, not to mention you would never see your friends or family again. Even worse would be getting stuck mid travel, in a veritable limbo between space and time. In this realm, commonly depicted in film as a vortex of clocks and math equations, you will simply float until you die, or kill yourself out of boredom and redundancy. To avoid these problems a travel companion always helps. I suggest someone with experience in science and adventure. Companions that come highly recommended are mad scientist, talking dogs, or an attractive female who brings out the best in you.

The next major issue you will face while time traveling is dealing with the inhabitants and environments of each time or dimension. The world has succumbed to an infinite amount of changes throughout history and in order to survive you must be aware of all possibilities. For instance, if you travel back to prehistoric times you would have to prepare for a dramatic climate change, hazardous vegetation, and carnivorous predators. Unlike Jurassic Park where the dinosaurs came to our time, you would be going to theirs, giving these indiscriminant killers home court advantage. While dinosaurs may seem scary, they are not the most dangerous predators you will encounter. If you travel to Transylvania in 1460, you will want to avoid Vlad the Impaler, you may wind up as a lawn ornament. If you decide to travel to Massachusetts in 1692, you had better not let anyone see you arrive, or else you will surely be labeled a witch and face an unpleasant death. The same goes for cowboys, medieval knights, pirates, Vikings and other various nefarious characters that Bill and Ted excellently warned us about. The future also holds a magnitude of danger such as super intelligent apes that will enslave the human race creating a Planet of the Apes or aliens that will wage a War of the Worlds. In order to defend yourself, you must be aware and educated in all fields of possibilities. Every one of these opponents has an Achilles heel and by knowing their weakness you can survive an unfortunate encounter.

The final major problem you will encounter while time traveling is changing history. As Ashton Kutcher showed us in the film The Butterfly Effect, this is a theory that a single butterfly’s actions can have a ripple effect on subsequent historical events. So while visiting the past you must be extremely conscious about what you do or who you talk to. Stay away from all major historical figures that have formed the world as you know it, such as Shakespeare, Cleopatra, Mozart, Gandhi, John F. Kennedy or Jesus. Interactions with these people can affect culture, art, and religion. As we have learned from Mr. Peabody and Sherman you must do anything in your power to ensure history remains the same. If you somehow encounter your parents in the past, any possible interaction can affect your eventual birth. In Back to the Future, Marty McFly almost got in the way of his parents meeting which resulted in him slowly fading away. Thus it is extremely important that when traveling through time you are clandestine and careful.

To ensure a successful and safe journey through time and space you must take these three issues into consideration. Getting stuck in time, facing vicious predators, or changing history are all possible while traveling through time. Each of these problems can be easily avoided with the right mindset and tools. Ultimately, survival is in your hands.