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Life is better now than back then in a lot of ways. Like a lot of folks here, I would have been dead long ago without antibiotics, and I wouldn't be near as functional without having had some rather complex back surgery a few years ago. I wouldn't see well enough to hunt without my progressive lenses, and I'm fond of being warm and dry.

However, I think a lot of that may be missing a big part of @sethwyo 's point:

There's an enormous number of missing people in this country and in the world,
it's likely that a lot of these people have tragically met with a bad end,
But I wonder if some of them went back in time, realized what had happened , Kept their cool, and just decided to avoid the fog and stay there instead of coming back to this place the rest of us hafto live in.

If going back in time were an option, there probably are some people who would take advantage of it. For all of our creature comforts now, we have lost a lot. When was the last time you drank clean, cold water right out of a creek? Found a nice piece of parkland in the foothills, built a cabin and just moved in? Killed an elk without having to draw a permit first?

White people in the 18th and early 19th century settlements enjoyed fairly secure lives, by the standards of their time, when compared to the native people, but it is documented that many of the white folks who found themselves living with Indians, whether voluntarily or not, wanted to stay with them when the option of leaving was presented. Indians who were taken into white society invariably wanted to leave it and go back to their tribe. Plenty of mountain men stayed in the wilderness by choice after the beaver played out, continuing to take their chances with the weather, hostile natives and white "road agents," starvation and any of the rest of the myriad dangers of that place and time. I guess we are talking about greater personal freedom, and a cleaner, healthier world, and also the possibility of discovery, of being the first of your kind to see or find something awesome. There is no doubt that we have lost a lot of those things, and there probably are people who would trade safety and comfort to experience them.

Given a choice, I guess I would stay where I am, but I can't deny a sense of wistfulness in wondering what life was really like back in the Shining Times.

Notchy Bob
 
I won't mention the exact area, but there is a large portion of Montana where outlaws have gone to hide for many years. I know some of those hid out there. Law enforcement don't even try to catch them, as they are in such a remote area they figure they can't cause any trouble there, and are in their own prison. Not to mention it would be pretty much impossible to catch a mountaineer in that country. Occasionally one will come out of the mountains and get nabbed, but it's pretty rare. One of my friends hasn't come out in over 40 years.

I've lived in a tipi here in Montana for a year and a half, then in a cabin with no power or water for a couple years. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything, but I wouldn't want to repeat it, either. I couldn't have asked for a better time to grow up, being born in 1954.

I was born in 1956, and had an interest in current events and history since about age 9.
Those subjects were commonly discussed at length at family gatherings every weekend by my father, uncles, and grandparents. Even as a young kid I enjoyed listening.

Seems like the worst things we had to worry about in the 60’s, 70’s, and most of the 80’s was nuclear annihilation by the Soviets.
Compared to the current state of affairs, I think I felt safer worrying about the Soviet threat.
The biggest difference I see between then and now, is that even when people vehemently disagreed on an issue such as a war or foreign policy, no one really wanted the U. S. to fail. And there was more respect for the Constitution.
Nowadays there are lots of Americans who are ashamed of our history and like the idea of our suffering military defeat at every turn, figuring it’s what we deserve.
I’m glad I was born when I was, and have been fortunate enough to have lived most of my life during some our country’s best decades.
 
I can appreciate the old days, ways and I do. In the old days I would have died at 17 when my appendix ruptured, it darn near killed me in 1993. My only wife and son would have died in childbirth in 2005, my son nearly died amid an emergency C section. Life is still plenty hard now, at least modern medicine is able to keep us alive for the next round. The wife and 18 year old son are doing great. Thank you Lord for the many blessings you have given me.
 
I can appreciate the old days, ways and I do. In the old days I would have died at 17 when my appendix ruptured, it darn near killed me in 1993. My only wife and son would have died in childbirth in 2005, my son nearly died amid an emergency C section. Life is still plenty hard now, at least modern medicine is able to keep us alive for the next round. The wife and 18 year old son are doing great. Thank you Lord for the many blessings you have given me.
Walking through the old cemeteries here, many kids died before they were one year old. The local cemetery has a listing of how everyone met their end, disease was a big factor.
 
The premise is great. Kind like Walter Cronkite's "You Are There". To experience things first hand and be able to talk to people that did some of the great things that formed our country would be fantastic. The reality is many of us would not have survived to see much of anything. Rod Serlings shows are kind of freaky if you ask me, just not my thing. He grew up about 50 miles from where I have spent my life.
I myself would most likely have died at age 4 from the staph infection that ruptured my eardrum. If I had survived I would be deaf in that ear. Could have died every summer from strep throat that I would contract swimming in polluted waters at our summer camp. The camp was located in a "development" of homes for Methodist ministers as a retreat. They were situated on a hillside above the lake and each had its own outhouse so the "nutrients" flowed down to the lake in the water table. By the middle of summer there was so much algae in the lake that it looked like you could walk on it. Most certainly my diabetes would have killed me over 20 years ago, although I might not have contracted it with more hard labor and less desk work. Some of my other medical issues over the years could have done me in too.
For those who say they like to go back to the 1950's, think of the McCarthyism that was going on then. Not that different from today just reversed. The nuclear testing that was going on etc. I can still remember doing duck and cover drills in school and evacuation drills in case of a bombing. Most of us would simply like to return to the years of our childhood when life was simpler and we didn't have the responsibilities that we do today. Most of us didn't have the money that we do today either, so things would have been harder like they were.
 
For the overwhelming majority if we went back in time to the 18th or 19th century we would be in Europe not America as our ancestors wouldn't have made the voyage yet. So it is really asking if we could pick a time in US history to live other than the present, when would it be and would you do it? For me the answer is I like now. Not only for the modern technology like my total reverse shoulder replacement surgery a month ago which went well. But I like my life and family and what I have created. Starting over again from scratch with nothing is not appealing at all.
 
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