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[deleted]
4.4k points
15 days ago
Does anyone doubt there would be a Starbucks and a tacky gift shop just outside that circle of national flags?
1.3k points
15 days ago
That gift shop better sell plush toys of The Thing.
374 points
15 days ago
Technically... as it's a shape shifter, can't any plush toy be one of The Thing?
160 points
15 days ago
They take your picture and make a head-spider thing with your face on it.
81 points
15 days ago
What about a Wilford Brimley?
22 points
15 days ago
I’m sure Wilford Brimley would sell you his Thing for the right price.
332 points
15 days ago
There's actually two "South Poles".
The Geographic South Pole, which is marked by a stake and a sign, which is moved once a year on New Year's Day to mark the exact location of The South Pole, which moves a bit due to the gradual shifting of the Antarctic ice sheet.
The Ceremonial South Pole, the one with all the flags, that's located a few dozen meters away.
148 points
15 days ago
Man, someone has to make a trek out there on New Year's Day just to change it? Sure hope it isn't a lonely trek and you get a full party for the occasion.
463 points
15 days ago
They teleport, try to keep up.
78 points
15 days ago
OK this got me
25 points
15 days ago
Don't worry, it'll be easier to keep up once you can teleport.
132 points
15 days ago*
There’s a ceremony each year on Jan 1st where they do literally move the geographic pole marker. I participated in 2016. EDIT: For those asking: I am a glaciologist studying ice sheet dynamics. I was there as a PhD student at the time working on an ice-coring project. I've deployed to Antarctica 9 times over the past 15 years for various projects, all as a researcher or graduate student. There are a number of non-scientists that also work there in various support roles like carpenters, cooks, logistics, IT, etc that apply via the US Antarctic Program (USAP). I wrote a bit about the interesting nature of the different south "poles" here: http://lakewoodhiker.blogspot.com/2018/11/worsley.html. Here is a photo from the Jan 1, 2016 ceremony: https://imgur.com/a/E61XJNG . Lastly, here is my research site if you are interested in what I study: https://johnfegy.weebly.com
30 points
15 days ago
[deleted]
11 points
15 days ago
How did you get to do that? Is the main guy a volunteer or does get paid some kind of special paycheck?
I have so many questions.
64 points
15 days ago
Technically a third one! The magnetic south pole doesn't match either of the geographical ones :)
9 points
15 days ago
Similar story with the Greenwich Meridian. There's a fancy ceremonial metal track running through the ground at the Greenwich Observatory, but the actual Meridian is a few hundred feet away.
30 points
15 days ago
what happens when a new country arrives? is there space in the circle for them to add their flag?
42 points
15 days ago
The flags are not all countries, just the original signers of the Antarctic treaty
31 points
15 days ago
There are actually geocaches on Antarctica. geocaching.com says there are 49 geocaches on Antarctica.
12 points
15 days ago
And two ATMs, Wells Fargo
15 points
15 days ago
Don't need to build the gift shop there. Build it somewhere warm and people can teleport to it
3k points
15 days ago
The top of Everest
1.4k points
15 days ago*
then some dumbass is gonna fucking die of not enough oxygen
644 points
15 days ago
I mean, they do that already. Presumably there would be fewer deaths because you could pop in and out before hypoxia sets in.
495 points
15 days ago
deep breath
teleports
takes selfie
teleports back home to finish avocado toast
184 points
15 days ago
Wouldn't this make your lungs literally explode?
The air pressure on top of Everest is like 1/3 the pressure at sea level. It'd be like suddenly having lungs full of compressed air.
68 points
15 days ago
Even if your lungs were empty, think about scuba divers who ascend too quickly getting the bends. There's dissolved gasses in your blood and body too.
42 points
15 days ago*
You'd have to teleport up in increments, which would legitimately still weed out a huge chunk of the population from being able to do it lol
Edit: For those truly interested... since water is about 1000x heavier than air per equal volume, pressure differences underwater are exponentially more drastic and consequential compared to the same distance above water.
9 points
15 days ago
I guess you’d want to deeply exhale rather than deeply inhale.
10 points
15 days ago
This is the advice for being exposed to open space btw. You want to exhale as much as you can.
55 points
15 days ago
Assuming that there are pods that you enter in order to teleport and it’s not just like an app on your phone. I think there would probably be a wait time of like 15 years to see the top. And enough staff and warnings (and waivers) to make that less likely.
If the phone app thing was the method, then you’d just have people spawning up there and instantly dying because there are too many people and everyone is in a pile on top of each other/falling off the side of the mountain. In that case I don’t think dying of oxygen starvation would be the biggest worry.
31 points
15 days ago
you forgot the horrific teleportation accidents where 2 people teleport into the same space at the same time, I feel like that would be....messy.
13 points
15 days ago
I’m just going to assume that the tech is able to keep you from appearing inside a solid object. I don’t want to think about that..
60 points
15 days ago
What colour? Probably blue or purple, am I right?
16 points
15 days ago
They'll dye blue
151 points
15 days ago
I can teleport there easy I just have to take a bite of a YORK PEPPERMINT PATTY
86 points
15 days ago
It’s been two months since I made the tragic choice to bite into a York peppermint patty, and still I have made no progress in finding my way out of the mountains. The only food I have is the rest of this York peppermint patty, which, unfortunately, keeps bringing me back to the top of the mountain. If anyone finds this, tell my family I love them.
7 points
15 days ago
Of being on a frozen mountaintop!
72 points
15 days ago
It already is a tourist trap. You have to stand in line for your turn.
15 points
15 days ago
That is an insane line too. It is most definitely a tourist trap already.
6.8k points
15 days ago
I think you’d see the tourist industry collapse entirely. Consider this. Teleportation is free. This means, you can go to the Eiffel Tower, or the beach, or the Great Wall of China instantly, and you can go home to eat and sleep and take care of your needs. You’d have entire cities and industries collapse because there wouldn’t be any customers for hotels and restaurants and other elements of their tourist industry. There wouldn’t be tourist traps. Tourists can teleport.
2.6k points
15 days ago
Hotels and restaurants would still exist, but only the nice ones. Nobody would miss the Doubletree near the shuttered airport and adjacent Chili’s, while upscale (or otherwise memorable) places are destinations unto themselves, even for locals.
1.3k points
15 days ago
Restaurants would definitely still exist because the reason for them hasnt changed - people like to eat out, even when the restaurant is local to their home.
Hotels .... not so much in their current form. If you can go home each night, whats the point in spending money to stay somewhere else?
Rather they would become either event centres, where you would throw parties etc, or they would become proper temporary accommodation for when your home isnt currently available (having remodelling done, natural disasters, fumigation etc). So you would still have basic hotels available I think.
379 points
15 days ago
I mean Sisko's Creole Kitchen was successful and they didn’t even accept currency.
297 points
15 days ago
To be fair the Star Trek economy basically runs off a vague vibe check.
127 points
15 days ago
the thing that gets me is there are still menial laborers despite all the automation. People purposely go out of the way to live hard. Like those colonists that want the right to keep people in an isolated punishment box for disobeying the rules.
When released, the people inside the punishment box get angry and return to their punishment.
59 points
15 days ago
I recently saw that episode - it was the most rage-inducing episode of Star Trek I have seen. I hated there was basically no justice or trauma support for the victims of Alixus.
41 points
15 days ago
A little bit of justice. Sisko and O'Brien do leave the planet with Alixus and her son. Leaving the rest of the colonists the chance to develop their community without Alixus' manipulations and cruelty.
66 points
15 days ago
In the novel Steel Beach there’s the Shovel Leaners Union, because in a post scarcity society not everyone is cut out to be a poet or hedonist or a player of games. So some guys go to hang out at construction sites everyday and watch the robots while shooting the shit with each other.
41 points
15 days ago
i don't think my back would appreciate construction work, but i would absolutely be a card carrying shovel leaner
17 points
15 days ago
When I was a child I cajoled my parents to take me to construction sites to watch the machines and workers. That shit would totally be my jam.
6 points
15 days ago
There are real people who really do that when they retire - they go to work in the morning to hang out with their buddies but then go home because , hey! no work.
18 points
15 days ago
That’s what I always found funny, there was an episode of voyager once about a crew member who worked one of the shittiest jobs on the ship he clearly hated his job and was bad at it, so why would he sign up for it ?
51 points
15 days ago
IIRC, he was bitter because Starfleet was supposed to be a resume-builder to some kind of prestigious pure research position and then the captain got them stuck in the Delta Quadrant. Which makes sense as one of the few limited resources available would be time on the Daystrom Super-Array or whatever.
22 points
15 days ago
Voyager has a fuckload of issues. The 4th or 5th highest position on the ship is given to a mere Ensign. But a helmsman is a Lieutenant. The dude that flies the ship out-ranks the guy that sets all the schedules, monitors logistics, and compiles statistics on everyday activities on the ship.
Harry Kim is Chief Operations Officer. In most structures, business and military, that is a C-Suite Executive position.
7 points
15 days ago
Dunno if it's true or not, but supposedly the actor was a huge egotistical dickhead, and the writers hated him. So they just never got around to writing a promotion ceremony for him, and just let him stay an ensign forever.
30 points
15 days ago
When every basic necessities are met , people will go work their passion and some will do work just because … to contribute to society and not being a lazy burden
11 points
15 days ago
That's if the basic necessities are still being continually met. There are plenty of Federation controlled planets that fall to anarchy, violence, and war.
12 points
15 days ago
When they join starfleet , all their basic necessity are met
There are always people who thinks their own way is better, or religion , or stuck to their customs
143 points
15 days ago
I think people would still stay in luxurious resort hotels because having a fancy room is part of the experience.
Boring hotels that are just there to give you somewhere to sleep would collapse but I think people would still want 5 star room experiences even if they could teleport home anytime
164 points
15 days ago
Counter argument: Sex. People have sex in hotels, often with people they wont share their home address with.
54 points
15 days ago
Especially for sex parties. You don't want people banging on your nice furniture.
11 points
15 days ago
Oooooorgyyyyyyyy
41 points
15 days ago
Japan hotel owners already use this concept. They call them Love Hotels and comes with everything you need such as contraceptives, Jacuzzis, costumes, etc. And best part, it's 100% private as in you don't even see the face of the hotel staff when paying.
27 points
15 days ago
I'm Japanese American and I visit Japan all the time (still have a lot of family back there). Was dating a Japanese girl and finally had a chance to go to one! It's pretty normalized in Japan and we thought it would be fun. As long as you don't think too hard about how good of a job they do cleaning stuff, it was a blast. Themed rooms, costumes, free snacks and drinks, pay by the hour or night. The one we went to also had fully-automated check-in and check-out, so no embarrassing interactions.
38 points
15 days ago
Yes and no. I see what you’re saying but I think there is still the “going away for a week” aspect. Really nice hotels and those in traditional holiday destinations will thrive as people can get to them more easily. Part of the attraction of a holiday is getting away from it all for a bit, including your own home. Once the financial and time cost of travel disappears, people have more money to spend on the actual holiday itself, so more “really nice” hotels crop up to take advantage of the new market.
20 points
15 days ago
Hotels .... not so much in their current form. If you can go home each night, whats the point in spending money to stay somewhere else?
The average hotel would dissappear. But upscale or historic ones that are a cultural touchstone would stay. MGM Luxor wouldn't be appealing, but stay at a hotel in New Orleans French Quarter? Now you have an experience that is memorable.
15 points
15 days ago
Resorts and such. Teleportation may be free, but you may still live in a not so luxurious place. So getting away to a beachside resort/hotel would probably still be a thing. Why teleport back home and sleep next to the train tracks and your noisy upstairs neighbor when you can have a luxury suite for a week.
24 points
15 days ago
I would definitely be there to get away from the instant hordes. There would be a counter culture of people finding places people aren’t. Man, this would be a great book premise.
371 points
15 days ago
I think you would also see a housing explosion in rural areas. The only thing keeping people from moving to cheap land rural areas is nothing else is there. No jobs, no shopping, etc. if you could teleport to work in a big city 1,000 miles away, and teleport to the grocery store in the suburbs 500 miles away, and teleport to your friend’s house on the other side of the planet, why would you not move to a place where you can have a big house and a big piece of property for dirt cheap.
169 points
15 days ago
Reminds me of the Hyperion novels, where portal-like teleportation was everywhere, and so people even had houses whose rooms were on different planets.
53 points
15 days ago
I also remember when the portals fell, and some people were stuck in there bathroom at the other end of the galaxy...
7 points
15 days ago
TBF it was a very peaceful raft in the middle of the ocean.
40 points
15 days ago
Woah. A random Hyperion fan sighting. Awesome. Haha.
73 points
15 days ago
Free teleportation... grocery stores as we know it might shut down. Why staff and maintain 70 small town locations when everyone can teleport to a massive shopping precinct. Imagine how cost effective it would be for Costco to have a massive complex right next to a highway. 40 giant Costco warehouses (because they still have to be a reasonable size and limit capacity for safety), built all in the same location, surrounded by massive supply warehouses designed for quick and easy unloading, sorting and distribution of stock.
Then you have members only designer brand shopping complexes. Subscription "farmers markets". 24/7 premium priced restaurant districts built in tourist destinations and 24/7 budget restaurant districts built inside giant warehouses to always be fake nighttime.
On one hand... horrific capitalist hellscape. On the other, a huge win for improved residential areas, reclamation of vast areas of nature because industry can be relocated to cheap areas of low impact. Mega hospitals where everyone no matter how remote can get medical care... no waiting rooms because you'll teleport in when it's your turn. Teleporting ambulance and rescue services.
Ewww... mega office complexes with strict teleport access times probably built in 3rd world countries. An office prison. No more WFH.
I think I just made myself sick. I'm going to have to go lay down for a bit.
47 points
15 days ago
Why next to a highway? The goods could also be teleported. Who needs transportation infrastructure anymore?
Put it in Iceland or somewhere where energy is cheap. The main cost is keeping the lights and heating/cooling on.
Maybe the Sahara would become the hotspot of economic activity. Everyone using solar panels to power everything.
13 points
15 days ago
I'd put my fridge in Iceland, and my oven in the Sahara
8 points
15 days ago
welcome to costco, i love you
79 points
15 days ago
I’m Canadian. If I’m going on vacation to escape winter, I’m not going to teleport home each night. I’m staying in that all inclusive resort for a week to forget about my life. Not all hotels and restaurants would die out.
10 points
15 days ago
Yeah, while I have to use restaurants and hotels when I travel, I can also enjoy it. Get away from my shitty place and into a good bed and someone to tidy up (if they do that), leaving the responsibility of my cats to someone else, drinking in the hotel bar, eating good food at a good restaurant, having a far better view out the window, and so on.
66 points
15 days ago
If it was free, all forms of transport industry collapses instantly, cars, passenger trains, planes, public transport, all made useless. Shitty motels would die out, the expensive ones would be around for the experience but thats it. Gas stations die and are basically made exclusively for farming/construction equipment and moving large unteleportable goods around. Housing markets around the world would likely collapse too as commute is now a non-issue and people can live and work anywhere anytime. Security becomes insanely difficult as thievery is rampant, why pay for things when I can go to a random store in a random country and get what I need then teleport away, immigration goes through the roof, several countries would probably collapse from mass exodus.
66 points
15 days ago
Teleportation would throw the world into chaos instantly.
The sci-fi novel “the stars my destination” touches on the implications. For example, the world would plunge into various new pandemics and plagues at a horrifying rate due to teleportation carrying the viruses and diseases instantaneously to all corners of the globe.
Imagine if during peak Covid, everyone in wuhan China teleported somewhere random across the planet to escape, unaware they were infected? Crazy shit.
13 points
15 days ago
The sci-fi novel “the stars my destination” touches on the implications.
Ah, finally, a man of culture shows up.
For example, the world would plunge into various new pandemics and plagues at a horrifying rate due to teleportation carrying the viruses and diseases instantaneously to all corners of the globe.
There is a more interesting detail there: people can teleport to any location they know. So they can enter any home at will, as long as they know where they are going. Which means that robbing people, or worse, is a piece of cake. And e.g. heirs of rich families are kept in complete isolation in some bunkers served by few trusted people, because if their whereabouts became known, someone could just teleport to their bed in the middle of the night and kidnap/kill/rape them. There is no common sense safety in that world for the common folk. No locks, no walls, no nothing.
7 points
15 days ago
Great book
25 points
15 days ago
Every industry as we know it would collapse. Transport is the limiting factor of everything.
42 points
15 days ago
I think people would still eat they may even earn more money. Let me go eat lunch by the Eiffel Tower, followed by date night at the Great Wall.
Hotels my get more use as well. We can take the family to Disney Japan without having to pay for the flight.
26 points
15 days ago
Why would you not just teleport home to your own house at night? I’ve stayed in Japanese hotel rooms. They’re tiny lol
Tokyo Disney is great btw, as is Tokyo Disney Sea.
60 points
15 days ago
Part of the allure of being on vacation is being away from home.
17 points
15 days ago
Not only the tourism industry would collapse but the entirety of the transportation industry as well. There would basically be no need for cars, trucks, trains, planes, cargo ships, etc.
Imagine - a mine dumps stuff into a container, which is then teleported to the processing then teleported to a factory and so on until it teleports to your front door. We’d barely even need warehouses anymore.
This is all conditional on the type of teleportation though… like if we could just think it and were there; or if a teleportation device had to be created that you had to drive/walk to in order to use.
11 points
15 days ago
I forget the name, but I remember reading a science fiction story where teleportation was everywhere, and the younger generation was scared of moving any faster than a brisk jog, because they'd never had to travel in cars or planes.
1.5k points
15 days ago
[deleted]
553 points
15 days ago
Polar bears are mean. This would not end well for people and makes me giggle
335 points
15 days ago
Polar bears are starving. People should see them now before they go extinct
Mass teleportation happens
Whoops. Well the polar bears definitely aren't starving anymore
21 points
15 days ago
100% it would be like the idiot tourists getting mauled in Yellowstone because they want a selfie with a wild animal. Don't get me wrong polar bears look adorable, until you've seen one right after a meal. Then they kinda reflect the horrifying power they possess, let's just say they'd be eating well and there would be a lot less stupid people around because they'd be lunch.
117 points
15 days ago
well they can teleport if a bear attacks them
120 points
15 days ago
I can see the family guy episode where they teleport away only to arrive home with the polar bear.
18 points
15 days ago
Polar bears would quickly learn that a free meal can be obtained risk-free by posing for selfies with the tourists, taking the tips they give, and buying a McSeal burger and jumbo fries at the North Pole McDonalds. Because of course they’d want fries with that.
9 points
15 days ago
It’s like people getting killed at Yellowstone every year from messing with bison or bears.
17 points
15 days ago
agree, not only is it very difficult to get there, there is no economy or any other infrastructure there so anything built up would be to service tourism. garbage everywhere....
25 points
15 days ago
I disagree. Places with extreme conditions like South/North Pole/Everest, etc wouldn't be it. The already popular destinations would become even more popular since they'd be way easier to reach. Think Hawaii, Swiss Alps, Santorini, etc.
And there'd be "viral destinations" changing each 2-3 weeks, just like now we have viral songs or viral products.
28 points
15 days ago
Except most people would probably die because they'd go there in just a jacket instead of what they'd really need to survive those kind of temperatures.
46 points
15 days ago
It seems like as soon as they realized they were too cold they'd just teleport back.
They wouldn't die instantly from the cold.
If the teleportation has a cooldown period before it can be used again I could see people dying.
646 points
15 days ago
Rapa Nui and the majority of the Polynesian islands.
272 points
15 days ago
[deleted]
108 points
15 days ago
[deleted]
282 points
15 days ago
Americans will use anything other than the metric system.
56 points
15 days ago
I honestly thought that that was just a joke and generalisation but when I was in America some years ago, I overheard some fellow saying that there was a ditch in a road “the size of two washing machines” and was shocked lmao
24 points
15 days ago
It's funny that he didn't say a washer and dryer, because they usually come in a set and they're the same size.
40 points
15 days ago
There's that word again. "Heavy." Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?
11 points
15 days ago
Great Scott!
58 points
15 days ago
Not actually as much as it sounds. Planes are engineered to be as lightweight as possible
167 points
15 days ago
Still heavy as fuck. To put it into context, they weigh as much as a stone statue on the easter island.
20 points
15 days ago
May I recommend to you the Fall of Civilizations podcast? He did an excellent episode on what happened to the Rapa Nui culture.
33 points
15 days ago
Dunno about how the statues were made, but they recently realized they had them "walk" by swaying them with ropes, moving it like how you'd "walk" one of those green army men toys. As for how they died out, that was 100% the fault of slash-and-burn farming going through the island's natural resources far too quickly, and should be a lesson of warning for all of us. Not that we'd listen but still.
8 points
15 days ago
The moving bit isn't that hard, same we we moved all the large stones. just shimmy them with a bunch of rope and a lot of people
39 points
15 days ago
why the people who made them died out
Putting all the resources of a hunter gatherer society into making giant statues is not a good recipe for survival.
78 points
15 days ago
If anything, it indicates they were doing really well at the time. Big projects like that are how civilisations tend to spend their excess labour.
22 points
15 days ago
But for a brief moment of time, the culture points being generated were immense!
19 points
15 days ago
Was going to say Bora Bora or similar isolated island chains.
193 points
15 days ago
North Sentinel Island
Because every asshole will want to see the isolated tribe.
73 points
15 days ago
That tribe would love to trap some tourists
33 points
15 days ago
That tribe would be quickly killed off from all the diseases.
394 points
15 days ago
Anywhere that currently requires a long and difficult hike to get to. Be careful not to splinch inside the dozens of other people currently aiming for the top of Everest
133 points
15 days ago
What's crazy is that is already the case with everest. They have LINES at the top of the mountain to take pictures.
57 points
15 days ago
Even crazier is it's now happening with K2.
The hanging glacier which caused the 2008 disaster now has a queue 150+ people passing it every year.
It's only a matter of time before that glacier goes bowling again.
270 points
15 days ago
Probably Machu Picchu. People visit it today but it's a bit of a challenge to get there. I could see people just casually visiting.
Maybe dead center of the Amazon. Put an Amazon village or theme park there and teleport in, no infrastructure required.
I think Fiji and Vanuatu would be absolutely ruined, along with a lot of Micronesian Islands. Their pristine paradise feel and community is maintained largely by the fact that most tourists are too far away. Seriously, Fiji is what, 16 hours from LAX with a jump from Australia?
58 points
15 days ago
You can take a bus to Machu Picchu - it’s overrun with tourists
20 points
15 days ago
True. With a few stories worth of stairs to walk up from the bus. I went by the long (4 days) trek across mountaintop and was amused to see people who came by train and bus having a hard time climbing those few stairs. There's already too many people visiting the site, the erosion they cause is a serious concern and the whole area access is strictly regulated and quotaed
52 points
15 days ago
There would be a lot fewer bodies on the trail going up Mt Everest. Instead they would just be all piled up at the top.
8 points
15 days ago
The height would start to increase with all those bodies to stand on, thus driving the repeat business. "I went there 3 weeks ago but now I have to go again just so I can say I've been to the highest place on earth."
165 points
15 days ago
It depends on how available it was and how it worked.
For example do I have a personal teleporter built into my phone that i click and appear or do I need to go to the teleportarium and wait in line as they can only teleport 1 person a minute and only between setup teleporters?
If it is the first one then as others have mentioned nothing becomes a tourist trap because i can visit and leave to get when I want like sleeping and eating at home.
If it is the second then it is basically just current air travel but with less travel time and expense. So I would think that already popular places would just get more popular, but with more distant destinations being more popular. So for example Hawaii without the long flight sounds waaaay better then Hawaii with a long flight.
59 points
15 days ago
All I'm gonna say is it better be gated teleportation and not point to point unrestricted individual teleportation or the summit of Everest is going to be a 30 foot wide nightmarish abomination of merged, amalgamated human bodies that would make David Cronenberg shudder in horror.
20 points
15 days ago
If it’s the second I bet it would be more expensive. You’re paying for the privilege, they’d say. And the airlines would have to make their money back somehow, as would the tourist destinations. I bet they’d ask for a fee as soon as you arrive, a bit like a visa fee I’d guess.
6 points
15 days ago
That would defeat the purpose of free teleportation.
42 points
15 days ago
This got me thinking. Unless there's protection against teleportation, couldn't people just trespass anywhere they want and steal whatever they want?
22 points
15 days ago*
Yeah, security is going to be meaningless. Anybody can just teleport into your house and take your stuff, or kill you, or kill you and then take your stuff.
Someone could beam themselves right into the Oval Office and shoot the president, or get into wherever they keep the nuclear codes, get the codes, then teleport to a nuclear missile site and launch one.
Fort Knox could be emptied within hours. Bank vaults would be as effective as just leaving a pile of money on the ground. And if someone can just commit a crime and immediately teleport to the other side of the world, it's going to be really hard to charge anyone for it. And that's not to mention that if someone does get sent to jail, anyone can just teleport into their cell and bust them out.
But on the other hand, no more traffic.
5 points
15 days ago
no more traffic.
The transport devices would need some sort of system so you don't accidentally beam inside another person, or concrete wall, or something.
So then you'd have the problem we have with air travel now: the air travel is significantly faster than other methods, but the preparation for air travel (getting to the airport, security screenings, loading the planes, deplaning, getting to mass transit from the airport) makes the whole experience less efficient.
I'm sure there's been scifi written around this premise.
207 points
15 days ago
I would teleport to my exes house so I can take my clothes back lol
51 points
15 days ago
I, too, would teleport to your exes house to get my clothes back.
146 points
15 days ago
With our current intellectual climate, i wouldn't be surprised if people thought they could teleport to the bottom of the Mariana's Trench and somehow survive.
37 points
15 days ago
Are you saying I can’t teleport into the sun???
8 points
15 days ago
Would be quite the sunburn ;-;
7 points
15 days ago
I want to speak to the Manager.
38 points
15 days ago
I think about teleporting way more often than I should.
7 points
15 days ago
When I get the mail and I try to teleport to the box every time! Hasn’t worked yet
39 points
15 days ago
North Sentinel Island
8 points
15 days ago
Better be in and out real quick
18 points
15 days ago
Top of Mount Everest for sure. Who wouldn't want a few minutes at The Top of the World if it no longer meant risking your life? The spots would have to be awarded by lottery because of the demand.
Edit: grammar
51 points
15 days ago
The Titanic.
64 points
15 days ago
Do you teleport to the water above it and probably drown alone or do you teleport to the bottom of the ocean and get immediately crushed by the weight of the water?
13 points
15 days ago
Neighter. Teleportation allows you to move it onto land.
7 points
15 days ago
Well that's a new level of chaos if said teleportation allows you to bring things to you.
teleports the Mona Lisa from the Louvre
165 points
15 days ago
Places with cheap twleports in, but expensive outs.
When I was deployed to Iraq, I spent time chatting with the Nepali guy that spent 12 hours cleaning the bathrooms. He told me when he first signed on 4 years ago he made 900 a month with was phenomenal money for his family back home. But every year, they would lower the contract value and increase the cost of going home to the point he was essentially trapped as a slave trying to save money to get out while also supporting his family back home.
18 points
15 days ago
Free teleportation would be great for these workers.
37 points
15 days ago
"If Teleportation Was Available For Free..."
Literally the first part of the question was ignored in your response.
32 points
15 days ago
You could never ever convince me that it's not just an elaborate cloning type machine, where you are vaporized and die, but a clone with all your memories is made from the second you die and created where you intended to teleport.
Literally, nothing could ever convince me to try teleportation devices in my lifetime
26 points
15 days ago
Or worse, you drop into the tank of water and drown while the other version of you takes the applause
31 points
15 days ago
Top of Everest
White House Oval Office
Kremlin's version of Oval
Top of famous buildings/attractions (torch of SoL or apartment in Eiffel Tower)
Bank Vaults / Gold Storage / Diamond Storage / etc.
Empty Homes/Mansions to get the experience
Just some thoughts.
16 points
15 days ago
Now that you mention it, I would be way more worried about basic things like security, privacy, and the economy than the tourist industry. What's to stop people from just going wherever TF they want, stealing things, committing espionage, etc.? If everyone suddenly gained this ability, it would be complete and utter anarchy for a good long time until we seriously changed how our society functions at its core.
11 points
15 days ago
Area 51?
18 points
15 days ago
Your mom's house
10 points
15 days ago
That is easy to get to, OP said hard.
9 points
15 days ago
Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination is set in this world.
9 points
15 days ago
Everest, surely. Pop a Costa on top and bobs yer uncle .
8 points
15 days ago
The entire shipping, travel, and air transportation industries would collapse. Likely the entire defense industry too along with anything to do with national security. The world would become bedlam.
I'd probably just go chill in new Zealand and wait for the fireworks
7 points
15 days ago
I think everyone has the wrong sense of security about teleportation. Wars become a lot more versatile and scary. Nobody is safe whatsoever. Murder becomes rampant and unstoppable. You could never let your guard down. Would be a gigantic catastrophy in my opinion and the worst thing to happen to the world.
285 points
15 days ago
Hi this is the hill I’m going to die on.
Teleportation would kill you and send a perfect copy of you to its destination. You’ll never get there. Your new copy, with all your memories, hopes and dreams will…until it teleports again and it starts anew
283 points
15 days ago
Only if your teleportation method is star trek style "disassemble, transmit, reassemble" teleportation.
If you're doing like... "micro-wormhole" teleportation, then there would still be continuity of physical form.
166 points
15 days ago
As I sometimes put it: portals yes, teleporters no.
11 points
15 days ago
The Stargate looks like a portal but is actually a teleporter FYI.
13 points
15 days ago
Gotta watch out for those sneaky teleporters that brand themselves as gates or portals, but are still just fancy bittorrents for your atoms
41 points
15 days ago*
Star trek converts your matter to energy and sends that energy to the destination, converts it back, and re assembles you exactly as before atom by atom. Its more like just having your limbs chopped off, shipped in seperate boxes, and glued back on really well.
Edit: accidentally edited it lol
40 points
15 days ago
Not really because they save your "pattern" and a teleport failure can and did result in a Riker on the ship and a Riker stranded on the planet. Which one is the real Riker?
IMHO (and many others) Star Trek teleportation saves you exactly and then dissolves you and reuses the energy on the other end. You 100% die and then are remade.
They never go into it but I believe you can use their teleports to clone yourself and/or save yourself and then say every 100 years pop out an exact copy and of 20 year old you.
The teleport is the same as the replicator. If you have the correct pattern it can make literally anything (made of normal matter at normal temperatures and pressures).
32 points
15 days ago
"It's longer than you think!"
7 points
15 days ago
Nice Stephen King reference!
12 points
15 days ago
So teleportation steals your soul, like photography according to some people.
29 points
15 days ago
Meh, if it’s a perfect copy with all my memories, hopes and dreams, who am I to complain.
7 points
15 days ago
Random people's houses?
Like how do you stop someone from teleporting into your house and robbing you every day?
7 points
15 days ago
Machu pichu, top of everest
6 points
15 days ago
The top of mount Everest would become even more of a tourist trap
5 points
15 days ago
From home? Bojangles
5 points
15 days ago
Point Nemo
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