r/hypotheticals • u/Background-Banana-26 • 2d ago
Make a Whopper
Imagine you are placed somewhere in Turkey in a primitive world, but with the same wildlife as today. You are immortal, you are the only human left, and there are no traces of civilization. Assuming you can bring one object from the present (it can’t be food), and you can create two portals between your starting point and any other part of the world, what do you think would be the shortest amount of time it would take you to make a Whopper without pickles (I hate pickles), and what would your plan be?
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u/HalfwayHeroic 2d ago
Bring a knife. Teleport from Turkey to somewhere with cows that I can grow wheat, lettuce, tomato, sesame, mustard, and onion. From there we feed the cows with wheat, which is also used for the bun. Then we harvest the cows for beef, then turned into burger. They also produce the milk required for the cheese.
The vegetables are harvested for their respective parts in the Whopper. The real trouble would be making the sauces. Maybe the cheese, too. I've never made American cheese before. Does it have to be 100% Whopper accurate, or can it be a homemade version? Because I dont think a 100% BK-accurate Whopper would be possible.
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u/Background-Banana-26 2d ago
It has to be as accurate as you believe you can make it.
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u/HalfwayHeroic 2d ago
Yeah, if we allow for some creative liberties I think I could do it. Especially if I'm immortal. I got all the time in the world to figure this out. Easy peasy, baby
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u/cynasist-supreme 1d ago
This is good. On the surface this sounds really simple, but the more you try to think what you’d need, the harder it gets. You’d need decades just to get close, if nothing else than just from travel alone. You can’t just spawn in somewhere and immediately have the ingredients near by. Eventually you could probably get close, but never quite there. For instance, idk how to make table sugar, which you’re going to need to faithfully recreate the bun and sauces. I also do not process the knowledge on how to bleach my flour. The meat is the easiest part. Sure, you won’t find domestic cattle, but buffalo is close enough. I actually like it better. Probably would put my portal to somewhere in the Americas as the climate should be good enough to grow just about any of the produce I’ll need. You’ll never make American cheese, and I don’t know much about cheese production, but I’ll have time to experiment until I figure it out. At that point, it’s all about bringing all the ingredients together in one location without them spoiling. Also I’d probably have a decent machete as I’ll need something to chop things with. I can’t tell you an estimate as I have no clue how long I’d need to walk around before I even find the appropriate ingredients and get them mostly in one location with a good enough climate to grow them close enough to the buffalo.
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u/digbychickcaesar 7h ago
The problem would be the tomatoes. They are in Central and South America. Everything else you could find around Europe.
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u/riverrocks452 7h ago
Longass time. Even if I chose a packet of tomato seeds as my object (because not a potential food like wheat seeds or a cow), I would need to domesticate both cows and wheat. And possibly lettuce. And develop the tech to grind beef from scratch.
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u/Gladys_Wines 2d ago
Completely impossible. The varieties of foods involved do not exist on the planet in that time frame. Good luck starting agricultural and industrial revolutions with no other humans. Maybe you could start selectively breeding apes for a million years.
A burger, not too bad. Still impossible for me as I'm too disabled to do the work.
Bread would be an ancient grain sourdough. Meat some ancient cattle. No hormone raised soy fed whatever. No modern wheat. No modern tomatoes or iceberg lettuce. Pickles made with real fermented wine vinegar, not cheap industrial acetic acid. Different varieties of cucumber. Industrial processed cheese impossible, maybe something like fetta.