How to timeout gets.chomp

You can use the timeout standard library

require "timeout"

puts "How are you?"
begin
  Timeout::timeout 5 do
    ans = gets.chomp
  end
rescue Timeout::Error
  ans = nil
end
puts (ans || "User did not respond")

Read more about the library http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib-2.1.5/libdoc/timeout/rdoc/Timeout.html