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That's a great question and google hasn't yielded any useful answers. Would the materials we have extracted and refined such as metal, return to some sort of ea
by cheese4242 7y ago
That's a great question and google hasn't yielded any useful answers. Would the materials we have extracted and refined such as metal, return to some sort of easily mineable state in a million years?
lmilcin raises a great point that many surface deposits of material that help "jump start" a civilization would have been consumed, but would the decay of our civilization return those same materials back into the surface, ready for the next round of civ to extract it?
- lmilcin 7y agoSo how do you exactly propose that pieces of coal materialize themselves along with prints of plants that vanished hundreds of millions of years ago? Or how the oil materialized from thin air. I think any industrial civilization will not hesitate to use things that are lying on the ground. It is the definition of "industrial" to be efficient with what you are given. It is possible we had other "types" of civilizations the way we had a dozen ancient civilizations exist akin to false jump starts like some kind of experiments but never reaching industrial level.
- antepodius 7y agoEven today, most of the iron we produce is recycled. I could certainly imagine that a post-apocalyptic civilisation would get basically all of its iron by scavenging from the giant hulks of rust we'd leave behind. I'd imagine elements that end up being used in very small quantities would be trickier. Reclaiming materials from phones isn't economically viable even with our tech today.