4 ms·

> While hunter-gathering is no Garden of Eden... Without electricity, we would be back to 200 years ago. That's still like 10,000 years after most humans were

by brabel 4y ago

> While hunter-gathering is no Garden of Eden... Without electricity, we would be back to 200 years ago. That's still like 10,000 years after most humans were hunter-gathering. Did we forget that for most of civilization's time, we had technology to help us do stuff, just not electricity-based technology? For example vapor engines would work just fine without electricity. Agriculture would require a lot (really a lot) more people, but would still be possible with manpower and animalpowered machines, like it was for thousands of years. Also, it's not like our knowledge of electricity would just disappear... we would just have to repair and make new machines, which may take a while but most people would probably survive that.

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
It would be more like 1200 years ago. Because almost no one today has the tools, skills, experience, and supply chains needed to recreate the Industrial Revolution. It's one thing to know that a steam engine is possible. It's another to build steam engines at scale when you're starting from iron ore or perhaps recycled scrap metal, and the most sophisticated available practical skill - and exceptionally rare at that - is blacksmithing.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  > Because almost no one today has the tools, skills, experience, and supply chains needed to recreate the Industrial Revolution. And even if we did, there is no easily-accessible source of energy anymore. All the accessible coal and oil have already be exhausted. We're now digging under thousands of meters of sea water and seabed to get to the sources of energy that are left.
  - jobs_throwaway 4y ago
    wood, peat, and there's still a decent amount of natural gas
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      Wood and peat will not meet the energy demands of a society on par with current western society, no matter how small. And I believe that you underestimate the amount of effort to recover natural gas today.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    > All the accessible coal and oil have already be exhausted The Powder River Basin would like a word...
    - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
      Transportation would like a word... Edit: Like Trains 12/2022, Cover story: 24 Hours on Logan Hill Follow along for a day's worth of action in Wyoming's Powder River Basin
      - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        Sure. But dotancohen's claim was that the only remaining energy was thousands of feet under sea, which is very false, even if the places that we currently want to burn coal are not all that close to the Powder River. But if we're rebuilding civilization, well, the iron ore mine that supplied US Steel's Geneva Works is also in Wyoming, not that far away. And once you get an industrial revolution up and running, among other things you get railroads, which are useful for transporting coal longer distances.
        LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
        TBH, I'd bet the tracks would be torn apart first to get at the steel, maybe even for the sleepers/ties.
        AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        Sure. But if we have to re-start the industrial revolution, those tracks probably don't go to the right places anyway. And if we can re-start the industrial revolution, then we can make new rails.
        LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
        We'll see, or not ;->
- jobs_throwaway 4y ago
  > Because almost no one today has the tools, skills, experience, and supply chains needed to recreate the Industrial Revolution. Beg to differ. We have millions of engineers with extremely relevant skill sets to these problems. If all of electronics was destroyed tomorrow, by next week you'd have a metric shit ton of people learning steam engine technology and how to build/work with analog systems. There would be a lot of growing pains and a lot of death, but it wouldn't be like starting in the year 800 all over again.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
    Are you sure these engineers would be able to coordinate under the circumstances? What would happen to all the spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants dangling in cooling pools, because still too 'hot' for dry storage? Bucket chains? Praimfaya!

by brabel 4y ago

TheOtherHobbes 4y ago

It would be more like 1200 years ago. Because almost no one today has the tools, skills, experience, and supply chains needed to recreate the Industrial Revolution. It's one thing to know that a steam engine is possible. It's another to build steam engines at scale when you're starting from iron ore or perhaps recycled scrap metal, and the most sophisticated available practical skill - and exceptionally rare at that - is blacksmithing.

dotancohen 4y ago
> Because almost no one today has the tools, skills, experience, and supply chains needed to recreate the Industrial Revolution. And even if we did, there is no easily-accessible source of energy anymore. All the accessible coal and oil have already be exhausted. We're now digging under thousands of meters of sea water and seabed to get to the sources of energy that are left.
- jobs_throwaway 4y ago
  wood, peat, and there's still a decent amount of natural gas
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    Wood and peat will not meet the energy demands of a society on par with current western society, no matter how small. And I believe that you underestimate the amount of effort to recover natural gas today.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  > All the accessible coal and oil have already be exhausted The Powder River Basin would like a word...
  - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
    Transportation would like a word... Edit: Like Trains 12/2022, Cover story: 24 Hours on Logan Hill Follow along for a day's worth of action in Wyoming's Powder River Basin
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      Sure. But dotancohen's claim was that the only remaining energy was thousands of feet under sea, which is very false, even if the places that we currently want to burn coal are not all that close to the Powder River. But if we're rebuilding civilization, well, the iron ore mine that supplied US Steel's Geneva Works is also in Wyoming, not that far away. And once you get an industrial revolution up and running, among other things you get railroads, which are useful for transporting coal longer distances.
      - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
        TBH, I'd bet the tracks would be torn apart first to get at the steel, maybe even for the sleepers/ties.
        AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        Sure. But if we have to re-start the industrial revolution, those tracks probably don't go to the right places anyway. And if we can re-start the industrial revolution, then we can make new rails.
        LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
        We'll see, or not ;->
jobs_throwaway 4y ago
> Because almost no one today has the tools, skills, experience, and supply chains needed to recreate the Industrial Revolution. Beg to differ. We have millions of engineers with extremely relevant skill sets to these problems. If all of electronics was destroyed tomorrow, by next week you'd have a metric shit ton of people learning steam engine technology and how to build/work with analog systems. There would be a lot of growing pains and a lot of death, but it wouldn't be like starting in the year 800 all over again.
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
  Are you sure these engineers would be able to coordinate under the circumstances? What would happen to all the spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants dangling in cooling pools, because still too 'hot' for dry storage? Bucket chains? Praimfaya!