I didn't say a damn thing about the state of chemistry in the 1940s. My point was that it's silly to claim the absence of PFAS or plastics would cause societal

I didn't say a damn thing about the state of chemistry in the 1940s. My point was that it's silly to claim the absence of PFAS or plastics would cause societal collapse when we have a ready image of our civilization without plastics. Metal, wood, resins, etc were just far more ubiquitous, doing many of the jobs plastics do now. Lots of things were a bit more expensive because of this. But none the less, people lived pretty decent lives.