Asimov’s Foundation tries to answer this by providing a range; if mankind concentrates its effort to document how to bootstrap civilisation, a thousand years. O

Asimov’s Foundation tries to answer this by providing a range; if mankind concentrates its effort to document how to bootstrap civilisation, a thousand years. On the other hand, if mankind does not prepare and ignore the inevitable collapse of society, 30.000 years of darkness. This refers to galactic civilisation. The interesting part is: it depends a lot on how much you pass over, anticipating the downfall. There is a parallel to deploying software: how good are your instructions, if you can’t be there to fill in the blanks?