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Tom Murphy over at Do The Math[1] argues that we would not be able to reboot modernity after an apocalypse. The short version of his argument is that we long ag

Tom Murphy over at Do The Math[1] argues that we would not be able to reboot modernity after an apocalypse. The short version of his argument is that we long ago mined/drilled/farmed/harvested the easy resources that can be gotten with pre-industrial technology. The raw materials we are extracting today require modern methods and materials. We can't bootstrap ourselves from human and animal muscle power back to industrial capacity because it is inadequate to the task. We might have the theoretical knowledge to do it, but we'd be unable to build out the infrastructure. And no, scavenging won't solve it because the energy and technology required to recover the raw materials again requires industrial processes and materials we won't have the ability to harness. 1 https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/

hnthrowaway0315 2y ago
He has a point. I thought about including this point into my original post but hesitated because I didn't really know how hard/easy to mine resources nowadays. Optimistically, it might not be a blocking issue, because the much smaller population does not need that much resources. But we need to make some calculations. And I'm sure it's going to be very tough for countries that lack resources.
- analog31 2y ago
  A population without the Haber-Bosch process would be much smaller.
  - hnthrowaway0315 2y ago
    Yeah there are so many key knowledge that ordinary people just take for granted. But that's how we built up modern industries throughout the centuries. I guess it is not realistic to ask for one generation to rebuild everything, and that's why I think we really need a lot of those "knowledge" and "tools" storage. I know many countries have such storage for wars, but are they accessible to ordinary people in case most of the population is wiped out?
    - analog31 2y ago
      Not just knowledge, but the Haber Process is part of a complex machine that involves mining and transporting the feedstock (methane), distributing and applying the product (ammonia), etc. Economic infrastructure (dollar, euro, etc). Nobody knows how to build a major government money system from scratch. We've turned the Earth into a complex and delicate machine for sustaining human life. We don't know how complex or delicate.
  - smallmancontrov 2y ago
    So the population is smaller for a while and then it gets bigger. What of it? Unthinkable suffering, yes, but that wasn't the claim, the claim was about capability.
    - analog31 2y ago
      Obligatory Dr. Strangelove quote: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say... no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      If you cannot provide modern fertiliser equivalents, your population will get smaller, yes. It won't get appreciably larger because of that first problem.
duchenne 2y ago
But we have landfills which are full of great raw materials. I would argue that it is easier to collect steel from a landfill than from a mine during the industrial revolution.
- throwanem 2y ago
  Collect, yes. But those materials, at the end of the consumer use cycle, are definitionally about as far as possible from raw. Having collected this scrap steel, how do you propose to smelt it efficiently for reuse with little or nothing that burns hotter than the local hardwoods? That's the question actually being asked. I believe you can work some grades of steel tolerably with manual, bellows-fired forge processes, but not all of it will still be the same kind of steel when you finish (decarburization, etc), some you won't be able to meaningfully hot work at all, and you likely won't be reliably able to produce pieces much beyond the quality you could get in bloomery days - forgings and hot working would benefit from well-chosen scrap of compatible metallurgy, but everything would tend over time to rehomogenization into something between wrought iron, and what we would now call low- to medium-carbon mild steel. That's far from nothing, you can do at least as much with it as our ancestors did, but it also isn't close to anything we'd call "modern." Between the relatively enormous energy inputs required to do any meaningful hot working and the relative scarcity of materials no longer being manufactured, tools and objects made of iron would probably come to be family heirlooms again for more than sentimental reasons: replacing your hipster thrice-great-grandfather's cast iron might indebt you the equivalent of half a year of your struggling truck farm's proceeds. (It is still called a 'truck farm.' No one knows why. The old missus in town who reads says it has to do with some of the old machines, but even she doesn't try to pretend she ever saw one of them move, so no one thinks much of that. But all the village, not only the half or so she's midwifed, is happy to grant her her modest notions.)
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    "Not raw" is actually generally an advantage, as it's possible to sort through landfills to find directly-usable materials, or those which can be fed to an electric arc furnace (presuming that level of sophistication), or a charcoal-fed blast furnace. This isn't great, mind you, but it's a good start. Steel has a relatively high melting point. Other metals, notably aluminium and copper can be worked at far lower, far more attainable temperatures. Keep in mind that modern steelmaking really doesn't begin until the Bessemer process (1860s), and that was far more predicated on high-volume, high-quality fuels (anthracite coal) than it was in the input iron ore grade. Knowledge of and access to liquid oxygen, far better process (and temperature) controls, and improved metallurgy, through the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries have advanced smelting and fabrication even further. NB: "Truck" means to barter or trade. A "truck farm" is one on which cash crops (rather than those for local consumption) are grown, usually vegetables rather than staple grains (wheat, maize, rice). <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/truck%20farm https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/truck%20farm> (And I'm realising you're painting a picture of a future in which etymological knowledge is scarce, just thought I'd answer that question.)
renewiltord 2y ago
Hmm, I would have thought we could use wood fires to get to wood pellet steam engines and from there we could work our way up.
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  Wood pellets are made how? Ask yourself "how do I make the tool to do that?" Recursively Steam engines made of what? Ditto E.g., steps to make wood pellets https://www.biopelletmachines.com/how-are-wood-pellets-made/ https://www.biopelletmachines.com/how-are-wood-pellets-made/
  - smallmancontrov 2y ago
    Is the modern optimized form of the technology necessary for the application? Obviously not. You are the infomercial salesman who can't use a screwdriver. Or an ax.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      Good reply but it reads far better without the final two sentences, BTW. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43456130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43456130>
    - readthenotes1 2y ago
      It is not obvious to me that without the efficiencies provided by modern technology that the result would be a good use of energy and material.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    The fact that wood pellets are made by one specifically industrially-intensive process doesn't mean that they must be made by such a process. Interesting historical footnote: Kingston charcoal briquettes, a slightly larger-form of wood pellets, were created as an incidental product of Henry Fords automotive factories. These produced a large quantity of scrap wood waste which Ford saw a market for. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal)#History>
smallmancontrov 2y ago
This sounds far more likely to be a failure of imagination along the same lines as malthusian catastrophe, peak oil, and Moore's Law Is Dead (all notoriously oversubscribed by academics) than a true constraint.
- cratermoon 2y ago
  Predictions for the exact date of peak oil were wrong, but it will still happen. In fact, Alaska's oil production peaked in 1988, conventional oil production peaked around 2005, and new oil discoveries peaked in the 1960s. Exxon-Mobil acknowledges publicly that all the "easy" fossil fuels have been found. Modern fossil fuel production is complex, difficult, expensive, and hugely damaging to ecosystems. Many of the claimed reserves may not be reachable even with current sophisticated extraction methods. The growth will end, the world will start sliding down the other side of the curve. It's only a question of when.
felipeerias 2y ago
Industrialisation was made possible by the existence of large deposits of fossil fuels which were relatively easy to extract. Most if not all of those readily available energy sources, along with many other useful materials, have long been exhausted. Modern society has been using increasingly complex technology to continue to find and extract those resources. Presumably, we might be able to keep this going for quite a long time. However, if humanity somehow reverted to pre-modern technology, I don't think that it would be possible for us to industrialise again.
- smallmancontrov 2y ago
  (Picture of an industrial plant powered by water wheel and burning biomass) Noooooo it's impossibbblleeeee!
  - readthenotes1 2y ago
    To crush grain? Sure. To build iPhones, not likely
    - smallmancontrov 2y ago
      One step at a time. Remember, you have to show not that one step fails, but that one step fails and cannot be worked around. It's a heavy claim.
  - cratermoon 2y ago
    > burning biomass Murphy goes into this in one of his posts. The energy density of fossil fuels is such that it's hard to convey that vast quantity of biomass it takes to equal it. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/09/can-modernity-last/#more-3803 https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/09/can-modernity-last/#more-...
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - smallmancontrov 2y ago

hnthrowaway0315 2y ago

He has a point. I thought about including this point into my original post but hesitated because I didn't really know how hard/easy to mine resources nowadays. Optimistically, it might not be a blocking issue, because the much smaller population does not need that much resources. But we need to make some calculations. And I'm sure it's going to be very tough for countries that lack resources.

analog31 2y ago
A population without the Haber-Bosch process would be much smaller.
- hnthrowaway0315 2y ago
  Yeah there are so many key knowledge that ordinary people just take for granted. But that's how we built up modern industries throughout the centuries. I guess it is not realistic to ask for one generation to rebuild everything, and that's why I think we really need a lot of those "knowledge" and "tools" storage. I know many countries have such storage for wars, but are they accessible to ordinary people in case most of the population is wiped out?
  - analog31 2y ago
    Not just knowledge, but the Haber Process is part of a complex machine that involves mining and transporting the feedstock (methane), distributing and applying the product (ammonia), etc. Economic infrastructure (dollar, euro, etc). Nobody knows how to build a major government money system from scratch. We've turned the Earth into a complex and delicate machine for sustaining human life. We don't know how complex or delicate.
- smallmancontrov 2y ago
  So the population is smaller for a while and then it gets bigger. What of it? Unthinkable suffering, yes, but that wasn't the claim, the claim was about capability.
  - analog31 2y ago
    Obligatory Dr. Strangelove quote: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say... no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    If you cannot provide modern fertiliser equivalents, your population will get smaller, yes. It won't get appreciably larger because of that first problem.

duchenne 2y ago

But we have landfills which are full of great raw materials. I would argue that it is easier to collect steel from a landfill than from a mine during the industrial revolution.

throwanem 2y ago
Collect, yes. But those materials, at the end of the consumer use cycle, are definitionally about as far as possible from raw. Having collected this scrap steel, how do you propose to smelt it efficiently for reuse with little or nothing that burns hotter than the local hardwoods? That's the question actually being asked. I believe you can work some grades of steel tolerably with manual, bellows-fired forge processes, but not all of it will still be the same kind of steel when you finish (decarburization, etc), some you won't be able to meaningfully hot work at all, and you likely won't be reliably able to produce pieces much beyond the quality you could get in bloomery days - forgings and hot working would benefit from well-chosen scrap of compatible metallurgy, but everything would tend over time to rehomogenization into something between wrought iron, and what we would now call low- to medium-carbon mild steel. That's far from nothing, you can do at least as much with it as our ancestors did, but it also isn't close to anything we'd call "modern." Between the relatively enormous energy inputs required to do any meaningful hot working and the relative scarcity of materials no longer being manufactured, tools and objects made of iron would probably come to be family heirlooms again for more than sentimental reasons: replacing your hipster thrice-great-grandfather's cast iron might indebt you the equivalent of half a year of your struggling truck farm's proceeds. (It is still called a 'truck farm.' No one knows why. The old missus in town who reads says it has to do with some of the old machines, but even she doesn't try to pretend she ever saw one of them move, so no one thinks much of that. But all the village, not only the half or so she's midwifed, is happy to grant her her modest notions.)
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  "Not raw" is actually generally an advantage, as it's possible to sort through landfills to find directly-usable materials, or those which can be fed to an electric arc furnace (presuming that level of sophistication), or a charcoal-fed blast furnace. This isn't great, mind you, but it's a good start. Steel has a relatively high melting point. Other metals, notably aluminium and copper can be worked at far lower, far more attainable temperatures. Keep in mind that modern steelmaking really doesn't begin until the Bessemer process (1860s), and that was far more predicated on high-volume, high-quality fuels (anthracite coal) than it was in the input iron ore grade. Knowledge of and access to liquid oxygen, far better process (and temperature) controls, and improved metallurgy, through the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries have advanced smelting and fabrication even further. NB: "Truck" means to barter or trade. A "truck farm" is one on which cash crops (rather than those for local consumption) are grown, usually vegetables rather than staple grains (wheat, maize, rice). <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/truck%20farm https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/truck%20farm> (And I'm realising you're painting a picture of a future in which etymological knowledge is scarce, just thought I'd answer that question.)

renewiltord 2y ago

Hmm, I would have thought we could use wood fires to get to wood pellet steam engines and from there we could work our way up.

readthenotes1 2y ago
Wood pellets are made how? Ask yourself "how do I make the tool to do that?" Recursively Steam engines made of what? Ditto E.g., steps to make wood pellets https://www.biopelletmachines.com/how-are-wood-pellets-made/ https://www.biopelletmachines.com/how-are-wood-pellets-made/
- smallmancontrov 2y ago
  Is the modern optimized form of the technology necessary for the application? Obviously not. You are the infomercial salesman who can't use a screwdriver. Or an ax.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    Good reply but it reads far better without the final two sentences, BTW. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43456130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43456130>
  - readthenotes1 2y ago
    It is not obvious to me that without the efficiencies provided by modern technology that the result would be a good use of energy and material.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  The fact that wood pellets are made by one specifically industrially-intensive process doesn't mean that they must be made by such a process. Interesting historical footnote: Kingston charcoal briquettes, a slightly larger-form of wood pellets, were created as an incidental product of Henry Fords automotive factories. These produced a large quantity of scrap wood waste which Ford saw a market for. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal)#History>

smallmancontrov 2y ago

This sounds far more likely to be a failure of imagination along the same lines as malthusian catastrophe, peak oil, and Moore's Law Is Dead (all notoriously oversubscribed by academics) than a true constraint.

cratermoon 2y ago
Predictions for the exact date of peak oil were wrong, but it will still happen. In fact, Alaska's oil production peaked in 1988, conventional oil production peaked around 2005, and new oil discoveries peaked in the 1960s. Exxon-Mobil acknowledges publicly that all the "easy" fossil fuels have been found. Modern fossil fuel production is complex, difficult, expensive, and hugely damaging to ecosystems. Many of the claimed reserves may not be reachable even with current sophisticated extraction methods. The growth will end, the world will start sliding down the other side of the curve. It's only a question of when.

felipeerias 2y ago

Industrialisation was made possible by the existence of large deposits of fossil fuels which were relatively easy to extract. Most if not all of those readily available energy sources, along with many other useful materials, have long been exhausted. Modern society has been using increasingly complex technology to continue to find and extract those resources. Presumably, we might be able to keep this going for quite a long time. However, if humanity somehow reverted to pre-modern technology, I don't think that it would be possible for us to industrialise again.

smallmancontrov 2y ago
(Picture of an industrial plant powered by water wheel and burning biomass) Noooooo it's impossibbblleeeee!
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  To crush grain? Sure. To build iPhones, not likely
  - smallmancontrov 2y ago
    One step at a time. Remember, you have to show not that one step fails, but that one step fails and cannot be worked around. It's a heavy claim.
- cratermoon 2y ago
  > burning biomass Murphy goes into this in one of his posts. The energy density of fossil fuels is such that it's hard to convey that vast quantity of biomass it takes to equal it. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/09/can-modernity-last/#more-3803 https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2023/09/can-modernity-last/#more-...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - smallmancontrov 2y ago