61–69 of 69 posts
Apocalypse as in complete destruction ? We're fucked, there isn't enough easily accessible fossil fuel for a new industrial revolution, this is our only shot.
I mean, it's not near anything else, but it's there...
In general, tech requires specialization. (You don't have people who are devoting most of their time to something else who are also producing critical components of our tech tree - the exception being some open-source components.)
Specialization requires enough people that you can put at least one person in each specialty (plus enough to grow food to feed all those specialists).
So you can't create CPUs below a certain population level, whether or not the people remember the scientific knowledge that it all requires.
The first amplifying vacuum tube was patented in 1908 and you could produce a crude computer from that, even if terribly inefficient. I imagine civilisation would wind back to around the 18th century, because we would understand things like fertilizers, calculus and how to make steel, but could not immediately use that knowledge to produce steam trains, bicycles or saxophones. So, assuming an accelerated pace of deve…
Also in the event of an apocalypse - the first generation could have all the awareness of technology, knowledge etc but the people who are experts may die out? Even if experts exist the transfering of what to build into "how" to build may need a lot of nurturing - Eg a chip-design expert knows it all - but may not be an expert in building a fab (not even considering the resources needed) to build this chip. But in th…
Just the base transceiver stations, which commonly have backup power, would be enough to maintain some degree of civilisation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One hurdle is that the easy to mine materials have already been mined. We have been using progressively more sophisticated methods of ore finding, mining and purification. Doing that the second time around would be harder. Though we can probably recover good quality materials from scraps.
Exactly, second time round it's going to be a civilisation built on recycling. It's crazy to think that by going slightly backwards the whole way forward would be so different. Early civilisation was hunter-gatherers, scavenging for food and resources. Imagine a new civilisation where we scavenge the remnants of where we're are now. The progress forward would be very quick, but also so very different.
It would obviously be possible, since we have CPUs now but once lived in caves. You can work backwards from "Semiconductor fabrication", which (I guess) would look something like: Microfabrication > Computation > Manufacturing > Electrical Engineering > Chemical Engineering > Metalworking > Power generation > Basic tools As to how long this would take, that feels very speculative. Did anyone print a copy of Wikipedia…
It's not the same. Now a lot of raw materials are hard to reach and deep down in the ground, since the we took all the easy stuff already.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A "solar panel" does not have to be a photovoltaic panel. A much simpler panel can heat water to use in a steam turbine.
We probably wouldn't even be able to source iron ore at that stage, let alone process it to make any kind of useful turbine, but let's say you make a working steam turbine from wood and clay, a DIY solar powered steam turbine is quite a few steps before modern CPU
Depends on how severe the apocalypse is. Right now, you could scavenge your way through civilization and not run out of new computers to use / fix, ever. If you were stuck in a cave and had 40 years of your life left, I doubt you'd ever see one. Computers are cool but food takes priority. Not enough hours in a day. There's a lot we take for granted in civilization. Once those layers are peeled back you're competing f…
We can't. All of the Earth's cheap energy has already been extracted. None of the remaining energy stores can be extracted without modern technology because it would take far more energy to extract than it produces. If we lose our ability to produce these extraction and refinement tools (or energy becomes too expensive to extract before we have sufficient alternatives), we'll be locked into a subsistence based existe…
We can't. All of the Earth's cheap energy has already been extracted. None of the remaining energy stores can be extracted without modern technology because it would take far more energy to extract than it produces. If we lose our ability to produce these extraction and refinement tools (or energy becomes too expensive to extract before we have sufficient alternatives), we'll be locked into a subsistence based existe…
Wind is readily available… easy to harvest and renewable. So is water now that we understand energy storage and transport via electricity were at most 100 years from restarting modern civilization.
And we don't have that yet. Every step of getting renewable energy from its source to the place where it performs work still depends so heavily on fossil fuels that we simply won't be able to survive without it for many decades to come (perhaps even centuries).
Losing our ability to extract fossil fuels at scale within the next 50 years would basically spell our doom.