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Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

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Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#211

Post by ethbr0 »

nostrademons wrote: post #169
notahacker wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And to a large extent, you skip the searching for raw materials to smelt cast iron to make a stove and go straight to searching collapsed buildings for cast iron stoves, or collecting railings to make a ladder etc...

Knowing how to repair and re-cast is still a useful skill, though. At some point the scavengeable items will have been scavenged and worn out, and if you want civilization to continue, you need to reboot it at a drastically lower level of complexity. That means building new production that can still be operated at the lower population levels of a post-apocalyptic world.

"Civilization" is really two things though: intangible facts & physical artifacts

If you preserve facts, you can reboot pretty quickly, relative to the initial time they took to discover.

Imagine how quickly you could make high quality steel if you could skip all the fumbling and straight to the proper carbon mix! https://acoup.blog/tag/iron/

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#212

Post by ethbr0 »

hyperhopper wrote: post #127
ethbr0 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an opportunity for a 2nd edition! If Amazon commenters filed pull requests rather than potshots, the world would be a better place. :)

The author isn't sharing the profits, why should people do the work writing his book for him. If he hosted it on GitHub that would be a different story.

It's called altruism.

The reviewer is under no obligation to, but if they feel strongly enough to write a detailed review, presumably they feel like a better written book would be valuable.

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#214

Post by nostrademons »

ethbr0 wrote: post #211
nostrademons wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing how to repair and re-cast is still a useful skill, though. At some point the scavengeable items will have been scavenged and worn out, and if you want civilization to continue, you need to reboot it at a drastically lower level of complexity. That means building new production that can still be operated at the lower population levels of a post-apocalyptic world.

"Civilization" is really two things though: intangible facts & physical artifacts If you preserve facts, you can reboot pretty quickly, relative to the initial time they took to discover. Imagine how quickly you could make high quality steel if you could skip all the fumbling and straight to the proper carbon mix! https://acoup.blog/tag/iron/

Certainly you can probably do it faster than the 10,000 years or so it took the first time.

But it's not a panacea. A "cold start" of a complex system isn't just about replicating the system itself, it's about replicating the conditions that gave rise to it. (Witness how many ex-Googlers have founded search startups and failed to get traction, or how many people have replicated Facebook and Reddit clones and failed to get traction.) A lot of our industrial processes (like building microchips, photovoltaics, plastics, modern manufacturing) require a large base of tooling that itself requires prerequisites which may not be available. In some cases the raw materials (eg. crude oil, rare earths) are no longer accessible.

The knowledge is useful, but it'll be useful in the sense that then people can look at their current situation and bring portions of the past into it. That's probably going to involve a lot of scavenging and looting, because why dig iron ore out of the ground and fire it with coal dug out of the ground when there are large supplies of abandoned scrap steel in the world?

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#215

Post by jerry1979 »

Shorel wrote: post #206
jerry1979 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of doing the work of rebuilding civilization, I bet that you have under-rated the role of organized superstition. At the very least, it seems to play the role of superego for the group, and thereby it can prevent incessant bickering and can guide group efforts.

How would we know? Has this ever been tested? Or is it just an instance of: “this is the status quo, accept it”.

I'm not an anthropologist, but I think the effectiveness of groups like the Freemasons indicates the power of myth and superstitious belief.

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#216

Post by gavmor »

nostrademons wrote: post #164
occz wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For how long would cars really be practical in a "down in the bunker"-scenario, though? There wouldn't be any more fuel produced, probably, and cars require a fairly high standard of roads which also would be lost after not too long. Personally, I would probably bring the equivalent book on bicycles, which I speculate would be the vehicle of choice for the end of the world. If anyone knows the name of such a book, I…

Just looking through the table of contents [1] - this is not just for cars. It's basically a textbook on mechanical engineering, applied to something that will be common and very scavengable in a post-apocalyptic world. The first 159 pages is basically a quick-reference for applied physics; the next 50 pages is mathematics; the next 100 pages is material science. They don't get to anything car-specific until page 460…

Thank you for the link; yes, I laughed when I first paged across the book's reiteration of physical constants, the laws of thermo-dynamics etc. but in retrospect, it's helpful to have even elementary references when learning new concepts.

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#217

Post by jerry1979 »

formerkrogemp wrote: post #115
jerry1979 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of doing the work of rebuilding civilization, I bet that you have under-rated the role of organized superstition. At the very least, it seems to play the role of superego for the group, and thereby it can prevent incessant bickering and can guide group efforts.

Yes, it helps when explaining rules to persnickety and unrepentant knaves that they should do what you say or they'll face supernatural terror.

Another way to look at it is that the bickering is not just between people but also internal bickering. Having "superstitious" beliefs allows people to receive sublime commands but also gives them sublime permission.

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#218

Post by ethbr0 »

nostrademons wrote: post #214
ethbr0 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Civilization" is really two things though: intangible facts & physical artifacts If you preserve facts, you can reboot pretty quickly, relative to the initial time they took to discover. Imagine how quickly you could make high quality steel if you could skip all the fumbling and straight to the proper carbon mix! https://acoup.blog/tag/iron/

Certainly you can probably do it faster than the 10,000 years or so it took the first time. But it's not a panacea. A "cold start" of a complex system isn't just about replicating the system itself, it's about replicating the conditions that gave rise to it. (Witness how many ex-Googlers have founded search startups and failed to get traction, or how many people have replicated Facebook and Reddit clones and failed t…

The analogies are apples and oranges, as all of them face existent incumbents with massive resources.

Which is where the point about population comes into play. Refining low-density elements (e.g. rare earth) into purified form is most of the difficulty and industrial base.

The available recyclable material from a civilization with a couple+ orders of magnitude larger population would be more than sufficient, even if chemical reprocessing is required.

Consequently, you run into an either/or. Either (1) there wasn't substantial loss of life (and industrial base), in which case no need to reboot, or (2) there was substantial loss of life, in which case there are more than sufficient recyclables.

And it's also hard to imagine a scenario by which we lack essential inputs. We've got more than enough crude oil or rare earths for the future. The only arguable example I can think of is helium...

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#219

Post by cheese_goddess »

imtringued wrote: post #187
hansor wrote: post #99

Total apocalipse is not possible (Earth is so large that it's impossible nuke EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE. But if this is just experiment "what if" those are thing that I would suggest to do: - Forget about computers and programming and gadgets - DO NOT STAY IN BUNKER, INSTEAD FIND FRIENDS! - Focus on FARMING as team - Scavending for potatoes, grain etc - for seeds! - FARMING - FARMING - FARMING - FARMING - FARMING - H…

You need the tractor and fuel for farming or else you are going to waste your entire life farming and not getting anywhere. You need the car to transport and trade with others. Honestly, a lot of Africans won't notice anything different in a technology apocalypse.

You need tractors if you're farming for tens or hundreds of thousands of people. In which case it's probably not the apocalypse yet.

As the OP says the knowledge of making enough food to keep yourself, your family and your probably decimated community fed and healthy is the number 1 requirement for surviving civilisational breakdown.

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#220

Post by cheese_goddess »

I have to be honest but when I'm thinking of post-apocalyptic scenarios and what I could do to survive, I'm thinking of my cheesemaking skills that I can use to preserve nutritious milk to keep my people fed. And I'm thinking of the farming skills that I lack and that I should really learn.

Civilisation starts with a few sheep or goats, a plot of land cultivated with cereals, some olive trees, maybe a vineyard on the side of a hill. If you can have bread, cheese, olive oil and wine, you have civilisation.

And if we can't set this stuff up, forget about rebooting technology, because we'd be all dead.

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