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

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221–230 of 250 posts

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

#221
post #29

Weird take. Sure, you could try to re-build what you had before the apocalypse. Or you could build a new world that isn't the one that just plunged everything into chaos. If our technology wasn't so good, the world wouldn't be as populated, we wouldn't need so many resources, there wouldn't be so many ways to poison the earth, and the earth would be habitable and sustainable for millennia. After the apocalypse, I wan…

> can dig wells, practice permaculture, organize a farm, keep sheep, spin yarn, blacksmith, prep lumber, fire pottery and glass, hunt, fish, manage woodlands I'm very confused by why you think this is sustainable - this type of life uses FAR FAR FAR more resources than modern living. It only works with a low population. England for example basically cut down every tree it has in order to sustain this type of (old) li…

> I'm very confused by why you think this is sustainable - this type of life uses FAR FAR FAR more resources than modern living.

Living in a society without heavy industry, without, electronics and without internal combusion engines uses up "FAR FAR FAR" more resources than living in a society with them? How so?

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

#222
post #49

Weird take. Sure, you could try to re-build what you had before the apocalypse. Or you could build a new world that isn't the one that just plunged everything into chaos. If our technology wasn't so good, the world wouldn't be as populated, we wouldn't need so many resources, there wouldn't be so many ways to poison the earth, and the earth would be habitable and sustainable for millennia. After the apocalypse, I wan…

> Or you could build a new world that isn't the one that just plunged everything into chaos. How are you going to get people to agree to "live sustainably" over thousands of years?

I think the answer is that if you don't, then there won't be people after "over thousands of years", or even after a few generations, anyway.

I mean because this is after the apocalypse we're talking about, yes? Either people figure out how to restart civilisation in a sustainable manner or they die out after a short while.

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

#223
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or you could build a new world that isn't the one that just plunged everything into chaos. How are you going to get people to agree to "live sustainably" over thousands of years?

Better question, if you can do that, why haven't you already?

Because we're before the apocalypse?

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

#224
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't technology. The problem is immoral people. Immoral people make immoral and greedy governments. Immoral and greedy governments wield power to acquire more and survive as a parasitic organism. All governments move towards totalitarianism. No nation-state in the world has ever escaped this eventuality. Limiting technology won't limit the harm even one evil person can do. Take a look at Gengis Khan, for…

> The problem isn't technology. The problem is immoral people. i think you are underestimating the power of your tools (technology) to shape you instead of the other way around... might be a good idea to read up on Marshal McLuhan and Neil Postman to get an idea what technologies and systems can do to us (as humans) > The reason Western culture has fared so well over the last 500 years is because it was largely Chris…

> human rights came from the bible? got any proof for that claim?

I apologize for the delay. Let me see what I can do.

By my reckoning the core of "all men are created equal" finds its roots in Paul's letter to the Galatians where he says

    3:27 For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
    3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
    3:29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.
The statement "All men are created equal", from the Declaration of Independence is an appeal to the idea of the perfected church. That is, in a perfect world, the christian church conducts itself in such a way that none of the above "identities" matters any more. (See Romans 12 for how the church ought to act towards itself and others.) You aren't valued more or less than because of your race/ethnicity/people, or because of your financial status, or even because of your gender. If the ideal is realized, there is true equality.

In the Lord's Prayer, there's a request to God to bring His kingdom into this world

   ...Your kingdom come, Your will be done...
The founders of the US understood this and it is reflected in the Preamble of the Constitution

    We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
They recognize they can't achieve perfection, and still seek it out "in order to form a more perfect union".

I argue that the fundamental human ~right~ truth is equality. From that all other rights stem. Without equality, none of the other rights enshrined in the constitution (what you say, who you associate with, your right to self defense, your right to your person -- habius corpus, your right to swift justice, and so on) all have their roots in the sovereignty of the individual. And the sovereignty of the individual among peers is only guaranteed if one has equality with all the rest.

Here's a short essay that covers this more in depth: https://www.gotquestions.org/human-rights.html

[edit] wording [/edit]

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

#225
post #53
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can dig wells, practice permaculture, organize a farm, keep sheep, spin yarn, blacksmith, prep lumber, fire pottery and glass, hunt, fish, manage woodlands I'm very confused by why you think this is sustainable - this type of life uses FAR FAR FAR more resources than modern living. It only works with a low population. England for example basically cut down every tree it has in order to sustain this type of (old) li…

FWIW, 17th Century Europe didn't have access to the technology and knowledge that we have today, that do not require any fancy devices or technology to improve our efficiency of resource usage in the hypothetical scenario discussed in this thread. At the time, there were many incentives to deforestation, but the main ones were to procure wood as fuel, and to clear arable land for agriculture and animal husbandry. I c…

A man with a tractor and a combine harvesters can cultivate over 100 acres. With manual labour you can't cultivate 1 acre

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

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steel does have a major use in your skyscraper but concrete is perhaps the main player. Conc is a wonderful and bloody complicated material and so is steel. Steel is basically iron+(stuff) - Fe 'n' that. If you add small amounts of carbon to iron you get steel and depending on how you do it you transform iron (brittle, hard etc) to a material that is "tough". Tough generally means that it will resist stress/strain mo…

This was super interesting. Any book recs with a similar flavor?

I could try to dig out my college reading list (it was actually Plymouth Polytechnic - that's Plymouth, Devon, UK) but it was 30 odd years ago. Things have moved on a bit but not too much.

Do you have a general interest in Civil Engineering or a particular project in mind?

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

#227
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in a post-apocalyptic world, building an outdated suboptimal car is still better than not having the car at all. I really wonder how practical this is though. The bicycle, for example, dates back to da Vinci, but we only became good enough at manufacturing to make the precise parts needed by the 19th century. having the diagrams is all well and good but we will also have lost the means of manufacturing reliably and t…

Surely tractors are more important than cars as they help massively in food production. Simply moving about is easily done on foot. And the range of terrain that cars can cross is very restricted. Without regular traffic and maintaince I doubt roads would be passable in a couple of decades. Motorbikes though would still work fine.

I think the bigger issue would be rubber. Rubber cannot grow just anywhere and synthetic rubber requires a specialized petroleum industry.

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

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there any guides for the first two weeks? There are thousands of prepper guides around, depending on how much work you want to do. I'd say a good start would be to think about the pandemic and think about what stuff became hard to get and make sure you have more of that available. Medications are a big one - try to have enough spare to last a couple of months. Having actual cash is important too, as is having c…

> Medications are a big one - try to have enough spare to last a couple of months. I've always wondered about how to carry out this advice for medicines other than what's available OTC. If someone depends on prescription medication, is this possible? How do you ask?

For non-controlled substances, I've been able to ask for more from my doctor and just pay out of pocket.

For controlled substances, you could probably ask for a slight change in prescription (e.g. a single 20mg pill vs. 2x10mg) right after the first one was filled, or ask for a slight change in dosage.

Technically this is legally dubious, but it's also ridiculous that there is no buffer allowed to be built in.

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

#229
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…

> 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.

True, but we also know the usefulness of what is beyond certain points so we don't have to do the stochastic walk through the economics to get there.

We know we want the printing press. We know we want glass. We know we want antibiotics. We know we want steam engines. We know we want electricity. We know we would want steel. etc.

Since we know that steam engines are useful, we don't have to wait for knowledge to get good enough and materials to get good enough to make them economically viable so we can gain the knowledge that putting them to general use is valuable. see: The Cotton Gin--anybody could have made it, but until the demand for cotton was sufficient there was no reason to take the risk.

Avoiding the technologic stochastic walk would be a big deal.

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

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boom and bust cycle? There’s been one boom and now there will be one bust. Unless you have some fancypants geoengineering idea which will stabilize the climate and put fossils back in the ground.

There've been plenty of booms and busts before, eg. the late Bronze Age collapse, the fall of the Roman Empire, most Chinese dynastic transitions, the destruction of North American civilizations by colonialism. This boom just happens to be bigger than the ones that came before.

I meant that there has only been one boom-and-bust cycle to end organized human existence on Earth. That’s what I meant…
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