The subject had been explored many times over in books, games and magazines.
I quite like Horizon Zero Dawn's take - that post-apocalypse people should take it slow deliberately, the first reason being that too big of an advance in tech caused a given apocalypse in the first place.
Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world
231–240 of 250 posts
Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world
#232It just occurred to me that I bought the book in kindle. So uh I guess first priority is find a way to charge a kindle
Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world
#233Earlier 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…
> 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?
Because the internal combustion engine is surprisingly efficient.
Did you know you release more CO2 walking a mile than driving a mile? It's surprising, but it takes a lot of energy to grow food, and then a lot of energy is lost by the time that food powers you.
Yes the CO2 from food is from the air, so not the same, but it's just an example of efficiency. Ignoring the source of CO2, a tractor emits less CO2 than a horse, for the same farm work.
You still need to heat your home, you still need to find fertilizer somewhere, you need fuel for cooking. You need to make clothing.
All those things take energy, and modern living uses less energy. The main difference from the past is there are more people now. And in the past a lot of that energy came from the sun, rather than being mined.
But back to resources (rather than just CO2): To live like a farmer you need wood, and you need more wood than can re-grow in the area available to you. Look at peat moss mines in Ireland - they mined so much, just for basic living, there's not much left.
Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world
#234Earlier 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…
> It only works with a low population. That’s the point. Killing lots of people lowers the population, but it doesn’t stay low. Over time, the population will always approach the carrying capacity, so the only way to permanently lower the population is to make the carrying capacity lower.
> is to make the carrying capacity lower.
What's the point in that? You end up using the identical amount of resources, but having fewer people. What goal exactly did you accomplish?
Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sure hope that the steel in skyscrapers and stuff is going to last a long freaking time though.
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…
Folks interested in such material science topics should definitely read about Wootz steel[1] (Damascus steel[0]) and roman concrete [3]. Its very hard [2] to concoct a high fidelity version of these today, mainly because it is hard to get the trace constituents right.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel#Reproduction_resea...
Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
how to reinstate governance And that's hardly something there's an easy how-to answer to. A primitive tribe or band tends have each member strongly connected each other member since with few resources, the people are the resources. Modern people don't have to care in the slightest about their neighbors and this is weakness in an emergency situation. Moreover, a "collapse" situation, in many instances, would imply a g…
> Perhaps the Amish would do well. I live in central Pennsylvania, in Lancaster County - there's an Amish farm walking distance from where I sit. I think about societal collapse a lot, and was just recently ruminating on how the Amish would do in that scenario. They're clearly more prepared for it than most of us, but they're a bit more dependent on the outside world (or "the English", as they refer to us) than you m…
You might like the novel "When the English Fall".
Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know of a book that similarly impressed me, though I've not yet seen the one you refer to, although it won't be quite so deep: The reprinted-under-many names book from Germany in the 70s? called variously: "How Things Work", "The Way Things Work", and more and published by Simon & Schuster, Paladin Press, and others Searching for C Van Amerongen will bring it up, although I think it is by multiple authors. https://…
Oh, I had a different book by that name How Things Work by David Macaulay . I loved it as a kid and a couple of years ago bought two used versions so that my son can experience it ;)
Macaulay's book was titled "The Way Things Work". I too loved it as a kid - what an incredible piece of art. I firmly believe every child should have a copy. One wonders how many STEM careers it provoked.
Your name confusion is understandable, as "How Things Work" was a popular book title - I had at least two books by that name concurrently with my ownership with "The Way Things Work", and I too was always getting them confused.
Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
Because the internal combustion engine is surprisingly efficient. Did you know you release more CO2 walking a mile than driving a mile? It's surprising, but it takes a lot of energy to grow food, and then a lot of energy is lost by the time that food powers you. Yes the CO2 from food is from the air, so not the same, but it's just an example of efficiency. Ignoring the source of CO2, a tractor emits less CO2 than a h…
No, the main difference from the past is that we have been taking fossil fuels out of the earth and burning it for the last 200 years, and releasing in that very short time the CO₂ that has been stored in them for many millions of years. This is much more than the amount of CO₂ that the environment's carbon sinks can bind and so we are warming the environment, and at a very fast pace.
Like you say, the CO₂ we breathe "comes from the air". Specifically, that CO₂, like the carbon gasses released by farming and agriculture, is part of the atmospheric carbon cycle that circulates carbon gasses between the biosphere and the atmosphere. This cycle is stable, it has been stable for millions of years and it has never caused a greenhouse effect, neither is there any risk that it will cause a greenhouse effect, now or in the future. There is certainly no chance that the CO₂ we exhale will cause the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere to shift, because that's where we get our carbon in the first place.
The internal combustion engine on the other hand, efficient or not, is burning fossil fuels and is a primary driver of release of the CO₂ bound in fossil fuels, to the environment. This is a major mechanism of climate change.
That having been cleared up, you're making a weird argument that is very difficult to support. If I understand correctly your earlier comment that I quoted, you're saying that living, in summary, without burning fossil fuels, is not less sustainable than living while burning fossil fuels. You 're saying that this is because the internal combustion engine is efficient. You mean that it makes good use of the fuel it burns, but its fuel cannot be easily replaced (because it takes billions of years for it to be created by natural processes that we can't replicate at scale) and burning it is causing a greenhouse effect and climate change.
So, no, it doesn't make any sense that living without burning fossil fuels, without combustion engines, without all the trappings of modern life, is not more sustainable than living with them. We can discuss the benefits and risks of either way of life (I'm not keen to return at a pre-industrial time myself) but it is abundantly clear which way of life is sustainable, and which isn't. And that's not "more sustainable". Burning fossil fuels is just not sustainable anyway you cut it.
Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing not to discount is that if we needed to rebuild civilization suddenly... a lot of us are going to be dead. And consequently, those surviving and rebuilding are going to have the residue of a civilization that supported many more people to work with. Cast iron might be relatively rare, but would it be relatively rare for 1/1000th as many of us?
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...
This comment reminds me of the book "Earth Abides" and where the main character is internally debating these sorts of things. Highly recommend.