Timeline for Can a civilization be reduced to the Stone age by a conventional war?
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15 events
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| Dec 20, 2017 at 20:42 | comment | added | Johnny | @jamesqf At the same time, I wasn't talking about generally useful books, but rarer academic books on such unusual subjects as nuclear engineering. I think we were just miscommunication, and pretty much agree on what would happen. But, from my perspective, the world would be in the stone age, with a few advanced farming cultures still in the Victorian(?) era. Whereas from yours, the world would be in the Victorian era, with a bunch of savages dying off in it. | |
| Dec 20, 2017 at 6:53 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Johnny: I haven't been discussing urban populations, other than my basic assumption that they'd pretty much all be killed off in the early part of the war. As for books, of course you could find more in towns, but not all of us rural folks are illiterate, you know. As I think I mentioned, my own library covers lots of useful things, ranging from gardening & home repair through basic electronics, physics through general relativity, and more... | |
| Dec 19, 2017 at 10:56 | comment | added | Johnny | @jamesqf Was thinking of the suburban areas where a lot of the major libraries and colleges are.The rural population will get by just fine, thought we were discussing the urban and suburban ones. While a lot of suburban in country areas are tough and could likely survive all right... there are also plenty who aren't, and probably won't, but might be good enough shots to cause trouble in scarcity. Still, there is enough of a scattering of towns that you could probably get most of the books you need (might have trouble finding a few critical works, especially rarer ones that fit the sitch). | |
| Dec 19, 2017 at 3:46 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Johnny: Why do you think most rural people aren't used to using fire? Whether it's the wood stove heating the house in winter, cooking over an open fire when camping, or just using a barbecue grill, it's an absolutely commonplace thing. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 22:40 | comment | added | Johnny | @jamesqf Are all fires are in cities? You mentioned candles and woodstoves, before. A lot of people using fire, which they're not used to. That combined with local fire-brigades either quitting their jobs or being forced to work bucket-brigades, puts a lot of stuff at fire risk. That, plus unchecked forest fires and raiders. Actually, the worst danger might be people burning books for warmth and cooking. But really, you could get the books from overseas or go to college in the first world, if you really had the resources to train nuclear engineers. Yet Africa isn't dotted with nuclear plants. | |
| Dec 17, 2017 at 4:11 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Johnny: The people who don't know and can't learn quickly (or who don't have useful skills to trade to the people who do know) won't be a problem, because they will be dead. There won't be anyone living in cities, even if for some reason they aren't destroyed in the war, for much the same reason. And why do you think all books are in cities? | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 6:09 | comment | added | Johnny | Dude, it's going to take time for everyone to get on the same level. You can't just teach someone how to survive in a day, and it's not like you can go to the local college and give seminars. Many of the people who won't be able to survive will come bandits, and you won't want to teach them a thing. If the problem lasts more than once generation, you're not going to have any nuclear engineers left. You can't build a nuclear reactor just by reading the books--you need to recover hundreds of books to train someone into a nuclear engineer. With no firefighters in the cities... that might be hard. | |
| Dec 16, 2017 at 3:51 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Johnny: My point is that the survivors wouldn't have to re-learn most of the tech: the fundamentals are there in books. There are plenty of people out here in the rural areas who know how to trap small game, how to bow hunt, grow crops, &c. The survivors might not have the population base needed to build a nuclear plant (or a chip foundry, a chemical plant, a rocket capable of launching satellites, &c), but the basic knowledge of how to do it (and perhaps more importantly, why you might or might not want to) is still there. | |
| Dec 15, 2017 at 19:20 | comment | added | Johnny | There's so much ammunition around, it'll probably last for many decades. By the time you run out of ammo, it is possible someone will have worked out how to manufacture it. I don't think we disagree, James. My point was that Cave Men would do better to survive in this environment. Eventually, people will relearn the skills of cavemen, as you describe. But that will take time, and relearning so many smaller steps will come before we can relearn how to make nuclear power plants. | |
| Dec 15, 2017 at 19:09 | comment | added | jamesqf | @Johnny: Cave men couldn't scavenge steel, because there wasn't any around to scavenge. And you won't have AK-47s once you run out of ammunition. (You can scavenge brass, but how do you make primers?) But you can build really good bows. Most people may not know how to make snares &c, but some do, and there are books. Unless you can somehow wipe out all knowledge, the people who know (or can find) better ways of doing things will pass that knowledge to others. | |
| Dec 15, 2017 at 16:29 | comment | added | Ville Niemi | +1 because this is a very good and important point. Improvements in manufacturing and metallurgy mean modern mass produced cheap steel is pretty incredible by standards of earlier times. For example, those Kalashnikovs (and most other military weapons) others mentioned have barrels that would look like "magic metal" just few centuries back. | |
| Dec 15, 2017 at 15:45 | comment | added | Johnny | @MSalters Unnatural selection will surely kill a lot of people. Those who survive will make sure to have plenty of ammo for their guns. Obama bought enough hollow point ammo to shoot every man, woman and child about 200 times, a while back. So, I expect there to be plenty of ammo to last, for the major warlords and survivors. | |
| Dec 15, 2017 at 14:57 | comment | added | MSalters | @Johnny: Evolution will take care of those who can't hunt or grow food. As for Kalashnikovs, they make poor clubs. | |
| Dec 15, 2017 at 12:17 | comment | added | Johnny | Indeed, it'd be a stone age with steel knives and Kalashnikov ARs. But the people will in many respects be on a lower tech level than the cave men. They don't know HOW to make the steel, only how to scavenge it... which is something cavemen could do, too. But most people don't know how to make snares to catch rabbits. | |
| Dec 14, 2017 at 23:27 | history | answered | Vashu | CC BY-SA 3.0 |