The current civilization is mining the more accessible supplies of resources such as oil and metals. If an apocalypse scenario wiped out the ability to maintain modern technology and infrastructure, and our current quarries and whatnot become inaccessible, future generations will have a harder time gathering material needed to fuel a high-tech civilization.

We can look at historical examples of such a societal collapse, the Bronze Age Collapse, lasting from about 1200 BCE to 900 BCE, a period of about 300 years. Presumably, it would take longer to recover to a higher tech level. However, the causes for the collapse are not known but such widespread collapse and the lack of recovery for a long time suggests a general systems collapse. I'll just copy some lines from Wikipedia.

The growing complexity and specialization of the Late Bronze Age political, economic, and social organization in Carol Thomas and Craig Conant's phrase together made the organization of civilization too intricate to reestablish piecewise when disrupted. That could explain why the collapse was so widespread and able to render the Bronze Age civilizations incapable of recovery.

 

-Late Bronze Age Collapse, Wikipedia

"The growing complexity and specialization of the ... political, economic, and social organization"

I don't mean to be a doomsday preacher but sounds kind of familiar doesn't it considering our very specialized sciences and technology being used in everyday life? This analogy applies to a total collapse of modern civilization.

On the other hand, if we look at the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Middle Age organized social structures were able to set themselves up fair quickly. The cities simply shrank in size but were not completely abandoned and some social structures remained such as the Church and the Eastern Roman Empire as well as new nations filling in the power void. This situation could apply to a more limited apocalypse situation such as a US/Russia nuclear exchange with southern hemisphere nations such as Argentina, South Africa, and Austrailia coming out mostly intact(until the economy and the supplies starts to collapse but hopefully they will figure that out before things go even more south).

The current civilization is mining the more accessible supplies of resources such as oil and metals. If an apocalypse scenario wiped out the ability to maintain modern technology and infrastructure, and our current quarries and whatnot become inaccessible, future generations will have a harder time gathering material needed to fuel a high-tech civilization.

We can look at historical examples of such a societal collapse, the Bronze Age Collapse, lasting from about 1200 BCE to 900 BCE, a period of about 300 years. Presumably, it would take longer to recover to a higher tech level. However, the causes for the collapse are not known but such widespread collapse and the lack of recovery for a long time suggests a general systems collapse. I'll just copy some lines from Wikipedia.

The growing complexity and specialization of the Late Bronze Age political, economic, and social organization in Carol Thomas and Craig Conant's phrase together made the organization of civilization too intricate to reestablish piecewise when disrupted. That could explain why the collapse was so widespread and able to render the Bronze Age civilizations incapable of recovery.

-Late Bronze Age Collapse, Wikipedia

"The growing complexity and specialization of the ... political, economic, and social organization"

I don't mean to be a doomsday preacher but sounds kind of familiar doesn't it considering our very specialized sciences and technology being used in everyday life? This analogy applies to a total collapse of modern civilization.

On the other hand, if we look at the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Middle Age organized social structures were able to set themselves up fair quickly. The cities simply shrank in size but were not completely abandoned and some social structures remained such as the Church and the Eastern Roman Empire as well as new nations filling in the power void. This situation could apply to a more limited apocalypse situation such as a US/Russia nuclear exchange with southern hemisphere nations such as Argentina, South Africa, and Austrailia coming out mostly intact(until the economy and the supplies starts to collapse but hopefully they will figure that out before things go even more south).