Timeline for How would humanity enter a Dark Age?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
18 events
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| May 1, 2018 at 16:27 | history | edited | user | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 4, 2018 at 9:25 | comment | added | celtschk | @GarretGang: Combine this scenario with the one by o.m., and by the time Uranium starts running out, there will be nobody left who could develop and build a thorium reactor. | |
| Sep 20, 2017 at 17:53 | comment | added | Pliny | Who needs uranium? Thorium reactors are far safer, more efficient, and thorium is a common rare earth mineral with only limited industrial applications as a catalyst. | |
| Sep 20, 2017 at 17:28 | comment | added | ShadoCat | @GrimmTheOpiner, Nuclear (at least our current nuclear program) is only a stopgap. The amount of nuclear grad uranium that we can mine is too low. It won't support current power needs for 100 years (let alone any increases in usage). | |
| Aug 12, 2017 at 0:06 | comment | added | Goose | The worst case scenario of peak oil and most resources is not a collapse of society into the dark ages. It's higher prices because alternatives have to be used. There's very few if any resources with an alternative. | |
| Jan 26, 2017 at 14:54 | comment | added | Grimm The Opiner | @MichaelKjörling our chosen source of energy is driven primarily by the economics. Oil is still relatively cheap, so we use oil. Nuclear's cost (outside of France) is artificially inflated by excessive regulation, so is underutilised - when oil gets expensive that regulation will fall away. The amount of fracking being done maps directly to the cost of oil, hydro is CO2 free but requires flooding huge areas of land - land can be expensive. As for renewables, well, I admit I think they're a bit of a red herring. | |
| Jan 26, 2017 at 12:03 | comment | added | user | @GrimmTheOpiner If, as you say, we have "a veritable smorgasboard of technologies ready" to replace oil, then where is the reduction on oil usage over, say, the last 20 years? Compare physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/02/… and physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/the-energy-trap and physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/peak-oil-perspective and perhaps to a lesser extent physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/12/…. Make sure to look at the actual data. | |
| Jan 26, 2017 at 11:53 | comment | added | Grimm The Opiner | Peak oil is a poor example as we have a veritable smorgasboard of technologies ready to replace it. Once the economics of diminished supply kick in, fracking, nuclear, hydro, renewables, will all take up the slack. Almost all mined minerals and the like have thousands of years worth left, and most are substitutable to boot. | |
| Feb 3, 2015 at 20:18 | comment | added | Monica Cellio | Comments removed. Comments are not for extended discussion. Please take conversations to Worldbuilding Chat. | |
| Jan 30, 2015 at 2:49 | vote | accept | user3652621 | ||
| Jan 28, 2015 at 18:23 | comment | added | user | @Ernie I didn't mean to imply that this would be a cataclysmic event, but I got the impression that the OP wasn't necessarily looking for one either. As for substitutes, I mentioned several in my answer (wind, solar, fusion are the ones I recall mentioning without reading through my answer again) and also touched on why they wouldn't necessarily work out. If you would like to delve more deeply into how those might work out in a resource-constrained world otherwise similar to ours, I think there are a few potentially pretty good worldbuilding questions in there. | |
| Jan 28, 2015 at 18:19 | comment | added | Ernie | It's also worth noting this would not under any circumstances be a quick, cataclysmic event. It would take a decade, and more to the effect, the price of said all-important commodity would gradually rise over that time as it becomes more and more scarce. And it's not like there's absolutely no substitute, either. It's just that the other substitutes are a bit more inconvenient. | |
| Jan 28, 2015 at 8:28 | history | edited | user | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 27, 2015 at 21:50 | history | edited | user | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 27, 2015 at 21:01 | comment | added | Bobson | Bonus: We can see this coming and we still aren't managing to change it. | |
| Jan 27, 2015 at 18:56 | history | edited | user | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 27, 2015 at 18:51 | history | edited | user | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 27, 2015 at 18:45 | history | answered | user | CC BY-SA 3.0 |