how long do you think it would take to recover ?



Imagine if tomorrow, everything we've built, all the knowledge we've accumulated in writing (along with a significant % of a population) will be destroyed and we have to start from scratch. Most likely we'll go back to hunter and gatherer society but still with minds full of knowledge and memories of the old world/technology.



will we be able to fuse/melt metals, process oil, build a combustion engine, source electricity, go nuclear ? considering we'd want to even go that route.



Think about it, due to a division of labour 90+% of people don't know how to do anything, we all specialize in a narrow field and that knowledge is not enough to do anything on a big scale, when the whole system collapses, can we recover knowledge and piece together the leftovers of the past ?

 

You would think that if it ever got that far, there would be a library of books somewhere with a ton of How To stuff so people could easily start developing new societies.

 

The problem would be regaining globalization. A lot of the stuff we do needs critical components from places that you cannot get it for yourself. So knowing how to do something without the materials would make it much more difficult.



We wouldn't lose all capabilities and go back to a middle ages (or worse) level of technology but we would merge the two. Plus, most situations leading to a decimation of population we will still have extensive availability of modern equipment, it will just be energy that will be lacking in most places.

 

The first thing that happens is referred to as TIDO



The

Initial

Die-

Off



Almost everyone would die. The few that remained would likely be extreme survivalists or small farmers. No need to worry then, b/c you're not either of those.