mousepad wrote:eclipse wrote:I'm just outlining the most probable scenarios
That is very debatable. I think it greatly depend on the type of disaster.
Yes - I already said that.
If there's complete destruction (nuclear) or other gross environmental degradation, the situation is probably much different.
Obviously - and I already conceded that - both on my blog and in this chat.
Keep in mind that the medievel ages didn't pick up the pieces from the romans.
It depends on what you mean. They might not have had the same nationalistic empire building successes, but that hardly means they descended into barbarism and anarchy. There was structure and learning and even development in some areas. There's a lot of cultural baggage around the "Dark" and Medieval ages that we all inherit from probably the most successful and longest lasting bit of propaganda ever.
The concept of a "Dark Age" originated in the 1330s with the Italian scholar Petrarch, who regarded the post-Roman centuries as "dark" compared to the "light" of classical antiquity.[1][2] The term employs traditional light-versus-darkness imagery to contrast the era's "darkness" (lack of records) with earlier and later periods of "light" (abundance of records).[1] The phrase "Dark Age" itself derives from the Latin saeculum obscurum, originally applied by Caesar Baronius in 1602 when he referred to a tumultuous period in the 10th and 11th centuries.[3][4] The concept thus came to characterize the entire Middle Ages as a time of intellectual darkness in Europe between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. This became especially popular during the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment.[1]
As the accomplishments of the era came to be better understood in the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars began restricting the "Dark Ages" appellation to the Early Middle Ages (c. 5th–10th century),[1][5][6] and now scholars also reject its usage in this period.[7] The majority of modern scholars avoid the term altogether due to its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate.[8][9][10][11] Petrarch's pejorative meaning remains in use,[12][13][14] typically in popular culture which often mischaracterises the Middle Ages as a time of violence and backwardness.[15][16]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages_(historiography)
Practically everything was lost and had to be reinvented.
Absolutely historically inaccurate - total rubbish. See the above.
Keep in mind that the Europeans didn't learn from the aztecs/mayas. Everything was demolished and forgotten.
They didn't need to. They had "Guns, Germs, and Steel".
Watch this short summary of Jared Diamond's Pulitzer Prize winning book. Ask yourself why the Europeans were invading the Aztecs and Mayas rather than the other way round! (Honestly!)
That's an interesting comment. To think that currently there are still tons of back-water 3rd world countries out there. The only thing they have to do is look, learn and copy successful nations and industries. Yet they don't or can't or won't.
Now this is your
most interesting comeback. This really does show how important governance is to the lives and personal wealth of the average citizen. I guess even in Somalia and other developing nation situations, while the average citizen is vastly poorer and living a totally different life to us - the warlords still have kit and booty. They still want viable workshops. They still want some people taken out of the total drudgery of generalist subsistence farming, and fed and housed and clothed to allow specialisation. Specialisation is the key. It means certain disciplines are being remembered and not totally lost to the ages. It means that the fragile candle of knowledge can suddenly blaze into a furnace again in the right conditions - should a kinder regime develop over time.
And if those States don't develop back into a trading Federation as I hope? War is also a powerful motivator for discovery and invention. (But probably a vastly worse outcome than local villages co-operating and trading as they sift through the rubble and salvage and relearn everything.)
What makes you think that somebody will dig up a user manual of an iphone and the light of ideas will go on in his head?
Are you kidding me? Talk about a straw-man. (Although - even in the
Book of Eli - there were workshops where you could get an old ipod charged!)
No. My blog page talking about
basic tractors possibly running on wood-smoke that allow farming,
basic Einstein fridges for a local communal kitchen (like an army mess) that allow preserving food and dairy, etc.
Once you're half a year or a year out of the horror (whatever that looks like - nuclear fire, starvation, rampaging mobs, etc) - collapses can be long boring affairs. Subsistence farming is hard and boring. There's no Netflix or internet or phones to browse. What do people
do with their time?
Salvage and
read. They dig through the ruins, even through old second hand book stalls, looking for entertainment and survival knowledge.
It's not the large town that allows specialization. It's the surplus in energy and food available that allows towns.
That's true but you've missed the point.
Given one town of 5000 people are already being fed, and another town of 5000 people also exists, and you are able to feed them all - you get the GDP for that region of 2 towns as the output of 10,000 people.
But the magic comes in if they're all in the same town. The same 10,000 people suddenly produce an extra 30% GDP FOR FREE if you combine them into the one town of 10,000 people. The basic rule? Every time your town doubles, you get 30% GDP for free. I would have thought trying to make things
easier after a disaster would be desirable?
Dr James Hansen recommends breeder reactors that convert nuclear 'waste' into 1000 years of clean energy for America, and can charge all our light vehicles and generate "Blue Crude" for heavy vehicles.
https://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/recharge/
