Can we Re-Build Civilisation after Collapse.

[bigpaul]

have it your own way, no comment.

[Scythe13]

Neccessity is the mother of all invention.

I really believe we will develop and move beyond where we are.

Cars powered by salt water, as an example.

The problems would be things like lubricants and chemical based medication (much of which is created from oil), however, there will be other developments that may cover those kinds of things.

The same with the 'wearing out' and general deterioration of materials. There are some AMAZING processes at the moment with bio-engineering, where they can GROW (yes, you read that right, a 100% organic material) a solar panel. Guess what? They can even do the same with a battery. They have engineered bacteria that produce electricity and have a small LED that's been running for a year or so. The best thing is, the bacteria that are being used to power that LED have actually been surpassed and even more effective organic-batteries have been created.

There is the chance that these kinds of things will be the next 'evolution'/development of technology. So post SHTF, the next labs that open up to create technology could well focus on those kinds of things. Organic cars, bacteria-created plastics (think about those funky shells with the oil-on-water shimmer...organically made and as strong as steel).

[Midnitemo]

we as a species will adapt and overcome, when man as we know it first came to be with our rubbish feeble slow body we overcame other creatures and nature to become the top of the food chain in a relatively short time because of our inteligence and ability to adapt things to our will,it will be quicker and easier this time because we have a huge selection of idea's in our libraries already,we don't need to wait for these great mind's to be born,grow up and develop there great idea's there here now in reference books

[Scythe13]

All due respect to John and the initial post. I do agree with much of what's in the papers. I have had a quick skim. However, there are still many of us here that will take these things into account and will find ways to work around such things.

I agree that to get back to EXACTLY where we are, is not going to be too doable in a short period of time, but we can progress to further ahead than we are, in a different direction. Like a tree branch being cut off, the tree will grow and develop in a different way...unless the tree dies out altogether. In which case we'll all be dead anyway.

[John]

Thanks for all your thoughts on this so far.
But what BP said is quite correct. Things like hydrogen take more to make in power, if you have it than what it gives out.
What we are doing at present is taking a source of power, say coal or gas and burning that to heat water to make steam to drive turbines to make electricity. The exception being hydro where we use the water direct. Even wind turbines require things like concrete to make the bases etc. This will be available and even if it is, for a short while it will all have to be hand mixed etc. and we will be more concerned with survival, growing, rearing animals, hunting and living until the next day or week. We will not have the numbers.

Please, if you have not, look up and read I pencil. It really is very good and you will see just how impossible it will be to make even this little old pencil post SHTF.

We also appear to have a thing about re-inventing stuff. We will not have the resources or raw material and I am talking longer term, not cannibalising or hammering and heating metals left for something else.
Things like railway lines re-made simply into other items. As stated before this OK for short term, may be a good few years or decades but what I trying to do is look at the longer term.

The lack of people numbers, expertise and knowledge. If we were even to stand a chance of any of this we would need to find the time to teach the children and we would not have the time or even the people spare to teach even if any of those people had the knowledge to pass on. Simple stuff you read instructions in a book or follow the pictures, but how do you make a generator from scratch.

We are now far too specialised. Please again read I pencil and you will get the idea. It is not a long paper just a few pages.
And to take what BP said a little further, once it happens we will from day one start to regress and probably quite rapidly. Our initial period will be on survival, which will probably mean using what we can find, scavenging, hunting, trapping, may be growing etc. And even growing without pesticides or artificial fertilisers. Teaching the child to read and write and even basic maths will be task that will probably go out of the door, you will be too busy surviving and teaching them to survive.

I have this awful problem that come that may we are stuck with thoughts of our own greatness and what has happened before. This planet we live on called Earth is a finite planet, yes some of replenishes and much of that takes millenniums to replenish, if it ever does. These sources which we have used to get us to where we are now are nearly gone, or at least becoming viably accessible. The only reason we can at present carry on is that we have the power to reach the harder to get resources. That power will go with a collapse. As stated before we may be able to have small enclaves which have power from solar, wind even Hydro but once that parts wear out, break down, we may have some spares and may have some knowledge as to how to replace these parts but we will not be able them from scratch.

We will not be able be able to re-invent or revert to anything like we have now. All we can hope for is to use what knowledge we have now and try to ensure a simpler life style in the future, if we survive.
To paraphrase JOHN WYNDHAM, The Day of the Triffids (1951)
We may have a flying start in a new kind of world. We may be endowed with a capital of enough of everything to begin with, but that isn’t going to last forever. . . . Later we’ll have to plow; still later we’ll have to learn how to make plowshares; later than that we’ll have to learn how to smelt the iron to make the shares. . . . That’s the short cut to save us starting where our ancestors did.
The problem will be is how far we will have to go back or regress.
Cars powered by salt water, as an example. Please tell me I have not come across this before?

Plus we have had no new technology for many years all we have had is refinements to existing technology.
To close BP is not counselling despair; he is trying to be realistic.

[Midnitemo]

I didn't mention a timescale and i suspect it will be decades or maybe centuries before some sort of modern society is up and running fully but provided we humans as a species haven't been completely eradicated we will bounce back.

[bigpaul]

I think it must be an age thing we as a race have progressed further than any civilisation has before, ergo we have further to fall, without our technology we will more helpless than any previous civilisation was. we may have to start again from a long way back.

[John]

We are of the generation that landed a man on the moon and we talk about the difficulty of making a candle. What you called the stockpile of "things" will merely allow a little breathing space. Perhaps several generations.

Survivors Terry nation 1974

[Scythe13]

To quote I, Pencil:
"I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding!"

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"For, if one is aware that these know-hows will naturally, yes, automatically, arrange themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand—that is, in the absence of governmental or any other coercive masterminding—then one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free people."

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Once government has had a monopoly of a creative activity such, for instance, as the delivery of the mails, most individuals will believe that the mails could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely. And here is the reason: Each one acknowledges that he himself doesn't know how to do all the things incident to mail delivery. He also recognizes that no other individual could do it. These assumptions are correct. No individual possesses enough know-how to perform a nation's mail delivery any more than any individual possesses enough know-how to make a pencil. Now, in the absence of faith in free people—in the unawareness that millions of tiny know-hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy this necessity—the individual cannot help but reach the erroneous conclusion that mail can be delivered only by governmental "master-minding."

My response to which is: DHL, FedEx, ParcelForce.....etc.

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To put it in the context with which I have read it, it's a paper about the brilliance of human ingenuity.

With this as it's final words
"The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society's legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed."

There is no one mastermind. But there is ingenuity, collaboration, and all of human history that says we can rebuild, we will rebuild, and we will exceed those before us.

[John]

Yes Ok but what about how to manufacture. The raw material needs to be dug out of the ground but before that you need the means to dig. Therefore you need the raw material. We can do this because of the technology that we have and we will not have it post collapse nor will be be able to re-invent it, at least not as know it.

I am glad so many think that the good old human being is so capable particular in a post collapse situation.
Only time will tell and probably by then many of us will be long gone.

Anyway I have had my say, it has not been deleted so I will leave you to it.
I would stress that I am not trying to earn any brownie points just to some people to get out of their boxes and have look.
But there you go.

BTW what about the sea water powered car????