Can we Re-Build Civilisation after Collapse.

[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.