So how far back are we likely to go……………..

[bigpaul]

you know what they say: "hope for the best, prepare for the worst"!!

[NorthernRaider]

Its all a best or worst best guess I think, My own is we could not really get further back than about the 1850s.

So long as we can still make steel and machine it we can make boilers, if we can make boilers we can make trackers, ploughs, and locomotives and steam ships.
that would take us back to around the 1900s etc. And to begin with there is billions of tons of high quality steel and alloys laying around just waiting to be melted down and reused.

it would be the very delicate stuff we would struggle for so no microchips but probably yes to telephones and telegraphs, no to photo voltaics buy yes to solar water heaters, no to plastic disposable needles and syringes but yes to glass ones. No private cars but yes to trains and canal boats.

Like I say a guess is the best I can think of and it will certainly create full employment as all the mass produced disposable automatic manufacturing processes stop and we have to start over from basic but not medieval levels

[bigpaul]

making steel and machining it is I think wishful thinking, without power I believe we will go back to pre industrial levels before everyone started leaving the countryside and moving to the cities, that would be 1750s not 1850s, without power no finance/banking, no telecommunications, and no mass production, someone may be able to knock something up on the equivalent of a blacksmiths forge but its going to be hard manual labour, time consuming and dirty and I cant see many wanting to do it.

[Lightspeed]

(14 December 2014, 16:33)bigpaul Wrote: making steel and machining it is I think wishful thinking, without power I believe we will go back to pre industrial levels before everyone started leaving the countryside and moving to the cities, that would be 1750s not 1850s, without power no finance/banking, no telecommunications, and no mass production, someone may be able to knock something up on the equivalent of a blacksmiths forge but its going to be hard manual labour, time consuming and dirty and I cant see many wanting to do it.

BP I disagree with you here:

Finance... There could quite quickly be some kind of convertible currency. Society recognises and values the ability to have an easily carried and universally accepted repository of value. That knowledge is not undoable, and I think will accelerate the return to cash.

If iron and steel goods are needed and in short supply, entrepreneurial instinct will drive supply. For both, electrical power is not prerequisite:

Steel: Time and hard manual labour will be the way of life. If the component needed is sufficiently needed, the time and effort will be found to re-forge material already in existence.

Iron: Getting back to industrial revolution levels of industry is quite doable. Iron smelting will be totally feasible in areas where ore deposits and forests are found close together. Once iron can be smelted, its a progressive step to move on to production of steel.

[NorthernRaider]

Around here there is still recoverable quantities of Ironstone, Limestone and open cast or sea coal that could be used and many of the old single shot furnces could likely brought back to life. Also I think in dorset some chaps have just recently started using a small scale traditional brick and tile making company using small hand managed ovens, so there at least is a hint of hope.

[bigpaul]

all of these systems the smelting and the forging are dependant on someone not only doing the hard and very physical manual labour-its not a job for the weak- but on someone who actually knows what to do. I cant see many of our population having the strength, the energy and the will to even start doing it. in an event where power is down, fuel pumps down and no food deliveries only the prepared are likely to survive, those who have not will start dying of starvation about 1 month after they run out of food.

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this is of course "worst case scenario".

[MaryN]

Of course we cannot "unlearn" things, the information will be there still in some format or other. However, having information is one thing, knowing how to use it is something else. I suspect that quite a lot of the information on many things will go into limbo until someone finds a way to use it. Imagine reading a book on brain surgery - a nice, detailed, high photo book - and it all makes sense, but how to use it? Not so simple. I don't suppose too many people are going to volunteer as guinea pigs.

I think losing the modern technology we have become so dependent upon will dump us back to the Victorian era in terms of what is available to us. This isn't to say that life would become unbearable - far from it - but it would certainly become more difficult. Those folks very dependent upon their machines and gadgets will really feel a draught, and I suspect the most vulnerable will be the younger people who have NO IDEA how to do anything in the old ways. It will be very tough. Even basic things like washing, cleaning, basic medical practice, growing seeds etc will be probably beyond a lot of them. I speak from experience with some young friends!

It won't be impossible to live, but it will be tough, and many people will die because of their reliance on modern technology. We can only wait and see.

[NorthernRaider]

The one thing I fear above all else if we do go back to a pre technological society say Victorian and huge numbers of people INCLUDING us have to start doing more manual labour would be if we could no longer produced god quality Antibiotics in large amounts.

We have much less resistance to bugs than they did back then because we as a society have not been exposed to , so cutting wood, cleaning fish , poultry and meat products, picking plants, getting a scratch or bite infected and we could be hit by tetanus (lockjaw)
Septaeceamia (Blood Poisoning) food poisoning, etc

[MaryN]

Keeping your tetanus jabs up to date now would be a good start, NR, as it is supposed to have a longer protective period than the 10 years given. As for septicaemia, well even with the antibiotics we have now this is still a dangerous thing. I did read somewhere that low exposure to "dirt" when young does make a person more prone to infections later; I don't know how true that is, but it could make a dammed good excuse for a bit of mud wrestling!

[NorthernRaider]

Good point about keeping inoculations up to date, Measles, Tet etc.