Also I don’t see why it would take even close to 100 years to get to ancient Athens. I see you said at most so possibly we are in agreement.
I feel pretty confident that my father, who is a city dweller like myself, but who loves gardening and is an avid reader, could produce 1000x-10000x his own needs in food within 5 years if he had access to nearby farmland, tractors/corn picking machines, gas, a well, and some relevant books. I don’t even think he would need electricity(though I’m not sure ). We live in Chicago, which is only a few days walk or less from literal industrial scale cornfields with all the equipment you would need and also a wealth of libraries with any book he might need about how to farm at scale.
This is someone who has a pretty deep understanding of cellular biology and moderate understanding of botany as well as lots of experience gardening and reading tips that have taken 1000s of years to develop. He’s somewhat unusual but It’s not like he’s an incredibly rare person. There are lots of people alive right now who understand plants wayyyyyy better than Mendel, let alone anyone in Athens. Moreover we have GMO’d plants and TRACTORS and drip irrigation, and we understand crop rotation, etc. etc. etc. These things won’t disappear and neither will the infrastructure created by mega farms, which have automated the vast majority of what they do (depending on the plant, but in the case of corn for instance, there is nearly no labor involved).
I just don’t see it. Either there is a 100 year period where going outside or establishing a colony will get you insta murdered or there will be lots of people who will quickly prosper to levels of wealth completely unseen by all but the wealthiest people ever alive during 300 BC. There needs to be some specific mechanistic explanation for why someone like my father would not be able to safely farm a cornfield.
I’m beating a dead horse here but based on an incredibly quick search 80% !! of ancient greece was engaged in agriculture. Currently in the US it’s something like 1-2 %. Let’s assume we lose an order of magnitude of our current agricultural productivity per capita. Then we are still producing 4-8x the food as them per person. And this seems like an incredibly conservative assumption. Because if civilization collapsed, we wouldn’t be farming oranges and bananas and spinach and berries, etc. We’d be farming corn and potatoes, which are both more calorie dense and extremely automated/optimized and thus trending way above the general efficiency ratios noted above.
With this abundance of food we could immediately spend the majority of our time studying modern civilization and rebuilding. It’s at this point where I feel much less clear of the timelines.
Also I don’t see why it would take even close to 100 years to get to ancient Athens. I see you said at most so possibly we are in agreement.
I feel pretty confident that my father, who is a city dweller like myself, but who loves gardening and is an avid reader, could produce 1000x-10000x his own needs in food within 5 years if he had access to nearby farmland, tractors/corn picking machines, gas, a well, and some relevant books. I don’t even think he would need electricity(though I’m not sure ). We live in Chicago, which is only a few days walk or less from literal industrial scale cornfields with all the equipment you would need and also a wealth of libraries with any book he might need about how to farm at scale.
This is someone who has a pretty deep understanding of cellular biology and moderate understanding of botany as well as lots of experience gardening and reading tips that have taken 1000s of years to develop. He’s somewhat unusual but It’s not like he’s an incredibly rare person. There are lots of people alive right now who understand plants wayyyyyy better than Mendel, let alone anyone in Athens. Moreover we have GMO’d plants and TRACTORS and drip irrigation, and we understand crop rotation, etc. etc. etc. These things won’t disappear and neither will the infrastructure created by mega farms, which have automated the vast majority of what they do (depending on the plant, but in the case of corn for instance, there is nearly no labor involved).
I just don’t see it. Either there is a 100 year period where going outside or establishing a colony will get you insta murdered or there will be lots of people who will quickly prosper to levels of wealth completely unseen by all but the wealthiest people ever alive during 300 BC. There needs to be some specific mechanistic explanation for why someone like my father would not be able to safely farm a cornfield.
I’m beating a dead horse here but based on an incredibly quick search 80% !! of ancient greece was engaged in agriculture. Currently in the US it’s something like 1-2 %. Let’s assume we lose an order of magnitude of our current agricultural productivity per capita. Then we are still producing 4-8x the food as them per person. And this seems like an incredibly conservative assumption. Because if civilization collapsed, we wouldn’t be farming oranges and bananas and spinach and berries, etc. We’d be farming corn and potatoes, which are both more calorie dense and extremely automated/optimized and thus trending way above the general efficiency ratios noted above.
With this abundance of food we could immediately spend the majority of our time studying modern civilization and rebuilding. It’s at this point where I feel much less clear of the timelines.