My intuition strongly suggests that it would take less than a thousand years to rebuild industrial society, even starting from hunter-gatherer levels. Argument to articulate my intuition: --It would take at most something like 100 years to get to something like ancient Athens, a primitive agrarian economy but rich enough that some people could afford to think and learn etc., and with a strong culture of science/discovery/engineering. The italicized part is the hard part, I think—it happened in Athens and various other city-states but not in most of them. However, 100 years after the collapse the cultural knowledge of the Before Times would still be present, so I think the average city-state 100 years after collapse would have levels of science/discovery/engineering culture that would be at least as high as Athens. --Ancient Athens, if it had loads of artefacts from an industrial civilization and diagrams lying around for how to build them, probably could have figured out to get there in 100 years or so. The bottleneck historically was NOT the sheer clock time it takes to go through the various stages (iteratively improving a set of tools and processes and accumulating resources which you use to build the next tech level, which you then improve to build the tech level after that, etc.) but rather the clock time it took to invent the new technologies. (A major restriction was that people didn’t generally think inventing things was a worthwhile pursuit; the governments of the time thought that building huge monuments was a better use of resources. Well, if they thought they could be FIRING CANNONS in 50 years and FLYING IN AIRPLANES BOMBING THEIR ENEMIES in 100 years, if only they put loads of money and effort into science and tech, they surely would!) --Conclusion: Estimated ~200 year timeline to rebuild civilization starting from industrial era.
This estimate is way more optimistic than yours, I wonder why. Which of the premises above would you disagree with? I’m guessing the second one?
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.
Well, if they thought they could be FIRING CANNONS in 50 years and FLYING IN AIRPLANES BOMBING THEIR ENEMIES in 100 years, if only they put loads of money and effort into science and tech, they surely would!)
I feel like you really hit the nail on the head here of where I think the original post went off track.
My opinion is that the original post is significantly underrating the value of the current zeitgeist, which is related to cultural norms and values but not the same thing. There will be this sense in the air of what things can become/return to, and it won’t be some vague notion of progress, it will be a very specific notion of planes, capitalism, computers, etc. It will be massively important that people understand that they can get to these things. I’d even go farther than you and say it’s not inventing the technologies that takes so much time, but the combination of having to invent them and not knowing which technologies to invent in the first place. If we told the romans that they should invent electricity I feel like it’s not that crazy to think they would have figured it out (depending on how much we specify what electricity is).
That’s why I said in my other comment that it might make sense to look at developing countries that leveraged catchup growth rather then rerunning history as a baseline. These countries had a similar Zeitgeist (i’m sort of just using this as a placeholder word until I can specify what I mean more) in this dimension. (some) People in these countries went to developed nations and saw what things could become. Of course it is also important they have some idea how to get there, but I don’t see that as much of a crux, since there should be books lying around everywhere.
Thanks this is great!
My intuition strongly suggests that it would take less than a thousand years to rebuild industrial society, even starting from hunter-gatherer levels.
Argument to articulate my intuition:
--It would take at most something like 100 years to get to something like ancient Athens, a primitive agrarian economy but rich enough that some people could afford to think and learn etc., and with a strong culture of science/discovery/engineering. The italicized part is the hard part, I think—it happened in Athens and various other city-states but not in most of them. However, 100 years after the collapse the cultural knowledge of the Before Times would still be present, so I think the average city-state 100 years after collapse would have levels of science/discovery/engineering culture that would be at least as high as Athens.
--Ancient Athens, if it had loads of artefacts from an industrial civilization and diagrams lying around for how to build them, probably could have figured out to get there in 100 years or so. The bottleneck historically was NOT the sheer clock time it takes to go through the various stages (iteratively improving a set of tools and processes and accumulating resources which you use to build the next tech level, which you then improve to build the tech level after that, etc.) but rather the clock time it took to invent the new technologies. (A major restriction was that people didn’t generally think inventing things was a worthwhile pursuit; the governments of the time thought that building huge monuments was a better use of resources. Well, if they thought they could be FIRING CANNONS in 50 years and FLYING IN AIRPLANES BOMBING THEIR ENEMIES in 100 years, if only they put loads of money and effort into science and tech, they surely would!)
--Conclusion: Estimated ~200 year timeline to rebuild civilization starting from industrial era.
This estimate is way more optimistic than yours, I wonder why. Which of the premises above would you disagree with? I’m guessing the second one?
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.
I feel like you really hit the nail on the head here of where I think the original post went off track.
My opinion is that the original post is significantly underrating the value of the current zeitgeist, which is related to cultural norms and values but not the same thing. There will be this sense in the air of what things can become/return to, and it won’t be some vague notion of progress, it will be a very specific notion of planes, capitalism, computers, etc. It will be massively important that people understand that they can get to these things. I’d even go farther than you and say it’s not inventing the technologies that takes so much time, but the combination of having to invent them and not knowing which technologies to invent in the first place. If we told the romans that they should invent electricity I feel like it’s not that crazy to think they would have figured it out (depending on how much we specify what electricity is).
That’s why I said in my other comment that it might make sense to look at developing countries that leveraged catchup growth rather then rerunning history as a baseline. These countries had a similar Zeitgeist (i’m sort of just using this as a placeholder word until I can specify what I mean more) in this dimension. (some) People in these countries went to developed nations and saw what things could become. Of course it is also important they have some idea how to get there, but I don’t see that as much of a crux, since there should be books lying around everywhere.