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We'll be like a global prison wing, sharpening plastic trash into weapons.
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Oct 28, 2021 19:56
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Mr. Nice! posted:I mean, not exactly. It's all sitting on the surface right now. All that precious steel and concrete will still be there to be repurposed. Yeah it's kind of the exact opposite, at least as far as metals go. If we went stone age today then 2000 years from now people would just quarry skyscrapers for rebar.
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Oct 28, 2021 19:57
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Mining, as in digging into the earth to extract non-organic raw materials, is probably as old as hominid lithic tool use. Because it's really really really easy to understand that rocks come from the ground. This causes issues because you get material sources that get exhausted prehistorically and if you don't realize that things get confusing.
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Oct 28, 2021 19:57
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Tulip posted:Yeah it's kind of the exact opposite, at least as far as metals go. If we went stone age today then 2000 years from now people would just quarry skyscrapers for rebar. just like people did every time a civilization collapsed and an abandoned city/monument was right there full of building materials
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Oct 28, 2021 20:00
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Some trilingual billboard built into the wall of some shelter of the future will end up being the rosetta stone that finally cracks english for future historians.
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Oct 28, 2021 20:03
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Tulip posted:Yeah it's kind of the exact opposite, at least as far as metals go. If we went stone age today then 2000 years from now people would just quarry skyscrapers for rebar. Yeah those Sentinelese islanders made weapons and tools from a freighter that ran aground off their island.
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Oct 28, 2021 20:32
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Telsa Cola posted:Mining, as in digging into the earth to extract non-organic raw materials, is probably as old as hominid lithic tool use. Because it's really really really easy to understand that rocks come from the ground. You don't need to be a hominid to work in the salt mines. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6rAQekwvL0
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Oct 28, 2021 20:46
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Mr. Nice! posted:In many cases, yeah. Lots of poo poo used to be just ripe for the taking. It's not anymore because all the peoples of the past already found the easy to get stuff. The earliest mining I'm aware of was for flint, which was valuable stuff and an excellent trade good.
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Oct 28, 2021 23:53
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Tunicate posted:You don't need to be a hominid to work in the salt mines. Yeah I was trying to cut out things that get eaten with the whole non-organic thing.
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Oct 29, 2021 00:33
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The real problem with a post nuclear apocalypse rebuilding will be fossil fuels. We’ve used up all the stuff even an industrial society can access. And unlike metals and plastics and such it goes away when used or goes bad quickly so our mad max descendants can’t scavenge it from the ruins. And without the ease of fossil fuels you can’t work yourself up to the level of nuclear, wind, and solar. A true nukpacolypse might very well doom the species even if it doesn’t actually kill us.
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Oct 29, 2021 01:49
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galagazombie posted:The real problem with a post nuclear apocalypse rebuilding will be fossil fuels. We’ve used up all the stuff even an industrial society can access. And unlike metals and plastics and such it goes away when used or goes bad quickly so our mad max descendants can’t scavenge it from the ruins. And without the ease of fossil fuels you can’t work yourself up to the level of nuclear, wind, and solar. A true nukpacolypse might very well doom the species even if it doesn’t actually kill us. There's more than enough coal to fuel several apocalypses.
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Oct 29, 2021 02:36
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The conversation has been had in multiple places on SA but I'm not really convinced that lack of fossil fuels is really a insurmountable barrier.
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Oct 29, 2021 02:42
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Kaal posted:There's more than enough coal to fuel several apocalypses. It's like a boiling-water nuclear reactor. Humans burn coal, global temperatures rise, humans die off, greenhouse emissions drop, temperatures gradually decrease, human population increases again, humans burn more coal...
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Oct 29, 2021 02:45
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Also IIRC hydrogen powered engines and gasoline powered engines were developed at about the same time, it's just gasoline won out due to it being slightly less explody and cheaper to use. In a hypothetical post-apocalyptic world, the crows may stick with hydrogen power if fossil fuels aren't around.
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Oct 29, 2021 02:46
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The Lone Badger posted:It's like a boiling-water nuclear reactor. Humans burn coal, global temperatures rise, humans die off, greenhouse emissions drop, temperatures gradually decrease, human population increases again, humans burn more coal... Yeah it's a pretty dark future, but it certainly seems hypothetically feasible. Current estimates are that the planet has something like 130 years of coal left at current use and with no other exploration. sullat posted:Also IIRC hydrogen powered engines and gasoline powered engines were developed at about the same time, it's just gasoline won out due to it being slightly less explody and cheaper to use. In a hypothetical post-apocalyptic world, the crows may stick with hydrogen power if fossil fuels aren't around. Creating hydrogen from coal is quite easy to do. It's called brown or black hydrogen, depending on the type of coal. Using gas probably would require a higher level of technical ability, but it also can be converted into grey or blue hydrogen. Kaal fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Oct 29, 2021 |
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Oct 29, 2021 02:47
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People spent thousands of years traveling either by foot or horse. I don't think going back to that is insurmountable especially after some theoretical collapse of society.
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Oct 29, 2021 03:03
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We are really bad/good(?) at going "They don't have X so they can't have Y" and then finding out they do indeed have Y they just do it in a completely different way since they don't have X. We then go "Giants/Angels/Aliens did it".
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Oct 29, 2021 03:12
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skasion posted:China is an interesting case because they had ironworking from a pretty early date, but bronze was a way bigger and more prestigious thing from prehistory on. IIRC as late as the Spring and Autumn they’re still mostly using bronze for weapons and armor, and iron adoption is directly driven by the increasing scale of armies under the Warring States. They kinda didn't have iron from that early. There are very occasional artifacts earlier, almost entirely bloomery stuff from the Central Asian provinces, but actual ironworking doesn't really happen in China proper until around 500 BCE. Bronze too for that matter appeared relatively late compared to other parts of Eurasia. Early Chinese civilization is a pretty good example of the fallibility of the "age" system of development, since you get social complexity very comparable to that of Near Eastern bronze working societies in a society that was technically neolithic. For that matter while they were "late" to metallurgy, they beat everyone else to the punch with ceramics both chronologically and qualitatively, which let them hit the ground running when they actually did start ironworking in quantity.
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Oct 29, 2021 06:02
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Telsa Cola posted:We are really bad/good(?) at going "They don't have X so they can't have Y" and then finding out they do indeed have Y they just do it in a completely different way since they don't have X. Yeah this. For some reason it's extremely difficult to imagine someone else taking a different route to Y. And what's even more difficult is imagining a different thing that is not Y but is equivalent to Y.
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Oct 29, 2021 08:07
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The Aztecs show how you can get pretty drat good with no more metallurgy than copper, and in a society that doesn't really use the wheel despite having discovered it.
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Oct 29, 2021 08:28
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I'd really prefer if our post collapse society didn't resemble the Aztecs in any way.
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Oct 29, 2021 08:29
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Well given how water levels are rising, their ability to farm in brackish swampland may be just what we need.
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Oct 29, 2021 08:33
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Gaius Marius posted:I'd really prefer if our post collapse society didn't resemble the Aztecs in any way. Do you want the sun to go away?
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Oct 29, 2021 08:54
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The Lone Badger posted:Do you want the sun to go away? I have full faith that a kindly torturer will eventually come and restart the sun/Kill all life on the planet in a cleansing flood
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Oct 29, 2021 09:03
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The Lone Badger posted:Do you want the sun to go away? I'm red haired, so yes.
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Oct 29, 2021 11:26
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Being high all day on your pontoon city seems like an ok life idk. I guess it was man made islands not pontoons
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Oct 29, 2021 12:32
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Insect eggs as a staple may come back in style.
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Oct 29, 2021 14:04
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Oh yes. If ~10 billion humans want to continue eating sufficient protein on ever-shrinking amounts of arable land thanks to climate change while not contributing further to the environmental devastation livestock causes, we better get a lot more used to eating insect, fungal, and plant proteins. The 20th century western idea of 'it's not a "real" meal if there isn't meat on the table' only has a few years left.
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Oct 29, 2021 14:17
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I will work the mycogen tanks
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Oct 29, 2021 14:51
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I will perish slowly inside the mycogen tanks
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Oct 29, 2021 15:23
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Gaius Marius posted:I'd really prefer if our post collapse society didn't resemble the Aztecs in any way. So, no compulsory public education,and no sanitation service?
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Oct 29, 2021 15:39
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Tree Bucket posted:I will perish slowly inside the mycogen tanks It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and to become one with all the people.
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Oct 29, 2021 15:54
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Grevling posted:Insect eggs as a staple may come back in style. "May?" Just last year I learned in parts of South America a certain type of fly egg is seen as a local staple food. It was apparently an important protein source in the Aztec Empire and the poorer parts of the population never stopped eating it. In parts of the world insect eggs/larvae apparently never went out of style
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Oct 29, 2021 16:03
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sullat posted:It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and to become one with all the people. *grinning and dying of several cancers and two viruses* Dinner's on me tonight
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Oct 29, 2021 16:14
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Brawnfire posted:*grinning and dying of several cancers and two viruses* Dinner's me tonight
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Oct 29, 2021 16:41
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Imagined posted:Oh yes. If ~10 billion humans want to continue eating sufficient protein on ever-shrinking amounts of arable land thanks to climate change while not contributing further to the environmental devastation livestock causes, we better get a lot more used to eating insect, fungal, and plant proteins. The 20th century western idea of 'it's not a "real" meal if there isn't meat on the table' only has a few years left. I'm working my hardest.
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Oct 29, 2021 17:21
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I'm not sure if it's really clear how much the amount of arable land will shrink from climate change, given that as some regions heat up too much (and I'm not really sure if it's heat itself that makes regions bad for crops as opposed to just worsening irrigation), many formerly unusable cold regions will thaw out and become available. And that's disregarding other prospective methods to increase the potential for farming density, potential technologies for developing new crops for the now too-hot areas, or even the capacity for humanity to contain or reverse climate change.
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Oct 29, 2021 17:36
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I mean if you could get the Midwest to grow something other than corn and soybeans you can feed a lot of people too
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Oct 29, 2021 17:40
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SlothfulCobra posted:I'm not sure if it's really clear how much the amount of arable land will shrink from climate change, given that as some regions heat up too much (and I'm not really sure if it's heat itself that makes regions bad for crops as opposed to just worsening irrigation), many formerly unusable cold regions will thaw out and become available. And that's disregarding other prospective methods to increase the potential for farming density, potential technologies for developing new crops for the now too-hot areas, or even the capacity for humanity to contain or reverse climate change. Siberia isn't so much becoming arable as [i]literally exploding.[/i
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Oct 29, 2021 17:50
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Libluini posted:"May?" Just last year I learned in parts of South America a certain type of fly egg is seen as a local staple food. It was apparently an important protein source in the Aztec Empire and the poorer parts of the population never stopped eating it. Yeah that's true. Does anyone still harvest them at the same scale as the Aztecs though? Too bad Lake Texcoco and its delicious eggs are gone now.
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Oct 29, 2021 17:53
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