How far would we slip? My best guess is stone age. Think about it; there is no abundant and cheap energy, no easily mineable metals and minerals and as there is no longer any abundant game we would have no possibility to revert to hunter gatherers. No way to sustain eight billion people, there would be a die-off on a scale not seen since the Toba eruption.

Why are there no easily mineable minerals ?

Many iron ore mines were abandoned because they were too small for modern machines , not because they ran out of ore . Even in countries like Switzerland there are plenty of examples .

Add to that there are plenty of machines that would no longer be usable without cheap energy but that we can still hammer into ploughshares or molten down to turn into all sort of things .

I can imagine we might call back to early victorian times , or maybe pre industrial revolution , but not much further than that . We are likely to still have cannons and gunpowder and muskets and weaving looms and kilns to make cement and concrete and bricks and pottery , and we would still have all sorts of mechanical devices . Maybe even simple electrical stuff that can run off small turbines or simple acid batteries .

There might well be a decrease in population connected to that of course . And probably a massive war first as everybody tries to control the limited resources . Fought with canons and muskets and cavalry charges like in napoleons day

I can imagine a plateau where recycled metals are readily available but not after a thousand years or maybe even five hundred and I also think that our mentality has to fit the technology at hand, Victorian tech needed victorian mentality, stone age tools need stone age mentality etc. A pre industrial revolution society would not be feasible with a 21st century mindset.

Just stumbled across this – Harry Harrison! Slammer, you have exceptional taste, like myself

IMHO his earlier stories are often a bit (intentionally) silly but the later expanded various series are great.



pi esse: Dear mods, why are “off topic” posts not thankable? Slammer deserves a medal!

James Gurney, "Dinotopia," a beautifully illustrated fantasy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinotopia

Bob Shaw wrote one where the intrepid time-travelling hero gets separated from his time machine in the age of the dinosaurs. Suddenly he spots, and is spotted by a slavering young t-rex. The t-rex runs straight at him, opens it's mouth and says

"Hewo. I'm emiwy. Would you wike to pway wiv me?"

I think mindsets and mentalities can change very quickly. We know this as expats. We feel as foreigners and our kids who grew up here think we are the ones who don't get it.

There is no fundamental biological difference between a modern human and a Victorian one. If we had to live a Victorian lifestyle we might struggle a bit but our kids who would be born into it would be just fine.

I would wager that the expats here on the forum would adjust faster than others and in the end the children born into a previous form of human society would not know anything else, like you say. Except for stories and in time these stories would become legend and sagas of a time long gone where men could fly and talk to people in the next valley without shouting and carts moved without horses, a time when a evil man called "Darth Vader" was given the power by Satan but in the end he was defeated by Lord Bezos and the Minions. But these are just stories told around the camp fire to scare the children...

It would be a slippery and painful slope to extinction but having said that I do believe that although Homo Sapiens will become extinct at some point in the near future, there could be an opening for Homo Sapiens Superior, perhaps, who knows.

__________________
Back in Bavaria, god´s own belly button.

I think that progress is like a saw-tooth.

Progress is made slowly over many generations and centuries and life gradually gets better. Then a catastrophe hits and we fall back down very quickly. Think end of the Roman Empire when the barbarians appeared at the gates of Rome, or similarly the downfall of many other great empires.

But it doesn't take long and, as with the saw blade, that you start climbing up to the next crenelation. Maybe taking pride in inventing stuff that had already been invented before, in creating better textiles and better ironwork, even though the previous civilization did far better than you. Think Europe in the dark ages. And after a few centuries of war and depravity along came Charlemaigne and there was peace and education and proper houses to live in things got a lot better for a lot of people, and by and large people lived almost as well as they had in Roman times. And with the exception of further wars and things, on the whole things only got better after that, right up to the present day.

So I think that even if our civilization crashes totally and there is famine and war and cholera and 90% of people die, the ones that survive will somehow get their act together and progress will start heading upwards again.

Because humans are curious and inventive and are always challenging the limits.

True, but without any means to power your machines and no metals to make them your civilization will always be stuck on one level with each generation thinking that they are the azimuth of society.
By the way, just remembered this little gem.

Attached Images

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Can’t claim to have taken in all previous posts but think it obvious hardly anyone has either read the books or considered the implications – the dinosaurs didn’t die off, they mastered genetic engineering, as a matriarchal society held males in harems and actively pursued genocide vs. humans. Let’s not forget, that Kerrick (human identification male) is raped by Vaintè (female dinosaur baddie) and doesn’t really know what to think about it…
So, take your precious metals, other issues and … them!

Oh I have read them all. Thing is we look at other creatures and don´t consider them "Human" in the sense that they are equal, just as the Yilanè don´t see humans as sentient.
Vaintè used Kerrick as a sex toy or perhaps was kinky into Zoophilia.

My favorite dinosaurs. They are the best in live gigs. Still have their pick somewhere..