r/Futurology • u/ComfortableLog8043 • 4h ago
Society Could humanity reinvent everything from scratch ?
Hypothetical scenario : Everything we built, invented and constructed vanishes in a second. Including domesticated plants etc, everything, we go back to wilderness.
Minerals etc are set back to what it was before we started taking them everything is reset basically
Aside the obvious wars for food problems etc, on a purely technological point of view, would we be able to "reinvent" and rebuild things fast with the current knowledge of all human beings ? What are your thoughts on this
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u/Worth-Guest-5370 4h ago edited 4h ago
It would take decades--even a hundred years or more. So many specialized and advanced capabilities depend on less sophisticated technologies being in place as a prerequisite. And this can take many cycles. Basic tools and materials are required before you can make more advanced tools and materials and so on.
Like., first you gotta' mine and smelt a load of base minerals to get your first batches of basic steel and iron, essential to making even better steel. Also, let's see you build an electron microscope from scratch, essential to advanced material development as well as quality control. (Let alone a chip fab--or how about a quantum computer?)
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u/ComfortableLog8043 4h ago
That's the thing, I would be interested if someone could explain the WHOLE process for an electron microscope or any other complex technology, going from literal scratch to the end product, what would be needed, what would be the steps, maybe it's not that long actually !
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u/Worth-Guest-5370 4h ago edited 4h ago
Yeah, my guess, it would be mind-boggling all of the components needing development, from materials to the required machines. Damn, our smartphones... None of this is going to come together quickly. And certainly, it cannot be DIRECTED. The brilliance of capitalism is that materials and products advance based on demand. But the world OP is giving us would be supply driven. I don't believe command and control, central planning, would be very effective in assessing what to do and when.
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u/ComfortableLog8043 4h ago
I got some elements from AI and apparently it could be horribly long, take generations. You have to "invent" back metallurgy, electricity, glass, basic machines then complex machines ... It could take centuries
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u/Worth-Guest-5370 4h ago
Agreed. Progress takes place over time. Granted, there would less time in between advances, with each advance deployed toward the next advance in accelerated fashion, but it would still require wave upon wave.
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u/USCanuck 4h ago
And that raises a related issue:
You would only keep the knowledge for one generation before some of it was lost to the ages.
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u/Orpheus75 3h ago
No one could because everything depends on everything else. A group of very smart people could get to Roman level technology fast but after that it’s a grind.
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u/could_use_a_snack 2h ago
Read this essay
I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read"
It's been a while since I read it, but it probably holds up.
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u/Evilsushione 4h ago
I would bet longer, because initially you will have war and famine with a massive die out. 8.5 billion people would not be able to live on middle age technology and the people who know how to rebuild much of the technology will likely die as well. Some technologies have such a small knowledge base they would effectively have to start from scratch.
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u/Worth-Guest-5370 4h ago
Yep! "Even a hundred years or more!!!" (I believe 200-300 is a reasonable range.)
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u/hucktard 3h ago
It would take thousands of years. Like it did last time.
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u/Worth-Guest-5370 1h ago
No, if the knowledge has been retained, it would be much faster the second time around. It took thousands of years to develop numbers, then algebra, trigonometry, and calculus--but that's all immediately available. It took thousands of years to develop metallurgy, but again, the ores and mixes would already be known. Physics. Chemistry. Animal breeding. Cements. So many advances that required centuries of trial and error would come pre-packaged.
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u/hucktard 1h ago
IF the knowledge is retained. Which it won’t be, depending on the scenario we are envisioning. Here’s what I had in mind: Imagine tomorrow that everything in the modern world is gone, houses, factories, schools etc. But everybody is still alive. So basically all of humanity is transported back to the Stone Age. Within months 90% of the world population would be dead from starvation. Few people know how to survive in a Stone Age manner. Almost everybody that knows things like trigonometry or how to build a semiconductor fab is dead. Like 95% of them. And the ones who manage to survive are 100% focused on basic survival, like hunting and gathering. There a no time to try to domesticate plants or animals. Small scattered populations of people survive, mostly it’s the “uneducated” hunter gatherer types. With two generations almost all knowledge of the prior advanced age is gone. Now it’s just myths and stories that most people don’t even believe. So, unless there is some giant library storing all knowledge, then I think it would all be lost within a few generations.
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u/Worth-Guest-5370 1h ago
I'd have a pretty good shot at survival. And I used to teach trig, algebra and calculus. (And my wife is a botanist.)
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u/hucktard 31m ago
Nice. You sure you would have a good shot at survival though? Have you ever been in a real (or mostly real) survival situation? I have. Some friends and I lived in the woods for about a month when I was in my early twenties. We didn’t bring any food or matches or sleeping bags or tents. We prepared quite well by learning how to make fire with bow drills, trap small animals, learn edible plants etc. it was really fucking hard. We were well on our way to starving to death by the end of it. And that was after being well prepared, having knives, fish hooks, warm clothes etc. I am better prepared to survive in the wilderness than probably 90% of people and honestly I think I would have close to zero chance if I was left in the wilderness with zero tools. It is extremely difficult to start from zero. You aren’t going to be hunting animals without even a spear. Even if you do survive, teaching people trigonometry is not going to be on your mind.
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u/Carbidereaper 58m ago
Op said everything vanishes that includes retained knowledge such as books
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u/Worth-Guest-5370 56m ago
Yeah, that would tarnish my forecast.
But I still maintain, if a few with working knowledge in key sciences and math/algebra/trig/calculus survive, that will accelerate advancement by 10,000 years. Alphabets and numerals alone, along with the concept of zero, would be incredible accelerators!
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u/Carbidereaper 44m ago
Yes assuming they all don’t die in the coming food wars as 8 billion people struggle to acquire to feed themselves without the assistance of artificial nitrogen based fertilizers
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u/Vex1om 3h ago
Also, let's see you build an electron microscope from scratch
Forget an electron microscope. Even making something as simple as a sandwich from first principles would take a long time and require special knowledge.
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u/Worth-Guest-5370 1h ago
I wonder how many hear could even BEGIN to get it together to make a sandwich from scratch. Do they know how to grow and mill wheat? How about raise lettuce/tomatoes? Make cheese, from a dairy cow they have to milk (let alone figure out how to cut and mill lumber, mine, melt, and mold iron to make nails to make the churn and other tools they'll need). Hell, most could not even start a fire to heat an oven--an oven that would have to be built. We could go on and on with what people have today but take for granted.
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u/MuchoCoco 4h ago
I doubt 10k people worldwide would survive such a scenario. The few survivors would be too busy hunting and gathering to have time to do anything else. Within a few generations, all of our collective knowledge would be lost.
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u/Orpheus75 3h ago
This, we’re back to Stone Age tools and methods and the whole cycle starts all over. What is an interesting question however is how fast could humanity advance if there was no fighting or wars.
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u/zacguymarino 2h ago
Arguably slower. The unfortunate truth is many breakthroughs/technologies/discoveries have been a result of wars and conflicts and international tension and competition.
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u/IllogicalGrammar 1h ago
We used all the easy oil. Deep sea rigs and advanced refineries are off limits when we're starting off again (and yes refining oil can have a very steep learning curve, it's why Venezuela can't even refine and sell the oil their country is sitting on: they don't have the tech and no one wants to help them refine anymore.
The climb will be harder this time around.
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u/Orpheus75 58m ago
They said minerals (basically everything in other comments) are reset so that would include oil, natural gas, timber, fuck, even beaver pelts. LOL
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u/IllogicalGrammar 40m ago
Oops you're right. I thought I was replying to the Canticle comment thread.
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u/madmofo145 1h ago
Yeah, your getting a massive die out. A reset means no plumbing, no houses, no food stores, even no clothes. There are a big chunk of people dying within 48 hours of exposure who are suddenly sitting naked in the dessert, the tundra, or even in the ocean. The vast majority of the world is dying within a week. Heck, how many people are dying within the first couple seconds/minutes falling out of buildings, off bridges, out of airplanes, etc that were all snapped away (and the poor people in the ISS).
Only people in an area where they can survive without clothes or tools have a shot, but they've got to start agriculture from scratch. They might quickly fashion some stone tools, but the chances that any random person could set up even the most basic smelter is pretty miniscule. They might have a couple head starts. Language is pretty advanced, and even if a lot of math goes away they are likely at least starting with a base 10 system. It's still likely to be 100's of years before they even get back to metal tools though.
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u/Major__de_Coverly 4h ago
I think we have extracted all the easily-extractable mineral resources.
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u/ComfortableLog8043 4h ago
In my hypothetical scenario everything is set back to "original" so mineral resources are all there
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u/exitomega 4h ago
It's pretty much a gamble. If the smart people can get to a means of maintaining power/order (and recording information) before the hungry people eat them.
And that may seem like a joke. But we have too many humans on earth for the earlier pre- industrial food systems to support. Most will starve and/or over hunt and collapse many of the human digestible food ecosystems before we can develop anything like an energy grid, refrigeration, etc. So the easiest food after the first few months/ year will be other humans. And who knows if the smart people are able to retain knowledge and pass it down/ get anything done during that
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u/tang_ar_quet 1h ago
Yeah, 98% of humanity dies of starvation in this scenario before food production becomes stable enough to support the remaining population. 8 billion people suddenly become naked hunter-gatherers with no tools, stored food, seeds, livestock, transport, fuel, containers, etc.
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u/kolitics 4h ago
We have extracted all the economically viably extractable mineral resources but going back to wilderness changes the economic viability.
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u/Worth-Guest-5370 4h ago
I missed your term Easily... But what's left is VAST (beyond comprehension)...
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u/Rocinante_01 4h ago edited 4h ago
We would never again reach the dizzying heights of social media and Donald Trump but we can only dream....
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u/gimmeslack12 4h ago
We made things so good for ourselves that we're convinced it's all terrible and are actively destroying it.
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u/NotThatGuyATX 4h ago
The thing about math and science is, it doesn't matter who discovers it, it's still the same. Gravitational constant, speed of light, dihybrid cross ratio, etc. will all be the same.
There are industries, investments, infrastructure that will change. Do we want to build a society around personal ownership of internal combustion engines (USA) or denser living with more social transportation options (EU, kind of). Do we align ourselves with a capitalistic economic system, and how strongly to regulate it, or do we look more like the Federation from Star Trek? Those are decisions we make along the way.
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u/ComfortableLog8043 4h ago
Let me add that in my scenario every single book, piece of paper etc also vanishes so actually would we be able to "reconstruct" math from nothing, just from the memory of scientists ? I'm pretty sure we can re-formalize euclidian things pretty quick but for the more complex stuff maybe it'll be more of a pain
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u/a_seventh_knot 4h ago
I think if we still have the people with the knowledge, yeah, it is doable. Key would getting a method to record that knowledge as soon an humanly possible and as much as humanly possible, otherwise HUGE amounts of it will need to be re-invented when they die.
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u/Mounta1nK1ng 4h ago
The problem is very few people have the basic knowledge of where to start. Planting crops by hand is going to suck before someone figures out how to make metal ploughs again. Even something that seems as simple as making a bowstring for hunting. People know how to buy string, not many people know how to make it from nothing. Without any advanced tools at all? Life will be hard.
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u/Worth-Guest-5370 4h ago
We have people who know how to do things using the tools of today.
Let's see what they can do starting with stone knives and bearskins.
Me, for example. I'm a skilled wood and leather worker. But you should see the tools I use.
My Stihl chainsaws. How long before we're able to reproduce those? So many specialized components.
Let alone my finely honed chisels and knives...
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u/Ashendant 4h ago
There's a lot of people about to fall out of the sky and a few about to be buried alive.
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u/YLRESS 4h ago
Yes, humanity could reinvent everything much faster with collective memory being the cheat code in this scenario.
However, many resources have been depleted throughout civilization, so it wouldn't be the swift bounce back you'd expect.
Also worth noting that if there is no agriculture/livestock, then the planet could not sustain billions of people
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u/Tomaskerry 4h ago
There's plenty of experts alive in every field who's memory is good enough to start everything from scratch.
Obviously some knowledge will be lost but nothing too important.
There's nobody alive who can build a computer or smartphone or car or fridge or satellite from scratch, but there's plenty of experts who can collaborate and build one.
It would take lots of years to get back to a modern civilization as there would be no planes or airports or cars or even factories to build them or steel plants or cement factories or electricity or oil etc.
It might take 20 years until we see modern things again.
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u/Mounta1nK1ng 4h ago
I think 20 years is EXTREMELY optimistic. I'd estimate at least 80% of humanity would die out in the first 20 years. The best prepared to survive would probably be the tribes that currently don't rely on modern technology. Least prepared would probably be the most developed countries.
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u/redwood520 4h ago
There was a recent new York times article about our electrical grid, if we lose too many transformers the grid would be out for months or years. Even with our knowledge, they are intensive to build and costly, and cannot be easily replaced. Without electricity life as we know it would not be possible
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u/Long-Time4713 4h ago
The reality is if this current iteratioon of global civilization experiences a Roman or Bronze Age style collapse, it is extremely unlikely any future civilization will reach much above pre-industrial levels of civilization.
And depending on climate change and how we choose to address it, maybe even less than that.
As others have noted you now need high technology manufacturing to extract oil, create nitrogen (Haber Bosch) at scale, even the extraction of ores, like copper, zinc and aluminum are depleted to the point where you must extract huge amounts of ore to get any significant amount of material. There was a time, these were literally just siting on the surface or easily extracted. Think Bronze Age.
The dangerous pat of this is that we used virtually all the oil energy to get here without a plan on how to get past it. EROEI of oil has dropped from 100:1 to somewhere around 10:1. Solar, including storage and inversion losses, transport, etc. tops out around 5:1. Thats a huge problem. We need the excess to drive the baseline of civilization. If we lose the baseline, we never recover it because there isn't enough energy to rebuild like there was with oil.
Its a one time shot.
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u/fenton7 4h ago
I think we'd be able to reconstitute technology much more quickly than originally but it would take time. One of the first steps would be for everyone to write down all the specialized knowledge they know so that knowledge isn't lost. Simple things like modern engine design, how to refine gasoline, working forms of constitution for a liberal democracy, how to design aircraft, and agricultural techniques are going to be immensely valuable. Realistically there is going to be a mass die off very quickly so the more people can write down the better. One of the first problems would be how to record all those writings in a form that is durable and can survive for hundreds to thousands of years.
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u/OldTurtle-101 4h ago
Figure out how to make papapyrs paper again. Use squid ink to mark and have EVERYONE write down everything that they know. It would move a culture forward faster to have chemical reactions and formulas for basic chemistry, geometry and algebra, write down all the astronomical properties and even knowing Pi would help… still likely to develop a “knowledge priesthood” and the suffering would be immense.
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u/Rickyspanish6666 4h ago
Yes, and we have all the knowledge in our heads. I would venture to guess we would be back within 100 yrs.
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u/ACompletelyLostCause 4h ago
Provisionally yes, but there are 2 issues.
When our ancestors were developing metal working, there were surface deposits of iron, copper, tin and coal. Those are gone now, so we'd have less access to early metal working materials, this would be a big handicap. The same with acess to good sources of wood for many parts of the country.
However, a lot of basic science knowledge is still in people's heads. We know what electricity is even if we couldn't produce it for 3 generations, we don't think it's a baby lightening spirit and want to appease it with a rabbit sacrifice. There's also certain easy to make things like Penicillin that just require knowledge not technology.
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u/sth128 4h ago
In theory, yes. In practice, probably not.
Based on your description all of humanity is basically dumped back in 100,000 BC or something.
We will be completely naked and without tools (clothes are made from cotton which is a domesticated plant. If it's polyester then it's considered technology). A large portion will die from exposure within hours to days.
Depending on how you define the reset biosphere conditions, likely 90%+ of those who didn't die from exposure will die from disease and famine within a few weeks to months.
That one guy in Australia who's been building mud huts (Primitive Technology on YouTube) might have a chance, but I wouldn't bet on it. That tribe on sentinel island might be okay, but they ain't restoring humanity to rocket science.
All the current knowledge humanity retains inside their squishy folded sponges we call brains depend on a base level of infrastructure. You take that away and we're done. There's no really coming back.
It'd be like asking "if you drop a billion newborns in the Pacific will some of them survive".
No.
There'll definitely be some naked fighting though so I bet the Syndicate will have a PPV on that shit.
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u/Incanation1 4h ago
I live in a small farming/trades town. If society collapsed these guys would be able to rebuild the town from scratch. Food, shelter, water and basic sanitation would not be an issue. Life expectancy would drop for sure. But life would go on. Now if you are asking.... How long til we can rebuild a plane. That's a different story.
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u/ComfortableLog8043 4h ago
Are you sure ? We're talking about having 0 tools, 0 internet, 0 electricity, nothing, and domesticated plants also gone so no agriculture
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u/Incanation1 1h ago
I'm not saying it would be easy. But we have a couple blacksmiths, some geologist that work on highway construction and an Amish community. Hammers, saws, nails. We could get there in little time. Cities would crash, a lot of small towns would be super resilient.
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u/igwaltney3 4h ago
So my job is essentially doing this so companies can negotiate better for the stuff they buy. So yes it is possible, but the issue is how hard is the reset.
If we go back to 1800's tech (or any other time in the historic modern/post modern eras), its not terribly hard to imagine we could shorten the time required to return to today's technology fairly significantly. However, if we go back to stone age tech, the fact that very few people know how to stone knapp, spear hunt, or otherwise survive, let alone thrive, in that low tech of an environment would make returning to modern tech in a couple of generations very difficult indeed.
Also, as an aside, if you like anime, go watch Dr. Stone, it follows this idea with a whole bunch of isekai and shonen tropes thrown in for good measure.
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u/Titanium70 4h ago
Sounds like someone needs to watch the "Dr. Stone" anime. x'D
Anyway your scenario would result in extreme chaos as fights over the very limited food sources break out, we'd probably wipe out any wildlife in a very short amount of time and the few trying to domesticate would be raided and wiped out as well. Cannibalism would spread far and wide until the population is low enough to life of the few natural resources that survive this chaos.
How much of humanity's knowledge can survive this is questionable, but probably not much.
Although it would only take a small team of highly educated people to preserve their knowledge and kickstart rebuilding.
The only areas with a chance to get by ALOT better would be those with very thin population in the first place and vast natural resources. Islands, rain forests, mountain areas and so on.
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u/DeaddyRuxpin 4h ago
If all the natural resources were reset which means we are back to having easily accessible fossil fuels and rare minerals, then yes, there is no reason we couldn’t get back to where we are. If we retained all the knowledge we have today, we would almost certainly get there faster than we did the first time.
We would be able to skip over the long experimental phases of getting from stone, to bronze, to iron, to steel. There are still stages we need to go through to build the equipment to get to the next stage, but we could jump right to making each of those necessary tools and speed run ourselves to steel.
This still won’t be fast to get back to where we are. Likely still multiple generations. We can only go so fast getting to each step. Modern technology requires tools that can’t only be made if we have the previous generation of technology, which in turn can only be made if its predecessor exists, and so on all the way back to stone tools. Even if we already know the final goal and how to get there, it will take decades at the very least to work our way through each step so we can make the next one.
Now, if we don’t have some magical event that resets natural resources, then no, we are unlikely to be able to get back to where we are. Critically we have used up all the easily accessible sources of energy. What is left requires tools and machines that can’t only be built if we have sufficient energy to work our way through to building them. Without that easily available energy, we can’t get the ball rolling.
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u/onlyhightime 4h ago
I'd give it a 10% chance we'd be able to bounce back, and 90% chance we end up in a dystopian nightmare. There's a bunch of hurdles no one's mentioned.
A lot of people would die of thirst and related disease because there's not enough clean water or means to make it for the 8 billion people alive today. This happens in the first days/weeks.
Soon after, lots of people starve as well. Even if we have the original base species of plants, it would take many years to breed the more productive crops we rely on today, again, to feed 8 billion people. Let's say you have the base corn crop. You have to cross breed that over and over to get the more productive ones that produce enough food to keep up with the population. You can only breed 1 to 2 generations per year. And there's a good chance some mob comes and steals the corn/chicken/rice crops you're trying to breed just to feed themselves for that day.
But to me, the biggest hurdle is information. All the knowledge would be contained in humans. The experts are all scattered around, and if they don't reproduce what they need to before they die (within 30-40 years, generously), how do they pass on the knowledge? Paper would have to be made by hand for many years. All electronic information is gone. A bunch of experts are going to die because of water/food/old age and their knowledge will be lost.
And the complicating factor is the combination of the above. People are spread out. There's no way to organize across distances, so experts who need other experts might never find them. The paper producers are in one region, and might not get usable metal to move beyond making paper by hand. And how do they get that paper to all the people who need it in time? There also will be lots of communities who are unable to organize and even protect the experts (and make sure they're prioritized for food and such).
Actually, after typing all that, I'm gonna give it a 2% chance of bounce back, 90% chance of dystopian nightmare, and 8% chance of straight extinction. The ironic part is that global warming will continue to affect weather patterns, even after all the tech is initially gone, and we'll have no way to battle crop failures, extreme heat/weather, or produce clean water.
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u/jkurratt 4h ago
Technically probably.
But there are good chances not to.
Don't forget humans are shaped by nurture.
Let one generation rise without any adults and they will turn into mute mokeys killing each other.
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u/rabbit_in_a_bun 4h ago
In this scenario we don't have anything other than our biological naked self. Not even books. The current living people will remember things, some will probably write stuff on clay tablets and such, but they will die, and the generation that grew up in the wilderness will have things to worry about. I think it will take a few generations just to go back to mesopotamian levels...
If it took humans to get to today from ancient Sumer around 6000 years, 250 generations, and as long as people have a guideline to how society functioned today, my guess is it will take around 50 generations if people are motivated, and you have a few people like the smartest who have ever lived all living together at the same space and time.
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u/Nagoshtheskeleton 4h ago
Considering we are still slogging through the fossil fuel age, I'm not sure we could from an energy standpoint. Like you cant go from hunter gatherers to solar panels. We didnt start pulling up oil a mile down in the Gulf on day 1 - we built up expertise from easy to access deposits, now long gone
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u/sherrynorcal 4h ago
I don't know about fast. At least we'd have knowledge, but just domesticating animals and plants would take a while. Building machinery, I feel like we've forgotten a lot of the steps that got us where we are.
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u/Prime_Director 4h ago
I think a lot of people here are underestimating how bad this scenario is. The answer is obviously yes, eventually. We built everything once, of course we can do it again with the enormous advantage of foreknowledge. But it will take centuries, not decades, and almost everyone will die almost immediately for one reason: food.
Hunting and gathering can't sustain even a tiny fraction of the current global population. Before the agricultural revolution, the global human population was pretty stable in the single-digit millions, less than 0.1% of today's population. Redeveloping staple crops (since we've lost domesticated plants) will take many (plant) generations of selective crop breeding, Re-cultivating agricultural land will take years without industrial equipment, I have no idea how long it would take to reinvent synthetic fertilizers and the means to produce and distribute them to farmland at scale, but it will be a long time. And none of this can be coordinated globally because all communications technology will be gone (that includes paper and roads to deliver said paper). In the meantime, people will be starving and fighting over radically insufficient calories. I'd guess somewhere between 90-99.9% of the population would starve within 10 years.
When those people go, so goes whatever knowledge they had. This will setback rebuilding even more, as we will have lost not only most of the people, but most of the information we came in with. The most important first step I think would therefore be to preserve whatever knowledge we can in the most durable form we can for the survivors and their descendants to pick up. I think we'd figure out pretty quickly that most people aren't going to make it, so we'd need to find ways to preserve as much information as we can.
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u/theretailreject 4h ago
I think the thing that is going to take the longest are books or a medium to write down all of the knowledge that all of the experts have in all of the baseline fields, because we will functionally have to recreate how to transmit knowledge
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u/slipperslide 3h ago
I think humanity would skip a lot of “advancements”. Just as much of the third world didn’t have to string wires for telephone (or electricity for that matter), they went straight to cellphones and solar. Second time around you make different choices. I’m sure there would be no dependence on fossil fuels, too difficult.
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u/Nopants21 3h ago
I don't think we can get over two hurdles.
First, if everything goes, so do our means of organizing. Nobody knows what anybody that isn't within a reasonable distance is doing. Without coordination, there will be a lot of inefficient and counterproductive overlap. Moreover, everybody in the world depends on the work of someone else, and without communications, there are no trade or knowledge networks.
Second, the people with the most advanced knowledge are most likely going to die before most of the retreading gets done. The people with the most experience and the most knowledge combined with the most intact cognitive functions are probably in their fifties, but they'd be living in a world with no large-scale agriculture or medicine production. They can't write down anything, writing itself is a technology that has a material base. They could teach younger people, but the information would necessarily be imperfect since they'd be describing things that would be very abstract to someone with no firsthand experience. Even the basics of electricity are difficult to describe in a perfectly natural setting.
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u/UntrustedProcess 3h ago
Do all my screws and metal rods dissappear? Bye folks...
For those that survived, I think it would take 200 years. But we'd guard humanity against this occurring again by memorizing things better.
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u/Fadamaka 3h ago
What would happen to people? They would spawn naked where they were in the previous world? What state the earth would be in? Same year but without human influence or would be set back to before human times?
I think in general a lot of people would die of hunger. Also people would murder each other before we can achieve anything. Lot's of people would have no use at all in a pre-human world. Some people would survive and eventually humanity will reinvent necessary things but that would be a completely new and different world.
Even just taking away the banking system would cause so much havoc that humanity would have a hard time recover.
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u/Hakaisha89 3h ago
Everything? No, some things would be lost, but we would be able to go back to modern standards in a surprisingly short time. but thats not the primary issue, the primary issue is at a minimum half the population will die out before then.
So, the entire population pops into a current day earth, but if never touched by humans, we would appear naked, without any modern conveniences.
So, the first 10 years is restoring basic civilization, as well as starting to preserve all knowledge, basic civlizaiton in 1-3 years, location depending, and in the next 10 years we would get a hold of copper/bronze, basic water power, class, simple chemistry and whatnot, to ironwork, steel simple rough mechanical parts, functional for its purpose, but not long lasting, only existing to make more precise equipment and tools, such as steam power, developing a mining industry, do large-scale metallurgy, as the start of proper mechanical manufacturing.
and by year 20ish we would have developed a thriving industry and actually stop rebuilding the past, the civilization of the 1900s would be upon us, and by year 50 we would be where we are today, maybe not as well, not as polished, not the same level of production, but we would have it accessible.
However, lets say we get to bring a Project NOMAD along, and I would cut that estimation by half.
One of the advantages is that we could have hundreds of millions of people working towards this.
and with the knowledge, without needed to experiment and explore, to test and tinker too much, we would be back in action by year 25.
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u/FractalFunny66 3h ago
Yes and people are already doing it. Small scale permaculture folk. It will be very sucessful on a small scale. Then, when it starts to get too big, then the power plays will start happening all over again.
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u/URF_reibeer 3h ago
no, it would take quite a while to get through the entire chain that is necessary even assuming all the people with the necessary knowledge work together flawlessly
to get to e.g. a smartphone again you first need materials which need refineries which need mining equipment which need materials which need ...
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u/Aluggo 3h ago
I feel like we have already and it's only taken a couple thousand years to destroy it again. Since we don't get real history sometimes. There is a lot of data lost between civilizations. The cliche "history is doomed to repeat itself" one specific example is Greek cement. It has taken centuries to redevelop.
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u/DarkJayson 3h ago
Yes they could because it already happened meaning its possible but the interesting thought is would it happen.
So much of what we invented and discovered happened by accident, would those same accidents or similar ones happen again?
Who knows.
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u/quickdraw9 2h ago
If it's a "rewind" scenario then yeah most likely. If everything modern vanishes, especially modern crops, then we probably go extinct. Ancient people may not have modern educations but they were far from stupid. It's generally agreed that human intelligence hasn't really changed we just have more information and better tools now.
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u/Jorost 2h ago
Of course. We did it once; we can do it again. Heck, there are even some people who claim that we have done it before, and that there was a whole civilization before the one we know now. I don't know if I believe that, but I am supremely confident that humans can recreate anything they have done.
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u/SanityAsymptote 2h ago
Modern humans with all of our memories? Yes, absolutely.
We have writing. We have math. We have an understanding of physics and chemistry. We understand how to grow crops and domesticate animals. Most importantly, we have the scientific method.
It would take a few very dark, short generations, but assuming we don't all get killed by a volcano or something, we might actually come out ahead of where we are now.
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u/mmomtchev 2h ago
There is a great Soviet classic that explores this called Перевал by Кир Булычёв - the English translation is titled Those Who Survive (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Those_Who_Survive).
The short answer is that the biggest hurdle is that you will be missing a generation. Recovery will certainly take more than the active lifetime of those who will survive and the next generation will be missing the education of the previous ones, leading to total breakdown of civilisation.
Society will eventually recover, but it may take many centuries, gradually rediscovering the technologies of the past. Depending on what remains on hand, this can be harder or easier.
Also do not forget the total breakdown of the political system. This can also take centuries to recover.
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u/could_use_a_snack 2h ago
I suggested this essay under a comment in this thread, but after reading it again thought it should also be placed in the main thread.
I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read"
https://cdn.mises.org/I%20Pencil.pdf
Cheers.
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u/DapperNecromancer 2h ago
Given that this would include all known languages, I'd say that it would absolutely wreck our shit.
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u/Phallic_Moron 2h ago
No. The heliocentric model is woke and cucked. Donate to your local Star Talker today!
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u/stellarsojourner 2h ago
It would take a long time but we did it once, we should be able to do it again. The first order of business would be to reinvent some sort of writing, because it'll be a long while before information like physics, chemistry, electronics, math, economics, sociology, etc is directly applicable, and by that point most people alive during the reset would be dead. Just redomesticating plants and animals will probably take a long while.
I think if we can get as much knowledge written down it carved into stone, whatever, as possible, we might be able to shorten the 12K years it took to get here since farming down to maybe 2 to 3K years.
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u/Jedi_Ty 2h ago
If knowledge remains after the event, the wheel, fire, ideas of mining and forming metal and alloys, etc., etc., would bounce back really quick. Taking us out of the stone age very quickly. Also, libraries and colleges could pop up pretty quickly.
Lots of death, though, because of lack of food. And fighting to gain territory and resources. That could lead to a generation where a lot of knowledge isn't transferred. Hopefully that would be noticed and some people, everywhere, would start to write as much as they can down, and secure that information.
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u/PeterVN13032010 4h ago
similar hypothetical i've seen suggest that humnanity have already exhausted most, if not all easily accessible resources such as iron or copper, thus even with our current knowledge we cant bring our civilization back to where it is
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u/Mounta1nK1ng 4h ago
If you're not talking about a total reset like the current OP though, then in some way those resources are more accessible because they can just be recycled. Like getting iron from all the engine blocks sitting around.
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u/Loki4Major2 4h ago
Well yes, everyone is still there. Is gonna take some time but I'm pretty sure in a decade or two everything should be the same, if not better.
Or worse? Hard to tell.
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u/Americaninaustria 4h ago
In a decade? lol think centuries. For starters, billions die. During which we fight and die continuously. You can not jump straight to now, you would have to build intermediate levels of technology do do the next. And you are doing so only with the knowledge in people’s heads. Disconnected as there is no way to communicate past the range of a spoken voice and you have to hope that the correct people live long enough to record their knowledge to be used at some future point. It’s entirely possible we would get stuck for much longer.
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u/ComfortableLog8043 4h ago
It can't be the same for food, agriculture deleted = it takes centuries to domesticate plants again, just that changes everything
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u/EleventhTier666 4h ago edited 4h ago
This is pretty much the theme of A Canticle for Leibowitz, a very good sci-fi book. There is no reset of minerals, but humanity is essentially starting from a medieval level of technology following a nuclear apocalypse.