The world after global catastrophe.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Given the recent interest in the phenomena known as Peak Oil, I've been thinking, and it's given me much food for thought, and a couple of questions I thought I'd bounce off the board.

Let's assume that the coming energy crisis ends in nearly the worst-case scenario. It sparks off wars, famines, money being plowed into ultimately pointless 'magic elixirs.' Nukes fly, people die by the tens of millions, and global warming is in the background, adding increasing pressure by flooding out the most populous coastal areas. Essentially, collapse becomes inevitable and some organization analagous to the medieval Church takes it upon itself to preserve the sum knowledge of mankind and scatter it in monastaries and other lifeboats while industrial civilization comes apart at he seams.

Fast forward some centuries into the future. The most energetic power source available to humans is burning biomass. Maybe other renewable applications, depending on how the upcoming question is answered. We know more about science, mechanics, and engineering than people did at the start of the Industrial Revolution. But, at the same time, I am also lead to believe that a lot of precision manufacturing and materials science requires a fully mature support infrastructure, backed by plentiful, highly-concentrated sources of energy to accomplish.

So, the question is: Given modern knowledge, and supplies of pre-refined metals buried in the wreckage of ancestral cities, what would be the most sophisticated sorts of industry/technical achievements a post-collapse civilization can achieve/build? Could they be sustained, given that the only source of combustible hydrocarbons available would be whatever can be processed or recycled out of biomass?

[RedImperator]

Early American railroads ran wooden rolling stock behind cast iron locomotives over "rails" made out of timbers with just a narrow strap of iron spiked on top. Steam locomotives, especially early designs, are very simple machines (the railroads predate the elaborate industrial infrastructure needed for automobiles or aircraft) and can run on anything that will burn. You might not ever exceed 35 miles per hour with such a primitive setup, but they're still a huge improvement over animal-drawn carts.

Another simple machine that will be available is the bicycle. A decent blacksmith could build one of those, and even a simple design is an improvement over walking. If chains and gears are too much trouble, the very first bicycles were powered by the rider pushing along with his feet.

[Surlethe]

I can see a civilization built on steampunk railroads burning biomass. Eventually, biomass production would itself industrialize, although I doubt a civilization based on biomass consumption could become as prolific or efficient as the modern hydrocarbon-based economy.

Eventually, I'd think that someone would make the jump to nuclear power, given that it's still known, but I don't know how likely that is.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Depending on the biomass, you may not have the needed heat to manufacture modern metal alloys or smelt certain ores. We need something better than wood at least to really go about iron manufacture that isn't bronze age like in application. I'm sure coke could be made in good enough quantities though.

Steam power would be one of the major contributors. If the world isn't a total radioactive wasteland, then large railways could be built up again perhaps with some being electrical, if any PV technology exists or turbines for instance (I'm sure the electric generator can be salvaged).

Airships may come back too, using hydrogen and maybe small ICE powerplants running on bio-fuels rather than steam power.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Airships may come back too, using hydrogen and maybe small ICE powerplants running on bio-fuels rather than steam power.

Stirling cycle engines, my friend. They're our only real hope for the future in terms of engines which can be used to power small vehicles on alternative fuels with any sort of efficiency comparable to the automobiles of old.

[Broomstick]

Hydro and, to a lesser extent, geothermal power sources will still be available in suitable locations. Such areas may be able to power energy-intensive processes and high temperatures.

[The_Saint]

Steam powered rail systems shouldn't be too much of a leap even for a post apocalyptic civilisation. Hydroelectricity and wind power will happily churn out power with little input and being in out of the way places could potentially survive any wars... although without an already powered and working infrastructure to support them I'm not sure how long they'd last without maintenance.

[K. A. Pital]

Molding and melting steel on a scale of the modern industrial civilization would be a problem IMHO. Too much need for fuels.

[Sea Skimmer]

Molding and melting steel on a scale of the modern industrial civilization would be a problem IMHO. Too much need for fuels.

Lots of steel objects could be salvaged and directly reused through. People are talking about railways for example, and in many situations you’d simply be able to lift steel rails off existing track and reuse them for lines you need. Once railways are working you can mine coal and move it on a mass scale with greater ease then river transport, and that’s all the energy you could possibly need for the first 100 years or so of rebuilding.

A great deal does depend on how much labor you can mobilize though. Whoever can assert control over masses of survivors will have an overwhelming advantage.

[Admiral Valdemar]

On coal, that's if we don't use it all up when building up to the collapse. There was enough in the '90s for 250 years in the US, then it went down to 100 years with same usage but higher population. Now it may be far less than that. If all the easy to get to and higher energy coal is dug out, then you reach the point where energetically speaking you're throwing energy into a black hole even if you can afford it.

[K. A. Pital]

The worst thing that can happen is the loss of ability to make more advanced energy technology.

Nuclear power holds the key to thermonuclear and possible beyond-Earth fuel reserves, nuclear-powered spaceships.

If we lose that, well, humanity will just gut it's own future for good.

[Starglider]

Nuclear power holds the key to thermonuclear and possible beyond-Earth fuel reserves, nuclear-powered spaceships.

If we lose that, well, humanity will just gut it's own future for good.

The first two 'Terminator' films clearly illustrated that humanity need only build one or two fusion plants before falling into chaos, and the machines will take it from there.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Not unless we plug Skynet into a Nintendo Wii and watch it try and conquer Marioland!

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I'm seeing some good answers here, and they seem to be meshing with what I've suspected so far. As RedImperator said, building locomotives wouldn't be beyond a civilization limited to biomass. Nor would bicycles. Though I cannot imagine rail networks being extensive. You might be able to sustain a nation the size of New England, say, with rail connecting forested areas to small-scale steel mills and localized industry operating near water. Or conveying people and goods between a couple of larger cities.

I can see a civilization built on steampunk railroads burning biomass. Eventually, biomass production would itself industrialize, although I doubt a civilization based on biomass consumption could become as prolific or efficient as the modern hydrocarbon-based economy.

Eventually, I'd think that someone would make the jump to nuclear power, given that it's still known, but I don't know how likely that is.

I can envision limited industrialization of biomass production as well. Part of that could be some sort of thermal depolymerization to convert a fraction of the biomass into energy-dense oil to sustain just enough steel and metal production to maintain the rail and infrastructure.

Nuclear power, that might be a bitch to pull off, though. You'd be limited to uranium pulled out of the ground (since I'm imagining that schemes like pulling it out of seawater would be energetically intensive, and thus, prohibitively expensive to a post-collapse civilization) and after an energy driven collapse, there might not be that much to go around. And sure we'd still know the principles behind it, but nuclear power requires an mature, energy-intensive infrastructure to build and maintain.

Depending on the biomass, you may not have the needed heat to manufacture modern metal alloys or smelt certain ores. We need something better than wood at least to really go about iron manufacture that isn't bronze age like in application. I'm sure coke could be made in good enough quantities though.

True. And I'm fuzzy on the details of recycling modern, pre-smelted metals, made in the time of energy plenty (i.e. now.) I think wood could provide the energy needed to drive thermal depolymerization which could be used to slowly convert a fraction of the available energy budget into something of sufficiently high energy-density to drive industrial processes . . . albeit at nowhere near the rate we're accustomed to.

Steam power would be one of the major contributors. If the world isn't a total radioactive wasteland, then large railways could be built up again perhaps with some being electrical, if any PV technology exists or turbines for instance (I'm sure the electric generator can be salvaged).

Photovoltaics require the ability to produce semiconductors. I'm not certain if our hypothetical civilization could muster the energy output, or precision manufacturing necessary to do that. And depending on how tricky it is to manufacture replacement parts for electrical generators attached to, say, hydroelectric plants, one could supplement biomass with hydro. And yes, steam power would be about the most we could expect.

Airships may come back too, using hydrogen and maybe small ICE powerplants running on bio-fuels rather than steam power.

Why airships? I suppose if you wanted a relatively quick way of getting people from one place to another, and for this sort of purpose, an airship with a Stirling engine running on alcohol would be more energetically favorable than a wood-burning locomotive or steamship, and probably safer than sail too, given how hostile and storm-infested the oceans of a future world stricken by global warming could be.

Steam powered rail systems shouldn't be too much of a leap even for a post apocalyptic civilisation. Hydroelectricity and wind power will happily churn out power with little input and being in out of the way places could potentially survive any wars... although without an already powered and working infrastructure to support them I'm not sure how long they'd last without maintenance.

That'd be the kicker. And it also depends on finding a hydroelectric plant in working order. Though, I imagine, as civilization comes apart, you'll find that the first feudal kingdoms will probably rise up around hydro plants. Which means they'll probably be the site of quite a bit of fighting.

Lots of steel objects could be salvaged and directly reused through. People are talking about railways for example, and in many situations you’d simply be able to lift steel rails off existing track and reuse them for lines you need. Once railways are working you can mine coal and move it on a mass scale with greater ease then river transport, and that’s all the energy you could possibly need for the first 100 years or so of rebuilding.

A great deal does depend on how much labor you can mobilize though. Whoever can assert control over masses of survivors will have an overwhelming advantage.

Yes. Though as coal will probably be the next most intensely exploited non-renewable energy source after oil becomes excessively expensive, our hypothetical future post-collapse civilization might have a difficult time finding coal in sufficient quantities to drive much of a rebuilding effort, and what coal remains will be deep underground. Though, as you've mentioned, whoever can dredge up enough labor would find that coal might be an economical source of energy. That nation would have a marked advantage over other nations relying solely on biomass. As long as the coal held out, at least.

And asserting control over the survivors could be easy for someone near a hydroelectric dam. Promise them basic electricity, or the chance to have it if they're loyal to their feudal lord and distinguish themselves in building efforts, or fighting back the barbarian hordes, or by consistently producing good yields from their farm downstream of the dam, etc, etc, etc.

[Sea Skimmer]

On coal, that's if we don't use it all up when building up to the collapse. There was enough in the '90s for 250 years in the US, then it went down to 100 years with same usage but higher population. Now it may be far less than that. If all the easy to get to and higher energy coal is dug out, then you reach the point where energetically speaking you're throwing energy into a black hole even if you can afford it.

The big easy to get at seams are being mined out, but plenty of smaller seams still exist and would be viable for rebuilding industry, they just can’t supply the thousands or tens of tons per day we expect out of modern mines. Hydro power would also be viable, most dams would remain useable for hundreds of years and it wouldn’t be hard for educated people to build a suitable dynamo.

[Broomstick]

Airships may come back too, using hydrogen and maybe small ICE powerplants running on bio-fuels rather than steam power.

Why airships? I suppose if you wanted a relatively quick way of getting people from one place to another, and for this sort of purpose, an airship with a Stirling engine running on alcohol would be more energetically favorable than a wood-burning locomotive or steamship, and probably safer than sail too, given how hostile and storm-infested the oceans of a future world stricken by global warming could be.

Actually, airships are more, not less, vulnerable to high winds and storms than sailboats are. Most of the great airships of the early 20th Century were lost with storms being either a primary or contributing cause.

Airships are a pretty efficient way of transporting small cargos and groups of people across oceans. The Graf Zepplin circumnavigated the globe and visited the north pole, proving they are quite capable of going global distances, but the captain was good at avoiding bad weather.

Speaking of weather... much of today's weather prediction is heavily dependent on satellites, as is nagivation in the form of GPS. Think of the effect on civilization if the current satellites can't be replaced - phone, TV, navigation, and weather satellites all gone. That would definitely have an impact, particularly since weather and navigation systems have helped reduce losses in international shipping.

[Broomstick]

And depending on how tricky it is to manufacture replacement parts for electrical generators attached to, say, hydroelectric plants, one could supplement biomass with hydro. And yes, steam power would be about the most we could expect.

Depends on what you're using hydro for. Waterwheels have a long history, after all. If you have falls like Niagra you wouldn't even need particularly efficient generators to light up a city or power heavy industry. Smaller streams and rivers could easily power industry such as grain mills or provide power to smaller than city settlements.

Wind power has a long history, too - windmills go back a long way. It's a less reliable power source than water, of course, but between modern airfoil designs allowing for more efficient energy capture and battery technology you might be able to arrange something to provide electrical power on a local scale.

[aerius]

Depending on the biomass, you may not have the needed heat to manufacture modern metal alloys or smelt certain ores. We need something better than wood at least to really go about iron manufacture that isn't bronze age like in application. I'm sure coke could be made in good enough quantities though.

True. And I'm fuzzy on the details of recycling modern, pre-smelted metals, made in the time of energy plenty (i.e. now.) I think wood could provide the energy needed to drive thermal depolymerization which could be used to slowly convert a fraction of the available energy budget into something of sufficiently high energy-density to drive industrial processes . . . albeit at nowhere near the rate we're accustomed to.

If hydropower stays intact we'll be fine for recycling pre-smelted metals as well as making new batches of aluminum. In Quebec for intance there's a ton of aluminum smelters running off the gigawatts of cheap hydroelectric power available in that province. For steel, we only need the big blast furnaces for making steel from iron ore, for recycling steel the electric induction furnaces which are now mostly used for making high-grade steels can be used to melt down and recycle scrap steel. We'll still be able to make a decent quantity of steel & aluminum, just not the countless millions of tons which we make these days.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Correct me if I've misread the replies to this thread . . . but essentially it's looking like that for some pockets of people, clustered around hydro power and steel and aluminum mills, quality of life should be able to approach, perhaps, the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At least, there'd be industry to maintain hydro plants, and enough steel and aluminum to go around that people could afford bicycles, and carts and such. And there'd be enough to build firearms to defend these regions from nomadic folk living a hardscrabble existence in the areas not blessed with being near these power-wealthy areas.

Actually, airships are more, not less, vulnerable to high winds and storms than sailboats are. Most of the great airships of the early 20th Century were lost with storms being either a primary or contributing cause.

Airships are a pretty efficient way of transporting small cargos and groups of people across oceans. The Graf Zepplin circumnavigated the globe and visited the north pole, proving they are quite capable of going global distances, but the captain was good at avoiding bad weather.

My mistake. I'd somehow gotten the impression that an airship would be less vulnerable only because it might be able to avoid bad weather more readily than a sailing ship, or some big, ponderous steamship could.

Speaking of weather... much of today's weather prediction is heavily dependent on satellites, as is nagivation in the form of GPS. Think of the effect on civilization if the current satellites can't be replaced - phone, TV, navigation, and weather satellites all gone. That would definitely have an impact, particularly since weather and navigation systems have helped reduce losses in international shipping.

Yes. I suspect that people would have to go back to learning to read the skies, and on reports radioed in via shortwave radio, as vacuum tubes and discrete analog electronics would be well within the grasp of a post-collapse civilization, even if VLSI integrated circuits are not.

Depends on what you're using hydro for. Waterwheels have a long history, after all. If you have falls like Niagra you wouldn't even need particularly efficient generators to light up a city or power heavy industry. Smaller streams and rivers could easily power industry such as grain mills or provide power to smaller than city settlements.

Wind power has a long history, too - windmills go back a long way. It's a less reliable power source than water, of course, but between modern airfoil designs allowing for more efficient energy capture and battery technology you might be able to arrange something to provide electrical power on a local scale.

I'd expect there would be a lot of watermills and windmills around. And I suppose, as long as the dams held together, and these future societies evolved a class structure which would reinforce the notion that eletricity is something of a God-given right for the ruling elites and their marvelous factories, and only doled out to the peons on holidays, then they could get by on increasingly inefficient turbines, or smaller-scale schemes.

If hydropower stays intact we'll be fine for recycling pre-smelted metals as well as making new batches of aluminum. In Quebec for intance there's a ton of aluminum smelters running off the gigawatts of cheap hydroelectric power available in that province. For steel, we only need the big blast furnaces for making steel from iron ore, for recycling steel the electric induction furnaces which are now mostly used for making high-grade steels can be used to melt down and recycle scrap steel. We'll still be able to make a decent quantity of steel & aluminum, just not the countless millions of tons which we make these days.

But what would we be able to do with these metals. Just how close to today's level of technology could we build in this scenario? And of course this all does assume that hydro power facilities, and the industrial assets near them will remain reasonably intact. I suspect they will, when people realize that they'll be worth raising armies to protect. Of course, on the flipside, if people start battling over hydro plants, there's always that possibility that they'll be destroyed in the fighting, either accidentally as colleteral damage, or intentionally by someone looking to salt the earth, so to speak.

[Broomstick]

An important point to remember is that even if current global civilization collapses that doesn't mean we will revert back to, say, medieval Europe. It's not just a matter of material technology, it's also a matter of knowledge.

For example, printing presses of one sort or another will continue to exist, thereby allowing the propagation of knowledge in a way that couldn't occur prior Gutenberg. A crude press is well within the capability of a post-oil society. Literacy rates may be maintained in many places, with the ability to consult old texts. This means that items such as steam engines and airplanes would not need to be reinvented from whole cloth. Ancient Rome could have had steam engines from a materials standpoint, they didn't because they didn't know how to build them. Post-oil, the knowledge of how to make will remain, the struggle will be to obtain resources to build with.

Thus, the power-wealthy areas may retain a mid-20th Century level of technology.

Even in areas without abundant power, knowledge of things such as sanitation and nutrition may be maintained (iffy, yes, but a possibility) allowing a much higher level of health and longevity than seen 500 years ago. Canning is a technology that was developed only within the last few hundred years, but doesn't require high technology - the ancient Egyptians were skilled enough glassworkers to have used the technique reliably, they just didn't know how to can food.

And a lot of the supply problems could be "solved" by simply having a much smaller world population. For that matter, many of our current energy issues would be solved or at least greatly mitigated by halving the global population. It's just that no one wants to be in the half that gets axed, nor do most people what to live through the sort of catastrophe and aftermath that would be required to halve the world population in a short time period.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

An important point to remember is that even if current global civilization collapses that doesn't mean we will revert back to, say, medieval Europe. It's not just a matter of material technology, it's also a matter of knowledge.

True. As I mentioned in the OP, knowledge would be scattered throughout the world by some future equivalent of the medieval Church. Our descendants are going to have an awful lot of knowledge at their fingertips. How useful much of it turns out to be is another question entirely.

For example, printing presses of one sort or another will continue to exist, thereby allowing the propagation of knowledge in a way that couldn't occur prior Gutenberg. A crude press is well within the capability of a post-oil society. Literacy rates may be maintained in many places, with the ability to consult old texts. This means that items such as steam engines and airplanes would not need to be reinvented from whole cloth. Ancient Rome could have had steam engines from a materials standpoint, they didn't because they didn't know how to build them. Post-oil, the knowledge of how to make will remain, the struggle will be to obtain resources to build with.

Yes, books could be printed and, if need be, important news could be relayed by AM or shortwave radio around the world. The kicker comes in how hard the collapse is, and how long before someone gets the notion to use ancient knowledge. In the best case, an area will have a painless transition from being part of a national economy to being a local entity centered around a hydro dam, and knowledge will remain in use.

In a post-collapse, post-Green Revolution world, the desire to maintain high literacy rates to ensure a supply of competent workers to maintain the pockets of high-technology infrastructure will come into direct competition with the urge to stratify society into upwardly mobile elites, and a large base of farmers and unskilled labor . . . none of whom need to be more than functionally literate, since the elites wouldn't want them going to the libraries and reading about funny ideas regarding the proletariat. A post-collapse world is going to be an agrarian one, and without the miracles of mechanized agriculture and artificial fertilizers and pesticides, agriculture is going to require a lot more labor to produce much lower yields.

Worst-case, scenario, though, is that the collapse becomes messy and people in a region spend some large amount of time just trying to survive, before getting to a state stable enough for them to even consider rebuilding. And a lot of knowledge will be lost in the process, either through destruction of libraries, or because future people who come across old works will have to translate them, due to lingual shifts.

Thus, the power-wealthy areas may retain a mid-20th Century level of technology.

Middle of 20th Century technology, yes. Considerably lower standard of living, though. And it will probably backslide from there, since not all knowledge will survive the transition. Depending on the immediate interests of those preserving the knowledge, certain works and entire fields of science may end up lost to history. After all, what ruler of a hydro-powered fiefdom is going to want The Communist Manifesto preserved for future generations, or the principles of quantum physics? One is liable to be dangerous to his or her society, and the other isn't going to help maintain an electrical turbine.

Even in areas without abundant power, knowledge of things such as sanitation and nutrition may be maintained (iffy, yes, but a possibility) allowing a much higher level of health and longevity than seen 500 years ago. Canning is a technology that was developed only within the last few hundred years, but doesn't require high technology - the ancient Egyptians were skilled enough glassworkers to have used the technique reliably, they just didn't know how to can food.

Medical knowledge like that is the kind of knowledge that will be most likely to survive a collapse of civilization. At least, in areas where there is no serious religious backlash. I can imagine medical knowledge being burned in some areas because it's an affront to God and a denial of the power of Jesus. But yes, sanitation and food storage knowledge is likely to make life less intolerably unbearable for our descendants than it was when their ancestors had a similar quality of life and technical achievement.

And a lot of the supply problems could be "solved" by simply having a much smaller world population. For that matter, many of our current energy issues would be solved or at least greatly mitigated by halving the global population. It's just that no one wants to be in the half that gets axed, nor do most people what to live through the sort of catastrophe and aftermath that would be required to halve the world population in a short time period.

Yes. That's the one thing that's likely to kick the state of the art back a long ways. We're so far above our carrying capacity it's not even funny. And given how short-sighted people are, if we do get to the point where collapse is inevitable, the ensuing collapse is liable to be messy.