Highest point a society could develop without fossile fuels

[The Nomad]

I've been toying with the idea of a fantasy universe set on a "young earth" only a few tens of thousands of years old, that would look superficially like Earth, but without any fossile fuel (coal, petroleum (oil and natural gas), etc).

How far could they realistically develop their technology, industry and demography? Could an industrial revolution happen without fossil fuels?

[Darth Wong]

I've been toying with the idea of a fantasy universe set on a "young earth" only a few tens of thousands of years old, that would look superficially like Earth, but without any fossile fuel (coal, petroleum (oil and natural gas), etc).

How far could they realistically develop their technology, industry and demography? Could an industrial revolution happen without fossil fuels?

Burning trees is a form of fossil fuel. The problem is that you run out so quickly, because trees don't have the energy density of typical fossil fuels. With petroleum, we can burn up fuels in one year that represent hundreds of years of biomass when they were first formed.

The Industrial Revolution obviously wouldn't happen, but progress should continue, albeit at a much slower rate and with most of the world still mired in a subsistence lifestyle. One of the anomalies of present-day society is that even the marginal elements of industrialized society don't really have to worry about starvation.

[K. A. Pital]

The leap to higher technologies will not happen due to energy requirements. This will be an endless feudal shithole since the means of production (earth) would dictate to the rest. Rapid industrialization will not occur anywhere.

The only possibility is that if you have a 1-world state, you can try to create a technopolis by using the tree resources of the entire world.

That's a shitty approach, but it can solve some of the difficulties stemming from the lack of denser fuels.

[Darth Wong]

The leap to higher technologies will not happen due to energy requirements. This will be an endless feudal shithole since the means of production (earth) would dictate to the rest. Rapid industrialization will not occur anywhere.

The only possibility is that if you have a 1-world state, you can try to create a technopolis by using the tree resources of the entire world.

That's a shitty approach, but it can solve some of the difficulties stemming from the lack of denser fuels.

A sufficiently large and powerful state could have enough resources to devote to scientific research. Hydroelectric dams could still be designed and built, thus allowing the creation of small but technologically advanced enclaves. The key difference is that technological advancement and prosperity would be even more unevenly distributed throughout the world than it is today.

[K. A. Pital]

The key difference is that technological advancement and prosperity would be even more unevenly distributed throughout the world than it is today.

Indeed. I would imagine however the thirst for advanced technologies to be more acute. Electrification - it's a very hard task without the fuels as we know them, it will even be hard to make proper hydroelectric dams without large energy costs in the first place IMHO...

The more technologically advanced governments would be in a much greater position of superiority - not only over their own population, but over other nations as well.

The possible gap is enormous, really. You could have 80% of the world not even knowing about electricity by the end of the XX century and living in a feudal or colonial something.

[Darth Wong]

Indeed. I would imagine however the thirst for advanced technologies to be more acute. Electrification - it's a very hard task without the fuels as we know them, it will even be hard to make proper hydroelectric dams without large energy costs in the first place IMHO...

Keep in mind that the Hoover Dam was built in a far less mechanized way than modern construction. It is quite possible to build an excellent dam with nothing more than manual labour to build wooden forms for the concrete. The Romans built aqueducts two thousand years ago after all. The electrification part requires the ability to build turbine blades and wind copper wire; both also possible for a more primitive society. They might not be as good as what we build today, but they would still work.

The more technologically advanced governments would be in a much greater position of superiority - not only over their own population, but over other nations as well.

The possible gap is enormous, really. You could have 80% of the world not even knowing about electricity by the end of the XX century and living in a feudal or colonial something.

Without fossil fuels, however, it would be more difficult for a technological elite to expand away from its power base. Its vehicles would have very limited range, so you wouldn't see a lot of blitzkrieg tactics, but its infantry-based armies would have more advanced weapons than their enemies. Air travel would be limited to lighter-than-air craft like blimps.

[K. A. Pital]

It is quite possible to build an excellent dam with nothing more than manual labour to build wooden forms for the concrete.

Hmm, I agree. I was thinking more about the generator parts which will produce electricity. Could those be built with a pre-industrial revolution level of technology?

[Darth Wong]

It is quite possible to build an excellent dam with nothing more than manual labour to build wooden forms for the concrete.

Hmm, I agree. I was thinking more about the generator parts which will produce electricity. Could those be built with a pre-industrial revolution level of technology?

Even if you have nothing more than primitive iron blades on waterwheels connected to hand-wound copper wire generators, you could make electricity. Not as efficiently as a modern hydroelectric dam, but you could make electricity nonetheless.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Electricity was probably utitilized during the Hellenistic period in the Seleucid Empire, one of the Diadochai states. We have the remnants of a battery from that period, the infamous Baghdad Battery, capable of generating up to 2 W, though we're not sure precisely what it was used for.

The Hellenistic period also had highly complex geared mechanisms, which are essentially the precursor to early mechanical generators, and an understanding of the operation of steam engines, which would still have certain reduced applications when wood fired; though most wood would be taken for producing iron just like it was in medieval times before the development of coke.

In short, an industrial revolution is still possible--it would just happen in very different circumstances. I would have to say Norway, or the Pacific Northwest--areas with very steady and reliable continuous rainfall which allow for extremely large generation potential, and very fertile land, so that there will production excesses which allow tens of thousands of men to be used to build things like large dams (which are easily in the capability of Roman engineering techniques--hell, the Yemenis built a huge dam in the bronze age!).

[Ariphaos]

I've been toying with the idea of a fantasy universe set on a "young earth" only a few tens of thousands of years old, that would look superficially like Earth, but without any fossile fuel (coal, petroleum (oil and natural gas), etc).

How far could they realistically develop their technology, industry and demography? Could an industrial revolution happen without fossil fuels?

Heh, I've had this idea too, with newly terraformed worlds colonized by people who wish to abandon technology.

Besides the topics already mentioned, peat is another means of power generation, as it forms relatively quickly (kind of the way forests do), and methane can be obtained from a number of sources.

I don't see any reason why precision generators couldn't be produced either.

Peat isn't particularly portable, and given the scarcity, rather than making a giant Hoover-style dam people will probably make a lot of smaller ones, with many if not most simply being mills of various sorts, both wind and water.

It would be interesting to look into the logistics behind solar and nuclear power and see if that sort of thing is at all possible in this scenario.

[Surlethe]

Once you have electricity and industrial-scale production, it should be possible to make the jump straight to nuclear fission power if you have the theoretical background. And if you can get nuclear power, suddenly you have access to a fuel with an energy density far greater than petroleum.

[Zor]

Would it be possible for such a civilization to devise and apply the energy of the Atom?

Zor

[Guardsman Bass]

Would it be possible for such a civilization to devise and apply the energy of the Atom?

Zor

That, of course, would depend on how well developed their transportation networks are (in order to bring the resources together to build a nuclear power plant), whether or not their sciences discover it, and whether or not they have the electrical capacity to get a plant started up, and power all the facilities needed inbetween (like mining and processing uranium).

It also depends on how large-scale you are willing to go on using nuclear; you could also probably use mined fuel in radioactive "batteries" a la a number of spacecraft like Cassini. It's not a CANDU plant, but it's something.

[Kuroneko]

There might be some advantage to having a young world--we could expect about 2.5 times as much ²³⁵U on Earth one billion years ago. Of course, we may need to make it about 500 million years for conditions sufficiently like modern ones in the case of Earth, but fictional worlds are more permissive, and in any case a higher initial concentration of fissionable material would help offset the difficulties of getting quality materials for the reactor or the refinement process.

[Sea Skimmer]

Without fossil fuels, however, it would be more difficult for a technological elite to expand away from its power base. Its vehicles would have very limited range, so you wouldn't see a lot of blitzkrieg tactics, but its infantry-based armies would have more advanced weapons than their enemies. Air travel would be limited to lighter-than-air craft like blimps.

Blitzkrieg never really moved faster then an infantryman could march to begin with, but then Blitzkrieg is really a myth anyway. Suffice to say though that you do not need hoards of tanks and trucks to dominate an enemy in fast moving warfare, Japan demonstrated this very clearly in early 1942. Take away both sides air power and give them a bunch of wood fired paddle wheel warships and the results would be interesting, but similar.

[aerius]

Iron & steel production is going to be a pain in the butt, and without coal there's no way it can produced in the huge quantities that is in our world. Without fossil fuels, it's still possible to have the industrial revolution, but for the process to be sustainable it'll have to be on a much smaller scale. In our world for instance, the industrial revolution would've stalled in Britain for lack of trees, and it was only with the use of coal that they were able to continue moving on.

I think steel will be the big bottleneck, practically everything in our modern life depends on steel. The manufacturing processes for practically everything we touch depends on steel tools of some sort, and if that steel isn't there we're going to run into trouble trying to build various things.

Using a nuke plant for example, let's say our non-fossil society wants to build a nuke plant. Well, that's going to take a fair amount of high quality corrosion resistant tubing of various kinds. We'll need a certain kind of pipes for the reactor vessel itself which is exposed to all the radiation and another kind for the turbines & so forth. Most of the tubing will be stainless steel of some sort, which is usually a pain in the ass to work with. To make that tubing we're going to need a bunch of dies made from high-grade tool steel, if we can't make tool steels we are in deep shit. If we can't make enough tool steel then production is going to slow to a crawl. Don't forget that we also have to cut the piping, stamp out various parts such as brackets & supports, not to mention millions of nuts & bolts. All of that requires tool steels.

I think everything hinges on steel, if we can make enough of it we can have limited areas of high-tech society at a 20th century level, if everything goes right. If we can't, then we're going to be stuck somewhere in the 18th or 19th century.

[Ariphaos]

There might be some advantage to having a young world--we could expect about 2.5 times as much ²³⁵U on Earth one billion years ago. Of course, we may need to make it about 500 million years for conditions sufficiently like modern ones in the case of Earth, but fictional worlds are more permissive, and in any case a higher initial concentration of fissionable material would help offset the difficulties of getting quality materials for the reactor or the refinement process.

There is also the matter of uranium and other heavy elements sinking over time, deposits while the ocean plates get continually subducted. The oxygen atmosphere formed in the early Proterozoic so, assuming evolution was being driven a bit (lots) faster, terraforming, or 'magic', nothing seems too out of line with even ~1.5 Gya.

Aside from a lack of crust development and the world being an in-general more interesting place to live (like the occasional komatite flow), anyway.

[Kuroneko]

Yes--fictional worlds are more permissive. The ~500MYA or less estimate can be seen as more reasonable point for "alternative histories" of Earth developing a technological society earlier if one considers that this is only a bit after the Cambrian period, i.e., when the Earth first developed a significant amount of biodiversity among larger organisms (and larger organisms in general only a bit before that). That way, evolution wouldn't have to be accelerated anywhere near the degree involved in having such things before the Cambrian period.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Hydroelectric dams could still be designed and built, thus allowing the creation of small but technologically advanced enclaves.

Without fossil fuels, primarily plastics, what would those technologies look like? Sure, hydropower is one thing, but other than old lamps, what would they use it for?

[Broomstick]

Air travel would be limited to lighter-than-air craft like blimps.

Not necessarially.

With the proper design you can fly without petrochemical fuel - you just have to be a LOT more efficient than early designs in our world which flew as much by brute force as aerodynamics. You will also have the problem of materials, in that many of the composites we currently utilize in aerospace are derieved from petroleum. For example, we have had human-powered aircraft, but the materials they were built from were all ultimately from refined petroleum. This hypothetical world might have aircraft-grade spruce and silk cloth, aluminum, and various other substances, but it won't have mylar or kevlar or carbon-carbon composite as we know it. I doubt they'd have the efficiency to build human-powered aircraft, but something between that and our current tech should be possible.

Europe has diesel aircraft engines that could, at least in theory, run on biodiesel. They are dependent on computerized fuel/air engine feeds, which may or may not be feasible in this hypothetical world. Brazil runs agri-industrial crop dusters on pure ethanol. The problem is that nothing has the energy density of petro-fuels, but if you're willing to burn more fuel for the same result heavier-than-air flight with alternatives is possible.

You could have fixed-wing aircraft, but they'd have larger wings, lighter wing-loading, less payload, and move slower. Is that a problem? Well, yes and no - depends on what you're used to, what you have as alternatives, and what you're using them for.

[aerius]

Without fossil fuels, primarily plastics, what would those technologies look like? Sure, hydropower is one thing, but other than old lamps, what would they use it for?

Given that we can turn coal into oil and then use that to make plastics & other fun stuff, chances are the process could be adapted to use charcoal, which comes from trees. Very inefficient, but in theory it should work.

As for what the hydropower can be used for, well, everything. It can light lamps, run electric motors & machinery, power various kinds of rail transit, heat homes, smelt various metals especially aluminum, used in electric furnaces to make high-grade steels, and basically make the world go round.

[Winston Blake]

The easiest way to get a little liquid fuel would be Straight Vegetable Oil produced from crops. The diesel engine was originally invented to run on ordinary peanut oil. I can imagine some kind of noble family speeding around in a revered magical carriage which is, in fact, a decorated diesel truck.

[wolveraptor]

I've been toying with the idea of a fantasy universe set on a "young earth" only a few tens of thousands of years old, that would look superficially like Earth, but without any fossile fuel (coal, petroleum (oil and natural gas), etc).

If the world were only tens of thousands of years old, wouldn't there be much more volcanic activity? In fact, wasn't it impossible for life to exist in the Earth's first few hundred thousand years of existence?

[Ariphaos]

If the world were only tens of thousands of years old, wouldn't there be much more volcanic activity? In fact, wasn't it impossible for life to exist in the Earth's first few hundred thousand years of existence?

I was assuming the age of the carbon-producing biosphere, but yes, though, as I understand it the Solar System formed very quickly after the parent supernova and I would imagine that this is not always the case, leading many worlds to be formed with a lot less tectonic potential.

[Howedar]

Even if you have nothing more than primitive iron blades on waterwheels connected to hand-wound copper wire generators, you could make electricity. Not as efficiently as a modern hydroelectric dam, but you could make electricity nonetheless.

I'm still trying to wrap my mind around where the copper is going to come from, and how it's going to be formed into any meaningful quantity of wire. There sure isn't a lot of native copper around, and (I'm probably making this up in my head) I thought a lot of the more abundant copper ores were made to be useful through electrowinning and other magic voodoo processes. Those won't do you much good if you don't already have electricity, of course.

I almost wonder if very initial attempts would be better off using gold. Generally less chemically tied up than copper, and ductile as dog poo.