Post #4480035

@MatthewToadAgain@climatejustice.social @Beldarak@mastodon.gamedev.place Much appreciated, thank you for your thoughts. Don't want to be a nuisance. But let me point to where I think your vision would benefit from more realism and less Hollywood-ism. You do mention global supply chains. It's where I think you could put in more thought. Because this, "I fear that the survivors may make the situation worse by yet more use of fossil fuels, deforestation and mining." can't happen. The complex supply web would have to continue to provide repair kits for delivery trucks, energy for mining equipment and all the other things people require to extract, ship, refine, and burn fossil fuels. As long as such a complex supply web holds, civilisation hasn't ended. The fracture points as I see them: when production facilities in populous, tropical/sub-tropical South Asia start stuttering. We don't have the manpower to replace their factory staff, even if we wanted to relocate a certain amount of production capacity for things identified as indispensable. When South Asia crumbles, so do our jobs. Then our societal safety nets and our finance systems. As existential as South Asia is for a continued tech civilisation, this also sheds light on why there can't be pockets of collapse survivors doing "yet more use of fossil fuels, deforestation and mining". The things, the material things required won't be available, can't be made anymore. Because our material things have become too complex. And for that reason the reduction in complexity can't be temporary either. Because of the required energy (and required tele-communication). A deliberate de-complexiation would be a Herculean effort without guarantee of success. But deliberate would be the only way of ensuring energy availability throughout, for not letting product supply chains break. A broken global web can't be mended anymore. Because access to energy is simply over then. We used up all of the easy-to-reach fossil fuels and metals. Even extracting water requires energy input today beyond what humans without electricity could reach. Because groundwater aquifers have been depleted so much in places by now that, eg in Germany, it would take 200 years to be refilled to a level within reach for low-energy, ie manual access. For fossil fuels to become accessible again so a new industrialisation might evolve takes millions of years. Oil longer than coal. Metals too. Iron, copper, silver, nickel – inaccessible without massive energy input – and inaccessible without a global complex supply web for all tools needed. The civilisation's residue might get recycled. Might. Because it takes knowledge of the alloys used in which product, and how to separate them. Separation then needs energy and chemicals. While chemicals are also depleted at the depths of easy access, where a person could use a spade to extract them. The open copper mines in Australia or Papua New Guinea won't help survivors in Eurasia. Because shipping won't be possible on any meaningful scale, if at all. In terms of guns I think, everyone has bow and arrow then. With a stone tip maybe. And the history lesson will stay in societal memory of how bad feudalism is for almost everyone. Might well be that feudalism and slavery won't become a thing again at all. Hard to subdue a population with that kind of historical knowledge, and where bow & arrow are the sole long-range weapons, don't you think? It all hinges on product complexity and supply chains. I guess, that boils it down. And why I think your vision is still far too unrealistic, still governed far too much by Mad Max-equivalent Hollywood narratives. Peace 🖖🏽