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Blackhawk748
2015-12-13, 01:39 PM
So we hear this a lot in TTRPGs. The current world has been built off of a once great Empire that fell 300+ years ago and is barely remembered. Now im not here to discuss how overused this trope is or anything, as i rather like it. What im here to discuss is, What would our world look like 500 years in the future, if a great catastrophe destroyed most of humanity.

So lets say that humanity died to The Scouring. Its poorly remembered and even more poorly documented. Lets also say that it was caused by magic. A magical Disease, lets go with that. So humanity gets nearly obliterated by The Scouring, lets say 1/10 survive, and loses most of its advanced tech, as the survivors just want to survive. So 500 years go by and the world is now populated by Humanity and a few other Sapient species (cuz magic did some weird stuff) and Tech Wise they have returned to Late Medieval.

So what does the world look like?

Does the Statue of Liberty still stand? Is Big Ben still there? Hell is some random house in Suburbia still there in 500 years? Has the topography changed substantially? (as in if someone where to be transported from now to then, would it look the same geographically, more or less)

DigoDragon
2015-12-13, 01:43 PM
Here's a handy reference (http://lifeafterpeople.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_collapses) from the tv series "Life after People" that answers those questions. The Statue of Liberty will theoretically collapse (be destroyed by the elements) after 300 years. Big Ben only lasts about 100 years.

Blackhawk748
2015-12-13, 01:47 PM
Here's a handy reference (http://lifeafterpeople.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_collapses) from the tv series "Life after People" that answers those questions. The Statue of Liberty will theoretically collapse (be destroyed by the elements) after 300 years. Big Ben only lasts about 100 years.

Wow really? I figured Big Ben could make it longer than that

Edit: Though holy crap is Notre Dame tough, 2000 years!

Strigon
2015-12-13, 02:28 PM
Here's a handy reference (http://lifeafterpeople.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_collapses) from the tv series "Life after People" that answers those questions. The Statue of Liberty will theoretically collapse (be destroyed by the elements) after 300 years. Big Ben only lasts about 100 years.

I'm skeptical of these numbers. They seem to suggest that the most grand structures would begin collapsing in just a few decades.
My family has been living in my current, fairly average house for a couple decades and we've never had to take any steps to prevent its collapse.

Heck, the Chernobyl incident was 30 years ago, and a quick Google search shows that most of the buildings are still fine, if unclean. (https://www.google.ca/search?q=chernobyl+today&newwindow=1&biw=1440&bih=791&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE2ce0x9nJAhUh4IMKHYCiADwQ_AUIBygB)
Naturally, big storms could cause big damage, but really I think most of the structures would be intact for about a century.

After 500 years, I'd say that most civilian buildings are gone (though the foundations are still there, if broken up), and the most sturdy buildings remain standing.



Don't forget that 1 in 10 people is still a lot of people, who are probably going to work very hard to prevent their homes from falling apart - so the more people there are in an area, the more structures will be standing - though they would have been repaired in a rather patchwork fashion.

DigoDragon
2015-12-13, 03:18 PM
I'm skeptical of these numbers. They seem to suggest that the most grand structures would begin collapsing in just a few decades.
My family has been living in my current, fairly average house for a couple decades and we've never had to take any steps to prevent its collapse.

You do have climate controlled interiors, yes? Paint the home every few years? Things like that extend a building's life. A big point of failure I imagine is the roof. Once it starts leaking, if there's no one to quickly plug it, it's going to mold, expand and eventually come apart, exposing the interior to weathering effects.

That said, the show does have to speculate some of their figures. We don't tend to just leave structures abandoned for long. Someone usually demolishes old buildings to build new ones.

Ashtagon
2015-12-13, 03:22 PM
I'm skeptical of these numbers. They seem to suggest that the most grand structures would begin collapsing in just a few decades.
My family has been living in my current, fairly average house for a couple decades and we've never had to take any steps to prevent its collapse.

Heck, the Chernobyl incident was 30 years ago, and a quick Google search shows that most of the buildings are still fine, if unclean. (https://www.google.ca/search?q=chernobyl+today&newwindow=1&biw=1440&bih=791&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE2ce0x9nJAhUh4IMKHYCiADwQ_AUIBygB)
Naturally, big storms could cause big damage, but really I think most of the structures would be intact for about a century.

After 500 years, I'd say that most civilian buildings are gone (though the foundations are still there, if broken up), and the most sturdy buildings remain standing.

Don't forget that 1 in 10 people is still a lot of people, who are probably going to work very hard to prevent their homes from falling apart - so the more people there are in an area, the more structures will be standing - though they would have been repaired in a rather patchwork fashion.

Grandiose buildings (especially tall/thin buildings and those with large open areas with only the technical requirement of internal supports, as is common in more modern architecture) require proportionately more maintenance work. It seems quite believable that famous landmarks will go before ordinary houses. "Over-engineered" buildings tend to last longer.

Âmesang
2015-12-13, 03:26 PM
Yeah, 10% of the current population is about, what, 700 million people? I believe most volcanologists and paleontologists are of the belief that the Toba eruption reduced the world population to no more than 10,000 — and that was during the Stone Age.

It'd be slow going at first, but I imagine with those numbers humanity could bounce back (assuming they work together). It's not a bad concept, you just might need a more catastrophic scenario (think Fist of the North Star).

Darth Ultron
2015-12-13, 03:31 PM
Plants would quickly over grow everything. It really does take a huge effort to keep the plants trimmed down. One of the funny things you will notice in The Walking Dead is how short all the grass is years after the Apocalypse. But as anyone with a lawn can tell you, it can grow a lot in just a couple weeks. And wild fields are even worse. After a couple years, and more so decades and centuries the world will look very different.

Shows like ''life after people'' have buildings crumbling quite fast. It does not seem to be correct. I live in an area with lots of farm houses, barns and buildings around 100 years old. And while I'm sure many have had upkeep over the years, I'm sure few ever faced ''utter collapse and obliteration''.

Though storms would destroy a lot. Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, lightning and high winds do a ton of damage. Add in things like mud slides, fire and earthquakes and the damage really does add up. And the cumulative effect would be quite extreme with out continual repair and upkeep. One hurricane might not do too much damage to a building, but 100 of them would obliterate it.

Blackhawk748
2015-12-13, 03:36 PM
Yeah, 10% of the current population is about, what, 700 million people? I believe most volcanologists and paleontologists are of the belief that the Toba eruption reduced the world population to no more than 10,000 — and that was during the Stone Age.

It'd be slow going at first, but I imagine with those numbers humanity could bounce back (assuming they work together). It's not a bad concept, you just might need a more catastrophic scenario (think Fist of the North Star).

Ok so itll have to be 1/1000, so down to 7 million people worldwide.

Anonymouswizard
2015-12-13, 03:49 PM
I'm going to take a different approach to normal. To start I'm going to assume that the 70,000,000 (1/100) survivors are spread out in an area surrounding the middle East, all able to communicate with each other.

The absolute worst that might happen? A drop in the speed of technological development and various ideological wars, which I want to think ends up with several power blocks in a set up more similar to the Chinese Warring States period than anything else. Islam becomes the majority religion, but that's due to location, if we plopped our survivors in North America I think we'd see many Christian powers and a couple of Islamic ones.

What if the plague wipes out creative types first and technical and unskilled labour after that? We lose many high end scientists and engineers, and there are very few new books/films/games/theatre productions for the next generation or two.

If it hits the engineers and scientists first? I'm sorry creatives, it turns out you're less important to society. Technology regresses a few decades, possibly further. Working horses become more common and horse populations rise, but between that and the eventual death of tractors it might be a bit lean. People start to learn how technology works and we climb back up to our tech level, possibly before anything bad happns.

It hits everywhere evenly? People end up living in towns and villages, not modern cities. We recolonise the modern cities before the 500 years are up.

It kills the youngest first? We die out.

It acts like a real disease? I suspect we end up with power blocks forming around places like Madagascar, and slightly weaker ones around places like Japan, the UK, the Carribean, etc. Canada and Russia have a decent chance of survival.

EDIT: at less than 10% population and spread out we do start to lose infrastructure, but we can keep that which is needed.

Forum Explorer
2015-12-13, 04:14 PM
I'm skeptical of these numbers. They seem to suggest that the most grand structures would begin collapsing in just a few decades.
My family has been living in my current, fairly average house for a couple decades and we've never had to take any steps to prevent its collapse.

Heck, the Chernobyl incident was 30 years ago, and a quick Google search shows that most of the buildings are still fine, if unclean. (https://www.google.ca/search?q=chernobyl+today&newwindow=1&biw=1440&bih=791&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE2ce0x9nJAhUh4IMKHYCiADwQ_AUIBygB)
Naturally, big storms could cause big damage, but really I think most of the structures would be intact for about a century.

After 500 years, I'd say that most civilian buildings are gone (though the foundations are still there, if broken up), and the most sturdy buildings remain standing.


I can't speak for the timeline, but I do know that we've had our house for some 30 years. And it's hitting the point where if we did no maintenance, I don't think it would last another 30 years. Not really 'intact' anyways, though there would still be a structure. Not only because of a water leak like Digo suggested, but also because wildlife (mice and squirrels at first) would quickly invade, and dig into the walls and the like, and would increase the exposure to the elements. And the more damage there is, the faster the damage accumulates.

Climate would play a big part. The less life and water there is in an area, the longer the structures will last.

Also it depends on your definition of collapse. If you mean completely flattened, then that takes a lot longer.

Inevitability
2015-12-13, 04:29 PM
I'd say that with most science gone, humanity would become more religious. This in turn would increase the relative number of ideologic wars. There might even be new 'crusades'.

Also, a number of communities will become isolated. With no modern technology, there really isn't a way to know what is happening on random Pacific island X without going there yourself. People there may come to believe they are the only humans left, which should make for interesting situations.

Jelly d6
2015-12-13, 04:31 PM
Speaking of structures, and speaking of structures made with concrete and steel which are by far the most common in my area, it's not about storms - it's about earthquakes. An earthquake of even medium intensity can momentarily and severely damage the building even it's being maintained perfectly. The same goes for a long enough series of smaller earthquakes. So 500 years in a seismically active area and 500 in a stable one would be VERY different.

Roads will be overgrown quickly. 20 years for a country 2-lane. 100-200 years for highways. I've trekked down the railroad which was dismantled 50-60 years ago. I had to guess my track only by mostly even elevation where rails once were laid.

The climate can advance the destruction. Moonsoons are horrible even when there are people to deal with various issues. Negative winter temperature is not helpful either. On the other hand, constant negative temperature like in Arctic region preserves things quite well.

As for the objects of nature, remember that rivers like to change their beds often whether there are people around or not. Oh, and not a single hydroengineering structure will hold 500 years. Even 100 years without maintenance is an optimistic suggestion.

Âmesang
2015-12-13, 04:49 PM
…now I'm reminded of an old PC game called Strife: Quest for the Sigil (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPrU7LSqiX0) that took place in a medieval environment (in terms of building structure and NPC clothing) that was ruled over by a futuristic technocratic-theocracy.

So basically imagine "Merry ol' England" 'round the 13th century with MechWarriors stomping through London and the enemy militia decked out like Judge Dredd.

Would a world of non-engineers in the future look at remaining, working tech as "magic?"

Blackhawk748
2015-12-13, 04:57 PM
…now I'm reminded of an old PC game called Strife: Quest for the Sigil (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPrU7LSqiX0) that took place in a medieval environment (in terms of building structure and NPC clothing) that was ruled over by a futuristic technocratic-theocracy.

So basically imagine "Merry ol' England" 'round the 13th century with MechWarriors stomping through London and the enemy militia decked out like Judge Dredd.

Would a world of non-engineers in the future look at remaining, working tech as "magic?"

Thats part of the idea im working with. Pre Scouring stuff is "Magical Artifacts" but there would be actual magic

Lvl 2 Expert
2015-12-13, 05:04 PM
So humanity gets nearly obliterated by The Scouring, lets say 1/10 survive, and loses most of its advanced tech, as the survivors just want to survive. So 500 years go by and the world is now populated by Humanity and a few other Sapient species (cuz magic did some weird stuff) and Tech Wise they have returned to Late Medieval.

So what does the world look like?

Does the Statue of Liberty still stand? Is Big Ben still there? Hell is some random house in Suburbia still there in 500 years? Has the topography changed substantially? (as in if someone where to be transported from now to then, would it look the same geographically, more or less)

1/10th survive? They'd rebuild. Pretty much. The plague killed about 95% of the native American's, and yes, a lot of them ended up being set back quite a bit, becoming wandering tribes chasing buffalo over cliffs and stuff. But there were also still organised nations left impressive enough to inspire some revolting European colonists who were looking to write their own constitution. A hundred years later everyone on that continent would probably have been at or above their pre-plague tech level again, if not for the armed follow up that disease got. Just still with less people than before probably.

Modern society if anything is more resilient to these sort of events. Yes, a lot of things have to line up correctly to produce and use say modern cars, but we also have a a lot of living experts on that stuff. And we're pretty organized. Even if electrotechnical stuff no longer worked at all suddenly I bet we'd have visual telegraphs or something set up pretty quickly to stay organized. And that's not even this scenario. You'd have to hurt us pretty damned good to actually throw us back to the middle ages/stone age/whatever era you prefer and make us stay there for more than 3 decades. I'd say it starts sounding semi-plausible when you kill of about 99.9% of all humans. One person in every thousand left, or about 7 million all together. Even if they quickly congregate in a hand full of communities so many knowledge has been lost that they might have to resort to steam tractors to do their farming. That's like getting thrown one or two centuries back. Seriously, I bet just the people in this thread could come up with a working design for some sort of engine just based on what we know, as well as a method of producing the needed metal parts, either from scrap or from ore. We know a lot more than we think, even if it's incoherent and requires a lot of experimentation to get right, and that knowledge needs to be completely without use for about 50 years for it to disappear. In the case of an apocalyptic event with few survivors, most of that knowledge instead becomes more useful, we start trying to apply as much of it as possible, and anything that works gets passed on.

But you know, especially in that last scenario a lot of parts of the world would be abandoned to the wild. Even now you can travel through the Balkans and find village after village consisting of three houses with people in them and seven ruins. A lot of them are missing their roofs, despite looking like they were pretty well build. The changes are probably going to be biggest in areas where active human interference is keeping the landscape in shape. The Netherlands are of course always a good example. The Hoover Dam might be safe for 10.000 years according to discovery channel (although I kind of wonder if that's really true and what happens if and when the water starts flowing over the dam) but if regular dikes go without maintenance for a few decades there will be holes. If the land behind those dikes has over the centuries lowered to a few meters below sea level (or used to be a lake floor) than the area will flood. If the area is a bit higher up than it will only flood ones every so many years, creating a natural landscape anywhere between a real swamp and a forest where there might be water sometimes. But the reason the Netherlands make a good example is the other half of the country. There are no original natural landscapes left anywhere in the country. Most of it is agriculture, some is cities and towns and even the parts we think of as nature are carefully maintained cultural landscapes rather than what it would become if left to its own devices. And that's probably true for a lot of ground all over the world. Most of Europe would become a big forest, most of North America too. It doesn't have to take more than a few hundred years, possibly less. Whether Big Ben stands or not, it will definitely not be standing in an abandoned city or even in a clean field of ruins. Rather all the remains will be sitting in a big forest somewhere.

And if there are still enough people to prevent that from happening, if our cities keep existing, than our tech level probably won't drop too far back either.

At least, that's what I'd think.

DigoDragon
2015-12-13, 05:11 PM
Plants would quickly over grow everything. It really does take a huge effort to keep the plants trimmed down. One of the funny things you will notice in The Walking Dead is how short all the grass is years after the Apocalypse. But as anyone with a lawn can tell you, it can grow a lot in just a couple weeks. And wild fields are even worse. After a couple years, and more so decades and centuries the world will look very different.

Shows like ''life after people'' have buildings crumbling quite fast. It does not seem to be correct. I live in an area with lots of farm houses, barns and buildings around 100 years old. And while I'm sure many have had upkeep over the years, I'm sure few ever faced ''utter collapse and obliteration''.

The key is having any upkeep at all. We trim lawns, put up a fresh coat of paint every few years, fix leaks, keep the interiors clean and dry, etc. All those activities go a long way to preserve a building.

Location is important too. I've seen homes around here condemned after being unoccupied for only 5-8 years because the roof collapsed. Just a little over half of one decade and the roof caved in. Florida is notorious for mold and it will eat through wooden roof struts like candy. On the other hand, The Boneyard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/309th_Aerospace_Maintenance_and_Regeneration_Group ) in Arizona is an ideal place to store old aircraft because of the very dry conditions. Stuff there will last decades with just minor maintenance.

Strigon
2015-12-13, 05:30 PM
You do have climate controlled interiors, yes? Paint the home every few years? Things like that extend a building's life. A big point of failure I imagine is the roof. Once it starts leaking, if there's no one to quickly plug it, it's going to mold, expand and eventually come apart, exposing the interior to weathering effects.

That said, the show does have to speculate some of their figures. We don't tend to just leave structures abandoned for long. Someone usually demolishes old buildings to build new ones.

They could extend its life, certainly, but look at any abandoned city, or an abandoned building in a city; odds are, they're still very much intact, but just not suitable for habitation either because of mold, leaks, or partial collapses. Naturally it depends on how we're defining whether a structure is still there, but I feel confident in saying a lot of buildings would at least still be standing in some fashion.
In particular, I'm thinking schools, libraries, government facilities, prisons, hospitals, and even things like shopping malls or department stores would still be quite intact. We tend to massively overprepare structures whenever possible - at least in theory; there's a chance someone somewhere down the line will fudge some numbers to save on construction costs.

Earthquakes would, naturally, be a huge concern where they occurred; 500 years without maintenance near a fault line would bring pretty much anything down.




Grandiose buildings (especially tall/thin buildings and those with large open areas with only the technical requirement of internal supports, as is common in more modern architecture) require proportionately more maintenance work. It seems quite believable that famous landmarks will go before ordinary houses. "Over-engineered" buildings tend to last longer.

Well, I agree with you on the tall/thin one; large apartment buildings and skyscrapers wouldn't tend to last long, but I think there would be plenty of large, grand structures that would last quite some time - it just depends on whether they were built with aesthetics or functionality in mind.

Cealocanth
2015-12-13, 06:03 PM
Our modern infrastructure is actually quite tough from a historical perspective. Concrete with steel reinforcement, while it will crack, will last significantly longer than wood or anything but the most robust stones. However, don't expect most cities to withstand 5 centuries. Especially in places with large moisture levels, plant life, and high winds, most skyscrapers will be a pile of rubble within less than a century, and that's pretty generous. The foundations will last significantly longer, to the point that the people living in your post-apocalyptic reset world may speak of 'fields of stone' or something like that in reference to the utterly massive amounts of lasting ruins that will be left behind with the destruction of modern cities.

As for our monuments?

Ancient monuments like the Stonehenge, the Pyramids, the Great Wall of China will not care in the slightest. They have been around for a lot longer than 500 years, and another 500 years will not do much unless someone deliberately dismantles them.
Monuments that are old by our standards, such as medieval castles or Notre Dame, will probably still be around as well, albeit quite decrepit and nonfunctional unless someone restores them.
Big Ben probably won't be around for very long, though its foundation and possibly its history might remain. The Statue of Liberty is crumbling today, without repair we're going to lose it in about 50 years. The only reason the Leaning Tower of Pisa hasn't been destroyed yet is because of tremendous effort on our part. I imagine that some particularly long-lasting modern monuments would be large-scale projects meant to withstand tremendous amounts of weathering, like the Kremlin, Hoover Dam, The Eisenhower Tunnel, etc. will probably still be relatively intact, though some might be in sorry shape.
As for our modern wonders: The infrastructure of the Internet will last well into the future, though it will not remain functional during that time. Though we might lose miles of cable each decade due to weathering, there is so much raw material in the internet buried beneath our cities, across continents, crossing oceans, that people will probably see evidence of it thousands of years from now. GPS will still be in geostationary orbit for thousands of years, and probably will still be functional, as they are designed to not need regular maintenance. The ISS won't last another decade, let alone 500 years. The rest of our space junk will probably still be there in 500 years, though some of it might deorbit, including both Hubble and Kepler. The Large Hadron Collider is surprisingly sturdy and protected from the environment, so will probably last a few centuries. The Seed Vault will probably still be present and in near-working condition at that point.

Other things that will still be there in 500 years:
The radiation from Chernobyl will still be deadly. Most other nuclear accidents will still be detectable in the atmosphere for centuries. They will be detectable in rocks for thousands and thousands of years.
Most of our landfills and our plastics will have not decomposed entirely.
Most of humanity's other pollution will have very real effects in 500 years, with the likely exception of fertilizer runoff and oil spills, which decompose quickly in an archaeological sense.
Most of our highways, while cracked and collapsed, will probably still be visible.
Most of our mines will still be accessible.
The areas which are our active farmland today will quickly come to be among the most fertile strips of land in the world, primarily due to latent fertilizer buildup. Expect new rainforest-level diversity in what is currently the U.S. Midwest.
It is possible that the Yellowstone Supervolcano will have erupted in that period. This is up to you, though, as it is inherently unpredictable.

@Digo: Corrected. Thanks for that.

Arbane
2015-12-13, 07:34 PM
It acts like a real disease? I suspect we end up with power blocks forming around places like Madagascar, and slightly weaker ones around places like Japan, the UK, the Carribean, etc. Canada and Russia have a decent chance of survival.

And Scandanavia. (http://www.sssscomic.com/index.php)

(This premise sounds almost EXACTLY like Stand Still, Stay Silent's, except I think it's only ninety years post-Illness.)

Blackhawk748
2015-12-13, 07:44 PM
And Scandanavia. (http://www.sssscomic.com/index.php)

(This premise sounds almost EXACTLY like Stand Still, Stay Silent's, except I think it's only ninety years post-Illness.)

Hilariously i've never read it. I just got the idea for a magical world following a technological one while reading the Septimus Heap series.

ExLibrisMortis
2015-12-13, 08:38 PM
I think that even with a 99% extinction rate, we wouldn't experience a huge setback in science, counted it in years of progress, unless you specifically had the plague target educated people. I mean, most of our knowledge is available in digital format somewhere, and that's distributed all over the world, with hundreds of copies, and immune to diseases. Yes, you would lose the finer points of certain theories, and a lot of small sub-fields would face extinction, but something like general relativity is well enough known amongsts physicists, we won't lose that.

On the more practical side, things like radios and computers would still be around. Yes, it'd be a bloody huge pain to service the world's networks with a much smaller population, but chances are there will be someone left who can read the maintenance manual, chances are there's still an engineer or ten around*, and core infrastructure would last long enough that a crew can be cobbled together to service the net. All the renewable power in the world is suddenly enough to supply the world's needs, which is pretty cool.

A disaster that destroys the internet to an appreciable degree will also destroy pretty much any monuments and buildings on Earth. The things we're likely to lose are the things that only a few dozen people ever do or know - several hundred languages might go extinct, for example.




*I don't know how many engineers work in a typical power plant, but I imagine that there will be someone left in most power plants, and those engineers together can safely shut down a hundred power plants, then man the remaining one, if needed, and relocate to the next plant once local storage is empty.

Arbane
2015-12-14, 12:09 AM
On the more practical side, things like radios and computers would still be around. Yes, it'd be a bloody huge pain to service the world's networks with a much smaller population, but chances are there will be someone left who can read the maintenance manual, chances are there's still an engineer or ten around*, and core infrastructure would last long enough that a crew can be cobbled together to service the net. All the renewable power in the world is suddenly enough to supply the world's needs, which is pretty cool.

*I don't know how many engineers work in a typical power plant, but I imagine that there will be someone left in most power plants, and those engineers together can safely shut down a hundred power plants, then man the remaining one, if needed, and relocate to the next plant once local storage is empty.

I don't know many details about the electrical gird, but I suspect you are being WAY too optimistic about the manpower and infrastructure needed to keep these things going.

DigoDragon
2015-12-14, 08:36 AM
They could extend its life, certainly, but look at any abandoned city, or an abandoned building in a city; odds are, they're still very much intact, but just not suitable for habitation either because of mold, leaks, or partial collapses. Naturally it depends on how we're defining whether a structure is still there, but I feel confident in saying a lot of buildings would at least still be standing in some fashion.

Well, walls would probably be there, enough to identify that there was a inhabited building at the site. Here in my city I've seen roofs collapse after just 5-8 years of no maintenance, but the walls are still standing. Not that it does the building any use without the roof.

Rebar-enforced concrete does not decay well compared to ordinary concrete structures it seems. As it ages, the rebar expands and cracks the concrete. So while it is stronger, it lasts a shorter time.



Most modern arsenals will still be present, but most will be nonfunctional, and most nuclear weapons will be completely useless. Almost all of our known uranium and thorium reserves will have decayed.

Uranium's half-life is measured in millions of years. The bomb casings might rust away in 500 years, but most of the uranium will still be around.

Thorium... depends on the isotope. The stable version has a half-life of a few billion years. Some of the isotopes we create last only hours.

AMFV
2015-12-14, 08:44 AM
I think that even with a 99% extinction rate, we wouldn't experience a huge setback in science, counted it in years of progress, unless you specifically had the plague target educated people. I mean, most of our knowledge is available in digital format somewhere, and that's distributed all over the world, with hundreds of copies, and immune to diseases. Yes, you would lose the finer points of certain theories, and a lot of small sub-fields would face extinction, but something like general relativity is well enough known amongsts physicists, we won't lose that.

On the more practical side, things like radios and computers would still be around. Yes, it'd be a bloody huge pain to service the world's networks with a much smaller population, but chances are there will be someone left who can read the maintenance manual, chances are there's still an engineer or ten around*, and core infrastructure would last long enough that a crew can be cobbled together to service the net. All the renewable power in the world is suddenly enough to supply the world's needs, which is pretty cool.

A disaster that destroys the internet to an appreciable degree will also destroy pretty much any monuments and buildings on Earth. The things we're likely to lose are the things that only a few dozen people ever do or know - several hundred languages might go extinct, for example.




*I don't know how many engineers work in a typical power plant, but I imagine that there will be someone left in most power plants, and those engineers together can safely shut down a hundred power plants, then man the remaining one, if needed, and relocate to the next plant once local storage is empty.

The problem is that the disaster would take people who were doing engineering and make them do only subsistence things. Then their kids wouldn't learn engineering, because it's not a useful skill when survival is what matters, so that knowledge would be lost.

The same thing HAS been observed in other population crashes (Easter Island comes to mind), education is lost, not because the educated population is reduced to zero, but because that knowledge is no longer the most useful. The only reason we have the level of science that we do is that people now have the time to devote to it, because they aren't constantly worried about whether or not they have food and shelter. Take away that time, and science (and many other endeavors) fade pretty quickly.

Of course once subsistence again reaches a point where it can be sustained, then you'll have the reemergence of science, but if that's several generations after, a great deal of knowledge might have been lost. And at that point, the servers will be down (servers cost power, and who's paying the bill after the apocalypse), so you're stuck with whatever writings you can recover, but that might even be gone (paper degrades or gets wet). So a lot of knowledge is often lost in those sort of population crashes.

Beleriphon
2015-12-14, 10:04 AM
You're basically asking the Fallout question. In a way Fallout is utterly ridiculous in many respects, but other make a lot of sense. Take the Brotherhood of Steel for example. They have a very high level of technological prowess compared to most other groups, the reason is they have dedicated themselves to keeping that knowledge base up to pre-war levels. In a more realistic scenario any level of technological knowledge requires that a group make a dedicated effort to keep that knowledge and pass it on to the next generation.

ExLibrisMortis
2015-12-14, 10:43 AM
I don't know many details about the electrical gird, but I suspect you are being WAY too optimistic about the manpower and infrastructure needed to keep these things going.
Very possible, but keep in mind that we're not trying to support all of the electrical grid all over the world. We just need to do the bit around the place we're going to live - maybe Europe, because it's fairly small and developed, though I'm not sure what the exact food balance would work out to. China is pretty concentrated, too, I believe, or the US east coast. As long as the infrastructure is in decent enough shape, we can tide over with simple fixes. You might have to drop health and safety standards, but it'll still work, more or less.


The problem is that the disaster would take people who were doing engineering and make them do only subsistence things. Then their kids wouldn't learn engineering, because it's not a useful skill when survival is what matters, so that knowledge would be lost.

The same thing HAS been observed in other population crashes (Easter Island comes to mind), education is lost, not because the educated population is reduced to zero, but because that knowledge is no longer the most useful. The only reason we have the level of science that we do is that people now have the time to devote to it, because they aren't constantly worried about whether or not they have food and shelter. Take away that time, and science (and many other endeavors) fade pretty quickly.

Of course once subsistence again reaches a point where it can be sustained, then you'll have the reemergence of science, but if that's several generations after, a great deal of knowledge might have been lost. And at that point, the servers will be down (servers cost power, and who's paying the bill after the apocalypse), so you're stuck with whatever writings you can recover, but that might even be gone (paper degrades or gets wet). So a lot of knowledge is often lost in those sort of population crashes.
Well, yes, but why would the remaining 1% be reduced to substistence farming/hunting? There are large frozen/dried/preserved food stores, in parts of the world anyway, not to mention loads of cattle around. In addition, 1% of the food producers is still a lot of food producers, they're not going to stop producing, even if fertilizer will be in short supply for a while. The grain will still be out in the fields, and 99% of the mills might close, but that last one will do fine for the reduced population.

Obviously, a disaster that reduces the human population to a much smaller fraction - 0,001%, or 70.000, for example - would suffer from this huge fallback, although temporarily. But a disaster that reduces the world's population by 99%, over the course of at most a year, that will scale down the world. We have a (few) hundred of most things, even a few hundred people who can run the LHC or launch a space probe, probably.

AMFV
2015-12-14, 10:50 AM
Very possible, but keep in mind that we're not trying to support all of the electrical grid all over the world. We just need to do the bit around the place we're going to live - maybe Europe, because it's fairly small and developed, though I'm not sure what the exact food balance would work out to. China is pretty concentrated, too, I believe, or the US east coast. As long as the infrastructure is in decent enough shape, we can tide over with simple fixes. You might have to drop health and safety standards, but it'll still work, more or less.


Well, yes, but why would the remaining 1% be reduced to substistence farming/hunting? There are large frozen/dried/preserved food stores, in parts of the world anyway, not to mention loads of cattle around. In addition, 1% of the food producers is still a lot of food producers, they're not going to stop producing, even if fertilizer will be in short supply for a while. The grain will still be out in the fields, and 99% of the mills might close, but that last one will do fine for the reduced population.

Obviously, a disaster that reduces the human population to a much smaller fraction - 0,001%, or 70.000, for example - would suffer from this huge fallback, although temporarily. But a disaster that reduces the world's population by 99%, over the course of at most a year, that will scale down the world. We have a (few) hundred of most things, even a few hundred people who can run the LHC or launch a space probe, probably.


Power goes out. Food stores spoil in under a year. You don't get large stores of canned goods most places, and you wouldn't know how to find them, not without the internet, (again I cite: Power goes out servers go down). Also then you have the issue of who winds up dying. Supposing it's truly near random, then you might wind up with NO people that know how to grow grain, certainly those people who do would not be anywhere near each other.

Then you're only one bad harvest from starvation, because without power storing food becomes increasingly difficult. Just look at the effects of famines on scientific production, it's pretty measurable.

The other problem you have is that 1% of the population CANNOT maintain the necessary infrastructure to move food around. That's absolutely impossible, so even if you can produce food, you won't be able to move it to sustain other population centers.

But if it wasn't random you might have a chance, random 1% remaining (as with a disease), you'd have mass starvation and would be lucky if any progress remained at all.

Mando Knight
2015-12-14, 11:20 AM
Wow really? I figured Big Ben could make it longer than that

Edit: Though holy crap is Notre Dame tough, 2000 years!
That's the strength of solid stone construction for you. Barring a freak earthquake or human action, just the action of wind and rain will have little effect on the structure itself.

Very possible, but keep in mind that we're not trying to support all of the electrical grid all over the world. We just need to do the bit around the place we're going to live - maybe Europe, because it's fairly small and developed, though I'm not sure what the exact food balance would work out to. China is pretty concentrated, too, I believe, or the US east coast. As long as the infrastructure is in decent enough shape, we can tide over with simple fixes. You might have to drop health and safety standards, but it'll still work, more or less.

Well, yes, but why would the remaining 1% be reduced to substistence farming/hunting? There are large frozen/dried/preserved food stores, in parts of the world anyway, not to mention loads of cattle around. In addition, 1% of the food producers is still a lot of food producers, they're not going to stop producing, even if fertilizer will be in short supply for a while. The grain will still be out in the fields, and 99% of the mills might close, but that last one will do fine for the reduced population.
Because the network of people required would be destroyed, and everything in the modern world is connected. Destroy 99% of the people, and 99.99% of everything you like about the world grinds to a shuddering halt.

Provided people see the world coming to its end, they might be able to consolidate human knowledge in one server cluster, but without the infrastructure to supply fuel to the power generators, they won't last (and even current sources of renewable energy wear out in a few decades with maintenance, and without a dedicated industry it's impossible to support them). Modern farming is also extremely dependent on that same fuel infrastructure... no fuel, and you're not running those diesel-guzzling machines to harvest and transport your grain, you're doing it by hand and by cart. The way of the future, then, would be largely manual until the population consolidated and rebuilt enough to restore its capability to harvest and distribute fuel.

Now, I don't think humanity would be totally "bombed back to the Stone Age" by this, but the population drop and major infrastructure damage related to it would probably set humanity back roughly equivalently to just before the Industrial Revolution, and so by 500 years civilization would probably have bounced back and surpassed the pre-disaster world... if the destruction of the 99% of humanity doesn't take the other 1% in the ensuing chaos.

AMFV
2015-12-14, 11:23 AM
That's the strength of solid stone construction for you. Barring a freak earthquake or human action, just the action of wind and rain will have little effect on the structure itself.

Because the network of people required would be destroyed, and everything in the modern world is connected. Destroy 99% of the people, and 99.99% of everything you like about the world grinds to a shuddering halt.

Provided people see the world coming to its end, they might be able to consolidate human knowledge in one server cluster, but without the infrastructure to supply fuel to the power generators, they won't last (and even current sources of renewable energy wear out in a few decades with maintenance, and without a dedicated industry it's impossible to support them). Modern farming is also extremely dependent on that same fuel infrastructure... no fuel, and you're not running those diesel-guzzling machines to harvest and transport your grain, you're doing it by hand and by cart. The way of the future, then, would be largely manual until the population consolidated and rebuilt enough to restore its capability to harvest and distribute fuel..

Another note on that topic is that the need for modern infrastructure for farming would be a huge issue, since very few people know how to farm without those kind of things. So I mean it'd be a few Amish people, and some people who live way out, but other than that, modern farmers would be very much unable to farm, since they wouldn't necessarily know how to do those sort of things. So that's another wrinkle.

GungHo
2015-12-14, 11:24 AM
Heck, the Chernobyl incident was 30 years ago, and a quick Google search shows that most of the buildings are still fine, if unclean. (https://www.google.ca/search?q=chernobyl+today&newwindow=1&biw=1440&bih=791&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE2ce0x9nJAhUh4IMKHYCiADwQ_AUIBygB)
Naturally, big storms could cause big damage, but really I think most of the structures would be intact for about a century.
Those are made from Soviet-era concrete. No rebar and no frills in a relatively calm climate (yeah, it gets cold, but that's about it). They don't have cyclones, earthquakes, sinkholes, or other mass erosion.

Furthermore, while "modern" stuff feels like it would last longer, I expect my home, which was built in 2010, to not last near as long as a turn of the century home much less some of the antebellum structures a few states to the east. Those older places do require more maintenance (today) than my current home, but the woods they were built from are much longer lasting than the woods they put in these modern throw-em-up/tear-em-down homes. It's not that they're incapable of making a home just as good as they used to (though the carpentry skills are diminishing), but that's not where the money is. This is furthermore compounded by the builders putting in things like 10-year roofs when they used to put in 30-year roofs, and people not knowing to get a good inspector who knows (or will identify) the difference.

Flickerdart
2015-12-14, 12:06 PM
Read A Canticle for Leibowitz.

Lvl 2 Expert
2015-12-14, 01:26 PM
And Scandanavia. (http://www.sssscomic.com/index.php)

(This premise sounds almost EXACTLY like Stand Still, Stay Silent's, except I think it's only ninety years post-Illness.)

It's not an uncommon setting in general. The Shannara books did this in the 70's. They were heavily inspired by Lord of the Rings. Lord was set in the past, so Shannara went for the future. Humans evolved into dwarfs and gnomes and trolls. Elfs had always existed, they just came back out of hiding. It's a pretty far future though. They find city remnants at some point, but outside of that one spot most of our history is gone. They do instead find lots of relics of a past even further back, with magic and stuff.

Blackhawk748
2015-12-14, 05:23 PM
Ok, so the conclusion here seems to be a Firm Maybe. Lets throw another wrinkle in here, what happens if the majority of the victims, say 95% are over 25?

Mando Knight
2015-12-14, 06:25 PM
Ok, so the conclusion here seems to be a Firm Maybe. Lets throw another wrinkle in here, what happens if the majority of the victims, say 95% are over 25?

As before, communities already basically living at the subsistence farming level have the best shot at surviving if there's enough breeding pairs left to start a proper tribe. They're saved in part here because they don't have a concept of child labor laws because to not have the children work would be to destroy their chances at survival, so by 24 the people have 2 decades of experience with subsistence farming already. Modern kids who haven't worked a day in their life, let alone at manually farming? Dead.

Mathematically, though, it isn't possible to wipe out 99% of the population if 95% of the victims are 25 or older... according to Census.gov (https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/worldpop.php), around 40% of the world's population is under 25.

Blackhawk748
2015-12-14, 06:39 PM
As before, communities already basically living at the subsistence farming level have the best shot at surviving if there's enough breeding pairs left to start a proper tribe. They're saved in part here because they don't have a concept of child labor laws because to not have the children work would be to destroy their chances at survival, so by 24 the people have 2 decades of experience with subsistence farming already. Modern kids who haven't worked a day in their life, let alone at manually farming? Dead.

Mathematically, though, it isn't possible to wipe out 99% of the population if 95% of the victims are 25 or older... according to Census.gov (https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/worldpop.php), around 40% of the world's population is under 25.

Ok, flip the numbers then, 95% of the survivors are 25 or under, now its functional.

Mando Knight
2015-12-14, 09:50 PM
Basically the same, or worse. 24-year-old subsistence farmers are basically men of their own right in this case, with two decades or more of practical work experience within a relevantly similar situation, but the vast majority of the survivors will die.

If the younger ages are weighted roughly evenly, then of the 95% of survivors that are 25 or under, then around 40% are between the ages of 0 and 10, and less than one percent of them will be lucky to have one of their parents alive even counting pregnancies among teens and early-twenties (not counting them, with those stipulations you're looking at closer to one surviving child out of every 2000 being lucky enough to have a surviving parent). In a modern city, most of those children don't stand much of a chance to survive a year, let alone learn the skills needed to live after their raided stores of canned goods and Twinkies run out.

If only 1% of the global population survives a disaster and do so by sheer luck rather than by disaster-preparedness, then I would guess that in a modern society probably only 1% of those survivors will survive the aftermath.

sktarq
2015-12-15, 12:52 AM
Life after people is a better book than TV series and goes farther into the how's and when's things break down. You should read it. It also goes into examples (like city in Turkish Cyprus) of places that have been abandoned.
And lots more modern structures are built on ;just enough" than old ones.

Rebar concrete goes faster due to expansion issues plus once exposed to water the whole bar rusts and when is does so expands massively and breaks it up from within.

One group of things that will last a good long time-tunnels and bunkers. Constant temps, even moisture-heck it is unlikely that caves were the only places our ancestors lived but are far far likely to make it to present day. The caves we make would be similarly favored.

Demon 997
2015-12-15, 10:15 AM
I feel that people are underestimating humanity. If the plague took time to kill, those immune would seek to concentrate themselves. I think the best survival strategy would be going for maximum population density someplace with easy to maintain infrastructure, and basically try to rebuild society that way. Canned goods and whatnot would last a lot longer than people are thinking, and with tons of surplus machines, spare parts are easy to come by. People will also teach themselves the needed skills quite quickly if needed, it's not like libraries will cease to exis.

Humanity would suffer massive losses, but all it really has to do is regroup, then slowly expand and rebuild. So what if 99% of the planet is now howling wilderness? The bit that's inhabited could be back to a reasonable standard quite quickly.

An interesting book to look at for this is Earth Abides, though it doesn't support my point. Or the Emberverse series, starting with Dies the Fire, for a straight shift from modern to medieval, and then gradually into some magic.

AMFV
2015-12-15, 11:49 AM
I feel that people are underestimating humanity. If the plague took time to kill, those immune would seek to concentrate themselves. I think the best survival strategy would be going for maximum population density someplace with easy to maintain infrastructure, and basically try to rebuild society that way. Canned goods and whatnot would last a lot longer than people are thinking, and with tons of surplus machines, spare parts are easy to come by. People will also teach themselves the needed skills quite quickly if needed, it's not like libraries will cease to exis.

Humanity would suffer massive losses, but all it really has to do is regroup, then slowly expand and rebuild. So what if 99% of the planet is now howling wilderness? The bit that's inhabited could be back to a reasonable standard quite quickly.

An interesting book to look at for this is Earth Abides, though it doesn't support my point. Or the Emberverse series, starting with Dies the Fire, for a straight shift from modern to medieval, and then gradually into some magic.

We're not underestimating humanity. We're just claiming that congregating and focusing exclusively on survival will temporarily set technology back. This has been demonstrated, repeatedly in actual population cuts, that's pretty much what happens. People do learn the needed skills, but there will be more deaths later, and some starvation.

As far as I'm aware nobody has suggested that the entire population is going to go extinct only that there will be a minute of extreme hardship that will set technological development back. This has been observed in other situations with the same sort of precedents.

Xuc Xac
2015-12-15, 04:00 PM
Our modern infrastructure is actually quite tough from a historical perspective. Concrete with steel reinforcement, while it will crack, will last significantly longer than wood or anything but the most robust stones.

This is actually backwards. Steel reinforcement makes concrete much stronger now at the expense of longevity. The Coliseum in Rome has lasted so long because it's just solid concrete and it's in a mild climate. Concrete in a cold climate is exposed to freezing and thawing every autumn and spring. The temperature drops and water in the pores freezes and expands which causes little cracks. The ice melts and fills those cracks and it freezes again and expands the cracks a little more. This doesn't happen once a year. It happens every day for weeks before and after winter when the temperature drops below freezing at night then rises above freezing in the daytime. Modern concrete in cold areas is formulated to be more resistant to this effect, but that costs more, so that special formulation is only used in exterior concrete (like pavements). It isn't used in buildings because the buildings are assumed to be in use by people and will be climate controlled (i.e. the heat will be on when the weather is cold).

Steel reinforcement actually accelerates the decrepitude of concrete. Once the concrete starts to crack from the freeze/thaw cycle, water and air can get inside and reach the steel. The steel starts to corrode and oxidize. Iron oxide has 5/8 the density of steel. So a given weight of rust will take up almost twice as much space as the same weight of steel. However, the steel reinforcement won't just double in volume when it corrodes because it's not going to be the same weight. Not only does it fit less weight in the same volume, but it's also going to increase in weight (it picks up 3 oxygen atoms for every 2 iron atoms). It will expand a lot with just a little bit of corrosion. The corroding steel cracks the concrete even further and exposes even more steel to the elements. Steel reinforced concrete breaks down faster and faster.

Solid stone weathers at the same slow rate until it's gone, but steel reinforced concrete essentially ages at an exponential rate.

Segev
2015-12-15, 04:38 PM
Just wait until nanite self-repair systems are invented. ...with renewable power sources.

Because magic self-repairing bricks will be awesome.

Flickerdart
2015-12-15, 05:31 PM
Just wait until nanite self-repair systems are invented. ...with renewable power sources.

Because magic self-repairing bricks will be awesome.
Awesome but impractical, perhaps. It's much more profitable to rebuild or refit existing buildings than build ones that last forever.

Telok
2015-12-15, 07:12 PM
I think that there is severe underestimation of both human skill and the lifestyle of a subsistence culture.

A 20 to 40 person subsistence unit is often able to support about 1/4 to 1/3 of it's population as essentially nonproductive individuals if that unit is located in an area with abundant natural resources of food. Here the word abundant means essentially a year-round cycle of hunting, fishing, and fruit/veg/nut gathering. So non-urbalized coastal areas will have available people to keep the two important things for technological civilization going. Literacy and paper making.

A couple of friends and I actually figured out that four of us could mothball and seal our municipal or local university library in less than four months assuming that the local gas stations weren't blown up and we didn't have to hunt or forage for more than a couple days a week. And that sucker would be mothballed. Two of us can drive commercial vehicles, one can repair them, and one of us can weld. All of us can read and follow instructions. The plan is simple: Cut off and drain the water and sewer completely. Cover the floor with salt and mothballs to at least an inch thick. Weld up panels over the windows, vents, and doors. Weld up forms around the outside of the building and cover everything with a few feet of concrete.

Subsistence does not mean that everyone works all the time to barely feed themselves. It means that they work enough to feed themselves. Thus a 20 person subsistence unit can proceed along a coastline and mothball at least one library a year while any subsistence unit will be able to keep literacy and a certain minimum of education going.

At that point all you're doing is waiting for enough population to restart agriculture and industry.

Beleriphon
2015-12-16, 10:39 AM
Solid stone weathers at the same slow rate until it's gone, but steel reinforced concrete essentially ages at an exponential rate.

Which is why after 6000 years the Pyramids of Giza are still there, but after 6000 years the Empire State Building probably not so much.

CharonsHelper
2015-12-16, 11:26 AM
If you really want tech to be replaced by 'magic' - I think you would need to have some sort of outside force preventing people from using/learning too much tech. Say - aliens wipe out most of humanity but want to keep us in a preserve for future study. (Scrapped Princess did a pretty decent job of this vibe - though a bit too mystical even when the tech was revealed for my taste.)

DigoDragon
2015-12-16, 11:29 AM
Which is why after 6000 years the Pyramids of Giza are still there, but after 6000 years the Empire State Building probably not so much.

Though interestingly, all the stuff we left on the moon should be there in 6000 years (minus any 'weathering' from solar radiation and micrometeorite damage).

SpoonR
2015-12-16, 01:07 PM
Assuming you still have population centers big enough that inbreeding won't make humans extinct, I think 500 years could get us back to 18th/19th century tech, not much higher because you wouldn't be able to rebuild good supply chains. People would still KNOW 20th century tech, but would find it difficult or impossible to make. I'm thinking Iceland, Australia, some villages in the low-pop density parts of Asia, Madagascar, that's about it?

The big difference between this and previous extinctions is knowledge. Caves filled with backup copies of everything, and every city's hub library with archives could last centuries. College bookstores and manuals/drawings at abandoned factories won't last as long, but if you build some monastaries to keep copying the books you shouldn't lose much. Chemistry and Agriculture texts will be very useful.

Here's some useful references.
Canticle for Leib was already mentioned.
Find some Time Team videos - see what it looks like when they find stuff from 500 years ago (roughly Queen Elizabeth & Shakespeare)
Wikipedia about acid-free paper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid-free_paper)
One quick google for archival in old caves (http://blogs.archives.gov/prologue/?p=13969)

Looking up some world pop numbers, 7 million would be somewhere around the pop in 4000 BC. But, I think you have to assume clumping to
have enough people to reproduce. So, a handful of small dense regions, and a lot of empty space. Then some more google & wikipedia, and I estimate 500 years would see the population at 100 million.

So what would happen to stuff that wasn't maintained?
Wood - gone. Completely rotted away. Regular paper ditto
Acid-free paper - "500 years for average grades"
Rock - unless you steal the stone for building something else, still there
Plastic - a lot of it is still there
Roads - AFAIK, road lifespan goes up a lot if there is no one driving on it, and no one salting it. Tree roots breaking it up would be a problem. Overall, my guess would be you might have a gravel road left, or dirt covering the road, but it would still be a recognizable path.
Metal - corroded, but plenty of recognizable objects, and scrap you could melt down.
Power - For most of the world, no accessible oil or gas means trees and homemade charcoal are your fuels now. So you could occasionally power your radio, but probably not enough fuel for electric lights. But, take a Google server farm. No power means no wear on hard drives, which are nominally sealed in vacuum. With a whole farm, you can fill in blank spots on one drive with data from another. So eventually when you get power running again, you can get back Google, Wikipedia, NSA archives.

Then, looking at causes of destruction.
Flood - everything marked as being in a 500-year flood zone? gone.
Tornado, hurricane, cyclone - if a building is in an area where that happens, it will get hit eventually. So, that's gone too.
Fire - Once it starts in a city, the only thing to stop it will be natural firebreaks (whole line of buildings that already collapsed, rivers, etc). Unless you get lucky, no city buildings left.
Earthquake - difficult. On the one hand, Hagia Sophia has survived them. On the other hand, you have rivers getting rerouted and lots of normal buildings collapsed. Also, Tsunami.
So, anything in an area that gets at least one of those disasters, gone. That... is probably everywhere humans live.

Eh, enough rambling for now.

AMFV
2015-12-16, 06:03 PM
Assuming you still have population centers big enough that inbreeding won't make humans extinct, I think 500 years could get us back to 18th/19th century tech, not much higher because you wouldn't be able to rebuild good supply chains. People would still KNOW 20th century tech, but would find it difficult or impossible to make. I'm thinking Iceland, Australia, some villages in the low-pop density parts of Asia, Madagascar, that's about it?

I agree with some of that, although five hundred years may or may not be accurate. The big factor we have here is WHERE the population survives. If it's someplace temperate than preserving knowledge may be a priority, since survival will be easier. Ironically, the places where survival is easy, preserving stuff is more difficult.



The big difference between this and previous extinctions is knowledge. Caves filled with backup copies of everything, and every city's hub library with archives could last centuries. College bookstores and manuals/drawings at abandoned factories won't last as long, but if you build some monastaries to keep copying the books you shouldn't lose much. Chemistry and Agriculture texts will be very useful.


The chief problem is that Chem and Ag texts tend to not be very near actual agriculture. I agree that such texts would be recovered in the future. But certainly immediately things would be an issue. Also many Ag texts are more focused on modern farming over old-school, which has a bigger oral tradition. This would be a problem for a while (although not in perpetuity)




Looking up some world pop numbers, 7 million would be somewhere around the pop in 4000 BC. But, I think you have to assume clumping to
have enough people to reproduce. So, a handful of small dense regions, and a lot of empty space. Then some more google & wikipedia, and I estimate 500 years would see the population at 100 million.

Very reasonable assumptions although I would argue that where the survivors are located is going to play into things in a big way. If they're blocked in or landlocked, they might have a MUCH harder time expanding, which is imperative to support a population that size. They may also not be near arable land. So I'm not disagreeing cmopletely only stating that without specifics it's a little bit rough.



So what would happen to stuff that wasn't maintained?
Wood - gone. Completely rotted away. Regular paper ditto
Acid-free paper - "500 years for average grades"
Rock - unless you steal the stone for building something else, still there
Plastic - a lot of it is still there
Roads - AFAIK, road lifespan goes up a lot if there is no one driving on it, and no one salting it. Tree roots breaking it up would be a problem. Overall, my guess would be you might have a gravel road left, or dirt covering the road, but it would still be a recognizable path.
Metal - corroded, but plenty of recognizable objects, and scrap you could melt down.
Power - For most of the world, no accessible oil or gas means trees and homemade charcoal are your fuels now. So you could occasionally power your radio, but probably not enough fuel for electric lights. But, take a Google server farm. No power means no wear on hard drives, which are nominally sealed in vacuum. With a whole farm, you can fill in blank spots on one drive with data from another. So eventually when you get power running again, you can get back Google, Wikipedia, NSA archives.

Awesome list, although it's really important to think about where things are stored physically. The drives would be fine themselves, but buildings need fairly constant maintenance to keep out moisture (I work on old houses now, and even well constructed old ones fall apart without work). The servers most likely to survive would be the ones that are most isolated, and there are plenty of them. But since they're out in the desert, people wouldn't go there often, so finding them would be chancy...

Of course, I'm not disagreeing with you only rambling myself.

CharonsHelper
2015-12-16, 06:16 PM
One thing that everyone seems to be forgetting... even IF we went back to 17th century tech & population for some reason - we'd be WAY better off than people were in the 17th century.

The reason? Our crops are far superior. Our crops are more resistant to disease, drought, and grow far more food over the same acreage, not to mention able to be grown in a greater variety of climates.

AMFV
2015-12-16, 06:26 PM
One thing that everyone seems to be forgetting... even IF we went back to 17th century tech & population for some reason - we'd be WAY better off than people were in the 17th century.

The reason? Our crops are far superior. Our crops are more resistant to disease, drought, and grow far more food over the same acreage, not to mention able to be grown in a greater variety of climates.

Partially true, our crops are also drastically less diverse, so without the ability to adapt them to new diseases, or environmental shifts, there will be a lot of problems until they start adapting on their own again. Right now when a new disease or insect or climate shift comes, then we can alter the crops, in a post disaster world we wouldn't be able to, so the lack of diversity would hurt us.

BootStrapTommy
2015-12-16, 07:05 PM
I'd say that with most science gone, humanity would become more religious. This in turn would increase the relative number of ideologic wars. There might even be new 'crusades'. The prevalence of the myth of the prevalence of religious conflict is something that bothers me. Greatly.

Religious conflicts are comically out numbered by conflicts rooted in more secular concerns. Historically greed is the undeniable King of Conflict.

So yes you might see more, but such conflicts would continue to be relatively rare.

CharonsHelper
2015-12-16, 07:15 PM
The prevalence of the myth of the prevalence of religious conflict is something that bothers me. Greatly.

Religious conflicts are comically out numbered by conflicts rooted in more secular concerns. Historically greed is the undeniable King of Conflict.

So yes you might see more, but such conflicts would continue to be relatively rare.

Historically everyone and their kid brother used religion as a rallying cry for propaganda - but it was rarely the actual reason for war if you look deeper at said reasons. (Even The Crusades - the classic examples - weren't primarily religious - it was in part in response to incursions into Spain - in part an attempt to use up the excess military forces post-Vikings - in part a bunch of other stuff, only a small part [if any] of it was actually religion)

BootStrapTommy
2015-12-16, 07:21 PM
Assuming you still have population centers big enough that inbreeding won't make humans extinct, I think 500 years could get us back to 18th/19th century tech, not much higher because you wouldn't be able to rebuild good supply chains. I believe the prehistoric event where humanity dwindled to some 10,000 members was already referenced.

To be honest, human gene pools do not have to be nearly as diverse as we would want to think to stave off the effects of in-breeding. At the hypothesized population sizes it would not even be a concern.


The big difference between this and previous extinctions is knowledge. Caves filled with backup copies of everything, and every city's hub library with archives could last centuries. College bookstores and manuals/drawings at abandoned factories won't last as long, but if you build some monastaries to keep copying the books you shouldn't lose much. Chemistry and Agriculture texts will be very useful. You just hit on one of the central premises of the Book of Eli. Good story, if you've no mind of religious undertones.


Historically everyone and their kid brother used religion as a rallying cry for propaganda - but it was rarely the actual reason for war if you look deeper at said reasons. (Even The Crusades - the classic examples - weren't primarily religious - it was in part in response to incursions into Spain - in part an attempt to use up the excess military forces post-Vikings - in part a bunch of other stuff, only a small part [if any] of it was actually religion)Yes, people are surprisingly resistant to conflict. Present them with a slight or an ideology and they are slow to anger. Present them with both, however...

Almost all wars are truly fought for control of land or resources. Some are just easier to instigate with God(s) at your back...

Knaight
2015-12-16, 08:08 PM
Historically everyone and their kid brother used religion as a rallying cry for propaganda - but it was rarely the actual reason for war if you look deeper at said reasons. (Even The Crusades - the classic examples - weren't primarily religious - it was in part in response to incursions into Spain - in part an attempt to use up the excess military forces post-Vikings - in part a bunch of other stuff, only a small part [if any] of it was actually religion)

I wouldn't go that far. There's generally a mix of reasons, and while religion is only part of that mix in just about every case, it's still part of said mix. That there are also other reasons doesn't mean that religion isn't one of them. The Crusades are a good example of this - yes, part of it is the reconquista, part of it was that there were way too many military forces around causing trouble, but the choice of targets reflected the ideologies involved, and the extent to which common people were brought out (which was often an unmitigated disaster from a military perspective) was due to religious fervor. Plus, religious differences were part of the reason that the invasions in Spain were viewed as such a problem, as opposed to the many territorial shifts within Europe. Had the group identity been drawn along different lines, it would have drastically affected the targeting.

CharonsHelper
2015-12-16, 11:41 PM
but the choice of targets reflected the ideologies involved, and the extent to which common people were brought out (which was often an unmitigated disaster from a military perspective) was due to religious fervor. Plus, religious differences were part of the reason that the invasions in Spain were viewed as such a problem, as opposed to the many territorial shifts within Europe. Had the group identity been drawn along different lines, it would have drastically affected the targeting.

I'm mostly with you. I was describing the reasons that the Crusades were started - not the reasons that people joined up. They did that in large part due to the religious propaganda (plus the chance to get rich - part of joining an army back then was for the chance to loot it big - sort of like a gold rush). I will also point out that the Spain thing was also a problem because the Islamic invaders had no intention of stopping at Spain - in the same way Poland was an issue for the rest of Europe in the 1930's. Heck - they'd already been turned back once at the border to France by Charlemagne's grandfather (always forget his name) a couple centuries back - and they were pushing into Eastern Europe too.

And yes - part of it was also that they didn't recognize Rome & The Pope - but that was as much political as religious. (Whatever you think of them - the Catholic church was probably a stabilizing influence on Europe as a whole during most of the middle ages.) Heck - the Prussians got random knights throughout Europe to help them invade Poland and Lithuania to make them Roman Catholic - but they were both already Eastern Orthodox - the Prussians just didn't tell the western Europeans who joined up that. It was an extremely blatant attempt to bulk up their ranks with foreign knights through deceptive religious propaganda before going into battle.

I will point out though - the communists & nazis of the 20th century certainly proved that you certainly don't need religious propaganda to foment brutal wars - any ideology will do.

Edit: spelling/grammar

Mutazoia
2015-12-17, 02:31 AM
This question was already answered in the late 70's / early 80's (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhAobPugvsk)

Fri
2015-12-17, 08:37 AM
Assuming you still have population centers big enough that inbreeding won't make humans extinct, I think 500 years could get us back to 18th/19th century tech, not much higher because you wouldn't be able to rebuild good supply chains. People would still KNOW 20th century tech, but would find it difficult or impossible to make. I'm thinking Iceland, Australia, some villages in the low-pop density parts of Asia, Madagascar, that's about it?


Interestingly, that's part of the setting of Desert Punk. In that setting, a lot of humanity got wiped out by some unspecified thing in the past (mostly some sort of global war), so now everyone lives in post apocalyptic desert. And they use 20th century guns and techs and such, with some more advanced techs in limited use. It's clearly mentioned that they're not actually using salvaged weapons and such. Basically, technology still exist, but not widespread. For example, towns might be built around a functional high tech water filter from pre apocalypse. The "governments" still have working computers and such, but there's no chance that ordinary citizens can even see one. There are ruin explorers and salvagers, and they dig for old weapons and techs and such, but not to be used, but to be reverse engineered by the current engineers and manufacturing centers and such. It's mentioned that eventhough the weapons look similar to 20th century weapon, they are actually worse than the original, because of the more limited engineering technique/materials and whatnot. One guy became one of the richest person on the setting by finding a working hard drive from pre apocalypse, for example (I think it's from a research center), and salvaged a lot of useful things from there.

BootStrapTommy
2015-12-17, 10:55 AM
I'm mostly with you. I was describing the reasons that the Crusades were started - not the reasons that people joined up. They did that in large part due to the religious propaganda (plus the chance to get rich - part of joining an army back then was for the chance to loot it big - sort of like a gold rush). I will also point out that the Spain thing was also a problem because the Islamic invaders had no intention of stopping at Spain - in the same way Poland was an issue for the rest of Europe in the 1930's. Heck - they'd already been turned back once at the border to France by Charlemagne's grandfather (always forget his name) a couple centuries back - and they were pushing into Eastern Europe too. Charles Martel.

A huge impact on the Crusades that is largely ignored is the Byzantines.

The Crusades really are the direct result of the Byzantines. The Eastern Roman emperor, in Roman style, tried to outsource his military labor. A little known fact is that for a short time, the Catholic and Orthodox churches actually reconciled, by negotiation between the Byzantine Emperor and the Pope. The condition of the agreement was Western military aid against the Turks. Since the Pope did not possess a significant army himself, he called a Crusade.

Obviously history has made clear how quickly that arrangement falls to ****.


And yes - part of it was also that they didn't recognize Rome & The Pope - but that was as much political as religious. (Whatever you think of them - the Catholic church was probably a stabilizing influence on Europe as a whole during most of the middle ages.) The ecumenical counsil known as the "Peace of God" is a fine example if this. Basically a medieval Geneva Convention, a precursor to the code of chivalry. It's often used to illustrate the post-Viking violent mercenary problem Western Europeans were facing prior to the Crusades.


Heck - the Prussians got random knights throughout Europe to help them invade Poland and Lithuania to make them Roman Catholic - but they were both already Eastern Orthodox - the Prussians just didn't tell the western Europeans who joined up that. It was an extremely blatant attempt to bulk up their ranks with foreign knights through deceptive religious propaganda before going into battle.I gotta correct this.

The Lithuanians were pagans. Europe's last Pagans. The Polish were themselves Catholic. The Teutonic Knights (a Prussian Crusading order) and the Estonian Brotherhood initiated a Crusade against the Lithuanians.

Eventually the two orders became powerful enough (sponsored by the Holy Roman Empire) that they threaten Polish power in the region. When a former-Lithuanian pagan ascends the Polish throne and the Grand Duke of Lithuania converts the country to Catholicism, but the Crusaders persist, the Lithuanians recruit the Polish. The result is the Battle of Tannenburg, which does not end well for the Teutons.

CharonsHelper
2015-12-17, 11:14 AM
I gotta correct this.

The Lithuanians were pagans. Europe's last Pagans. The Polish were themselves Catholic. The Teutonic Knights (a Prussian Crusading order) and the Estonian Brotherhood initiated a Crusade against the Lithuanians.

Eventually the two orders became powerful enough (sponsored by the Holy Roman Empire) that they threaten Polish power in the region. When a former-Lithuanian pagan ascends the Polish throne and the Grand Duke of Lithuania converts the country to Catholicism, but the Crusaders persist, the Lithuanians recruit the Polish. The result is the Battle of Tannenburg, which does not end well for the Teutons.

Really? I was sure Eastern Orthodox *shrug* - it's been a long time since I read Michener's Poland - (I haven't actually done the legwork myself). But yes - I knew that Lithuania had been pagan until shortly before the war - converting due to the marriage of the two royal families and other factors.

And while technically Poland was just helping the Lithuanians - it's pretty clear that Poland would have been their next target and that they just wanted to take them down piecemeal. (If I remember correctly - they also recruited some Tartars - or at least some other steppe cavalry - to help them.)

GloatingSwine
2015-12-17, 11:21 AM
Wow really? I figured Big Ben could make it longer than that


Even 100 years is pretty generous. The whole palace of westminster's in a pretty shocking state and the Elizabeth Tower* needs about £30 million spending on it to keep it stable in the immediate term (the whole building needs about £5bn of restoration work).


*Big Ben is actually the bell.

BootStrapTommy
2015-12-17, 11:35 AM
And while technically Poland was just helping the Lithuanians - it's pretty clear that Poland would have been their next target and that they just wanted to take them down piecemeal. (If I remember correctly - they also recruited some Tartars - or at least some other steppe cavalry - to help them.)Technically, the King of Poland was a Lithuanian, so that probably contributed.

Apparently it is now called the Battle of Grunwald, so people don't confuse it with the WWII Battle of Tannenberg. The wiki does appear to list Tartars as among the Polish-Lithuanian forces.

Segev
2015-12-17, 12:17 PM
I'll also add that religion and science are not inherently opposed. It is actually a religion (which I will dub "scienceism" for this post) that claims they are, and a lot of gullible members of other faiths which foolishly accept the scienceists' claims about what science is and what those other faiths "must" believe.

Scienceism is characterized by an orthodox doctrine of specific beliefs which are deemed "scientific," and any contrary theory is so crackpot that it MUST be "unscientific" because it challenges the orthodoxy. Such ideas are to be belittled and ignored, rather than challenged with scientific inquiry and experimentation. Scienceism values "peer reviewed" publications over actual data, and rejects from peer reviewed publications data that do not agree with the orthodox view.

Genuine science was very much in line with religion for centuries, and still is for those who are both religious and actually bent towards scientific discovery (rather than enforcing scienceist orthodoxy). Christians of the prior millennium were very deep into scientific study, believing they were discovering the mind of God and His design and will by learning how His creation really worked. Even the reputed Gallileo heresy was not really about heliocentrism (which wasn't nearly so "heretical" a topic as many lazy historians would have you believe); it was about a number of other political and religious disagreements Gallileo had with the reigning heads of the Church at the time.

It was a political, not science/religious, conflict that got Gallileo executed for heresy. The same is largely true of all such examples of supposed anti-science religion.

BootStrapTommy
2015-12-17, 12:40 PM
It was a political, not science/religious, conflict that got Gallileo executed for heresy. The same is largely true of all such examples of supposed anti-science religion. He wasn't executed. Gallileo was put under house arrest.

Telonius
2015-12-17, 01:40 PM
I'd expect a fairly big migration back to the old, original population centers. Major rivers and lakes would be as important to travel and agriculture as they used to be. You might even see some new important centers of civilization in North America that were bigger than the original centers. The Great Lakes could fare pretty well, and a place like Pittsburgh (defensible, strategic position, rivers, bridges, few natural disasters, surrounded by currently-unused foundries, natural resources like forests, deer, and - to a much lesser extent as before - iron) might even have a resurgence.

Segev
2015-12-18, 10:49 AM
He wasn't executed. Gallileo was put under house arrest.

I'll take your word for that; if it's true, it only emphasizes the point that "popular" history is...inaccurate.

CharonsHelper
2015-12-18, 11:07 AM
I'll take your word for that; if it's true, it only emphasizes the point that "popular" history is...inaccurate.

Heck - kids are still being taught that everyone thought the world was flat before Columbus - when the educated have known that since the ancient Greeks. Columbus was just bad at math and thought that the globe was smaller than it is.

Blackhawk748
2015-12-18, 11:34 AM
Heck - kids are still being taught that everyone thought the world was flat before Columbus - when the educated have known that since the ancient Greeks. Columbus was just bad at math and thought that the globe was smaller than it is.

Lets be fair to Columbus, most people thought it was smaller than it actually was. Still, youd think he'd realize that he was talking to very different people

CharonsHelper
2015-12-18, 11:51 AM
Lets be fair to Columbus, most people thought it was smaller than it actually was. Still, youd think he'd realize that he was talking to very different people

Oh - I'm all but certain that he did. He was just trying to not get in trouble. Heck - that's why we call them 'peppers'. It was Columbus saying "I know that we came all this way for spices such as pepper. This is hot - so it's totally the same thing!".

Blackhawk748
2015-12-18, 12:06 PM
Oh - I'm all but certain that he did. He was just trying to not get in trouble. Heck - that's why we call them 'peppers'. It was Columbus saying "I know that we came all this way for spices such as pepper. This is hot - so it's totally the same thing!".

Well he wasnt exactly wrong on that one :smalltongue:

Arbane
2015-12-18, 07:46 PM
I'll also add that religion and science are not inherently opposed. It is actually a religion (which I will dub "scienceism" for this post) that claims they are, and a lot of gullible members of other faiths which foolishly accept the scienceists' claims about what science is and what those other faiths "must" believe.

In that case, you're going to have to stop discussing it, since we're not supposed to talk about real-world religions here.

Which is also why I won't bother asking which branch of pseudoscience you think the High Priests of Science are ignoring.

Madbox
2015-12-18, 11:34 PM
I'd like a clarification of something. When we say 99.9% of the world's population gone, is that specifically from the primary cause of this apocalypse? Because then we could say that only 1 in X survived the sudden loss of support systems, further lowering the population, which makes it harder for the other survivors, killing some more, in a great spiral of doom. Wheras if the 0.1% survivors we are discussing are the survivors of both the primary event and all of the countless secondary crises, then we are left with basically 7 million of the toughest, smartest humans, which I would think means that their survival rate would be ridiculously high. They'd just be like, "I survived the apocalypse, the great famine, the plague of 2038, and haven't had any toilet paper to use since I was a small child. What more can the world throw at me?"

Blackhawk748
2015-12-19, 01:15 AM
I'd like a clarification of something. When we say 99.9% of the world's population gone, is that specifically from the primary cause of this apocalypse? Because then we could say that only 1 in X survived the sudden loss of support systems, further lowering the population, which makes it harder for the other survivors, killing some more, in a great spiral of doom. Wheras if the 0.1% survivors we are discussing are the survivors of both the primary event and all of the countless secondary crises, then we are left with basically 7 million of the toughest, smartest humans, which I would think means that their survival rate would be ridiculously high. They'd just be like, "I survived the apocalypse, the great famine, the plague of 2038, and haven't had any toilet paper to use since I was a small child. What more can the world throw at me?"

The 0.1% just survived the primary apocalypse, so yes this number will go down for several years. Then you will be left with some of the toughest badasses in history