How long would it take to bootstrap modern civilisation again from nothing?

[Togath]

This has been left out of historical books because ammo-fetching bear is obviously far more wholesome, but that bear had 96 confirmed kills--most of whom were enemy soldiers.

That is kinda awesome.
Sounds like something out of a strange but entertaining tabletop campaign.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

but that bear had 96 confirmed kills--most of whom were enemy soldiers.

The word that worries me in that sentence, and speaks for the benefits of domestication, is "most".

Still an impressive number though in a war fought with guns, even for a bear.

[Xyril]

I should have been more clear, but that last bit was meant to be a joke. If it happened to coincide with reality, that would be a hell of a coincidence.

IIRC--and this corresponds with the wikipedia article--this bear was found and raised by humans from the time he was a cub. I think usually when this is the case, they be pretty successfully raised to be tame.

[Excession]

Yeah, but assuming similar geological history you would expect something similar to banded iron formations to be pretty ubiquitous*. Iron ores are much more common than good copper deposits. This is a reflection of their abundance in the wider universe, so will probably be true even given a very different geological history. Historically we worked with copper first because it was so much easier to discover how to work it that it was possible to discover it by chance, if you were in the right place. Given that we already know how to produce iron, it is likely that we will be using it before a good copper supply is established.

Agreed. Iron sand works too, and has the advantage of being nicely ground up already. You do need to pump air into a bloomery smelter, which is the hard bit really. It's either hours of tough manual labour on a bellows or you need to get a waterwheel set up first.

And now I'm wondering if you can make a workable pedal powered air pump with wood, leather, and stone tools...

[Telok]

And now I'm wondering if you can make a workable pedal powered air pump with wood, leather, and stone tools...

Almost certainly. If you can build a simple treadle spinning wheel and a basic bellows its not hard to combine them and scale up. Bonus is that you can mate the spinning wheel to a waterwheel.

[Accelerator]

Question. How plausible would it be for us to simply skip the combustion engine entirely, and rely on electricity? Or at least, use arc lamps to light up the night sky early on in the 'make the tech' thing?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Question. How plausible would it be for us to simply skip the combustion engine entirely, and rely on electricity? Or at least, use arc lamps to light up the night sky early on in the 'make the tech' thing?

That might not be completely stupid, especially if we can adapt the group to it before they are sent. By specializing, cutting out huge pieces of modern technology, they might be able to keep more of what they are focusing on alive."

However, battery tech is still a problem today, and complex electronics in general rely heavily upon some very rare metals. So if this can be done without any forms of international trade and such in place (given the complete lack of other humans)...

[Accelerator]

And what are our unfortunate colonists going to do about light? You can't really do good work in moonlight and sunlight. That means fire, candles, and doing majority of the work in the daytime. How much time would it take to make candles, how many man-hours, and how many people would die in the ensuing fires?

[LibraryOgre]

And what are our unfortunate colonists going to do about light? You can't really do good work in moonlight and sunlight. That means fire, candles, and doing majority of the work in the daytime. How much time would it take to make candles, how many man-hours, and how many people would die in the ensuing fires?

Candles would be less efficient than lamps. Lamps can be done pretty simply with a bowl, a wick, and oil (whale oil is obviously a standby, but you can make lamps with a lot of different kinds of natural oils)