Post-Apocalypse: Back to the Stone Age

[Yorunkun]

I would like to get some feedback on a particular kind of Post-Apocalypse setting I have been thinking about. It’s nothing to do with PSI, Mutants or Mad-Max-type survival-porn. Rather, its about a primitive agrarian society reemerging after a near-total collapse of civilization. There’s a 1937 genre-text called “By the Waters of Babylon”, by Stephen Vincent Benét that captures the spirit pretty well.

This forum has had a very informative 2009 discussion on the PA genre in general. In it, Kromm amongst others, argued that society would be unlikely to still be so far in regress such a long time after the extinction event. I’m hoping we could come up with conditions that would make this plausible.

Here’s what I envision:

- A world still largely devoid of people, Tl0/1 agrarian tribes
- Our world still climatically / geographically recogniseable, but shot through with large stretches of wilderness and most past infrastructure /material culture decayed or useless
- no knowledge of society before the collapse event or the event itself in living memory; this is at least the fourth or fifth generation after X, if not more

What ultimately interests me is what kind of societies and what kinds of people such an environment would produce and how they would conceive of our present.

However, first I’d like to work out two basics:

1. What has to happen for humanity to be knocked so far back and stay there a while?

2. What modern day bits (material and information) would be gone or reclaimed in what timeframes?

Ballpark for 1 is a collapse event that winds up killing all but 0.001% of the population. I think it really needs to be that drastic for it to take us back to essentially the stone age. How do we get there? Asteroid Impact? Giant Solar Flare? Global Epedemic of unknown lethality levels?

As for 2, I’d be grateful for any deeper understanding of the factors that have a bearing on what these people have to work with. Especially I’m interested in which technologies can be easily reclaimed given at least some modern day scientific knowledge. Crackerjakk mentioned Muskets as easy to recreate weapons in the other thread; that sort of thing.

Right, thanks.

[Figleaf23]

I don't want to be a wet blanket, but I think your idea involves certain direct incompatibilities. A TL1 agrarian society will not, IMO, exist for long if you really want to retain "at least some modern day scientific knowledge."

For example, you mention muskets. They are TL3. Gunpower itself is very simple to make and it's TL2. The germ theory of disease is TL4. The problem you've got is that historical progress took a long time not because of a lack of knowledge, but because of a lack of even the concepts. If the concepts are there, the knowledge and techniques of early tech levels are not really that tough to build -- if you can survive until you do.

[Ji ji]

Modern scientific knowledge goes nowhere without technological applications.
Technological applications require several factors. Among others:

- food surplus
- metal availability
- energy availability

The first factor can definitely lack after a catastrophe. For instance, it can be that atmosphere is darkened by powders and plants are for the large part dead (and consequently there is little fauna and lot of deserts).
The second factor is not so simple, but it should be crucial. It's difficult to imagine a human global society that go back to stone age. More likely, it should be iron age.
The third factor is simple. Electricity is provided by huge power plants, requiring a lot of workers to function. They needs lots of maintenance, unavoidable supply (for nuclear power, but for charcoal or diesel plants too), technicians.
The very knowledge could disappear! Without electricity, the whole digital information baggage become unattainable. Large scale catastrophe can stamp out paper books, that are fragile. New generations are likely to learn abilities more contingent than reading and, when only few readers are left, spreading this ability among others will be painful slow.

Without industry and blast furnace, fire weapons still function, but soon they will lack ammunition. And it's impossible to create new guns or ammunition.

Overall, however, no society can prosper or even mantain old technolocigal development without demographical weight. And no technology can support people when cultivable lands become deserts. Human beings should come back to tribes or chefferies, hunting little game, and fighting among them for the scarse available resources.

[Jonas]

Originally Posted by Ji ji

Modern scientific knowledge goes nowhere without technological applications.
Technological applications require several factors. Among others:

- food surplus
- metal availability
- energy availability

You do need a certain level of food surplus and the specialization it offers for a given tech level so to speak but its not as much one may think. Keep in mind even ancient civilizations were able to support some level of specialization on what today we'd consider a razor thin margin of surplus food otherwise..they'd never have developed in the first place.

The first factor can definitely lack after a catastrophe. For instance, it can be that atmosphere is darkened by powders and plants are for the large part dead (and consequently there is little fauna and lot of deserts).
The second factor is not so simple, but it should be crucial. It's difficult to imagine a human global society that go back to stone age. More likely, it should be iron age.

If most of the planets surface is a desert then you have bigger ramifications to worry about then if your humans can rebuild or not. Such as potential mass extinction of game animals for hunting or livestock for example. Also how can you have an iron age without any sort of agriculture without postulating the intervention of Alien Space Bats given even reliable Iron working requires some level of specialization thats beyond nomadic tribal groups.

The third factor is simple. Electricity is provided by huge power plants, requiring a lot of workers to function. They needs lots of maintenance, unavoidable supply (for nuclear power, but for charcoal or diesel plants too), technicians.
The very knowledge could disappear! Without electricity, the whole digital information baggage become unattainable. Large scale catastrophe can stamp out paper books, that are fragile. New generations are likely to learn abilities more contingent than reading and, when only few readers are left, spreading this ability among others will be painful slow.

As long as the concept of moving conductor through a magnetic field still exists to produce electricity its not going away given how useful it is. Survivors may have to rely on makeshift power sources such as a homemade wind turbine, water mill or, old engine blocks converted over to producer gas or even homemade copper oxide photocells but there's many ways to produce it that don't rely on large maintenance intensive power plants and can easily be made at home. Especially from all the salvage likely left over from when a large technologically advanced society falls apart.

Another note is that books are both far tougher and much more numerous then people give them credit for, and that literacy would actually be one of the key things any group of survivors would likely preserve precisely for the reasons you mention. Frankly any group in that bad of a situation who willingly lets such a huge and easy to teach skill slip through their grasp due to considering it 'non-essential' almost deserves what would happen as a result. Likely eventual domination by those who didn't do something so foolish and short sighted.

Without industry and blast furnace, fire weapons still function, but soon they will lack ammunition. And it's impossible to create new guns or ammunition.

Keep in mind that you don't need industry on a large scale nor do you need fancy tools to keep things going if your willing to accept certain limitations such as the lack of mass production. You would be surprised what can be turned out of a small cottage style workshop with simple hand tools at a slow but steady production rate. For example take a look at the Kyber pass in regards to weapons and ammunition, some of the things they can produce with simple hand tools and a lot of skill is downright impressive. And before you mention said skills need reading I should point out that the master/apprentice system can and did for a long time rely on just physical instruction and practice when literacy wasn't all that common.

Overall, however, no society can prosper or even mantain old technolocigal development without demographical weight. And no technology can support people when cultivable lands become deserts. Human beings should come back to tribes or chefferies, hunting little game, and fighting among them for the scarse available resources.

Except irrigation which can and has done just that very thing for a very long time in many different places including in the middle east, there's fishing near coastal/shore area's and then there's the classic use for agriculturally marginal land for livestock (which produces 'natural' fertilizer as well) and that's just off the top of my head.

You are correct though that population crash is the most brutal and direct way to reduce a society's tech level..until it manages to stabilize and begins to recover.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Figleaf23

I don't want to be a wet blanket, but I think your idea involves certain direct incompatibilities. A TL1 agrarian society will not, IMO, exist for long if you really want to retain "at least some modern day scientific knowledge."

For example, you mention muskets. They are TL3. Gunpower itself is very simple to make and it's TL2. The germ theory of disease is TL4. The problem you've got is that historical progress took a long time not because of a lack of knowledge, but because of a lack of even the concepts. If the concepts are there, the knowledge and techniques of early tech levels are not really that tough to build -- if you can survive until you do.

The problem of infrastructure still remains. It is very hard to make things you lack the infrastructure for even with the theoretical knowledge. That won't keep you at TL1 though.

[Ji ji]

It seems to me, Jonas, that you are a bit too optimist, Jules Verne-style :D
Our technological world is build over hyper-specialization and ultra complex mansion network.

However, let's imagine that, after a total catastrophe, humanity can return to medium TL in few generation. We can follow a total different fantastic path to obtain a TL1 world in near future.

In 20xx, a devastating pandemy strikes humanity. It can be a failed experiment of bacteriological world or anything you like. The disease kills everybody is infected by it. Everybody but 4 years (or less) old.
We can imagine that only a few of older survives to first months. However, there are enormous stocks of food long lasting in warehouses and shops, buildings to protect themselves (in a world with few or no predators, like USA or western Europe), cloth to cover themselves and so on, and somebody manages to survive. So, let's imagine that, over 1% of population (4 years old), only 0.1% survives to reproductive age.
70.000 kids became men and women.

Among these survivors, nobody can read. Moreover, there is a very low density. They will develop creol languages. They lack technological knowledge at all. They cannot read, ignore writing basis - for instance, phonetic value of letters - and so books are written, to them, in an unattainable code and in a stranger language, that is likely to be never discovered.
After two generations, stories about previous world are already far legends and myths. After six generations, they are a new simple religion. With the total loss of technological skills and the total impossibility to decifrate the least bit of information, they're returned to TL 0-1.
A stone age society in a world of wonders, remains of what is called "the god's era" or so on.

[ericthered]

I think we are also underestimating the resources it takes to teach someone to read. It doesn't happen by itself. Though there will be a few enclaves of those who have a line of people who can do such things.

[jason taylor]

In such a society librarians could become a profession of prestige; rather like Irish Monks. Someone has to take care of the Wisdom of The Ancients until it can be restored.

Heck, my boss would BE a princess instead of just looking and acting like one.

[Ulzgoroth]

We've got all this metal and all these domesticated species around. Even if we lost too much ground for, say, electricity to be of much use to us, our agriculture has some big edges that aren't going to go away easily and we've got all the scrap iron you can eat.

Originally Posted by Ji ji

In 20xx, a devastating pandemy strikes humanity. It can be a failed experiment of bacteriological world or anything you like. The disease kills everybody is infected by it. Everybody but 4 years (or less) old.
We can imagine that only a few of older survives to first months. However, there are enormous stocks of food long lasting in warehouses and shops, buildings to protect themselves (in a world with few or no predators, like USA or western Europe), cloth to cover themselves and so on, and somebody manages to survive. So, let's imagine that, over 1% of population (4 years old), only 0.1% survives to reproductive age.
70.000 kids became men and women.

Among these survivors, nobody can read. Moreover, there is a very low density. They will develop creol languages. They lack technological knowledge at all. They cannot read, ignore writing basis - for instance, phonetic value of letters - and so books are written, to them, in an unattainable code and in a stranger language, that is likely to be never discovered.
After two generations, stories about previous world are already far legends and myths. After six generations, they are a new simple religion. With the total loss of technological skills and the total impossibility to decifrate the least bit of information, they're returned to TL 0-1.
A stone age society in a world of wonders, remains of what is called "the god's era" or so on.

Yeah, I was thinking on the same lines. The only relatively plausible way to actually put humans back to the stone age would be to really annihilate our accumulated knowledge, including the brains that house it. People may not have all that much in mere biological memory, but they know enough to blow past TL1 without even trying unless you've somehow scrubbed every material trace of the old world away.

...However, I think you'd be pretty likely to exterminate the species there. 70 milion 4-year-olds worldwide have to survive to adulthood on their own and then manage to form breeding populations?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

We've got all this metal and all these domesticated species around. Even if we lost too much ground for, say, electricity to be of much use to us, our agriculture has some big edges that aren't going to go away easily and we've got all the scrap iron you can eat.

Yeah, I was thinking on the same lines. The only relatively plausible way to actually put humans back to the stone age would be to really annihilate our accumulated knowledge, including the brains that house it. People may not have all that much in mere biological memory, but they know enough to blow past TL1 without even trying unless you've somehow scrubbed every material trace of the old world away.

...However, I think you'd be pretty likely to exterminate the species there. 70 milion 4-year-olds worldwide have to survive to adulthood on their own and then manage to form breeding populations?

If someone can posit a catastrophe that kills everyone over four yet leaves seventy million four-year olds alive they can also arrange a way for them to survive.