[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Gedrin

I think "explode" is a pretty good descriptor of what the world is about to do. The majority of surviving governments have seized control of production and distribution of materials, probably seen as a necessity by all at the start of the crisis. TL 8 is far too optimistic. I'd think low TL 7 at best. Seventy years of strict control and tight resources just doesn't seem likely to produce the same levels of innovation that Homeline 2000 had. The die off has killed so many people that you're going to be lucky to retain tech and not loose it.

You play it your way. Maybe a Cabalist decided that Thaw-1 meet his or her needs and snuck in out time tech which slowly got diffused. Also, government regulation does not equal fascism. The new Deal was not the moral equivalent of the Stalinist Purges or the Gestapo. The USA is the 20th century saw itself as innovative and innovation as a high good. Given the crisis, that would be encouraged!

Thaw-1 in 2000 is a world of vastly available resources, plentiful food, open spaces and governments that make Stalin look like a Care Bear. Those governments are full of people who've spent their entire career shooting people who are eating too much. Again, possibly as a survival necessity, but they're not going to want to loose their jobs, and they're not going to react well to radicals who want to change farming methods or control their own food supplies. I suppose you could have a world where the emergency doesn't span this type of reaction, or where the absolute power over food distribution isn't maintained, but I don't see historical rationale for it.

That might fly in frozen Europe, but the New Deal USA? You're projecting the politics and fears of today backwards. You're also mistaking FDR for a fascist.

You could have a second renaissance, but you're likely to get a second round of guillotine revolutions first. More likely you'll get the same sort of dystopian control combined with megaprojects and the like. It's a world of very wealthy East Germanies.

In the USA, which would be nearly uniquely positioned, the stress would be mammoth, but the nation would make it through. There were aspects of civil society, which both conservative policy and comsumer society have gotten rid of that would have gotten America through. A modern day USA would have a harder time in the crisis because we have had our democracy weakened over the decades.

Other societies would be undergoing crisis.