And they make good fire material on a cold winter night.
I’m just confused as to how you’re thinking books decay in 50 years. I have books in my personal ownership, that have not been professionally maintained at all, that have basically sat on shelves since the 1930s. My grandfather used to buy old books bulk from libraries, and I moved a number of boxes of them out of his house when he passed on decades ago now into a large storage unit my family uses. Those books are still there and still readable. Some were printed in the 1920s.
Are they out in the weather? Are they covered? Are they in any sort of environmental conditioning (i.e. heating, cooling, etc)? I can tell you I had books out in my shed that has maybe been there for 10 years and had to throw them all away because they were so rotted out. Paper made today is not the same as that used hundreds of years ago, and it doesn’t last nearly as long unless it’s in a climate-controlled environment.
Was the paper from your grandfather’s books made of the older linen/cotton composite, or was it the newer modern more acidic pulp-based paper. It also really matters how and where and in what conditions they were stored. I can tell you, having lived there, that the DC area where the Library of Congress is located is not an optimal paper preservation environment unless it’s climate-controlled and maintained. I’m fairly sure that some of the vaults where special documents are held will be ok…for a while…but definitely not everything.
Never is a long time. The original people learning it without books in the first place.
At some point after things settle down to a new status quo another Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Elon Musk or Einstein will be born and take advantage of all the knowledge left behind. Maybe we will start with electric cars next time.
Yes it is, but even if they had the same time, the starting conditions would not be the same anymore. There would be much less oil, for instance, and harder to find. They would have to leapfrog several technological achievements because we had exhuasted that road so we had to overcome them, they would have to avercome them without having the privilege to enjoy them as a stepping stone (or to enjoy them at all, full stop). It might be harder, depending on the cases, or downright impossible. And they may develop in another direction, so they never attain our level, but another one: higher here, lower there. We are just speculating, of course, but that was the point, I thought?
Gee, so many new posts! I have some catching up to do!
I think there will be enough of a tech base to have a level of civilization, it’s just going to be a while. Decades at least, probably more like centuries. A lot will be lost, but it won’t be the first time this has happened to humanity. Or even the 10th time. Eventually, we’ll be back on track and, perhaps even move forward from today. But it won’t be all relearning everything we know today…a lot of it will be piecing some data back together, hints at others, and rediscovery. Just like it’s been in other collapses. This time, a lot of the tools left behind, or at least the materials available will give them a jump start over previous collapses. Hell, take away everyone older than 16 and the world is rich with materials no matter where you are. There should be sufficient resources for the survivors to get a real jump start on building something.
Everything? No. Some team mechanic for Shelby American is the last person alive who knows how to adjust the brake distribution on a Daytona Coupe to prevent rear wheel lockup in turn 3 of Laguna Seca when running fresh 1960’s vintage Firestone tires and Ferodo brake linings on a cold damp morning with Mark Donohue driving. When that mechanic goes, the conditions to regain that knowledge are unlikely to ever be repeated. On the other hand, no matter how far society regresses, people are going to figure out how to make bread and beer again. The knowledge you care about is probably somewhere between these two extremes. If humanity survives this apocalypse, it will rebuild its knowledge base. It might take many generations to get back to where it is today but it we did it once without even fully knowing what was possible. With books to learn from, we could do it again the second time even faster.
Great book. I never saw the TV series though.
And relevant, since the biggest danger to the kids would be the places that would collapse before they could figure out how to secure them, like the Texas refineries.
You seem to be assuming some kind of after the bomb collapse. If the kids worked together, there is no reason that books would die. They survived just fine when heating was by wood fires and there was no air conditioning. I have Jules Verne books in pirated American editions from 150 years ago in good shape without special care, and Tom Swift books from over 100 years ago in cheap editions which are in perfect shape. Well made building aren’t going to crumble in 20 years if the kids keep the weeds off them, at least, and that doesn’t require any high tech.
The OP assumes electronic records are available, which assumes electricity. There should be plenty of gas available in tankers and gas stations to fuel generators. With way fewer people there should be plenty of food available until the crops come in, and I bet 16 year olds who live on farms are plenty competent to harvest and put crops in, as well as driving tractors and stuff.
Besides published books, the manuals and procedures of the companies making and maintaining things will be available - no security guards keeping them out - which is likely to be more useful than what is in the library.
In the old days getting the generating plants up would be a problem - but today they could probably harvest enough solar cells to provide a reasonable amount of electricity, and it is getting better all the time.
Everything would have to be local, since no internet and no phone system, but they could build out from there.
So, by my rough calculation, there are approximately 30 million Americans who are under 16. About 10-15 million of those are under 9. This was in 2019, and like I said this was a rough calculation. There were over 320 million Americans in the US in 2019.
So, we are talking about 30 million people scattered across the entire continent suddenly and presumably without warning on their own, at least half of which are very young children in a world that has no one running it…something that around 200 million Americans were doing moments before. Yes, I’d say ‘bomb collapse’ sums that up pretty well. 
Simply, there is no way these folks are going to be able to do more than survive for a long time. They aren’t going to be maintaining 150-year-old copies of Jules Verne in a climate-controlled environment or keeping the electricity on except, maybe, in a few very isolated places. Even leaving aside the shock and loss, even leaving aside that a large number of these survivors are themselves going to die…for sure…you simply don’t have them together enough for a critical mass of knowledge or people. Hell, I’d say the same if the 30-40 million survivors were between 20-40 years old. Scattered across the country with no idea what happened and the infrastructure breaking down.
In Avengers Endgame I thought they really soft balled things…I think that collapse would have been VERY bad. But there we were talking about only half the population gone. Here we are talking about over 80% losses. These guys wouldn’t be worried about saving books unless they were books on immediate survival needs. For the most part, they would have to find each other in small communities, maybe their school classmates, but then they would have to figure out what to do…and who’s in charge.
I did not even know there was a TV series! Perhaps it was not shown around here, will look it up.
I made a working still from a magazine when I was 10
For some reason I was assuming 10% survivors (but didn’t say it since I was too lazy to look it up) so I was close.
Now if we get into a Lord of the Flies situation, all bets are off. But I was assuming a reasonable case. Kids are not evenly distributed, they’d be able to collect together. Sure, any kid in an ICU is probably a goner, but no one needs to starve. The older kids would have to take care of the younger kids. My kids knew how to cook long before they were 16, I knew how to cook before I was 16.
Where I live you could get on fine without heating or air conditioning for pretty much 365 days a year. You might need extra blankets some night, you might be uncomfortable some days during the summer, but no kid is going to die. You congregate in the houses with solar power. You collect generators. I bet kids in houses with generators know how to use them.
My 150 year old book has never been climate controlled. I have letters from my wife that are 50 years old and in great shape despite being in the attic and garage most of the time. Now my 100 year old pulp magazines are kind of iffy, some of them, but they were made on, well, pulp paper. The kind of technical books the kids would need are printed on better paper than that and will last just fine. So you don’t need to save books, just not burn any.
There will be critical mass for kids in cities, no problem. Kids in small towns would be fewer, but I bet they are more self-reliant. Enough would be able to drive to collect outliers, and probably drive smaller trucks to gather supplies.
Anybody who’s ever been in the Boy Scouts isn’t going to starve. Won’t be fun, but definitely survivable.
.The TV series “Life After People.” (Season 2 Episode 3) predicts what would happen to the Library of Congress.
Especially relevant was the earlier remark of how the remaining people will have to figure out how to govern themselves. While we might hope post-enlightenment civilization would carry over, there will likely be a a large number of little feudal kingdoms. And who’s to say that those leaders will be especially interested in having their serfs preserve learning.
There has been a lot of mention about refueling cars. That’s not as important as getting agriculture (tractors) going again. There will likely be a run on museums to pull out those wood/coal fired steam tractors - and the new generation will have to relearn about boiler explosions. New generations will have to plant what worked before the 1800’s. Rye in Europe, non-hybrid corn, beans and squash in North America.
I agree some would survive…but the death rate would be a lot more than I think people realize. Any kids in the hospitals would probably die… newborns or just sick. Kids who have no siblings and are under, oh, say 6 or 7 in their houses are probably also going to die. Even kids who are 16 are going to die in large numbers, especially initially. They just don’t have the survival skills…hell, most people don’t.
As to Lord of the Flies, well…yeah, that’s going to happen as well. We are talking 16-year-olds (as the oldest) who have just been completely traumatized by their world coming apart, and all of the adults suddenly disappearing or whatever it is that’s supposed to have happened. I can’t even imagine the emotional trauma. These kids aren’t going to be picking up their parents’ tools and knuckling down to work, they are either going to be in shock and desperately trying to survive or banding together to attack the weakest and do what human kids do…all sorts of crazy stuff.
As to climate control, I assume your attic wasn’t in a decaying house left completely to the elements, but instead the house itself was repaired, the roof in good shape, and the house climate-controlled…right? I’ve seen houses left for even a decade or two and they have mainly collapsed wrecks, with the windows broken out and falling apart.
Well, that’s my thoughts on this anyway. I think that, eventually, some sort of society will emerge, but that 30-40 million survivors in the US will be down to, oh, maybe 10 million or less in a year or so (again, IMHO), with, maybe, the population in the US stabilizing at perhaps 5 million before things start moving slowly up again. Maybe by the time the survivors are old and dying of that instead of everything else they will be able to start seeing a positive population rise again and start getting things back together, especially at the local level. I’m sure you’d see bands or towns with some working electricity and other machines, maybe even some computers and such working…but the majority of the data centers and libraries and the like will be rotting, open to the elements or burned to the ground. It just won’t be a focus for most who are trying to salvage what they can, scrounge what’s available, and learn to feed themselves once all the stored food is gone and the medicines have all gone bad. JMHO and all.
Yeah, I think I saw that one but don’t recall what they projected the time until complete collapse was. But in most of those shows, within maybe 10 years the houses start coming apart, and within 50 the buildings start to decay to the point they are ready to collapse as well, except the exceptionally well-built ones. In most cases, the cities are just piles of rubble within 100 years or so, especially in environments like DC, which IIRC they predicted would mainly be a swamp or underwater fairly rapidly.
I think people overestimate the amount of slavery and violence that would be in these sorts of societies.
Slaves only make sense if there is something to do, because you have to feed them and keep them from escaping. Sustenance level people aren’t going to have slaves, because there’s nothing for the slaves to do. They aren’t just going to keep them out of a desire for sadism.
With violence, if people have things of value to protect, sure. Murder rates were likely high in primitive societies. On the other hand, your opponent can kill you too, so you’re a lot better off scaring someone away than actually coming to blows. Even animals know this.
Aha. I’m assuming that the older kids, knowing how important the books are, would retrieve them to whatever reasonably secure place they live in long before any roofs fall in. That’s the difference between this scenario and an after the bomb scenario. If the oldest survivor was 6 rather than 16 it might happen also. It might take a year, but libraries are not going to rot away and be open to the environment that quickly. My attic was not even close to being climate controlled, by the way. It is accessible through a hole in the ceiling. I’ve lived in places where there were attic fans and the like, this attic isn’t like that.
Kids in the hospitals will die. So will kids needing drugs after the drug supply in the pharmacies runs out.
I’m more optimistic than you. The older kids can take on responsibility. They won’t have the oppressed now in charge attitude of the militia leaders in your standard post-Apocalypse story, and the younger kids won’t dispute their authority. Pockets that have gotten it together might invade and absorb pockets not in such good shape, but that would probably be a good thing.
Kids deal with trauma all the time. The ones crippled by it won’t be the leaders, and would probably be willing to listen to the kids not so traumatized. It depends on how the disappearance happened. Are there rotting bodies all over the place or do the adults just vanish?
As for surviving, local stores with canned food and bottled water would last them for a while until they figured out a better approach. Littler kids? The bigger kids in a neighborhood know where the littler kids live, and could rescue them, or find them as they wander around the streets. No problem getting run over by cars and bikes will be available. A little kid in an isolated house in the country won’t make it, sure.
During the pandemic a kid about 15 or so built a bike ramp in the ground in front of the school across from me, and organized a whole bunch of kids to maintain it and supervise littler kids going over it. He asked politely for water from our front hose which I was happy to let him have. That kid, and his friends, would be able to run things in our neighborhood just fine.
I was being nice and just saying they vanished. 
If they adults stay, then the kids will be in for a stinky situation. 