I think that this view is too… Hmm, what’s a good word… Not anthropomorphic because we’re talking about humans all around… To convinced that the path we took to get where we are is the only path that gets here.
Let’s be clear, the only “available resources” that you could be referring to here are hydrocarbons that we burn for energy. Yes, we mined up much of the metal that’s easy to get to, but we didn’t atomize that metal; it’s going to be much easier to get metal out of the ruins of New York City than it is to get metal out of a vein in the belly of a mountain. And things like forests and herds of animals will come back if civilization goes away.
So the question is whether society can industrialize without easy access to hydrocarbon based energy. And it helps to keep in mind that wind and hydro power are both in fact older than steam power. In China, they were doing some pretty serious metal crafting on a massive scale using hydro power; and the Romans were likewise pseudo-industrialized.
If our planet didn’t have massive stores of hydrocarbons from the Carboniferous, I think it’s quite likely that someone somewhere would have eventually discovered electricity even without steam power, and from there, they already had wind and water wheels that could drive a generator. And eventually, you can make fuel from crops, if you come up with the idea.
In our world, in a post apocalyptic situation, the survivors would have the benefit of knowing that such things are possible, so they’re even more likely to go towards biofuels. A society that never finds hydrocarbons laying around may never think to make corn into fuel, but a society on post apocalyptic Earth would find evidence of internal combustion engines everywhere.
Right. They might never discover coal if all the easily discoverable coal is gone (or if this society evolved on a planet with a geologic history that didn’t allow for the formation of large coal seams) but they would discover charcoal, water wheels, and windmills.
I’m a bit puzzled by how in the movie “Beneath The Planet Of The Apes”, supposedly a civilization-ending thermonuclear war took place– and yet the ruins of New York City still stand, albeit a bit worse for 2000 years of wear:
It’s just artistic license, there’d be nothing significant left after so long. A modern city would be pretty much gone in decades, at most.
I recall reading that the developers of Fallout III asked experts how much would be left 200 years after the apocalypse and the answer was “basically nothing”. So they essentially said “oh well” and decided to entirely ignore that so the setting could have proper post-nuclear ruins anyway.
Way older than steam. A noted Roman use of water power is a big mill near Arles, France: Barbegal aqueduct and mills - Wikipedia. Wind mills were invented in Persia somewhere in the 700-900 A.D. period. Fulling mills, using water power for processing wool, were common in the Medieval period, dating from the late 11th century.
But even after the steam engine was invented, they still used water and wind power for mills. For example, sawmills and grist mills were commonly built near water falls and rapids on the American frontier to take advantage of the water power.
