# What if we had to restart technology from scratch, but with all the knowledge we have? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 11, 2012, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131 "2012-01-11T05:02:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/61 "2012-01-12T11:28:17Z")
> [@Celidin](#): > > **Buck Godot** touches on it here, but if you can get past the “initial survival state”, I think the biggest problem you’re going to run into over time (especially as the first generation dies off) is that language changes over time. language doesn’t change really quickly. In English, Shakespeare is still readable if antiquated at more than 400 years on, (even though we can miss some of the sense of it now without a linguist;) Beowulf is unintelligible to the layman at about 1000 years on. ---
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/62 "2012-01-12T11:32:02Z")
> [@WreckingCrew](#): > > I was just thinking about something like this a few days ago. A place I work at sometimes just happens to have a working 1810 water powered machine shop. (you mean your workplace doesn’t?) > > While I am not very mechanically inclined, with a couple of Mangetout’s hand tools, I could rough out a working waterpower system given a decent sized stream. The first part would be all stone and wood, with leather or rope drive belts. The first goal would be to get a grist mill/saw mill going and then a forge with trip hammer and bellows. Then you could start building more advanced stuff with that as an industrial base. > > Wouldn’t be easy mind you, but knowing that things like water power, spinning wheels and gear ratios are possible would save a few thousand years of evolution. I only neglected to mention a saw mill and trip hammer because Mangetout and I were still looking for iron ore. ---
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/63 "2012-01-12T11:33:29Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I’d add to this writing down as much math as possible, i.e. compiling detailed textbooks so future generations can get from arithmetic to multivariate calculus without having to rediscover anything along the way. It’ll take a few generations before the industrial base needs anything beyond basic trigonometry and you don’t want important math skills to be lost in the interim while you’re waiting for a new Isaac Newton to be born. I agree. I didn’t think about this initially as I was so busy building a working water power system. ---
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/64 "2012-01-12T11:35:48Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > If you don’t get as far as metal tools, the wheel, the waterwheel etc within the lifetimes of the original generation, I think you’re no better off than starting from scratch. I agree with this too. But, I think that you, me, and WreckingCrew could do that in a couple years. What do you think? ---
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/65 "2012-01-12T12:02:15Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Most of your spare time will be spent building tools so you can build other tools. > > You could probably get to the radio age within a generation. > [@SlackerInc](#): > > [QUOTE=ch4rl3s] > Once you have copper wire and glass, you can have lights and even vacuum tubes. Telephones, switch boards, and 1940’s era computers even before you have heavy industry up and running. This is an angle I’ve seen mentioned a couple times that I find really intriguing: that we wouldn’t actually have to follow the same order as technology has taken in our history. I had not realised that the electronics of the early 20th century would be easier to produce in some ways than, as you say, heavy industry. Interesting to imagine then what some of the transitional points would look like, and what types of technology might ultimately be skipped altogether. [/QUOTE] China and India are pretty much skipping the step of land-line telephones and going straight to cell-phones. No need to build wires everywhere. I would say I would bypass telephones to start, (with a small population all living in earshot,) because almost as soon as you have wire and telephone tech, you can have radios, which is a far more useful thing for send out scouting parties. “We’ve found iron ore 15km Northwest of you. We’re leaving a beacon and moving on.” > [@SlackerInc](#): > > [QUOTE=Pine Fresh Scent] > My $0.02: I’d make sure to sustain the germ theory of disease. Simple things like disinfecting surgical tools and controlling vermin would greatly increase average lifespans if they remain fixed in the community’s practices over generations. Great point. [/QUOTE] Japan had an intricate set of largely religious rituals set up to make high-quality steel for swords long before anyone knew what the science was. ---
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/66 "2012-01-12T12:13:37Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > [QUOTE=ch4rl3s] > The big stumbling block would really be population growth. To that end, you need to maximize your reproductive rate. And that means taking only a few males… just enough for genetic diversity, and as many females as possible. Actually, the optimum is probably something pretty close to 50-50. The advantage to skewing female is only going to last for the first generation, anyway, but the genetic diversity is going to be an issue for the entire foreseeable future. And there’s also a limit to what proportion of your society can productively be pregnant at once, and anyone who’s not pregnant, their gender doesn’t matter, so having a whole bunch of women might not even help much in the first generation. [/QUOTE] Women have historically worked fairly hard physical labour well into their 8th month. (hard labour practically until… labour.) ;):smack: (edit) the first few years with extra females will massively jump-start the population. (/edit) > [@Chronos](#): > > On the question as a whole: I think that, most likely, if they can last a full local year or maybe two, they’re probably good for the long haul. Decent shelter can last for centuries, but you need to build enough shelter to protect your population before the first winter strikes. You also need to build up a good stockpile of food before then, and build up your hunting and gathering technology, and so on. A stable population will always have to be rebuilding some portion of their technology (replacing broken spears, repairing roofs, etc.), but in any given year, most of it you just keep on using. That first year, though, you need to build _all_ of your houses, and make _all_ of your spears, and so on. It’s a lot of work that all needs to be done at once. We don’t need to build everyone a house right away. We start with shelters. Then a barn raising. We all move into the barn for the first few months while we are setting up agriculture; making tools; building the saw mill; etc. \*Then \*come individual shelters. ---
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/67 "2012-01-12T12:44:37Z")
> [@kevlaw](#): > > [QUOTE=ch4rl3s] > Once you have copper wire and glass, you can have lights and even vacuum tubes. Telephones, switch boards, and 1940’s era computers even before you have heavy industry up and running. Hadn’t thought of telephones. Good one! But vacuum tubes?. [/QUOTE] Since I’m making electric lights anyway… Why not vacuum tubes and let someone build a computer in there spare time, (under their electric lights?) I know how to make logic gates. The reason for the computer?.. > [@kevlaw](#): > > In my list, I try to keep a balance between stuff that’s essential now for survival and stuff that we have a shot at rediscovering before the original founders are all gone. > … > I’m not sure electronics will be making a come back any time soon though. I fear that anything involving silicon or triodes is out of reach for my society. If you don’t want the future generations to dismiss the “legends” of electronic devices as fantasy, have a working computer up and running. I’m sure the calculating power will be helpful for the engineers trying to redesign stuff like steam engines, silicon chips… (Oh, and Pong. How did we survive before video games… But if you make Tetris, or World of Warcraft before society is stable it’s game over.) ---
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/68 "2012-01-12T12:46:56Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I daresay papyrus (and ink) production could nearly as important as agriculture, if the goal is to get back to the industrial age as quickly as possible. There’d be a massive amount of knowledge lost when the first generation starts to die off, unless recorded in some reasonably durable (and hopefully portable and copy-able) fashion. I agree. Paper is vitally important. And it’s not too hard when you know how. I’ve made paper in my own home. As I’ve shown in my continuing posts, I believe many of the developments leading up to the industrial age are not that hard when you know how. And we do need to preserve as much knowledge as possible. ---
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/69 "2012-01-12T13:04:03Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Ever notice that most engineers and scientists have very limited practical knowledge outside their particular field of endeavor? (As I am a practicing engineering and studied in the natural sciences I can say this without prejudice, or at least ignorance.) It is not simply enough to have abstract knowledge about how things work; in order to recreate complex devices and sophisticated materials from scratch, you have to have practical, hands-on experience with the fundamential production processes… That’s why I was focusing on those things I was sure I could actually build with my own hands to start. And just showing what we could make fairly quickly from there. I could build a water wheel or windmill. Wow, we have power, irrigation and grinding. I could build a furnace. I can make charcoal. We could make iron tools. Once you can make copper wire and a water wheel, you can have electricity. > [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Most of what we think of today as “technology”, even simple things like plate glass, plastic bottles, and plywood, are the result of not only a series of extremely complex and precise operations based upon a broad skill set of knowledge that even the people who are involved in the manufacturing of these today are ignorant of. To make flat plate glass, for instance, requires not only the ability to select and melt sand, but also to acquire coal and processes into coke, built and operate an overn, acquire lead or tuin for a Pilkington float bed, et cetera. Personally, I am very familiar with most of the steps and precorsors to manufacturing glass, and I couldn’t recreate this technology from scratch on my own in a just a few years. I’m familiar with floating glass on molten tin as well, but I’m not suggesting we go to that length. We don’t need perfectly flat glass to make a greenhouse. We’re not building million dollar mansions with plate glass picture windows that give virtually no distortion. That’s luxury at this point. We do need lenses for telescopes and microscopes, though. And we’ll do it how Galileo did; by grinding them. > [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > This is all setting aside the fact that, as a hunter-gatherer or farmer you will be spending the bulk of daylight hours foraging, hunting, cropping, sourcing fresh water and materials, tanning hides, weaving rope and textiles, et cetera. At night, it will be too dark to do anything practical aside from some light weaving, and besides, you’ll be beat from spending your day just trying to stay alive. If you have a large community then they can support a handful of people performing research-type activities, but obviously they’re going to want some benefit from this, as well, so even if you can devote your waking hours to the “leisure” of developing technology from rudimentary elements, you are still going to be spending a fair portion of that time building practical implements and teaching useful processes rather than a pure devotion to new development. That’s why irrigation and directed pollination are vitally important from the start. Water power will give a lot more time for developing the next technology. Of course oxen would be incredibly helpful too, and I have no idea how much effort that would take to domesticate them… Someone mentioned that the wheel wasn’t invented in the new world. That’s becuase the only domesticated animals were the llama and alpaca. Both in South America in the mountains where a wheel isn’t practical. ---
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/70 "2012-01-12T13:23:27Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > More fantastic posts. > > For the pessimists, let me throw in another twist, a bit of a life preserver if you will. On Terra Nova, they have a computer that’s in an underground cavern, powered by some eternal and stable geothermal process I think, and is basically like the entire Internet and then some (it being 2149). Leaving off the 2149 aspect, what if the colonists had this computer to access, and it was basically equivalent to Google as of December 31, 2011? They still however don’t have any other tools, just this information. Presumably this would give them a much better chance of ramping up technological progress, but how long do the most pessimistic here think it would take? 200 years maybe? Or still think it would be longer? I don’t think that’s necessary. I am quite happy to debate the issue entirely without it. I’m planning on having the first [computer](http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000984.htm) up and running within 40 years. I’m hoping to still be alive to see it. ---
**Author:** ![not\_what\_you\_d\_expect](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/not_what_you_d_expect/32/3246_2.png) [@not\_what\_you\_d\_expect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/not_what_you_d_expect)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/71 "2012-01-12T13:36:22Z")
I love this thread. I’ve never given this much thought before, but I have to say, after reading through all these responses, I’m pretty impressed by us humans. When you consider all the difficulties, it really is amazing that we’ve accomplished so much. I do agree that after survival and increasing our numbers, the priority of the original folks has to be preserving all the knowledge. Otherwise, I fear the new generations will do the same thing that our civilization did, make up stuff to explain anything they don’t understand. ---
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/72 "2012-01-12T13:40:57Z")
> [@Ken001](#): > > This is an excellent discussion. Regrettably I remain a pessimist. > > Although I work in a city I grew up on a farm where we grew at least some of our own food. Many of the above posts gloss over sheer survival but IMHO that is a primary problem. Food clothing shelter and safety cannot be taken for granted. The need for food reoccurs daily, it isn’t something you can set aside - and farming is not easy. I agree that it’s very hard. That’s why all my earliest developments make it easier to survive. But I did gloss over the fact that I would need a stone knife, axe, pickaxe, spear, atlatl (and a net for fishing if there are any,) in the first week. > [@Ken001](#): > > But lets imagine our brave colonists establish a stable village and remember the good times back on Earth. As posters above correctly say, the children don’t have those memories. And the grandchildren don’t believe the stories. The odds are stacked against knowledge being retained so there would be a devolution into a primitive society. That’s why we have to have the industrial revolution practically started by the time the grandchildren reach adulthood. Because we will have done all the “easy” stuff; what you can do with your own hands and a moderate amount of trial and error. We will have a list, and they will see that industry continually produces the items on the list in progression. that will go a long way to belief. Of course, the historian Niall Ferguson gave a list of the “killer aps” of Western Civilization… “[competition, scientific revolution, property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society and the (Protestant)\* work ethic-- that define and set apart Western culture.](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/06/niall-ferguson-ted-talk_n_1078637.html)” He also discusses whether the West is losing it’s edge to the East… i had worried about that trend until Mr Ferguson said that he thinks it’s because the West is losing sight of the killer aps, but the East is picking them up with gusto. That reassured me for the fate of civilization. * * * \*(The quote from the link didn’t contain the word Protestant, but Niall himself, though not religious, had no problem saying it.) ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/73 "2012-01-12T13:41:40Z")
In threads like this, there’s often a sentiment of “we think we’re so smart, but we’re not”. People always want to see humans cut down to size. I would come down on the optimistic side. They have with them the knowledge to avoid the big stumbling blocks that held up the human race for millenia. And the usefulness of this knowledge is readily demonstrable in many cases; enough examples to keep people on the program (e.g. scientific method) for the first couple of centuries. For one thing, people who took the old-world stories seriously would tend to have better weapons and tools. And that’s all that’s needed before it becomes self-reinforcing. As a side issue, what about pathogens? It would be quite an advantage if we were unharmed by all local microbes. ---
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/74 "2012-01-12T14:18:00Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I agree with nearly everything you wrote here. The notion that this scenario can support a population of pure academics from the outset is unrealistic. I agree. We can’t support pure acedemics. I read quantum physics in my spare time for fun… But I’m building the water mill… We need academics (to preserve knowledge,) who can work practically as well. > [@Mangetout](#): > > Although it would be useful to try to write everything down and teach it, in practice, we’d have to focus on the technologies and processes that we can put into practice straight away, for the benefit of our survival. Yes, the first things we make make it easier to grow food and increase our productivity beyond our physical strength. that’s why I said water wheel first. > [@ch4rl3s](#): > > We don’t need to build everyone a house right away. We start with shelters. Then a barn raising. We all move into the barn for the first few months while we are setting up agriculture; making tools; building the saw mill; etc. \*Then \*come individual shelters. I forgot to mention that we then use the barn for livestock and storing grain, etc. > [@Mangetout](#): > > That’s why I reckon the priority must be to get metalworking, fossil fuels, the wheel, etc up and running again _within the lifetimes of the original pioneer population_, otherwise, we have to do everything pretty much the hard way all over again. You, me and WreckingCrew practically have these up and running already at… what do you figure? 6 months? a year? Can we bring the Mythbusters crew? Oh, and we need someone who can make acids. I can give you chemical formulas for several, but I wouldn’t know what you need to start them from scratch. * * * For an online tutorial: The first thing we do is [punch some trees](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Lpzrz2fNM)and [build some tools](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkP19BVYNVI&feature=relmfu). Then it’s not too long 'til [logic gates](http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_Circuits#Logic_Gates). ---
**Author:** ![ch4rl3s](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c4cdca/32.png) [@ch4rl3s](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ch4rl3s)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/75 "2012-01-12T14:26:06Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I would come down on the optimistic side. They have with them the knowledge to avoid the big stumbling blocks that held up the human race for millenia. And the usefulness of this knowledge is readily demonstrable in many cases; enough examples to keep people on the program (e.g. scientific method) for the first couple of centuries. For one thing, people who took the old-world stories seriously would tend to have better weapons and tools. > And that’s all that’s needed before it becomes self-reinforcing. Nice. > [@Mijin](#): > > As a side issue, what about pathogens? It would be quite an advantage if we were unharmed by all local microbes. I see this as a major problem to survival. We won’t have encountered any bugs out there for 10,000 years. Of course, we may have an advantage, as we’ve been battling their advanced decendants for that long and may have an immunity\*… But, we’re helped by knowing about sanitation, and the fact that there aren’t any human specific pathogens around. And as soon as we have glass, we make microscopes, so our children can see the microbes, and don’t have to take the germ theory on faith. \*The Spaniards decimated the Native Americans with disease, and NOT the other way around. So, being practically resistant to native pathogens is a real possibility. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/76 "2012-01-12T16:34:21Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Ever notice that most engineers and scientists have very limited practical knowledge outside their particular field of endeavor? (As I am a practicing engineering and studied in the natural sciences I can say this without prejudice, or at least ignorance.) It is not simply enough to have abstract knowledge about how things work; in order to recreate complex devices and sophisticated materials from scratch, you have to have practical, hands-on experience with the fundamential production processes. Most of what we think of today as “technology”, even simple things like plate glass, plastic bottles, and plywood, are the result of not only a series of extremely complex and precise operations based upon a broad skill set of knowledge that even the people who are involved in the manufacturing of these today are ignorant of. To make flat plate glass, for instance, requires not only the ability to select and melt sand, but also to acquire coal and processes into coke, built and operate an overn, acquire lead or tuin for a Pilkington float bed, et cetera. Personally, I am very familiar with most of the steps and precorsors to manufacturing glass, and I couldn’t recreate this technology from scratch on my own in a just a few years. Could you create levers and pulleys in a few years? The plow? There are all sorts of situations where we won’t have to spend nearly as much time engaging in trial and error. I only have a general idea of how cracking towers separate different petrochemicals but I bet a chemist and physicist would make the road to the first crack tower a lot faaster and safer. > [@](#): > > This is all setting aside the fact that, as a hunter-gatherer or farmer you will be spending the bulk of daylight hours foraging, hunting, cropping, sourcing fresh water and materials, tanning hides, weaving rope and textiles, et cetera. At night, it will be too dark to do anything practical aside from some light weaving, and besides, you’ll be beat from spending your day just trying to stay alive. If you have a large community then they can support a handful of people performing research-type activities, but obviously they’re going to want some benefit from this, as well, so even if you can devote your waking hours to the “leisure” of developing technology from rudimentary elements, you are still going to be spending a fair portion of that time building practical implements and teaching useful processes rather than a pure devotion to new development. > > I don’t know how many of you have spent any amont of time “living off the land”, so to speak, but I have and it takes an incredible amount of effort just to stay fed, warm, and safe in the best of circumstances, even baring injury or sickness. This notion that you can walk into the wilds with an armful of science texts, or “use the scientific method” in some abstract way to create technological society in the span of decades is obtuse. And anything not devoloped in that time will be at least partially lost even with records, just as information about past technologies that we no long use or build is also difficult to recover.. Midieval peasants had a lot of free time between planting season and harvest and between harvest and the next planting season. With modern farming techniques (heck with peace corp levels of technology, simple knowledge about irrigation and crop rotation) you work harder and for more hours but your yield is a LOT higher The first year is going to be rough if there is a winter but lets just assume we get dropped off in San Diego near a bunch of caves near an abundant source of resources, otherwise the first blizzard would kill us all if we didn’t starve to death trying to domesticate local plants for farming. > [@Mangetout](#): > > I agree with nearly everything you wrote here. The notion that this scenario can support a population of pure academics from the outset is unrealistic. Noone said pure academics. We are saying that knowledge will accelerate us through and circumvent all sorts of technology. I think the really tough spots will be at the very beginning where get basic farming in place and then we are off to teh races until we hit the electronic age. IANAscientist but I grew up during the cold war have thought about this sort of thing before. > [@ch4rl3s](#): > > China and India are pretty much skipping the step of land-line telephones and going straight to cell-phones. No need to build wires everywhere. > > I would say I would bypass telephones to start, (with a small population all living in earshot,) because almost as soon as you have wire and telephone tech, you can have radios, which is a far more useful thing for send out scouting parties. “We’ve found iron ore 15km Northwest of you. We’re leaving a beacon and moving on.” I agree that radio is more useful but until the development of transistors, not particularly portable. long range scouts would still alrgely be on their own unless they could lug around a pretty big radio transmitter. Still, having a network of radios at mining outposts and fishing outposts would be very useful. > [@](#): > > Japan had an intricate set of largely religious rituals set up to make high-quality steel for swords long before anyone knew what the science was. Yes but the science would have short circuited many years of trial and error. ---
**Author:** ![kevlaw](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kevlaw/32/2281_2.png) [@kevlaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kevlaw)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/77 "2012-01-12T16:53:34Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > The first year is going to be rough if there is a winter but lets just assume we get dropped off in San Diego near a bunch of caves near an abundant source of resources, otherwise the first blizzard would kill us all if we didn’t starve to death trying to domesticate local plants for farming. I think it’s important to anchor the discussion on somewhere concrete like this otherwise it’s too easy to imagine up handy resources of petrochemicals, iron ore, copper, coal, the right kind of animals for domestication, the right kind of crops for agriculture. If the natural resources are not within walking distance, they are pretty much fictional until society has recreated transport technologies and a big enough population to exploit them. I don’t think we get to any of those things in the first generation. The best we can hope for is to leave breadcrumbs so that our descendents know what to do with them so they find them. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I agree that radio is more useful but until the development of transistors, not particularly portable. If we are lucky enough to land near a copper mine, I can imagine making batteries & wires leading to motors, generators, heating, communication and lighting in the first generation. But transistors & vacuum tubes? No chance! If we don’t have a local source of ductile metal. Electricity is lost for several generations at least. ---
**Author:** ![kevlaw](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kevlaw/32/2281_2.png) [@kevlaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kevlaw)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/78 "2012-01-12T16:56:04Z")
> [@ch4rl3s](#): > > The Spaniards decimated the Native Americans with disease, and NOT the other way around. So, being practically resistant to native pathogens is a real possibility. Guns, germs & steel explains that the spaniards relative immunity advantage over the natives came from several thousand years of living closely with domesticated animals. Our intrepid party of explorers wouldn’t have that advantage and pathogens evolve quicker than hosts. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/79 "2012-01-12T17:23:55Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Midieval peasants had a lot of free time between planting season and harvest and between harvest and the next planting season. With modern farming techniques (heck with peace corp levels of technology, simple knowledge about irrigation and crop rotation) you work harder and for more hours but your yield is a LOT higher You’re being dropped off in the middle of nowhere with no equipment. Clothes on the back, remember? Modern agricultural techniques rely a ton on having good seed stocks and modern fertilization chemicals. I guess it’s easy to dismiss farming, but agriculture relies on a staggering amount of infrastructure, even at subsistence levels. That’s why it’s much easier to be a hunter/gatherer. If you are lucky, your landing spot has some native plants you can grow. But it will be years (perhaps decades) before you can cultivate reliably good seed stocks that will sustain your colony, much less improve your yields per acre. And that assumes such plants exist. In North America, maize was the closest they came and even it took a while to breed into something useful. Crop rotation? Really? Unless you are planting the same few things year after year after year in absolutely gigantic quantities (unlikely in the first few years of a colony), this isn’t even an issue. Middle Age farmers certainly had a pretty good working knowledge base. That level farming tech would be wondrous in the first year of this thought experiment. Unless things go really well for the colonists, even Middle Age tech would be hard to manage - they had domesticated animals for farming, remember? And even with modern farming techniques and beasts of burden, your season-to-season yield is still heavily dependent on good weather. Check out the cotton crop in Texas this last year. Or any other crop. It’s abysmal due to the drought. Sure, nobody is starving, but that’s because we can now grow much more than subsistence level. So, not only do you have to get lucky with finding good native plants that will sustain human life, you have to hope you get decent weather for a long stretch. The example of the Plymouth Bay colonists in their first year is a good example of what happens if you get just a bit unlucky with your colony - and they had much, much more in the way of supplies than this supposed scenario. > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > The first year is going to be rough if there is a winter but lets just assume we get dropped off in San Diego near a bunch of caves near an abundant source of resources, otherwise the first blizzard would kill us all if we didn’t starve to death trying to domesticate local plants for farming. Well, if we’re adjusting the scenario to be ultimately favorable, it becomes meaningless. Why not set them up with a herd of cattle, a couple hundred chickens and pigs, and a herd of horses while we’re at it? And a couple tons of wheat, some processed iron, and a couple hand tools, too? > [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Yes but the science would have short circuited many years of trial and error. No arguments here. But instead of short-cutting 10000 years into 10, I’m envisioning 10000 years into 200 (if you get extremely lucky). ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2012, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131/80 "2012-01-12T17:30:51Z")
> [@ch4rl3s](#): > > Oh, and we need someone who can make acids. I can give you chemical formulas for several, but I wouldn’t know what you need to start them from scratch. The [lead-chamber-process](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_chamber_process) for the economic production of sulfuric acid (arguably the most important industrial acid) was used all through the industrial age. If you have someone who knows how to use sulfuric acid extensively, it’s your first huge step in making fertilizers, detergents, batteries and inks. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-we-had-to-restart-technology-from-scratch-but-with-all-the-knowledge-we-have/609131.md?page=5)