I think people are wildly overestimating when they speak of the world being thrown into the dark ages. There is just too much knowledge already out there to let us fall too far.
I’m no engineer but I can give a fair description of how to build a generator to produce electricity. I’m no doctor but I have a reasonable understanding of bacterial and viral infections. I’m no pilot but I understand the concept of lift, drag, and thrust.
/johnny
You’re possible right. However how many people really understand what happens when they flip the light switch. If you take out any meaningful percentage of the population will the remaining have the necessary knowledge? Will those that have the knowledge be in the same place as others with vital knowledge.
Probably in some places. Chances are it will take us 2000 years to claw our way back to current levels. Especially considering you have those who WANT to go back to the 7th century and will see this event as a sign from their pig loving prophet.
Well, we’ve got the departing head of DHS making statements that dovetail with this, and I just can’t bring myself to view such a staid, plodding oaf of a woman as being all that imaginative or even capable of making a risky speculative statement without assurance that it would be met with approval among her circle. So, they’re apparently being told this, and they’re viewing the source as credible. Why? Could be several things, most of which are politically motivated and therefore manipulative and not particularly fact-based, especially considering the source, but one of which would be a known threat.
True, present generation has a lot of knowledge, but the next will have less given most of our records are digital data on hard drives that will have been erased.
A huge culling of the population from simple starvation will take much more of that knowledge with them, followed by the ravaging of the Thunderdome phenomena where only the cruel and powerful survive. If we are lucky we may stabilize at the 1940s level of technology.
Have you considered being a flight surgeon? ;-)
All of the things you are mentioning are profoundly complex and require infrastructure and secure transportation systems (you're going to need parts for that generator).
Consider all he abandoned, bullet-scarred office buildings to be found throughout the Middle East and in places like Kosovo and Bosnia. Those were once new, thriving communities (the people who erected those buildings didn't do so for target practice!)
I have only to make a trip to the local grocery store or the local Walmart to become quite aware of how close this nation is to savagery.
The scenario that is being described in this article has already happened in 1959 - an event known as the "Carrington Event" ... if it happened today you would literally find yourself in the Dark Ages tomorrow.
re: “I think people are wildly overestimating when they speak of the world being thrown into the dark ages. There is just too much knowledge already out there to let us fall too far.”
I agree with you. If an EMP event occurs, the technology and the knowledge to fix things is still there - how long this would take, I don’t know.
Would such an EMP take out all our power plants, i.e. the generators within these plants that produce the electricity - would it destroy the structures (transformers, cables, etc) that carry the power to cities? What’s the difference with an EMP attack as opposed to cities and regions losing power due to storms or overloads?
However, if 90% of the world dies, it is hard to see how we maintain the level of technology we already have. We may know in general how to build things, but a lot of the specific knowledge would be lost. A lot of knowledge is online now, which would be lost. But most of the actual, specific knowledge to make something is not even online, it is kept in people's heads.
NASA engineers investigated bringing back the Saturn rocket after the Shuttles were retired back in the 90's or so. They still had all the engineering drawings of the rockets, and written documents. But they found that it wouldn't save any money instead of redesigning everything from scratch, because there is so much knowledge that was carried around in the engineer's heads, who were then retired, that to spend the effort to figure all that out would save no money over just starting over.
That was in a continuously operating organization. If the population of NASA were to be cut by 90%, and then try to keep doing what they are doing, they couldn't. The same would happen in every organization. Eventually there would be so much knowledge lost that there would be no choice but to lose a couple hundred years of progress.
That is why I liked being in Boy Scouts. I earned every merit badge there was.
I had to build electric motors from scratch. I had to learn how to start a fire without a match. How to find edibles in the forest. How to find my way out of the deep dark woods with no compass, no idea where I had been taken and dropped off. How to use a bow and arrow, how to use a rifle, how to clean it. How to build bridges out of rope and tree limbs. How to make water drinkable.
BE PREPARED. Knowledge is one of the most important assets one can have.
How much food is delivered to cities, all sized cities, by trucks which require gas or diesel pumped in from a far and then pumped into the trucks via electrically powered pumps? How long will the current supply of food in any citiy last without trucking? Laugh all you want, the scenario is horrific to contemplate, and quite real.
True, but a lot depends on how the infrastructure is affected by any magnetic anomaly. If there is any sort of widespread EMP, most vehicles would be rendered useless, as well as large machinery With 'just in time' inventory the rule these days, the loss of the ability to deliver goods means after a few days, most people can't obtain food in the supermarkets, and will simply starve, over time.
People who live outside the cities might have the chance to grow their own food, or be able to take advantage of farmer's markets, but inside large cities the situation would be dire.
Over time, the knowledge would allow those left to re-build, but there would be many fewer to do that work, and they would be spread out over a wide area, and communication might be difficult.
I'm ahead of the game. I practice this every couple of days when the lights go out.
I thought that I had heard that many of the transformers will fry. It would make sense for us to have at least a stockpile of 50% of our needed inventory so that we can manufacture more transformers.