/sci/ - Science & Math

>3878456

thousands of years. most of the knowledge would be lost when 99% of people starve to death.

We could hunt animals and survive for years. Few would die.

500 years

Electromechanical would probably be easiest. You need lots of wire, you need cores for the electromagnets, you need some sort of insulation so you can wrap the wiring tightly around the cores, you need to be able to generate electricity, and you need people who have time to work on it.

Anyone here know anything about metallurgy? How hard is it going to be to find and refine the ore we need?

You can't build a computer from dirt and ore. Even without nutrition, shelter and security it would take generations.

We would have to build the tools that can build the tools that can build the tools to make the machines that make the machines that make computers.

Do you have any idea how hard it is just to make a simple stainless steel screwdriver from shit you dig out of the side of a mountain?

>>3878456
dude if my house disappeared while i was sleeping i would fall nekkid 15 feet onto gravel

Hm, depends on what kind of people survive.

If any one of them has knowledge of electronic engineering, it could be made in 10 years: a couple of years to make tools, more years to get materials, a few more to get energy sources and then to build the circuits and make some programming. One year to test it and make it work.

But if none of them know how to build a computer, it would take a lot more than 10 years to remember what they learned about electricity in school and start building circuits and progress to a (manually) printed circuit board.

But if this happens, i bet building a computer would be the last thing anyone would think about.

>>3878492

All the OP is asking is a basic economic growth question: Assume the worlds capital got destroyed, how long would it take to obtain today's standard of living.

The vast majority of the worlds capital has been built within 250 years. So, 500 years isn't a stretch of the imagination.

>>3878485

Fucking impossible. You would have to start by using wood and rocks to mine copper and zinc. Sphalerite would be a good place to start. We need a geologist to tell us how to mine it.

millennia

just like the last time

We're going to need a geologist, a metallurgist, a chemist, a machinist and finally an electrical engineer.

>>3878516
Nope. I assume that there would be some among the survivors who still have the knowledge to make tools, dig for material and build computers. Knowledge doesn't disappear because "capital" disappears. If tomorrow all the books and everything written vanishes, there will be lots of people who still have the memory of what they learned or know how to rediscover them.

Do you want to know how long it would take if everyone was primarily concerned with feeding their families? Or how long it would take given some sort of plot device that kills everyone if we don't have a computer in n years?

3 weeks until I start burning integrated circuits.

Seriously, the first few generations were made with reflected light and a magnifying glass.

>>3878548
Yeah? Exactly.... You're agreeing with my point, or rather I'm agreeing with you.

3 Million people in my city. 95% of the population died in 2 weeks. Thanks for killing me and my friends.

ww3 ?
ww4 sticks and stones

and back to hunting and gathering

>>3878551

I say we try to actually design what we would do right here and now. What's step 1?

>>3878571

find some way to generate and store electricity

good luck

>>3878456
are plants still domesticated?

>>3878572
Isn't that hard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery

>>3878574

No. Everything is as if humans never lived. Domesticated plants and animals don't exist including ge crops. Sorry no bananas for you.

>>3878456
I can tell you one thing, it wouldnt take long for use to go back to being tribal religious zealots, how advanced can we really say we are when the fact is if we lost our technology and communication religion would take over again so fast.

>>3878577

not enough electricity;

this is retarded

what about plastic? we'll need to isolate it from petroleum. we'll need to send somebody after that next...

and then there's the technical expertise along the entire chain of the thing

i'm trolling myself but i'm bored


the thing is we'd have to find food and water and shelter and worry first about weapons and self-defence perhaps

also, the question is how long would we, not how long could we

seeing as there would be absolutely no point to a computer in such an environment we would wait until we rebuilt civilisation to approximately where we were a few decades ago

>>3878610

well, actually supposedly we were hunters and gatherers for tens of thousands of years

religion is relatively young; it accompanied settling down, agriculture, the need for centralised self-organisation, social rule, etc.

for the most part we'd just return to being wild animals, if you will

>>3878468
Are you serious? Cant tell if troll or incredibly ignorant.

Anyway theres a book series(Dies the Fire, by S. M. Stirling) already that has a similar premise as the OPs post, rather then vanishing, all human technology ceases to work globally and permanently.

The amount of research put into it was impressive, the sheer logistics of feeding people in densely populated areas in that situation would be literally impossible in the OPs premise, any animals would be hunted almost to extinction immediately, and even that would only be a fraction of what would be needed in-till people can get crops up (which are really fucking far away when the transportation networks are gone)

>>3878571

Step one is locate iron ore, most likely in the form of Magnetite. Then we need to mine it without any metal tools. Then we need to construct a blast furnace to begin the production of steel.

Once you have steel you can start making reliable tools and the real work will begin.

>>3878616
>>3878616

yah, pretty much this

plus to plant crops requires some social security

with tons of rampaging, hungry people running around that's unlikely in the foreseeable future

meh

http://dis.4chan.org/%64erefer.php?url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck

>>3878614
Right but religious nuts from before wouldn't suddenly dissapear along with everything we have built, kids get indoctrinated etc etc and it happens all over again

religion spreads among ignorance like a disease.

>>3878571
step 1: would probably be obtain shelter, water, and a food supply.
step 2: start mining stuff, copper, coal, iron, refractories
step 3: build a big furnace and start smelting iron, maybe even do the bessemer process and make steel in large quantities
step 4: make a casting box, and start sand casting parts for a lathe, use the lathe to make a mill, follow Gingery(HAIL GINGERY!) process for bootstraping the industrial revolution in your backyard and make steam engines and other machine tools.
step 5: use the copper and steel(with the magnets made from steel) to make a generator, as far as insulation goes you could use plant fibers or worst case polymerized casein made from human breast milk(if animals are undomesticated).
step 6: use generator for electrochemistry and you can start separating out other metals like aluminium, silicon and from there pretty much anything else. But for now you can use the generator to magnetize steel to make a better generator or magnets for a relay computer
step 7: make relays from coils of copper wire, magnets, and metal contacts
step 8: make relays into a simple relay computer

>>3878618

You can't make iron without bronze. Did you learn nothing from Civilization 1-5?

>>3878626

look homey, i'm not religious myself but there are a whole lot more destructive impulses than religion

is it oppressive and closed minded? yes but it holds the fucking thing together

it holds families together; families are the glue that holds society together; it discourses self-indulgence, promotes respect, obedience, self-sacrifice; these things keep our economy in shape, for one...

post-modern relativism on the other hand says if it feels right do it and generation me, etc. fuck your kids, your wife, your husband, your neighbor, the consumer, the govt. etc.

this kind of mentality accompanies the collapse of civilisation for a reason

it's not the decline of morality so much as the morality of decline


at this point we are fucked unless robots/ai/chinese, etc. and i don't know which would be worse; that cage or the wild

>>3878631
One doesn't need bronze to make iron, all you really need is iron oxide and a way to reduce it.

>>3878629

What do you build the furnace out of? All you have are rocks. I suppose you can use clay but you need something to support it and making that kind of heat is nearly impossible.

I'd be eating people within a few weeks - wouldn't hesitate to do it to stay alive after the starvation takes hold. I'd be guessing 90+% mortality within three months. The system just wouldn't be in place to feed the millions of useless eaters who only know how to wait for a gummint cheque or make a fancy coffee.

Best bet would be to head out from population centers as quickly as possible and make camp. Once food became scare (winter is coming on) either scrabble up what you can or else hunt a few of they dying hordes and smoke the meat.

Next spring we can see what's what and think about building some better shelter and communities with whoever made it through the winter. Prepare to make yourself useful to a strongman, because they're coming back hard and fast.

Computers? LOL. Gone like the dodo. Maybe in a few centuries.

>>3878647
pretty much just clay, clay can take pretty high temperatures, much higher than what you need to reduce iron. One makes that kind of heat by blowing air into something that burns so it burns faster and produces more heat.

One usually does this with a bellows, though in the bronze age this was done by putting the forge up on top of a mountain where it was windy or by blowing into the fire with pipes.

Pic related it's a backyard forge
http://www.twinoaksforge.com/BLADSMITHING/FORGE%20BUILDING.HTM

>>3878601
Wait...no domesticated anything?
A very LARGE fraction of the species on earth have adapted/evolved with humans throughout time.

So either they disappear and return to their evolutionary ancestors that never met human beings. (Which is totally vague. homo sapien sapiens? homo erectus? Or...how far back in the evolutionary line? Before tool making? )

And then you have a domino effect on species that coevolved with other species that coevolved with us.

It all depends, really. If that was the goal for the entire human race, all of the efforts of every human on the planet was to make that computer, I'd say 20-30 years.

Other than that, 500 ish.

Not in our lifetimes. We'd probably get back to the iron age within 20 years by which time our life expectancies will have been depleted and our hopefully literate children will have to run on legends of inventions like the steam engine.

It will probably take at most 3000 years, 1000 to repopulate, 2000 to go through the motions again.

>>3878663

good advice; i would head north even with a worse winter; everybody and their mother will be heading south (more minorities there = greater chance of conflict); plus i've been up north and they're used to working together to get thru the winter (plus they don't have many minorities so social cohesion has not be disrupted like it has in most other places (especially in the cities))

oh, and be the strong man (that's what our minds are for, and our hearts [courage])

>>3878637
Do you read what you type? most if not all of humanities destructive impulses have been influenced by religion, the "oh it keeps families together" is bullshit, a family sticks together because they are of blood relation and a society sticks together so that they may survive better, im going to have to say all religion did for us in those days was cause disputes between villages and often times fights, you are saying that because im not religious i would abandon my kids? You're lucky we're talking over the internet.

>it discourses self-indulgence, promotes respect, obedience, self-sacrifice; these things keep our economy in shape, for one..

No it fucking doesn't, it says that but no one actually follows it, whens the last time you saw someone actually like ned flanders in real life, ever, humans create their own morals, case in point the bible.

>>3878456
hmm... so does that mean mammoths and other large mammals are not extinct anymore?

>>3878689
>>3878637
>atheist activist vs christfag on /sci/
*sigh*

You realise you are both wrong. Don't you? Shut up please.

>>3878689

religion contributes to social pressure to do certain things, like not get divorced, that keep families together, and societies intact.

internet tough guy, there are exceptions; like i said, i'm not religious myself, but the tendency holds

remove social pressure against divorce with the decline of religion, suddenly divorce becomes much more widespread

doesn't take a fucking genius to make that connection, no matter if you specifically or i knew this one guy, etc. would or not

also, as the religious values decline they are replaced with what? individualism, consumerism, entertainment. and tons of debt

shit's not working like this

you can complain all you want about religion, but it's a moot point if you can't keep it together otherwise

mammoths died because of the end of the ice age not from human action.

most species wouldn't be that different than they are right now except domesticated plants and animals.

>>3878706
>remove social pressure against divorce with the decline of religion, suddenly divorce becomes much more widespread

Religion was oppressing people to stay with people they do not like, fine i agree. Now though people do get quite alot of divorces but honestly alot of that is to do with the "women are independant" mentality that women have now you now when they can get handouts from the government, a house etc basically independence without being independent, when we revert to lesser tech women will once again depend completely on the man she chooses and therefore bye bye divorce.

>>3878456

These are always the dumbest possible questions posed on /sci/. They serve literally no purpose but to remind us of the "shocking" fact that all technology requires infrastructure.

>>3878717

Not a closed question at all at this point, but mammoths made it through several ice ages without too much trauma. Enter humans and suddenly the entire North American megafauna just ups and disappears. Hmmm...

My view on this:
1: Everyone panics, people form tribes that may or may not be peaceful towards each other, may even form alliances. All tribes will have a couple of major worries: Getting food and water. Defense of the tribe from other tribes. Enough shelter. People who know how to help with birth and some small fractures and such. Building saunas would be perfect, it's a place where people can easily clean themselves and a good place to give birth. An education system also needs to be implemented.
2: After a while territories of the tribes stay somewhat the same, probably having minor skirmishes. People will start to try getting their shit together and try to get some basic "technology" back, so there will be schools to help educate people to build stuff from wood, stone, and if found, iron. Those things are easy to work with and have great potential for making shelters, weapons and so forth. Trade between territories will give wealth to all tribes, so there is no need to practice protectionism just yet.
3: After people have accumulated enough iron and other workable metals, making basic stuff like wind- or watermills will start, again giving wealth to people.
4: Tools become more sophisticated all the time, and watermills and windmills give basically "free" energy for people, and as soon as basic electrical wires can be made, people will get electricity, and things like light bulbs and heating. Aqueducts also will be needed.
5: Life is good, you have running water, electricity, basically all you have to do now is wake up, get some breakfast or something, if you want to go somewhere just open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur

>>3878717
>mammoths died because of the end of the ice age not from human action.

I'd love to know what you're basing that on.

>most species wouldn't be that different than they are right now except domesticated plants and animals.

Do you know how many species that encompasses?

And what about species that went extinct due to human tampering? Would we have dodo birds back?

How's about neanderthals and the other cousins of homo sapiens that we wiped out (and/or...interbred with >_> ).

>>3878762
Uhm you know when the giant turtle was first discovered it took 4 centuries to get one back to london without it being eaten so, maybe mammoths where also really delicious, plus they were massive so they could feed alot, not surprising the possibility that we ate them to extinction if you think about it.

>>3878734

that's also true and it's not by accident that religion coincided with a more traditional role for women.

it does make some sense that the one with the functional tits and the mothering instinct stays home with the kids

religion is the consecration of natural principles of self-organisation

whether postmaterialist ideology and technology can overwrite that portion of our nature remains to be seen

>>3878777
>we wiped out (and/or...interbred with >_> ).

Do you see any of the dolphins ancestors running about, do you see any of the horses ancestors running about?

Think what you're saying there is a reason we are here and they aren't.

>>3878790

Well, he did say if ALL traces of human existence vanished.

It is believed that humans wiped out many other homo species.

And in the case of homo neanderthalis, if we hadn't been there, it's possible neanderthals would be the dominant species on earth.

>>3878822
>All effects of human existence suddenly vanish from the entire planet.
Yes but humans are still here Did you not read what i said?

If you go outside and see a dog you wont see his ancestor, youll see their genetic cousins but not their ancestors, its the same for any modern animal its previous ancestors are no longer about, i think its the norm for when a species deviates enough to be considered a new species it still breeds with its previous ancestor/ us and neanderthals were separated for many many many years and yet we have 4% of their dna, it seems so much more likely that when an animal is born deviated enough to be a new species they still breed with the previous population and assimilate them, like us you wont go outside and see our ancestors.

obviously ive got no proof, only logic and how i apply that logic.

>>3878844

Alright, so to get this straight. Everything that has gone extinct up until this point, due to humans or otherwise, is still extinct. Anything that has coevolved with humans or has been manipulated by humans is now gone.


(New species are caused by isolated populations that accumulate mutations in their gene pool)

>mfw I imagine dat rape spree

>>3878764

lold

>>3878878
I am just using dogs as an example dude, stop being so anal.

How much more sense does it make that evolutionary we assimilate our ancestors since we are better at surviving due to being the latest version of the family of species, rather than a senseless bloodthirst where we wiped them out and raped them because they looked abit different, not only where they stronger and more sturdier than us, they also had tools, we had slightly bigger brains but it doesnt take much intelligence for a human to work out throwing a sharp stick or rock at someone will hurt them.

Im not saying it didnt happen the bloodthirst way but the other way makes much more sense to me.

>>3878922

Whoa...wait, what? This...has nothing to with my question...but for the sake of explanation:

Evolution in general isn't about assimilating our ancestors. It's about having more successful traits for the current situation (having an advantage) and passing on your advantageous genes to the next generation more successfully than your competition. Over time, if your trait is awesome (<--bad word, I know, but for now, it works), it gets spread throughout the gene pool.

To say that we were better is really ambiguous. Neanderthals actually had larger brains than we did.
At some point, our ancestral population divided and two different "species" were isolated from each other. They became the neanderthals and the humans. Neither was the "latest version" of the family species.
There was some interbreeding between our species, but it was more of a situation akin to naturally occuring hybrids that are still viable to reproduce.. (The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Silver and Bigheaded Asian carp, but I know there are more)

It is generally believed that humans, for the most part, out competed neanderthals (and other homo species) and did not assimilate them. Which led to me coming up with my second question of whether neanderthals, or whatever species would have been dominant had humans not been there, would be there now.

And I think I get what you're saying, in this hypothetical world. Humans were still there, so anything they outcompeted is still gone, but that confusing what you say that anything they've domesticated is gone now. Where do you draw the line of human impact on the evolution of other species?

Now back to what I thought was a simple question. I'll just have to make it simpler: Would we get dodos back?

We will probably revert to having the worst problems humanity has slowly overcome for quite a while, again.
There will probably be a host of new Luddites that see the disappearing of technology as some sort of religious sign to fight against.
The most savage and power hungry sociopaths will rise to the top and very likely will viciously rule over others and we will definitely have pockets of some sort of slavery, all over the planet.
Both of these will accelerate and hinder returning to anything "modern".

>>3879006
Youd ont get what im saying, i also cant understand why you dont understand what im saying.

I know what evolution is, its hard to explain my point i guess, without using the wrong words cause youve completely misunderstood.

>but that confusing what you say that anything they've domesticated is gone now.
i didnt actually read your question, and I didn't actually say this, im high and went off on a tangent when i saw the bit you said about wiping them out, horses before domestication were evolutionarily different, but you dont see this kind of horse running about anymore, now i get that through human domestication this species could go extinct in favour of the domesticated horses we see now, but without human contact i still say the previous species would dissapear through interbreeding with a newly deviated species, and its likely thats what happened with homo sapiens, neanderthals, erectus etc etc we bred with them and through that phased them out in favour of our species.

I think that nature rarely keeps the previous genetic generation and it gets naturally phased out through interbreeding, rather than just suddenly dieing off somehow(like neanderthals in a homo sapien bloodlust)

Does this include language, more particularly the written languages? Because if we can still write, then we can still communicate and share information with one another. We will still have the memory of the printing press, even if our best bet is to make clay pressings and paper made from trees. More concerning is that we would effectively be back in the Stone Age; plant and animal husbandry would become one of the most important tools for everyone. People who used to have jobs like, "Sales Rep" or "Sales Associate" or "Quality Control Agent" and all that other meaningless shit would be exactly that: meaningless shit.

We'd have to forge an alliance with /k/, definitely. We can make the bows, but those fuckers can use them better.

But to make an electrically powered computer? A long, long time. I'd estimate at least a hundred years. Maybe longer.

That's a very interesting question. There wouldn't be any looting, because there's nothing left to loot. The sick and injured would be dead first before anyone else. No clothes? People in cold climes will be dead in two days. Humans would survive in tropical and in warmer regions; we are African apes, after all.

No boats.

No planes.

Not a single engine to speak of; no paddle-wheels, no turbines, no wire, no refined metal to speak of. You, your hands, and the wild.

Seems a thrilling thought, but in a very chilling way.

What if you live in a building above the third floor?

>>3879250
Define where is the third floor.

Americans count the ground floor as the first floor.

>>3879239

>humans in cold climates dieing in days
>does not realize humans have been living in arctic environments for thousands of years
>mfw he obviously lives in the tropics

>>3879265
Well you would have to skin some animals for fur really fucking fast.

>>3879300
furfag alert

>>3879300
Actually, no, you wouldn't.

>>3879303
Have fun being naked in sub zero environments then.

>>3879305

I do. I'm hairy.

Seriously, what do you think that shit is for?

if this would happen atleast 80-90 % of the human population would die within a couple of months....
maybe more

>>3879310
congratulations, you have found a hypothetical situation in wich your neckbeard would actually be usefull

>>3879310
we dont have enough hair to survive in a cold environment for long, we have the intelligence to wear clothes or skin animals and use their fur so.

im pretty hairy aswell(chest,belly,arms,legs,ass) but i still feel it when its cold.

>>3879334

it's not even about hair, it's about conditioning and genetics. I live in canada and can walk around in -20 Celcius before windchill in a fucking t-shirt and shorts, and actually be semi-comfortable; meanwhile I went to florida in december and couldn't stay in the sun for longer than an hour as I felt I was gonna die of heat stroke.

>>3879328
Oh, I don't have a beard. I'm a woman. Maybe a slight mustache, but definitely no beard.

>>3879334
The trick is staying out of the wind.

Our hair isn't a great insulator, but it's good at trapping air next to our skin.

>>3879340
a neckmustache? or a regular one?

Fabulous dieoff. Without modern agriculture world population is in a horrific overshoot. Basically take your favourite african famines imagery and expand it to about everywhere.

So, first wait for about 75-90% of population to be extinct, and only AFTER that start to think about computers. Everything you try to build before will be ravaged by hordes of poor, hungry, desperate fuckers.

>>3879349
Just a shadow-thing I can get with tweezers.

>>3879352
Too true.

OP, have you seen the recent remake of 'the day the earth stood still'? It's basically what you're imagining.

Except they didn't show the part where after the transport and communication systems break down, everyone not engaged in subsistence farming starves to death and the cities go up in a starving orgy of looting and burning.

I would just run off and dig a hole and live off mushrooms for a few months until shit calms down.

>>3879352
Actually, I really wonder about overshoot. Before people started damming rivers and lakes and fishing out the sea, as well as killing all the buffalo and such, there was a lot of other life out there. Of course, the problem would be making the tools to kill the stuff to eat it before we all die, but I think an earth with less human impacts could actually support more humans.

>my neighbors

I'm going to get bludgeoned to death so who cares.

honestly fucking never. all the easily accessible sources of copper etc have long been mined out of existence, unless all of our natural elements replenish themselves.

>>3879419
True, Fred Hoyle's warning is not unreasonable, but the OP's scenario is based "reset human influence everywhere" premise, which I think means everything is back, untouched, you just need someone who remembers where to dig.

>>3879394

Do you have any idea the unnaturally high level of animal/plant farming required to support our population? It is a real possibility that survivors would number in the thousands worldwide. Hell we might go extinct.

bump

>>3878456
you'd see mechanical computation devices far before anything resembling modern circuitry.

>>3881893

And you would see stone tools before that what's your point? It is simply a benchmark.

>>3878456

it'll be hard even to start writing in any material that lasts.

imagine you would need to rebuild education all over again, otherwise next generation would be fucking scavengers

why don't they make a fucking movie with this idea. it's awesome.

is there any post-apocalyptic movie where some people rebuild civilization?

Yeah, check out "Riverworld", it's a sci-fi series of books from the 70's by Phillip Jose Farmer. It was made into a fairly bad mini-series last year.

The original story was called "To Your Scattered Bodies Go" (1971) and ran as a serial in a sci-fi magazine.

Everyone who ever lived on Earth wakes up on a huge distant planet in a river valley. Everyone is 25 and in good health. Every woman is a virgin, every man is circumcized. Everyone is immortal in the sense that if they die, they reawaken somewhere else on the planet.

Hilarity ensues when Sir Richard Francis Burton decides to get to the bottom of things and meets up with Samuel Clemens,...and a whole lotta other bastards from history. It's good sci-fi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverworld

>>3882926

>circumcised

not to start a cut vs uncut argument here but how is that considered the "natural state" of a dick?

>>3882951
I'm fairly sure he meant "uncircumcised"

>>3882951
I believe it's discussed in the book. The great thinkers of history start making observations and rationalizing what their mysterious "masters" intend for them.

>>3882926
btjunkie has a torrent of the whole series.
dl'ing now.
Can't wait to read; sounds awesome.

But to go back and address OP's question, Riverworld residents don't build an electrical computer that I can recall (1971, after all) but they DO build up an industrial base that can build Mark Twain an aircraft-carrier sized riverboat, aircraft, and handguns.

>>3879193

OP, you still haven't answered my question about the dodos. :P

>I know what evolution is, its hard to explain my point i guess, without using the wrong words cause youve completely misunderstood.

From what I've read, you don't understand the mechanisms of evolution very well.
You have theories, as you have stated, but they are not concurrent with what is generally believed to be true.

>the previous species would dissapear through interbreeding with a newly deviated species.
This is not how how we get new species works. We get new species by taking one population , splitting it apart and and isolating the 2 (or more) populations from each other. Left alone, these species will acquire random mutations, some possibly advantageous to their current environment, and each separate population will gain it's own mutations.

After MANY generations, these two populations may become so different from each other that they cannot interbreed even if brought back together, (even though their ancestors came from the same population).

This is a spot were evolutionary biology gets iffy, because sometimes organisms that we consider separate species are still able to mate with each other and produce viable offspring.

So basically what I'm saying is, we do not get new species due to interbreeding with "newly deviated species"

Every single organism alive today, bacteria, protists, plants, animals, things we haven't discovered yet, everything, is just as evolved as everything else on the planet.
There are species which have barely changed at all because they were already super awesome at surviving and passing on their genes. (like lampreys over the last 360 million years)
To put that in perspective, homo sapiens have been here for less than a million years.


>and its likely thats what happened with homo sapiens, neanderthals, erectus etc etc we bred with them and through that phased them out in favour of our species.

Again, not how evolution works. We don't assimilate genes. Unless you count Viral DNA...but you don't mean that...

It's much more likely that we out competed the other homo species and that one of them would have been dominant had our species never existed.

I like how many posters are discussing building computers and plastic and mining specific minerals for construction

when the biggest effect is that fucking 99% of humanity is going to starve within a week

>>3882994

Well that part isn't as interesting. You build shelter and hunt food while trying to farm. Most will fail, most will die. The end.

But building a computer with NO tools? No one person would be able to do it. Even a dozen people, it would take about a hundred with exactly the right knowledge. It's an exciting thing to discuss.

Do you have any idea how many tries it will take to do something simple like create a metal tool? Even a small % of contamination or the wrong temperature for the wrong length of time will result in something that shatters. Every one of the thousands of steps for making a computer will have this problem.

>>3883503
>Do you have any idea how many tries it will take to do something simple like create a metal tool? Even a small % of contamination or the wrong temperature for the wrong length of time will result in something that shatters.
You're exaggerating the difficulty, as is common amongst modern peoples. They tend to think technology has to be incomprehensibly precise and delicate...
It doesn't.
Making metal tools is not that hard, at all. Steel is difficult and complex, sure, but it's doable. Bronze, brass, or crude iron? Simple as fuck for someone who knows what they're doing.

It wouldn't take any large number of attempts to come up with good results.

For fuck's sake, people have been doing it with the absolute crudest of methods and utter lack of knowledge for millennia.

>>3878456
Would take like a week(not even) if that was the explicit goal.(unless every just starves, we could pretty much have to resort to cannibalism)

>>3883514

They failed many many times and the few who succeeded spread the word. By the time we were making metal tools we had roads and horses and infrastructure. We will have none of that.

Take a look what happens when someone tries to make a simple appliance from scratch:

ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch.html

>>3878456

Humans would probably way outnumber the natural carrying capacity that we have increased via technology. We rely on agriculture and many of us would probably starve without it.

>>3883596
>horses
>effects of human existence
besides, they had to do it through trial and error
there are people in the world who know how to do it even today, not many, sure, but they're around to spread the word

>>3883596
>Take a look what happens when someone tries to make a simple appliance from scratch:

fortunately humanity won't be made up of 7 billion people living in total isolation

>>3883609

There are people who can do "it" the problem is there are thousands of "its" and the people would die of starvation before coming into contact with each other.

ive wondered this myself, kind of like if say the 100,000 smartest scientists of many different fields were dropped into a 'garden of eden style planet, how long would it take to have the technology we have now.

>>3883596
>implying that that's relevant
>implying that's analagous

>>3883609
>not many
More than there were in 2000 BC or 1000 AD, I can promise you that. And with much greater understanding.

I doubt anyone would have then necessary primitive survival skills to survive. The ones that survived would spend their lifetimes perfecting their skills by building simple tools and weapons. Most would be looking for the right opportunities to domesticate animals and farm. I dont know about you but all the times that I've been hiking or in the woods, Ive never seen a wild corn stalk, or a wild potato. Think about how hard it would be to capture a wild animal using a trap like a snare, and then capturing a mate for it. It takes a large population and functioning economy to employ miners and to have people dedicated to specific jobs. It would take generations and generations just for that. I guess you could write some basic principles against the wall of a cave or something before you died. someone might get lucky and discover it 3000 or so years later when people are able to employ such ideas.