Stone Age, or some form of Scavenger-age in not much better shape than stone age.
Almost all of the accessible surface minerals have been mined. That means if the production chain collapses everything goes to shit. We cannot mine and refine the materials we need without heavy and specialized machinery. No reboot. The minerals are inaccessible. That machinery’s production relies on a huge amount of materials, from energy to electronics, and the logistical network to put it all together.
Our production chain is very discrete in a lot of ways. Electronics made one place, smelting another, fuel by ships, food over here, lithium someplace, copper somewhere else, iron from far away, medication over there, clothing someplace else. If the global network fails, that’s it. People starve. The specialized knowledge is lost to make things. Systems fail rapidly. The manufacturing of electronics quits, along with the rest of the supply chain. People probably eat all the seeds for crops. Lack of pesticide and fertilizer, plus climate change, wipes out yields for many. No way to harvest enough or transport it anywhere. Small pockets of humans might survive, but it’s gonna be hand-to-mouth or subsistence farming at best.
You’d go back in time quite a ways pretty quickly. People living tribally in the more remote parts of the world would maybe survive depending on how nasty climate change gets.
Stone Age, or some form of Scavenger-age in not much better shape than stone age.
Almost all of the accessible surface minerals have been mined. That means if the production chain collapses everything goes to shit. We cannot mine and refine the materials we need without heavy and specialized machinery. No reboot. The minerals are inaccessible. That machinery’s production relies on a huge amount of materials, from energy to electronics, and the logistical network to put it all together.
Our production chain is very discrete in a lot of ways. Electronics made one place, smelting another, fuel by ships, food over here, lithium someplace, copper somewhere else, iron from far away, medication over there, clothing someplace else. If the global network fails, that’s it. People starve. The specialized knowledge is lost to make things. Systems fail rapidly. The manufacturing of electronics quits, along with the rest of the supply chain. People probably eat all the seeds for crops. Lack of pesticide and fertilizer, plus climate change, wipes out yields for many. No way to harvest enough or transport it anywhere. Small pockets of humans might survive, but it’s gonna be hand-to-mouth or subsistence farming at best.
You’d go back in time quite a ways pretty quickly. People living tribally in the more remote parts of the world would maybe survive depending on how nasty climate change gets.