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Re: I wouldn't posit "nothingness" either.
ER — (archived)

Socially, we're up to it. Technologically, I don't know. As I have pointed out earlier, unlike the Roman peasants who had to endure the collapse of the Empire, we don't now how to work metal, weave cloth, grow food, or train horses. Even our experts and craftsmen today are overspecialized, and our best farmers helpless without gasoline and electicity. Or to put it another way, I may be able to navigate a boat by the stars alone, but I can't weld aluminum or repair fiberglass, or replace dacron sails or nylon line with plant fiber. Realistically, my manual skills will be about as useful as an airline pilot's.

Recovery can rely on mining the blasted cities for materials and parts, but no one will know how to make a fire. How can you make gunpowder for your muzzle-loaded matchlock AK-47 when you can't get sulfur or saltpeter, even if you do have a chemistry degree?

A total collapse will only be survived in places like India, or the Andes, where people still know how to grow food and fiber, and where work animals are still trained and bred, and the blacksmith's trade is still taught to children. In those places, literacy will survive and the books will be treasured--until modern high-acid paper rots away.

A partial collapse? Who knows? Every time I try to imagine it, even the slightest change in the intitial assumptions leads to enormous differences in the speculative outcomes. After a generation or two, will we wind up Steampunkers, Bronze age farmers, Neolithic hunter-gatherers, or naked cannibals?

And on an unrelated note. Why did THEY get assigned the Red States? There is nothing wrong with Red. It is a color with legitimate and proud political connotations. There is nothing to be ashamed about Red. We should have embraced it for our own.

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