Re:Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?
by xxpor on Thursday November 12, 2020 @08:50PM
(#25077913)
Could we not bootstrap with coal? There's still plenty left. Oil would be an issue though.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?
by PeterisP on Thursday November 12, 2020 @10:13PM
(#25078397)
We've dug out almost all the easily accessible minerals - we're currently mining minerals that are cheaply accessible to us with modern technology, but the ones that were cheaply accessible to pre-industrial civilizations are long gone.
For some minerals (e.g. metals) that might possible even be a bonus, as we've brought it up to the surface and it might be more accessible than before (a scrapyard that's buried under some soil could be an excellent place to mine iron), but there won't be shallow coal or shallow oil that a second industrialization could use as a cheap power source.
Re:Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?
by marcosdumay on Thursday November 12, 2020 @09:38PM
(#25078188)
There isn't any easy to get coal anymore, just as any other fuel.
We may be able to start low scale stuff to bootstrap renewables, but if we lose our knowledge, things get much harder.