Re:Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?
by lmm on Friday November 13, 2020 @02:27AM
(#25079903)
It's not though - it's a whole interlinked ecosystem of industry and even if you have the knowledge that doesn't mean you'd be able to bootstrap. A simple example is that most wind turbines today are likely built from steel that was made in an electric arc furnace, which themselves require massive amounts of electricity to run. (And that's just the basic material, to say nothing of the tools and processes you need to actually build one).
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Re:Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?
by jacobush on Friday November 13, 2020 @02:47AM
(#25080028)
It’s one thing to build highly optimised things and another to build things that work just well enough.
Re:Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?
by lmm on Friday November 13, 2020 @03:41AM
(#25080355)
"Just well enough" may not be enough to rebuild society with. The Greeks didn't lack the knowledge of how to make a steam engine - they had novelty steam engines - but they lacked the industrial base that could actually make them productive.
Re:Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction?
by trhway on Friday November 13, 2020 @04:44AM
(#25080703)
i imagine how in the year 3000 the people will be arguing why the people of the 21st century, i.e. we, wouldn't build say a fusion engines and power generators (we do have "novelty" fusion devices) , or may be even FTL space ship when it happens to be such a simple thing :) We probably have the tech for the fusion, or very close to it, yet we don't know how to put it together and/or in what direction to make that small final push.