The main reason we need all that power is for our creature comforts. We don't technically need them to survive but we don't know how to live without them anymore. There being billions of us doesn't help either. A rebooted humanity shouldn't have too much difficulty with that though.
Not at all. There will be books containing most human knowledge. It would be hard work for the rebooters to reacquire those skills but much, much easier than redeveloping them from scratch. Plus in many cases there will be artifacts around that can either be reused directly or as models.
> those trying to restart civilization will as well
Rebooting doesn't have to follow the same development path that we took to get here.
It would be very interesting and potentially important to try to find shorter, easier paths to modern technology. It's not obvious to me that such paths can't exist. If they do exist we can record them to guide future generations.
I'm only personally familiar with the (current) high end of technology, but for example once you get to the point where you're building microprocessors we know that you should build something simple like RISC-V which lets you skip generations of mistakes. If you actually build RISC-V then we can arrange to have a whole lot of archived software ready for you to use.
You say this as if it is a fact. It's a decent theory, but it's hardly so certain that you should write with such conviction.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Interference_Task_Forc...
Tree cover is actually increasing. Your comment reads like you've only ever seen a forest on TV... I suggest you step away from your computer screen and go for a hike.
And you underestimate how quickly forests will grow back. Sure, it will take maybe 100 years, but civilization was built in 4000, so there is no rush.
Also, Saudi Arabia is sitting on an ocean of oil, not that hard to extract.
There's also still a ton of easily accessible lignite everywhere, which our present civilization doesn't really care about for its inefficiency and ecological concerns.
It’s the ores which are going to be problematic. As well as the coal obviously but there charcoal is an option, just not as easy.
Better to use trees and wood for heat: The original solar power system.
For comparison, supposedly Teslas ship with 80 kWh = 288 MJ batteries. So you can take 14.6 baths with the energy in that battery.
That's more than I'd expected.
No it doesn't. Turning motion into electricity is fairly easy, and turning electricity into heat is even more so.
The biggest hurdle will be manufacturing quality mechanical parts, but you can do without quality in a pinch.
Also producing heat is a matter of survival, not civilization. We can safely assume people will at least be able to make a fire.
2. Make incrementally better tools. You don't need to get to the level of medieval clockmakers, just as long as you're not hitting metal with a rock.
3. Make a draw plate.
4. Make lots and lots of copper wire.
5. Build a water wheel whichever way you want.
6. Attach bigger wheel (TM) and connect to smaller wheel (TM) with a rope drive.
7. Use copper wire to build a power generator attached to smaller wheel (TM).
Unless humanity got completely wiped off the planet with no artifacts left behind, most of the above should not be necessary though.
I would recommend learning about what is involved in this step, before moving on to step 2.
https://acoup.blog/2020/09/18/collections-iron-how-did-they-...
This process is incredibly difficult, made moreso by the lack of easily accessible surface ore/coal. Also, keep in mind that when agricultural productivity is in the pits (Due to a lack of tooling, chemical feedstock, massive infrasturcture projects), and when you don't have the ability to make synthetic clothing (Which leads you to working with natural fibers, which is an incredibly labour-intensive process[1]), you aren't going to have the spare calories, or the hours in your day to 'just bootstrap a smithy'.
[1] https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-t...
But it's better to start with a magnet and stick to easy-to-debug stuff that can be eyeballed start to finish.
Try finding enough burnable wood near an emerging city/town to provide warmth and power while you restart civilization and I think you'll discover that humanity has already cut down the majority of the forests, tapped the majority of the oil Wells that can produce oil without lots of supporting tech, and mined most of the easily mineable coal. Sure, you can get a bit of power, but it's going to take a lot of both power and specialized skilled labor to restart our power sources civilization after a mass extinction event. The chances are extremely good that even if you can resume making babies you can't resume making the power those babies will need to achieve the goals we would have for them. On the surface of the Earth today it takes more power and skills to gain access to power than survivors are likely to have.