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Assume there is a small group of people, or a colony, with limited resources, who have all the knowledge of the world, but very few of its gadgets. How long will it take to rebuild the world to the level we see around us today?

This question is important in two contexts:

  1. If something, either natural or man-made, destroys the Earth, and only a tiny group of people remains in underground bunkers or in space colonies. After the destruction, a few hundred, thousand or million years, nature recovers, as it always did, and the survivors can come to the surface. Nothing remained of pre-apocalyptic technology. How long will it take to rebuild it? They have only a few computers and memory chips in which they preserved all of our knowledge, and maybe a few basic tools carried with them.

  2. We discover a second Earth in reachable distance, and send a generation spaceship to colonize it. After hundreds, thousands or millions of years, the spaceship arrives. It carries all the knowledge of the world, and can even receive updates from Earth, but has very limited resources. How long will it take to build a new world, using almost exclusively the resources they find at their destination?

jdunlop
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pintergabor
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  • why would they even want to do that? our world of today is far from perfect. – ths Dec 26 '20 at 20:03
  • @ths I am sorry, the question was: can they, and not if they want to. I agree that, given the chance, it would be possible to build a better world. But, if I asked the question that way, it would be too broad. – pintergabor Dec 26 '20 at 20:15
  • Less time than it took us to build it in the first place. With tech and untapped resources your primary limiter is population growth. – candied_orange Dec 26 '20 at 21:18
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    (1) What's the purpose of this question? Suppose that an answer tells you that it would take 2500 years. How does that help? (2) Crucial pieces of information are missing from the question, which are essential if somebody were to be so kind and construct a timeline for you: (2.a) How many women are there in the initial population? (2.b) Specifically what do they have initially? (2.c) What is their initial ideology? That is, do they treat women like cattle to produce the maximum number of children, or is there something like our European view of women's rights? – AlexP Dec 26 '20 at 21:51
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    Maybe they could bring some improved 3d printers. – NomadMaker Dec 26 '20 at 22:29
  • In addition to AlexP's excellent points: how will they store all that knowledge for a million years? To say nothing of the next 200 years! Computers and memory chips will be utterly useless: look into the concept of bit rot to discover exactly how fragile our e-data will be in a post-Pockyclyptic future! – elemtilas Dec 27 '20 at 05:45
  • As @elemtilas indicates, a hundred thousand or a million years is a totally unrealistic timescale for a bunker full of survivors. Humans didn't look like humans even 50 000 years ago. A million years from now, we won't be humans as we define them today. – jdunlop Dec 28 '20 at 07:51
  • Pick one question please. – John Dec 29 '20 at 02:27
  • Does this answer your question? If all our technology disappeared, how long would it take to make a smart phone? – Rekesoft Dec 29 '20 at 07:00

2 Answers2

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Big difference between the two scenarios. In the first you have all the scientific, technical and cultural knowledge of Earths society prior to the 'fall' BUT you don't have the resources or more importantly the numbers and experience to rebuild. No matter how brilliant your small group is there are literally thousands of specializations from book binding through to nuclear fusion research you would have to know and be experienced in to succeed.

And then, even if did have the numbers and skills you wont have all the components and tools you'd need, the parts and raw materials. All the millions of inputs, the 'pieces' from paper clips, perfume to electric motors needed to rebuild the Earth as it was. Which you don't because everything has been blown up. The team couldn't build a hair dryer from scratch let alone civilization.

At best the survivors could eek out an existence recycling parts from the ruins of civilization - taking old objects like cars apart, then repurposing them for basic needs like wagons! As a long term plan they could extract basic survival information from their system then work to seal off/preserve that system until the population base is large enough and advanced enough to start making use of it. Which could take hundreds of years. Basically becoming part teachers and librarians.

In your second scenario you are by default sending a group large enough and diverse enough to prosper upon arrival. And since they're on a colonization mission not a suicide mission this group will have all the skill-sets they need to survive. They will also have all the equipment they need to 'boot strap' basic industrial production using whatever raw materials they find when they arrive. (You don't send someone to Mars with nothing but a inflatable tent, a pick and a shovel and tell them to 'have at it' - they go with everything the mission planners expect them to need). Finally they will also have access to the best technical advice available from home, even if it takes some years to arrive. No-one is helping the first group at all.

So while the colony may be short on shopping malls, art galleries and yacht clubs for a few generations there will be enough housing, farms, factories and mines etc to power expansion. In short the second group DOES have everything they need to reboot civilization. So not long at all.

Mon
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First scenario, it's unlikely they can, period.

A group that small can only sustain a very low tech level, they're going to have to breed back up before technology is even possible--at which point their store of knowledge is no longer readable.

Even if it is readable there's a big problem of resources--mining (and it's relative, drilling) are simply not options, anything that could be reached with primitive capabilities has already been taken. The only source to mine is the ruins--and by then all the stuff of interest will have oxidized away.

Loren Pechtel
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