Exactly. Imagine if something horrific happened—a mad virus or something like that—which wiped out 95% of mankind.
While we could probably get by for a half a generation on stuff that was left over...it would soon all break or just wear out. No more gas. No more power cells. No more electric pumps (new ones.)
If something like that happened to wipe a bunch of folks out, it would take the engineers and mechanics with it. It would be pretty grim, pretty fast.
The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm
https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Rebuild-Civilization-Aftermath-Cataclysm/dp/0143127047
“His account quickly progresses from raising crops to making soap, shearing and spinning wool, mining coal, generating electricity, and building radios. Of course, since this is all speculation, it’s hard to predict what people would be able to scavenge and what will be left intact or who might be on earth besides yourself. Dartnell doesn’t address questions of governing this survivors’ society or how people would collaborate on rebuilding or how hopeless some will feel without Google and smartphones. Still, Dartnell’s vision is a great start in understanding what it took to build our world. —Laurie Borman”
Exactly. Imagine if something horrific happened—a mad virus or something like that—which wiped out 95% of mankind.
While we could probably get by for a half a generation on stuff that was left over...it would soon all break or just wear out. No more gas. No more power cells. No more electric pumps (new ones.)
Check out Eric Flint’s 1632 book series. A town in West Virginia is transported from 2000 to 1631 in the middle of the Thirty Years War in Europe.
They dropped back to steam engines and leveraged present technology to that era. It’s amazing what you can do with old tech if you know it can be done. Within a few years they had flying machines and railroads.