While I loved the idea behind Atlas Shrugged, I had the same thoughts about how such a small group of super-producers isn’t realistic. Also, the novel ends on a happy note as the bad guys’ government is collapsing, as if the hard part is over and now it will be easy for Galt’s people to rebuild society. But the reality is that a society once collapsed into anarchy is a VERY hard thing to rebuild! I appreciate Rand’s ideas but I just don’t have the optimism to think it would be an easy task. A Canticle for Leibowitz strikes me as the far more realistic scenario, unfortunately.
The dissertation I'm sweating my way through at the moment deals with two guys who pulled the swirling wreckage of a broken culture together, and built a new world in the middle of a maelstrom. One was a fifth century African Christian. The other, a 20th century secular Muslim.
I don't know. I haven't read the book (or even heard of it before now) but the premise, that advanced knowledge is forgotten by all but a self chosen few as a consequence of societal collapse, doesn't seem plausible.
But the other aspect, leading the masses out of something resembling anarchy, would still be problematic. There will more than likely be enclaves, lots of them, who would prefer their present circumstances over a return to something more like that which had nearly ruined them.
It would naturally evolve to that over time, but Galt or anyone else coming in and extolling the virtue of shipping the bounty to New York, isn't going to be universally popular in the beginning.