Post-apocryphal society?

[CanadysPeak]

What are your thoughts about stabilizing at a steam-driven technology? Or a water-powered one?

Well, I think it all could and eventually probably would be recoverable. The appropriate knowledge would be out there in books (of course anything stored on electronic media only would more likely be lost). Sooner or later someone would mine all the old Popular Mechanics magazines, etc.

I think the realquestion Paul might be posing is how far things would get without the trappings of a state-level society. I don't see how, frankly, as that has never really been done even though people do like to point to small-scale "utopian" societies that managed for a while on the outskirts of larger states. I would bet that once populations stabilized (there would definitely be a very severe demographic "adjustment"), the closest you would really get to a stabile form of political structure would be something along the lines of feudalism.

Yeah, I guess a lot of the knowledge-base is out there somewhere. That brings us back to Ursa's point. In an era of no treated water, won't anyone who knows how to make beer or wine have a higher social status than, say, a marketing consultant? Of course, I suspect most ex-cons have some knowledge in this area? Interesting.

One of the problems in doing a reset in technology is that some of the things which were common knowledge two hundred years ago aren't now. If you look in an old text book and you see to grease ramps with "red ram's oil" or such, what the hell does that mean? Even something as simple as trying to make steel out of "red-short ore" is likely to puzzle people.

And, suppose we go back, for example, to wind-powered ships. Where do we find those tall cedars for masts? What did we cut them all down for? I have great doubts.

[Paul Anthony]

I think the realquestion Paul might be posing is how far things would get without the trappings of a state-level society. I don't see how, frankly, as that has never really been done even though people do like to point to small-scale "utopian" societies that managed for a while on the outskirts of larger states. I would bet that once populations stabilized (there would definitely be a very severe demographic "adjustment"), the closest you would really get to a stabile form of political structure would be something along the lines of feudalism.

My position may seem naive. Hollywood has given us a steady stream of movies depicting the sort of dog-eat-dog scenarios you describe, but (unlike Canada) a lot of average Americans are armed. I'm guessing most of the survivors would be. Unless someone collected a lot of military weapons, it would be difficult for a would-be tyrant to rise to power. When the citizenry is armed, a government isn't needed for protection. I think we would see pockets of people cooperating in order to survive, and part of survival would be the establishment of citizen militias. Some parts of the country still successfully rely upon volunteer fire departments, so why not volunteers for other needed services?

[Forest_Dump]

My position may seem naive. Hollywood has given us a steady stream of movies depicting the sort of dog-eat-dog scenarios you describe, but (unlike Canada) a lot of average Americans are armed. I'm guessing most of the survivors would be. Unless someone collected a lot of military weapons, it would be difficult for a would-be tyrant to rise to power. When the citizenry is armed, a government isn't needed for protection. I think we would see pockets of people cooperating in order to survive, and part of survival would be the establishment of citizen militias. Some parts of the country still successfully rely upon volunteer fire departments, so why not volunteers for other needed services?

I will answer the last question first because it is easier. There are definite differences between volunteers and professionals. As a rule, professionals are those who can devote all their time to things like training so tend to be better at what they do. I have worked with amateurs and dolike working with them but I have found that, at the very least, you do need a trained professional to coordinate and motivate them as well as do alot of the tedious and even nasty work that volunteers may not want to do. Of course, I also know that in some areas the wages of professionals has slipped so that there may not still be that much difference. As the old saying goes, sometimes you get what you pay for.

Getting back to the idea of armed citizenry, that is actually the way it was way, way back (and discussed in Earle's book, mentioned above). Prior to any complex society, everyone had full access to all the weapons they wanted, and they were "state of the art", because the raw materials were readily available and the technology was relatively easy to master. So, it would seem on the basis of both archaeological and modern ethnological evidence, military power was totally invested in the capabilities of the individual and extremely unstable with lots of room for treachery, etc. However, more stable complex political organization becomes possible when elite individuals are able to control the means of production. In the case of the Norse, the key component was control of metal smiths so that the more advanced, effective and complicated weapons would be under the control of the elite. In other cases, this is enhanced by the ability to control economic power so that surpluses can be used to provision professional soldiers. But even these may not be enough in at least some cases. In places like Vietnam and the more recent wars in sw Asia, seemingly "primitive" combatants appear to have dealt pretty severe blows to more powerfully armed, better trained and better provisioned professional soldiers because they had superior ideological power. However things have, may or will turn out, communism in Vietnam and Muslim extremism in sw Asia was enough to curtail economic and military power. In your scenario for North America, I would say that if something like Christianity or some ideal of patriotism can be controlled by some kind of elite, then you have the makings of a hierarchical form of government not much different than what we have now or perhaps, under the conditions you propose, with even less freedoms than we have now - not hard to imagine the powers to be declaring some kind of state of national emergency and clamping down on just about everything, maybe even with some kind of boogyman to point to because paranoia is pretty easy to exploit.

[Paul Anthony]

Forest,

Of course, this is all speculation - albeit based on historical data.

I think the lack of both transportation and long-distance communication would make large-scale organization unlikely. Certainly, a silver-tongued charlatan could organize those within earshot and raise havoc with those who refused to join him, but I am envisioning small groups of survivors separated from other small groups.

Presumably, each group would have something in their past that would have already link them - whether it is an extended family, a neighborhood or perhaps members of a church. Each group would be free to either band together, forming co-ops for their mutual well-being, or fighting amongst themselves until there was no one left standing. I suspect there would be more of the former than of the latter.

But, that may be wishful thinking!

[Forest_Dump]

I think the lack of both transportation and long-distance communication would make large-scale organization unlikely.

Well, the Romans managed a pretty far-flung empire. I would think a similar kind of group could as easily manage today to pull something together out of the ruins. Not sure I would want to be living in that kind of a context though.

[Paul Anthony]

Well, the Romans managed a pretty far-flung empire. I would think a similar kind of group could as easily manage today to pull something together out of the ruins. Not sure I would want to be living in that kind of a context though.

How long did it take for the Roman empire to grow strong enough to conquer other states? I'm not sure we'd last long enough.

********************************

I started this thread to pick the brains of my esteemed colleagues, because I was considering installing a solar array for emergency power during the day and batteries for night. I already had a pretty good idea of the cost (it varies depending on how comfortable I want to be). I also considered the practicality of storing food and water, but there is only so much storage space... I think I could survive not much longer than 3 months IF I had no cooperation from others and IF I didn't get robbed, but what then?

Thank you all for your input. I have reached a conclusion that Forest aptly articulated:

...in essence, almost no one survives and when you get down to it, they are not the lucky ones.

[Forest_Dump]

I was considering installing a solar array for emergency power during the day and batteries for night.

Personally, depending on where I live next, I could go one of two ways. A friend of mine not too far away, drills "off the books" gas wells for a living and if I lived down that way, that's how I would go. On the other hand, not too far north in the Canadian Shield country, geothermal is becoming popular but it is a bit more pricey (about $30 k). Still, neither will run out for a century or more although geothermal may need more maintenance.

[Paul Anthony]

Naturally, living in the desert, solar is the most abundant source of power for me. It wouldn't make much sense to erect a few windmills, since the wind rarely exceeds 5 miles per hour. When it does, it blows hard enough to knock down windmills!

If I covered the entire south-facing portion of my roof with panels, I could generate about 1,000 KWH per month. As long as I stored what I didn't consume during the day, theoretically I could enjoy my current lifestyle 9 months out of the year - keeping food cold, cooking, heating and cooling my house, watching an occasional movie or listening to CD's. I could even power my computer and keep a diary. I would have to conserve a lot in order to survive the summer months, but it's doable.

But if I ran out of water, what difference would all that power make?

[DragonFly]

Post-apocryphal society…

This is not just hypothetical, for global warming will come to burn and flood, in an exponential manner.

[Paul Anthony]

Before you tout global warming as the only truth, you might want to wait for a paper soon to be released. It states, in part:

A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward.

The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locations, and a trend of +0.309 C per decade after NOAA adjusts the data. This issue of station siting quality is expected to be an issue with respect to the monitoring of land surface temperature throughout the Global Historical Climate Network and in the BEST network.

This pre-publication draft paper, titled An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends, is co-authored by Anthony Watts of California, Evan Jones of New York, Stephen McIntyre of Toronto, Canada, and Dr. John R. Christy from the Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama, Huntsville.

In plain English, reading temperatures over time from the same locations - without giving consideration to the growth of the area - can lead to erroneous projections of temperature increases that are merely the result of heat-sinks created by new construction. Cities hold heat. Duh!

[DragonFly]

In plain English, reading temperatures over time from the same locations - without giving consideration to the growth of the area - can lead to erroneous projections of temperature increases that are merely the result of heat-sinks created by new construction. Cities hold heat. Duh!

Yes, I realize, and am really only using global warming as a possibility, so as to have something more actual to reference, and the ice caps are melting, Greenland is without snow cover, and this is already the hottest 12 months in recorded history.

[LowLight]

Many people fear death and panic stricken society but, subconsciously, humans fear losing what makes their life easy. Those who can bring back that lifestyle would be most valued however equality would be closer due to the destruction of conventional social structure.

[CanadysPeak]

Before you tout global warming as the only truth, you might want to wait for a paper soon to be released. It states, in part:

A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward.

The new improved assessment, for the years 1979 to 2008, yields a trend of +0.155C per decade from the high quality sites, a +0.248 C per decade trend for poorly sited locations, and a trend of +0.309 C per decade after NOAA adjusts the data. This issue of station siting quality is expected to be an issue with respect to the monitoring of land surface temperature throughout the Global Historical Climate Network and in the BEST network.

This pre-publication draft paper, titled An area and distance weighted analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends, is co-authored by Anthony Watts of California, Evan Jones of New York, Stephen McIntyre of Toronto, Canada, and Dr. John R. Christy from the Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama, Huntsville.

In plain English, reading temperatures over time from the same locations - without giving consideration to the growth of the area - can lead to erroneous projections of temperature increases that are merely the result of heat-sinks created by new construction. Cities hold heat. Duh!

McIntyre? McIntyre? Evan Jones? Isn't that a bit like asking Imelda Marcos a good place to get old shoes resoled? C'mon, Paul, we're not simpletons here. Few of us will buy anything McIntyre says about climate change. Please use real authorities. There are some on your side, but McIntyre is not one of them.

[Paul Anthony]

I recently read about something called "hour banks", particularly "Hour Exchange Portland".

Let’s say you’re good at fixing computers. You help a neighbor or resident of the same town for an hour with their computers. Doing that earns you an hour credit that you can use toward an hour of someone else’s time, whether it’s health care or home repair.

Along with greasing the wheels of the local economy, a time bank helps alleviate the problems of unemployment and underemployment. It also gives you knowledge of who has which skills - which would be very handy information in the event of a collapse in society!

I mention it here because the system values every skill equally, whether it is a doctor's hour of time or an hour of the time of a mechanic, or a baker. This ties in with my premise that a new society might actually value everyone equally. But a funny thing happened when I read about Time Banks. Suddenly, it didn't seem fair!

Should we value a service by the amount of time it takes to perform it, or by the amount of time the end-product serves us? If you fix my car, and I get to use it for many months, is that not worth more than if you prepare a meal that leaves me hungry before the day is through?

If labor is to be equated with currency, as time-banks do, labor-intensive tasks would be worth more than less labor-intense tasks. Also, an expert mechanic can fix my car a lot faster than an amateur. How is the amateur's time equal to the professional's?

(BTW, the attraction at present is a little fact that the IRS considers barter to be taxable, but time exchanges are not - yet.)