I watched an interesting video yesterday about a fellow learning how to smelt tin so he could alloy it with copper (which he also learned how to smelt) so that he could make Bronze which was a revolutionary metal in it’s time which allowed mankind to emerge from the stone age. He’s also the author of a book on “How to Rebuild Civilization”.

The problem is that should a total Earth catastrophe occur people are NOT going to be making Bronze.

There is a quite good Sci-Fi/Fantasy book series by S.M. Stirling called “Dies the Fire” or the “Emberverse”. In it the characters are caught in what at first seems to be a worldwide EMP in which all modern technology fails. They survive the initial chaos and then start trying to rebuild. Almost the first thing they try to do is build steam engines to provide traction power for machine tools and electricity. But none of it works. Steam engines simply do not work. Gunpowder doesn’t explode but simply burns slowly. Batteries do no generate electricity. Nor does any other industrial age technology. They are FORCED back to medieval technology like swords and bows. It proceeds from there.

The point is that they had KNOWLEDGE of industrial age technology like steam engines, steel, gunpowder, electricity, telegraph but the author invokes a deus ex machina to prevent them from building such technology. Otherwise they would certainly have skipped the medieval age and jumped straight to the early industrial age. Thus they are forced into a medieval society.

And that is the issue I have with the focus on more primitive technology. I applaud this fellows efforts to learn smelting and alloying of Bronze. I LOVE learning old skills like that simply out of fascination. But it is NOT what will be needed after a collapse.

We KNOW about gunpowder and steam engines. We KNOW about electricity. We KNOW about the telegraph. We KNOW about railroads. We KNOW about refining petroleum. We know of the EXISTENCE of industrial age technologies even if we don’t know exactly how to make them ourselves. We KNOW they are possible and have at least theoretical knowledge of how they work.

So if/when there is an imposed collapse of our modern technology we are not going to be sitting around the fire trying to think of how to make Bronze swords.

We are going to be figuring out how to making gunpowder (milled or corned) until we can perfect gun cotton (smokeless), how to make primers in order to make more ammunition for our modern weapons (as long as they last), how to get an old (non-computerized) diesel engine running until we can build a steam engines, how to build gang plows out of old car steel, etc.

We’ll skip right over the swords and bows and armor medieval age (however great it is for fantasy books) and go right to the 18th and 19th century industrial age.

To illustrate the validity of the point even further, in Stirling’s companion series called “Island in the Sea of Time” the same event which destroyed technology in the former series transports the island of Nantucket to the Bronze Age. The characters in that series do just what you’d expect. They immediately start building an 18th and 19th century industrial base from which they manufacture modern technology to give them a massive edge over other societies. The story proceeds apace as they accomplish that and then interact with the Bronze Age civilizations.

It is a common theme. In Rally Cry by William Forstchen a Civil War regiment is transported to another world in the midst of a medieval war. They recreate 1800s technology. In Destroymen by Taylor Anderson a Destroyer is transposed from early WWII to a Bronze Age world. They rebuild 1800s technology. In the Axis of Time by John Birmingham a Modern Carrier Group gets transposed to early WWII where they help build a modern technology base for the Allies.

The theme is consistent. When people have to rebuild they build the most modern technology of which they are aware and capable. If someone KNOW about steel they are going to work on making THAT and not Bronze.

Reality will be the same. If one community builds bows and swords and another manufactures gunpowder and steam engine… history tells us how that ends.

The Librarian