January 12, 2004
Hokay.
Given my current line of research, this is incredibly funny and appropriate. Also vulgar, so be warned.
We put the 'spec' in 'spec fic'
Okay all you intelligentsia. Major catastrophe wipes out civilization as we know it. Human existence is limited to small pockets of survivors here and there. Most of our modern infrastructure is gone, blown down by violent winds, flooded, burned in massive fires--or quite possibly all of the above. The environment is ravaged.
The question is: how long does it take humanity to reach our current level of technological advancement and then pass it? Some of the knowledge is still there, after all, even if it's limited to (as an example) "well, I know space travel was possible once, but nobody from NASA survived..."
In The Stand, humans were back to their old ways within a year, but that's because everything was "just lying around, waiting to be picked up again". What if there's nothing left to pick up but occasional scraps and maybe a cache of information here and there? What if most of what's left is simply a collective memory of what we used to have? How many years will rebuilding take then?
Discuss.
