You assume that there would be an infrastructure collapse to the point where the energy economy cannot sustain post-Borlaug farming.
That won't happen unless the disruption happens so instantly that the energy sector doesn't have time to backslide to Victorian era technologies that could sustain it (like bringing back coal gasification for example).
You don't get the yeoman farmer back unless the entire energy sector is an instant smoking crater. And even that will only be temporary.
Then we have a semantic issue. You introduced collapse; I now think you meant slowly deflate. I have no horse in that race. If it became clear that this was the trajectory, I would sympathize with the accelerationists and redpin aquafers, nuclear powered facilities, dams, and grid tied energy production as barriers to progress.
Yeah I'm still trying to figure out what race you're running.
My perception is that you want to return to a pre-Borlaug yeoman farmer America. But you're being evasive on how the fuck that would happen.
That hasn't even happened in fucking South Africa. WAR IS NOT ENOUGH to bring that kind of backslide. It's too slow.
If you want Amish America, great as that may sound, you need to explain what you are envisioning will happen to make it so. Because I don't see any way of that happening short of OVERWHELMINGLY catastrophic instantaneous damage that knocks out the energy economy on a global scale. War alone won't do that.
Supply chain collapse, and or extended down comms occuring simultaneously with a biological weapon capable of > 30% mortality. The devastation from sudden unexpected disruption of pharmaceutical dependency and substance abuse withdrawl alone would be unprecedented. I know many people under 30 years old, who cannot tell the time on an analog clock face, or cook a nutritious meal, let alone kill one. I am personally terrified how presently fragile and interdependent ascendant and peaking generations are currently. The simple detatchment from nature in its totality leads me to believe it would require precious little to decimate the majority of 2 standing generations.
Realistically this won't happen without a collapse of the energy economy. Oh, we can have shortages, or complete runouts. But the system keeps churning as long as people can get food, which is predicated on energy. Fuel to move food around, and electricity to keep it cold (and/or make it hot). If people can't buy clothes, widgets, or shit from ikea, modernity doesn't end, people just go without shit they probably didn't need anyway.
Loss of communications is itself not sufficient to trigger a total failure of energy and food distribution. Because those systems operate partly on MOMENTUM, whether bureaucratic or mechanical. Piggly Wiggly opened decades before they had computers in every store and they did fine. Hell, the store I worked in as a kid only had a proper actual computer to track video rentals. Whenever we got a truck, we gave the driver our (on paper) order for the next shipment. Literally sneakernet.
Now, as for your point about a biological attack... unlikely to happen. Explaining WHY it's unlikely to happen would require going into pages about R0. Oh, you can make deadly biological agents. But they generally have to be deployed in the same fashion as chemicals. They're paradoxically TOO lethal to actually spread in the wild. LIke, literally, a virus that deadly is not likely to be that transmissible.
You could pick up a handful of dirt and there are deadlier viruses in your hand then man could think up. But they're too deadly to be effectively weaponized on a large scale, you have to keep manufacturing it, it's R0 in the wild will simply be too low.
Spanish flu is the sweet spot. You really can't expect more from a readily transmissible virus. There are deadlier, they don't spread anywhere near as fast or easily. There are faster spreading, they aren't as deadly. It's a biological balancing act.
You missed my point entirely.
You assume that there would be an infrastructure collapse to the point where the energy economy cannot sustain post-Borlaug farming.
That won't happen unless the disruption happens so instantly that the energy sector doesn't have time to backslide to Victorian era technologies that could sustain it (like bringing back coal gasification for example).
You don't get the yeoman farmer back unless the entire energy sector is an instant smoking crater. And even that will only be temporary.
Then we have a semantic issue. You introduced collapse; I now think you meant slowly deflate. I have no horse in that race. If it became clear that this was the trajectory, I would sympathize with the accelerationists and redpin aquafers, nuclear powered facilities, dams, and grid tied energy production as barriers to progress.
Yeah I'm still trying to figure out what race you're running.
My perception is that you want to return to a pre-Borlaug yeoman farmer America. But you're being evasive on how the fuck that would happen.
That hasn't even happened in fucking South Africa. WAR IS NOT ENOUGH to bring that kind of backslide. It's too slow.
If you want Amish America, great as that may sound, you need to explain what you are envisioning will happen to make it so. Because I don't see any way of that happening short of OVERWHELMINGLY catastrophic instantaneous damage that knocks out the energy economy on a global scale. War alone won't do that.
CME
Supply chain collapse, and or extended down comms occuring simultaneously with a biological weapon capable of > 30% mortality. The devastation from sudden unexpected disruption of pharmaceutical dependency and substance abuse withdrawl alone would be unprecedented. I know many people under 30 years old, who cannot tell the time on an analog clock face, or cook a nutritious meal, let alone kill one. I am personally terrified how presently fragile and interdependent ascendant and peaking generations are currently. The simple detatchment from nature in its totality leads me to believe it would require precious little to decimate the majority of 2 standing generations.
Good.
Realistically this won't happen without a collapse of the energy economy. Oh, we can have shortages, or complete runouts. But the system keeps churning as long as people can get food, which is predicated on energy. Fuel to move food around, and electricity to keep it cold (and/or make it hot). If people can't buy clothes, widgets, or shit from ikea, modernity doesn't end, people just go without shit they probably didn't need anyway.
Loss of communications is itself not sufficient to trigger a total failure of energy and food distribution. Because those systems operate partly on MOMENTUM, whether bureaucratic or mechanical. Piggly Wiggly opened decades before they had computers in every store and they did fine. Hell, the store I worked in as a kid only had a proper actual computer to track video rentals. Whenever we got a truck, we gave the driver our (on paper) order for the next shipment. Literally sneakernet.
Now, as for your point about a biological attack... unlikely to happen. Explaining WHY it's unlikely to happen would require going into pages about R0. Oh, you can make deadly biological agents. But they generally have to be deployed in the same fashion as chemicals. They're paradoxically TOO lethal to actually spread in the wild. LIke, literally, a virus that deadly is not likely to be that transmissible.
You could pick up a handful of dirt and there are deadlier viruses in your hand then man could think up. But they're too deadly to be effectively weaponized on a large scale, you have to keep manufacturing it, it's R0 in the wild will simply be too low.
Spanish flu is the sweet spot. You really can't expect more from a readily transmissible virus. There are deadlier, they don't spread anywhere near as fast or easily. There are faster spreading, they aren't as deadly. It's a biological balancing act.