Interesting question LB.
I can take technology up to simple electronics. I know how to make vacuum tubes and what not, and know enough about semiconductors to make diodes out of galena crystals.
So, barring the internal combustion engine's influence, approximately that of 1930.
Ah, but can you, say, blow the glass needed to create some of the hardware (I know you could make it out of other stuff, but those aren't a cakewalk either)? How to find, mine and refine all the various ores needed?
If nothing else, the thread is a nice reminder of how interconnected our world is, and how much we depend on each other and 'the system' to make things run.
As a matter of fact, I can.
Those are all things I have played with has hobbies over the years. Making the glass is not terribly hard. You just need a pot furnace. Copper is one of the few metals that appears in metallic form in nature, and can also be cold worked. To draw wire however, you will need an annealing oven. (It will get too brittle during the compressive forming process without being heated to anneal the metal) Copper is soft enough to use ceramic extrusion/forming dies. (Steel is too hard, even when hot.)
I mention copper, because you need a blow pipe to make the tubes from the glass melt in the crucible in your pot furnace. Copper has been a traditionally used material because of its versatility. You will need either wet paper or a damp sponge to work with the glass, and some copper cutting tools to work with the glass, as well as some wooden paddles, and a bucket of water. You will also need an annealing oven.
I would have to have a pretty elaborate set of workshops set up to take this process from raw minerals up to useful products. I doubt I would be able to do that and still have time to forage for, and or, grow crops for myself, unless I did all this kind of work in the winter.
Iron can be purified using the bessemer process-- just dont add any coke after blasting with the cold air. Bentonite clay is easily identified. (You probably know it better as "cat litter." You need it to make the refractory material for the smelter.)
The electronics I would be able to produce would be bulky and quite ghetto looking, (glass bottles full of saline, with copper, silver or gold vapor blown onto the outer surface using a lampwork torch to make a suitable flux layer, then plated in a thin metal coating to make ghetto electrolytic capacitors, etc.)
It would be sufficient to recreate primitive FM radios, Primitive CRTs (With a single phosphor type, so monochrome), etc. Theoretically, magnetrons could be fashioned by hand and fitted into suitable container to make ghetto microwave ovens, but that's wasteful given the suggested environment. The copper needed to make the farraday cage would be much better employed any number of other ways.
The above assumes I will find myself in a position where I would be able to access copper or copper ores though. That's not something to bet on. Glass is pretty much makable everywhere though. You just need a good silica source, know how to build a pot furnace, and need a sufficiently refractory clay body to work with to make the crucible. After that, it's just fuel. If push came to shove, home-made fuel pellets made from cut grass would work.
RE:Roy
Asthma: This is basically just an inflammatory disease. It can be "treated" in various low-tech ways,
including purposeful infection with helminths, and
also with capsicum from hot peppers (of all things.) They may not feel like a million dollars, but they wont die of an obstructed airway due to bronchial inflammation.
I am probably in that 5% figure you mention-- My dad is an old Korean war vet, who practiced his own unique brand of fatherly love by subjecting all his kids to deep survival training since infancy. (No, really.) I do not fear a technological collapse. I fear OTHER PEOPLE in a technological collapse, because I would be too valuable to be allowed to go free. (EG, once known about, no group struggling for survival would PERMIT me to leave them.)
RE: Purpetual Growth.
I am with Mainiac on that one. It is simply NOT POSSIBLE. No, the current economic status is built on a lie-- IT IS NOT SUSTAINABLE, AND CANNOT BE SUSTAINED, AND WILL FAIL. This is provable with simple mathematics. I would rather use my knowledge and skills to train a post-horror society how to survive stably and comfortably, and would loudly preach against any such "Purpetual growth" absurdity whenever I saw it rear its ugly head.
The problems we are having right now with global climate change? A natural consequence of that "Purpetual growth" bullshit. The earth is a zero sum system. You take something out to make a product with, and that something you took out is taken out. You dont get magically consequence free resources or products. It does not work that way. There's an ideal local maxima for the planet between humans and their environment. When you exceed that, shit goes to hell in a handbasket, global catastrophe style. "Denial" is not an appropriate strategy for dealing with that inevitable outcome.
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Topic: How far could you take technology if reduced to a primitive situation? (Read 7785 times)