This brings to mind something David Mitchell said once on Would I Lie To You (British panel show):
In response to Kelvin MacKenzie’s claim that the “This Is My” guest had built him a nuclear bunker:
David Mitchell: If there’s a nuclear war, I don’t want to live…I have no skills. Okay, society is destroyed by a nuclear war, we’re basically - we’re back to the bronze age…how long is it gonna be before people start pitching panel shows again? It’s gonna be at least 2000 years!
(as quoted by TVTropes)
Watch it here if you want, it was annoyingly hard to find.
However I don’t think David - who is a comedian - is precisely right about how such a war would affect the state of technology. If there are survivors, I don’t think we’d really be back to the bronze age. Even if all technology was destroyed (which it wouldn’t be), give humans a few decades, we’ll have some sort of modern technology back up and running. Maybe not computers, but some certainly some analogue electronics - the knowledge isn’t lost. Communications would be one of the first points of focus, so television would follow closely behind.
peopleproblems@lemmy.world 3 months ago
The longest stretch would likely be chip fabs. You need precision electronics and hazardous chemicals and plenty of power.
But considering that some form of electronics will survive, and it wouldnt take long for people to get rudimentary electricity going, I don’t see why we couldn’t have world Internet within a decade.
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
Yeah, chip fabs are exactly why I think computers would need more time. I’m not super familiar with this, but I’d wager such a factory can only be built using tools and machines that come from other specialized factories, and so on maybe 3 levels down before you get to a relatively rudimentary manufacturing process that can be reasonably achieved within a few years. It would take a lot to get that back up and running.
Zoot@reddthat.com 3 months ago
However… Just think about how many chips are currently just sitting around… Between scrapping and searching you would likely be just fine for a few decades.
Mammothmothman@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
EMP would fry most of them though.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 3 months ago
By the time nuclear war happens, most chip manufacturing capability will be underground or in hidden sites and therefore not targeted.
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
How could you be sure of any of that? For all we know, nuclear war could start tomorrow. Or, a bit more realistically, next year. How fast can these factories be built?