What if through some act of nature or man, civilazation was destroyed(Nuclear,comet,greenhouse,or other). How long before man was back to develping new civilazations, and would any thing be left of our world for them to discover. Would they try to emulate the monuments or claim them as their own. WOuld they carve their names into mount Rushmore, or change the faces of our great leaders into theirs? Would they remeber a time of greatness a golden age when men could fly in the sky, or would they think we were gods.

You would be instantly thrown back into the stone age.
We wouldn't be able to rebuild because no one would know how, It would be my dream come true.

My sister and I discussed this. I thought that maybe it would be an answer to a lot of problems our society has. Maybe if we were more worried about survival and needing each and every individual in the family, we would gain some values that are missing.

you dont know that what if a select few were chosen to populate the underground facilities that would survive chaos.

Yes that is true that we would be thrown to the stone age. But what would happen afterwards?

We'd likely invent a new set of social woes over time, and look on the ruins of todays society like we look at the ruins of other ancient half understood cultures.

True enough. If history hasn't taught us anything by now....but still, there could be pockets of people that would learn from it. Sometimes we have to remember to not be so pessimistic and actually appreciate that humans do have some redeeming qualities.

Depends on where those are that survive. A scattered group of survivors (i.e. less than 1 per 10 square kilometers) , I guess several thousand years. If there is a cluster of survivors in the first world big enough in this situation ( more than 1000), less than 1000 years. If there are several clusters divide exponentially for each cluster.

If more than 10 million (of the near 4 billion on the planet!) survive in the first world and in developing countriesI guess it would be less than 100 years before everything is back to the level it is now.

Microsoft Would Declare "One World Order"

Scientists Theories.............

Natural Disasters:

Asteroid impact
Gamma-ray burst
Collapse of the vacuum
Rogue black holes
Giant solar flares
Reversal of Earth's magnetic field
Flood-basalt volcanism
Global epidemics(germs/diseases etc)


Human-Triggered Disasters:

Global warming
Ecosystem collapse
Biotech disaster
Particle accelerator mishap
Nanotechnology disaster..........
Environmental toxins


Willful Self-Destruction:

Global war
Robots take over..........
Mass insanity..............................


A Greater Force Is Directed Against Us

Alien invasion.....
Divine intervention...............
Someone wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.....



All the above detailed on web page...
20 WAYS THE EARTH COULD END

It all depends upon HOW catastrophic it is...Man might not even survive it. But I've always felt that 10000 years from now, they're going to think we worshopped at the Golden Arches and that Mickey Mouse is some kind of God.....

I think about this question a lot. Our world is a finely tuned machine. We are able to do the things we do in science and technology because we can depend on all the different building blocks below to do their job. If we run out of one of the basic and vitally important building blocks, like oil for instance, everything else at the top is either slowed or stopped completely. That one weak link, in this case oil, can cause the collapse of everything: no oil means slower production/transportation, slower production and transportation means less availability of basic needs such as food (it's pretty frightening how dependent we in American cities and suburbs are on importing food from the country-side), less availability would sky-rocket prices meaning less luxuries are bought, less luxuries puts a lot of people producing those luxuries out of the job, and so on. (I realize this chain of events is fairly flawed, but you get the point). Can you imagine trying to produce the amount of energy that oil and coal give us right now with only wood fuel or solar energy? We would have to severely limit our energy consumption, causing tons of other problems. "Severely limit" doesn't even describe it enough. And that's just the disaster of running out of oil alone. Each other possibility is equally devastating and depressing to think about.

In my opinion, barring disasters that would force us underground, survivors would still work together and try to rebuild in small communities, but only for a short while. I think some people alone or in small groups would revert to plundering rather than working; out of desperation they'd attack and steal from those rebuilding, and at that point we would revert to another stone age. And even that's assuming the right people survive. I don't know much about growing my own food apart from putting a seed in the ground and watering it, I know even less about building a permanent shelter. I probably couldn't defend myself very well against animals or someone trying to steal from me. That's kind of depressing to think about yourself being unlikely to survive on your own.

I think we would only fall as far as a New Iron Age. There is enough iron (building frames, cars, ect...) lying on the surface of the Earth that humans would quickly have iron and then steel tools and weapons. A new Industrial Revolution using coal would probably soon follow and we would get back to about where we were in the year 1900 in just a century or two. With all the saws, hammers, knives and other metal tools lying around there would be no need for a Stone Age.

This is given, of course, that a large percentage of the worlds population would die first. There is just too many people to support any kind of pre-industrial society.

that would also mean that there would be no medicine,burger king,tv,clothes,music,and hail almighty..no unexplained-mysteries(forum),to name but a miniscule, hoorahhhhhh

i would dream that you would be unable to witness a cataclysmic event like this but be part of it

As long as there are people left, without a doubt there will be rebuilding and it might take a while but there will be alot of the things that we take for granted back the way it was, if you call what we have today normal....

The ones that are the survivors will have to teach each other and depend on each other to survive. Learn how to hunt, make your clothes. The simple thing like even starting a fire.

I can't say for sure....But it would be common knowledge that some of our TOP leaders and there Families would have places to go in case something like that happens.

Thanks for all the interesting posts so far, but you guys are missing my point. did something like this happen already?

By the way to the new Steel revolution Poster : that wont happen since in most scenarios most of the continents and major cities will be underwater, or under ground. Or Radioactive for 600 years.

Im sure of we keep digging deeper into the earth, who knows what we might find...I remember a post not to long ago about some one finding a doll that looked like Mickey Mouse, It was from way back next to a mummy or something to that nature..

I understand your point and it is possible that we have started over many many times..Alot of people dont think about or are just not aware of how far we have come in such a short time..Just think where we are now and what we have accomplished in the last 60 years.. i Remember playing a stupid pong game on my TV at my house when i was small, now my son is playing games that look like there real movies....

Makes you wonder.. Plasma Tv's, cell phones, laptop's the list goes on............

That would be the ultimate catastrophe. You don't want bureaucrats and politicians to survive but a skilled workforce. I used to have a kick about the atomic war emergency plans of most countries. The safest places, i.e. those where the chance of survival would be greatest, would have been filled by pencil pushers and politicians. I guess they would have wound up eating each other once the rations ran out.

There is evidence to suggest that it has happened before, perhaps several times. If that is true, then history repeats, and we will be forgotten, our descendants starting all over (again). In the context of our modern civilization, I think it depends on who survives, and what skills they posses. Will there be enough skilled steel workers, men and women who know how to weld steel without using a torch or electric welder? How about farmers and husbandmen who know how to plow a field without a tractor? Our current civilization is sitting on a technological cusp, caught between what was and what will be. Right now, there are enough of these skilled individuals about that I think humanity might have a chance, without having to revert to hunter-gatherer behaviour. As a bonus, many of them live away from large urban centers, and as such have a higher chance of surviving. Of course, all of this depends on the precise nature of the cataclysm.
If we are looking at a large scale natural disaster, such as an asteroid, solar flare, or drastic global climate change, all bets for farming will become of the "sink or swim" variety. Whatever the scenario, I think that it will be the people with the greatest "can do" attitude that will prosper, because what they don't know, they will likely learn in a hurry.

Absolutely right, I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for natural catastrophe.

I agree, Unless it is total death for all, the human race should survive, I dont think we would come back as cavemen, but alot more smarter then, well before if there was a before...

And the'd be the first ones that the survivors would kill...there would be a LINE.

If something wiped out modern day living and it was anarchy and chaos it would be hell of cool to me. Probably not when I'm getting shot at and almost dying but damn thats always something I wanted to do for a day. In reality I would most likely pillage everything and make sure I am dominant above all others at the start or at least able to defend from others. That way your secure and the rest and screwed

The people who will live to create a new society will be the people who live far out in the countryside. People in the cities will be the first targets and the fastest to feel the hurt of the loss of technology. Also people who can live simply will do well. People who can't cook, hunt, farm or ride a horse will be left behind.

Yes, stone age tribes in New Guinea or Amazonia would have little problem in continuing as they are now, unless they were directly killed by the catastrophe.

But I suspect a brief iron age followed by a rapid industrial revolution is mostly likely elsewhere in the world, depending on exactly what kind of catastrophe occurred. Indeed, it's quite likely that if sufficient people with the right technological knowledge and equipment survived (govt bunkers etc) it would take less than a generation to get civilisation back to current levels, in some parts of the world at least - albeit with a much reduced population. Hmmm, that sounds a good idea. Anyone know where I can find a rogue meteorite?

Maybe you have to use some Magick and conjure one ... then again seeing the success rate of Crowley trying to assassinate Mathers by conjuring something I'll doubt your rate of conjuring a meteorite would be any greater.

I think they would think we were self-absorbed folks who destroyed their own civilization.

If its nuclear: then most of the educated would be destoyed along with the technology and the work force to make them. Third world countries would start anew. There would be no MacDonalds or Burger King cause of what I just mentioned.

If its global warming: the rise of the seas and oceans, toxic air and water, famine and pestilence, harsher weather would drives us all into wars for territorial reliefs. A fight for the fittest and our technology will be there with us to harm or heal.

If its a comet/meteor: most of our society is built out of sticks and bricks, wires and plastics, metal and concrete. I don't know what they will find but maybe a heap of junk of a society.

who knows what they'll find!? looking back at history. It would be our art and fashion.

And for some centuries a miraculously undestroyed Voltmeter would become an item of worship....

With the Atomic thesis ... even if the world in its entirety would be affected by fallout, there is sufficient technology in third world countries to fall immediately into an iron age. I think the atomic option would be less impeding because it concentrates mostly on those regions where war is waged, except some possible nuclear winter in other regions ... which as the last ice age has proven is an accelerator for civilization, not an impediment.

Sorry, I misread Oxymoron's question.

I think that if later civilizations could get their hands on one of our history books, they'd be surprised at how many there were of us and how slowly we advanced, in proportion to our population.

It seems to me that unless a piece of our current civilization were able to survive and pick up where we left off, all other civilizations (be it more humans, aliens, or an entirely new species here on earth) would arrive on our planet long after most of the remnents of our society disappeared. If it were other humans who took our place, artifacts from our civilization would probably be gone by the time the new society invented ways of studying and understanding them. Apparently almost all of the artifacts from our time would be gone in about 300,000 years. That could be long enough for other humans to learn about us, but I doubt anything else would be here in that amount of time. IMO, other civilizations would just build on top of us, probably without even knowing it.

Adding to the original questions, WHich if any monuments would be left? How long would survivors remember what happend, how would the sory be transmitted to new generations, what religion will their be?

Anything to do with our founding fathers might be destroyed like statues, art work? Accept our currency, now that would be world-wide.
It would be hard to destroy all U.S. and British coins. A Chevy Corvette Stingray

Difficult to say. The Pyramids would remain for sure unless they suffered a direct hit. Whatever construction was done in the 20th century would probably not last 100 years without proper maintenance. Most non-inhabited cities would be a heap of rubble .. or a overgrown heap of rubble, within 200 years.

The religion would be a continuation of whatever religion those who survived had. There is no reason... or historic precedent, that believes should change because of a catastrophe, but as far as we know quite the contrary is true.

What difference does it make, you'll all be dead!
Moot point of discussion.

Yes but you are living now, cause our ancestors left something for us to find about who they were like, what they were wearing. How good or tough it was in that time. We are influence by Roman and grecco era from politicians to theater.
I'm just trying to help the OP of what he is looking for.

In my last post, I thought I'd finished the last sentence but didn't til now. "A Chevy Corvette Stingray would be a nice find."

this can happen by global warming. (wait...nvm)