[avar]

I couldn't find a straight answer to this the last time I looked, but it sounds to me like this is more of a matter of cost then the actual hard need for pre-WWII steel.

We could mine ore that hasn't been exposed to the atmosphere since then, and use air (either purified or found in some air pockets underground) for the furnace behind an airlock.

This would be much more expensive than just finding some pre-WWII steel, there's a lot of that around, but I don't think it's the case that if we somehow didn't have it we'd be screwed.

Am I wrong?