[paulmd]

the bigger problem is that if society collapses again there are few easily-accessible resources anymore, particularly fuel/energy. Consider the coincidence of factors that led to the industrial age in Britain… some of those can’t be reproduced again.

Mining garbage dumps for resources could of course be a thing, but probably not abundant energy.

This time there is no plan B. We either become an interplanetary species or this planet eventually becomes our tomb. Probably a couple millennia.

[trhway]

well, may be civilization would be much better off if we went straight to electrified industrial society using wind and hydro energy bypassing burning of dinosauruses - windmills and watermills were known for millennia, one only had to add copper winding and some magnetic iron, the things available for the last 2000+ years.

> We either become an interplanetary species or this planet eventually becomes our tomb.

Yes, only my version of the "tomb" is that it would be our planetary scale ant city/colony as we become totally connected and our societies naturally become highly totalitarian (not necessarily due to some ideology, you'd just naturally have less and less space/resources/opportunities for your private endeavors). Some ant colonies exist uninterrupted for several thousand years, no progress, just happy busy ants doing their happy stuff. Only few of us who'd get off that planet will have a chance to continue the civilizational progress. Kind of bifurcation of our species. Interesting that Musk advances our civilization in both directions - neural implants as well as SpaceX.

[MobiusHorizons]

How do you get the prerequisites for solar without access to large amounts of energy? Solar cells are made from silicon wafers which must be refined and doped to work. Maybe we could build windmills if we salvage copper and magnets, but refining even copper would be challenging without access to high heat fossil fuels. I guess you would have to bootstrap using charcoal, which would be very labor intensive.

[OkayPhysicist]

Photovoltaics are not the only form of solar electricity production. Concentrated thermal solar power can easily get into the hundreds of megawatts range.

[MobiusHorizons]

Good point! I guess that requires mirrors, but those can be made of less hard to refine materials.

[maxerickson]

They'd mine ruins of the fallen civilization, not dumps.

[paulmd]

Well, you’re not going to find centuries of easily-accessible fuel by raiding gas stations. Good luck drilling natural gas two miles under the gulf with your renaissance era mineshafts.