Thought of the ultimate state of the planet Earth, where all resourses for energy and fuel had been depleted (or banned,..). (As a flight of fancy : No consumables,.. what so ever,..)
All work would be done by muscles, human, animal,.
Communication would be solely verbal.
No artificial light, not even fire to warmth at night.
Just fields, robust houses, carts / wheel barrows,.
As a 'pause' to pollution of the atmosphere, and possibly a time for it to re-cover and re-ballance it-self.
As an immidiate effect, that could be tried out : Live solely within walking distance of your home-place. Have all contacts, and provisions within your local region.
Gather the safe and economical way of such a non-global living.-- sirau, Jun 02 2011 Perpectives on Colonies on Other Planets http://youtu.be/YPjXxKpM4DMpanets and stars within 12 light years distance, and technology. [sirau, Jun 02 2011] The Last Question http://www.multivax.../last_question.htmlHowever far you travel, Asimov got there first ... [8th of 7, Jun 02 2011] Black Powder and Alcohol http://www.promethe.../filk/blkpowdr.htmlLeslie Fish has sometimes been described as a bit of an anarchist. [MechE, Jun 02 2011] This is called *the Past* and it has been baked by cavemen...-- xandram, Jun 02 2011 Wood from trees is a fuel; burning it releases energy that can be used by Humans for their nefarious ends.-- pocmloc, Jun 02 2011 No pharmaceuticals,no painless dentistry, no insecticides - fleas, lice, mosquitoes everywhere - no metals or plastics ... hot in the summer cold in the winter, many die young of communicable diseases, limited diet, no decent waterproof clothing, no population control, massive infant mortality ...
Ah, the "Good Old Days" ...-- 8th of 7, Jun 02 2011 There was somebody in recent history who tried this, let me think, what was his name.... oh that's right, it was Pol Pot. It was all well and good until people told him that the human race had out-stripped its ability to survive as a functioning society in this way. Unfortunately, Mr. Pot wasn't so good at taking criticism...-- Alterother, Jun 02 2011 - it was just a perspective.
But how will you see it not happening ?? - all comes to an end,...
:-).-- sirau, Jun 02 2011 "Oh no it doesn't !!"
<link>-- 8th of 7, Jun 02 2011 Forced upon us eventually, yes, voluntarily, not usually, but living as if it will breeds resilience and self-reliance.
I'm quite close to living this way and i don't know, it has its up and down sides. On the down side, i'm never going to meet [UnaBubba] in person. On the up side, you get to be able to do a lot of things for yourself and you needn't trust so many others.
Surprisingly, i just blogged about this very subject.
[ of ], we manage just fine with our pharmaceuticals, we have insecticides aplenty growing in our back yard, our diet is more varied than most people in the money economy, many compositae produce latex, but yes i do have three dead siblings.-- nineteenthly, Jun 02 2011 How do you propose to prevent me from burning things when I am cold. How do you propose to prevent me from enslaving a horse? Will you tear it down if I build a telegraph line? If I travel the world and bring things fro far away. Would you kill me? Do you believe that there is any other way to stop me? You can live how you will. Feel free. You can take my solar panels from my cold dead hands.-- WcW, Jun 02 2011 If all other fuel sources are exhausted, wind and water power are both useable with all materials in the structure being low energy/natural materials (note this is for mechanical, not electrical power). Likewise solar is easily utilized for (some) thermal operations without a technological industry behind it.
If you allow me wood, then I can use an external combustion engine, plus produce charcoal to produce metal components. With metals I can hook an electric generator up to the wind or water generation.
Of course access to all of these will be plentiful, since something like 90% of the human race will have died out.-- MechE, Jun 02 2011 including, i suspect, many people who are intellectually compatible with this idea. Shame they won't be able to enjoy the fun.-- WcW, Jun 02 2011 What the Borg said. I dunno where you are going to get your 'robust houses' neither.-- gnomethang, Jun 02 2011 Oh, and if you want to do something about me doing all of the above, well, brewing and distilling alcohol is easy enough, and the only components needed for weak gunpowder are charcoal and animal waste (sulfur helps, but is not required).-- MechE, Jun 02 2011 Didn't Ghandi want to go this way.. the whole simpler agrarian society thing...learn to spin cloth.. It all sounds so wholesome till somebody does the math and figures out that there won't be enough food to feed the present population....-- MisterQED, Jun 02 2011 Solar-powered Stirling engine would be the way to go, though it would probably be very inefficient since it would be made of - don't know what, come to think of it.-- nineteenthly, Jun 02 2011 That elemental alloy, dontknowwhatium.-- normzone, Jun 02 2011 You could do a wooden stirling engine, since the temperatures and pressures aren't prohibitvely high. You would need laquer or similar to get a smooth water-proof interior surface, but it's not insurmountable.-- MechE, Jun 02 2011 It's possible to get a very nice, smooth polished surface on the interior of (for example) a tube drilled through a block of granite, which is pretty heat-resistant.
Given that one "precision" heat-resisting component, it is probably possible to build a Newcomen engine using wooden components; the original engines were mostly wood anyway.
The piston would be a wooden disc, with a greased leather seal at the perimiter and water on top of that.
Now, drill three "cylinders" in a row in the same granite block, and using windmill/watermill technology create a three-throw 120 degree crank. Three sweep arms link to the beam tips ... since the link between the piston and the beam is flexible, or at least has hinges at each end, no need for an approximate-parallel motion as there's no upper piston gland.
This could quite possibly be constructed with 1st Century CE technology.-- 8th of 7, Jun 02 2011 Still, it WAS just a philosophical perspective.
The contributions leed in one way, of these components :
Wood, food, and solar power.
From a designers and a consumers stand point, I feel like the perspective leeds towards :
1. Autonomy (stand-alone systems).
2. Quality, as in long service life of products.
3. Efficiency, in energy and space occupied and used.
And individual freedom.
I like the UNIVAX story, at the link. Expansive !.-- sirau, Jun 02 2011 Of course ... freedom to starve, freedom to be eaten by a large carnivorous animal, freedom to freeze to death, freedom to die of dysentry .... wonderful thing, freedom.-- 8th of 7, Jun 02 2011 what about the freedom to tell the person who comes to take away your horses and stove to take a hike?-- WcW, Jun 02 2011 In a 'Universal' perspective, a 'stove', a static, metallic, item, will eventually rust, or otherwise run out of service life. In a final volume, like an entire planet, everything eventually will run out of re-supply possibilities.
So, my 'Quality' - long time usage, should be taken to : Perpetual/Eternal Life Time usage quality/guarantee /specification, (softened up to for instance : self-maintaining/ resilient/low- maintenaince).
As displayed in Star Wars, one episode or the other, there could be a 'horse planet' somewhere, ie. a planet, which' sun-shined surface supports only living and breeding horses,!. Also water planets, and so on,..,. The Earth could turn to such a state, possibly,..,.
'Robust Houses' depends on the time frame. Some European churches are still around from years 1100-1200 after Christ,. There's a bridge in Rome from around 100-200 years before Christ, still beeing used, with regular cars and busses travelling across it.
The architect/calculator was to insure with his own, personal, bodily life, that the bridge would stand for at least '40 years' ! - said the Emperor, or who ever commisioned the works, so the bridge was heavily dimensioned ! - and quality was applied in the laying of it's stones,.-- sirau, Jun 03 2011 [sirau] Five or ten centuries ago, the world had, not no power, of the sort you discuss, but a lot less of it. To me (how about you?) that seems causally related to the fact that most power, for agricultural and industrial purposes, was supplied by slaves and/or serfs.-- mouseposture, Jun 03 2011 //...but yes i do have three dead siblings//
0_o
because they eschewed modern technology?-- xaviergisz, Jun 03 2011 I long for the days when we were single celled organisms floating in our own secretions.-- doctorremulac3, Jun 03 2011 At least you had secretions to float in! The secretions didn't come from nowhere you know; someone had to go to the effort of exuding them!-- pocmloc, Jun 03 2011 I ddin't impose any labour rights, or other political perspective to my view, like allowing slavery/'serfs' (I had to look that one up !), for the production of power.
I should think, in situation of an Earth completely devoid of the previous fysical/material raw 'stuff', basics for steel, aluminium, as well as coal, uranium, oil, then, the remaining, already installed before the ultimate end-state condition, industry complex, would be wear-free, and processing pure organic products, produced from purely SOLAR growth, ie. photo synthesis, and whatever algea and other 'things' grow from.-- sirau, Jun 03 2011 Traditional Australian Aboriginal society was pretty much like this (except for the use of fire). And yes, they did kill you if you insisted on abusing the common and living beyond the ability of the land to support you. Similarly, population was controlled, sometimes with infanticide. It was a bit brutal, but it worked.
[nineteenthly] Please consider including me in your list of people to see if you ever build a sailing ship or whatever and visit the colonies.-- spidermother, Jun 03 2011 // It was a bit brutal, but it worked. //
So very, very different from your world today, of course.-- 8th of 7, Jun 03 2011 Go take a time machine back to the middle ages.-- travbm, Oct 29 2015 random, halfbakery