Heading Back to the Stone Age
Monday, June 8th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Back to the Stone Age soon? It certainly looks that way, some experts are saying. It may not be too long before this comes about, and around 500 years or so looks to be a possibility, according to some estimates.
Why? Look at the rate we have discovered new fuel and metal sources and progressively burnt them out. Within two hundred years or so we have nearly mined the planet out. The rate we are burning up the planet’s resources is simply unbelievable.
It won’t be long before all liquid and gas fossil fuels are burnt out. After that the coal will run out. Even the uranium will eventually be depleted and finished – and that means the lights will finally go out. By that time metals will be scarce, and a chunk of iron or aluminium will be worth more than gold is now.
Probably, by this time, the only power sources will be solar, wind or tidal generators, and maybe a small amount of geothermal power in one or two areas. Also, with no metal for repair and maintenance – and certainly not to build new with – these existing power sources will have a short life expectancy. Not really a problem, though, as there will be little left to power anyway by then. No doubt by this stage the oceans will only be a dead, toxic waste holder, so things don’t look good there.
The prospects for human life after this point look extremely grim. Essentially we will have burnt the planet out and thrown ourselves back to the Stone Age – except that we won’t even be able to survive at that level of ‘civilisation’. That’s because previously there was an abundance of flints, wood and game to hunt. None of those exist any more.
We can only try to imagine the grim reality of life at this time – a knife or spade will be worth about twenty or thirty cows by then; food will be whatever you can grub up with your bare hands, or with a piece of expensive wood. The currency will be cows, pigs and slaves. And as we descend back to the depths of a Neanderthal life again, out of which we can never escape, all the old and vile ways of life will return, to fit the new caveman lifestyle. Men will once again become animals.
Food shortages will be so severe until the population shrinks back down to the tiny fraction of its present level that the planet can support without any technology, that cannibalism will become rife. As the shortages begin to bite, starvation and disease will reduce the earth’s population to around 5 percent of the present number. Since by the time this all comes about, the world population will be even larger than the huge numbers now, it means that something like 99% of the population will die out.
It is also important to note that areas with the highest technology levels will fare worse at this time. It is probable that rural regions in third-world countries will not see much change, and will carry on as normal. The most advanced countries will experience a return to a pre-Stone Age existence since we have removed all the resources that enabled even a Stone Age lifestyle. This means that life in the UK and US will revert to that seen thousands of years ago in those areas, as in for example rural Cambodia now. This viewpoint should not be controversial since no one can suggest any realistic alternative.
And don’t forget there is no way out – ever.
There cannot be any medical care of course, since there won’t be any power, metals, plastics, transport or energy. No antibiotics, no surgeons, no survival if you fall ill.
A lifestyle of a pre-Stone Age type seems to await us, as even flints and game to hunt are no longer available. It seems possible though that after life in the West has virtually died out, that in remote areas of places like Brazil might remain and even flourish. With the removal of the poisonous virus of industrial humanity chainsawing the trees and bulldozing the land, the native peoples will be able to recover.
There’s only one possible escape from this dilemma: if before that point we have developed a space travel method that allows us to mine the planets and asteroids, to keep the supply of metals going for vital industries.
‘Vital industries’ by then will simply and only be space transport research, as the human species will become virtually extinct without it. The only escape possible is a way to leave this planet and find another where we can start again and mine it to extinction – before finding another…
Maybe if we are supremely lucky. And that escape will be for the chosen few only – politicians, administrators and the occasional engineer perhaps.
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