Would it even be possible for civilization to regress like it did after the fall of Rome...

Would it even be possible for civilization to regress like it did after the fall of Rome? It seems like even if everything went to shit, we would still have the capabilities to produce electricity, have clean water, still have access to the knowledge from before. It just doesn’t seem like things would be able to regress as much as they did after the fall of Rome.

>What does Veeky Forums think?

Name 3 (three) technologies lost in the fall of the Western Roman Empire

Yeah the regression seem mostly political Feudalism is shit

Medicine
Art
Architecture
Infrastructure

Architecture & medicine improved after the fall, Infrastructure & art aren't technologies

>muh dark ages meme
Veeky Forums was a mistake.

Concrete.
Sewers.
Baths.
etc.

Shit, the bridge over the Tiber River in Rome itself collapsed in 380 AD because there weren't enough professional architects around anymore - and that was a century before the fall of the Empire.

It wasn't a total catastrophe though. It's mostly just major monumental stuff, high quality goods and specialist equipment that vanished.

Look at places where civilization already has collapsed, like Detroit, Michigan and parts of South Africa. The road networks, electrical grids, and law enforcement have already broken down in large swathes of neighborhoods there, and are decaying, while the dark zones are spreading further every year. As soon as the last pretence of government there vanishes altogether the cities will be totally abandoned. These places are like crystal balls.

>Architecture & medicine improved after the fall

What the fuck are you talking about? People could barely even repair masonry buildings by the 6th century AD. One of the only examples of a building that had any maintenance done on it whatsoever was St Peters in Rome. In Britannia you have massive brick towns falling to ruins with local warlords building timber huts and halls in the middle of the crumbling amphitheatre.

...

Quality post.

>muh dark ages dark ages meme

/pol/ was a mistake

>art aren't technologies
top kek

That was lost for western europe, idiot
None of those things improved after the fall

Obviously he wasnt talking about what was lost in fucking China or India.

this is not Veeky Forums related

The fall of Rome is like the entirety of north america descending into 20 petty kingdoms fighting each other, then Europeans sporadically dropping bombs until every town has to become self-sufficient. The advanced trade networks necessary for creating modern items would just collapse, period. We'd regress farther than the Roman Empire without the ability to import them from a not fucked part of the world, an advantage the remnants of Rome certainly didn't have. In the case of Italy, it was then a war zone that leveled Rome itself when the Byzantines repeatedly tried to retake it for 100 years.

If we heat peak oil it could happen (not happening any time soon, global warming will wreck us way beford that happens). Travel and every material item would become way more expensive, leading to smaller more local economies. As peoples economic circumstances go down the shitter the birthrate will decline. As these factors ramp up, infrastructure will also go down the shitter.

I want to piggyback on this and recommend the movie "Empire of Dust." It shows a Chinese contractor working in Western Africa. At one point he berates the Africans for letting the railroad fall into such disrepair it can no longer be used. I think and I am paraphrasing here, he says that the Europeans built the rail road at great cost in material and human lives but the Africans were so lazy they could not even be bothered to do simple maintenance and keep it functioning.

The transition to electric is happening faster than peak oil is likely to approach. There's still multiple decades worth of oil sitting around in places like the Oil Sands and arctic drilling.

Those are just backwards people who never had the capacity for civilization. To assume something like that would happen to Europeans or Asians is a stretch.

Oil production peaked a long time ago. Hubbert's Pimple my friend.

Yes, just look at the middle east

>t. /pol/

not really, considering our society is held together by some very fragile threads. Any breakdown in government or law enforcement in those two areas you mentioned, I think things would turn south pretty quick until some sort of warlord established power

No, the internet would prevent it.

Detroit is bouncing back though, albeit slowly. Still time to get in on the ground floor and pick up property cheap.

It would require a really fucking insane event to deal that much damage, and even then its likely that someone somewhere would have retained knowledge that had become common in the world.
Sure, it would completely fuck the balance of power and individual locations could get completely fucked, but eventually things would prop themselves back up, and likely much faster than you may think.

Detroit isn't bouncing back at all, it's all bullshit propaganda. Basically everything within the city limits is a catastrophic shithole, the media are shilling how the downtown is haven for "young professionals" (meaning a handful of GM employees crammed into a handful of dense condos) and "a mecca for hipsters" (I guess all ten of them? Go look at Portland or Columbus to see a real hipster mecca) and it's all just not true. Dan Gilbert and the Ilitch family are barely keeping that sinking ship afloat, when even they leave the entire city will vanish. I'm dead serious, it's a post-apocalyptic empty wasteland with ghouls coming out at night. Even the people mover is always so empty it's downright scary.
t. half of my family lives in Troy

>not being able to afford repairs means they forgot how to make repairs

lmao
all the money just moved to Byzantium, economy =! technology

Modern people dont even know where their food comes from senpai

The weakest link right now is fuel. Without oil(petrol), nothing can be done. Even countries with nuclear reactors and stuff, need oil for the cars, airplanes, boats and trains. If something cuts the oil, everything goes to shit. Power plants cant produce. Without electricity nothing can produce. Factories cant produce. Your fridge will let food be spoiled and the food from farms wont be able to reach the cities. There are not enough horses left in the world to return to that kind of transportation. Nobody knows how to build wooden sail boats anymore. What then?

>It seems like even if everything went to shit, we would still have the capabilities to produce electricity, have clean water, still have access to the knowledge from before.
How many of the people in your life know how to produce electricity from scratch in a useful voltage?
>we'll just read how to do it in a book
Leaving aside the fact that no one owns books anymore, lets pretend there was a nuclear war and all the major cities and heir libraries are burnt to ash.
How confident are you that your isolated community will be able to keep it's machines running in that scenario?

Yes the eastern islanders, went from fishers to cannibals due to desertification

Technology is almost never lost, it’s just that access to it becomes more limited.

That’s the same thing

Yeah just look at this fucking awesome ivory carving from before the fall of the western empire

how did we go from this

to THIS??????

Empire of Dust is complete shit (slice of life it is barely okay but as film about Chinese African relations it's shit) and your point is completely flawed

>It shows a Chinese contractor working in Western Africa.

DRC which is central Africa if you could noteven get that right no wonder your post is a mess

>he says that the Europeans built the rail road at great cost in material and human lives

They used African labourers with no rights and based on when it was built either forced labour or ass wages and either way no concern for human welfare.

>the Africans were so lazy they could not even be bothered to do simple maintenance and keep it functioning.

It's because Mobutu mismanaged the infrastructure and finances to the point he couldn't pay for government workers or just plain workers to fix it. Nigger you think they'll do it for free if they aren't getting paid?calle zapote

No not really. it's the difference between losing your car and losing your car keys.

you mean muh dark ages meme meme