Let's say the world end in a nuclear holocaust, but some Friendly Neighbourhood Aliens decide to grab a handful of people and drop them in an unspoilt Earthlike habitat, along with a library's worth of books on survival and technology, but no modern tools.
What practical tech level do these people end up with? Could Average Joes exploit surface iron deposits and make iron tools just by reading about it?
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Depends how many nigs ayys saved
The only limit is how much time and manpower you have.
A lot of human technology can be worked out from first principles if you're not a retard, the reason it has taken us so long to get where we are is that peoples ideas are naturally limited by the tools at their disposal and their cultural circumstances.
Just look at the Primitive Technology guy, he's basically done thousands and thousands of years of human development in his spare time, because he already knows how things work, and building them are the easy part.
>drop them in an unspoilt Earthlike habitat, along with a library's worth of books
So thousands of books in the middle of a forest? The humans better build shelters fast before rain ruins all the books.
>people who have tasted modern life
>having to go back into cavemen life
I sure hope those books are porns, because all i see is a bunch of dead people by suicide.
They could put them in a cave. That should buy them some time
A big obstacle to technical progression was the hunter gather lifestyle. Those kinds of tribes need every able noddied person devoting the bulk of their time to survival. It wasn't until we developed agriculture that people were able to specialize and have the time to actually experiment to develop new stuff.
though if they already have the knowledge and booms to reference on hand I don't see any reason these people couldn't start up at iron age equivalent. they can afford to have a couple people not hunting and such as they know it'll pay off in the near future.
They can build their first house out of WotC rpgs and Brandon Sanderson books to protect better stuff.
That's kind of the point. The abductees won't just have to rely on what they know. Information will be made available.
They will, however, need to make all of their own tools and harvest all of their own resources, all while making sure their basic survival needs are met too.
Don't be anal. The books are provided in pic related.
who the fuck reads books anymore, except fags
You're projecting and I'm a little worried about you.
Plastic is a modern tool
done with this thread lmao
...
Prove me wrong
it really depends on who the aliens grab, but given a big enough population to breed without genetic complications kill every offspring withing 50-60 years, there really is no limit. We are in a better situation than cavemen and the early humans, because we know it can be done, we just need to figure out how to do it, plus a middle schooler knows more about math than a ancient greek, so im preaty shure we can do architecture too
I mean, the average person is armed with a lot of knowledge that basically skips steps. Everyone I know can figure out the bare basics on genetics and knows farming exists. It'll probably take an entire generation to find suitable plants, land, and infrastructure to start farming, but they wont be hunter-gathers for long. Exploiting iron deposits? Not without literally thousands of people, by the time you hit 10 generations or whatever to have enough people to feasibly divide labour to start things that advanced is well beyond guessable territority.
You're not, you've just dialed the autism up to eleven.
Would you be triggered if I told you these fictional people in their fictional habitat were also allowed to keep the modern clothes they were wearing at the point of abduction?
The point is to speculate on how useful all of our modern knowledge is if you don't have modern, specialised industries to rely on for your resources.
>That's kind of the point. The abductees won't just have to rely on what they know. Information will be made available.
There is a step by step guide on the internet that tells you how to go from a stone hachet to a electric generator, giving the right info people would have no problem surviving
>Exploiting iron deposits? Not without literally thousands of people
People 'mined' bog iron in settlements that were smaller than that.
Genetic complications are a dirty sjw lie, how did Adam and Eve breed, fucktard?
Honestly, I love the fact Primitive Technology guy is getting more recognition nowadays, but fuck me, the quality of comments in the YouTube comment section deteriorated ever since that trending video so much.
they did not, are you implying that god would create something that dose the impure hancky panky? It's obvious that adam and eve reproduced by parthenogenesis but later on satan and the jews created sex to make the poor humans sin
>Could Average Joes exploit surface iron deposits and make iron tools just by reading about it?
No. Not in the slightest. Those Average Joes are going to need to feed themselves FIRST and ALWAYS before they can start the reading, exploration, trial, and error that iron making will require. They'll be lucky if they're knapping crude flints within a month and that will require them finding flint first.
We live in a post industrial society. 999 people out of a thousand have no fucking idea how anything is actually made let alone how stuff was made 200, 500, or 1000s of years ago.
You want iron ore? Even a surface deposit will require some digging. Got any shovels? Can you even make any? Need to carry the ore? Go any baskets? Can you even make any? How about coal? Can you spot a surface seam? How about digging it up? Oops, going to need those shovels again. Maybe charcoal? You'll have to fell trees. Got an axe? You need to bury the wood rick too for the long slow burn. Damn, you'll need shovels again.
Beginning to see the picture, you technologically illiterate douche nozzle?
The Average Joe is going to be hard pressed to make and keep a fucking fire going. Or killing enough small animals to go with the roots, veggies, nuts, berries, grubs, and insects he be gathering. The Average Joe is going to end up starving in the cold and dark.
>The point is
The point is on top of your head.
>giving the right info people would have no problem surviving
I'd LOVE to drop you in the woods with your internet how to guides. In a couple of months we could come back for your corpse.
They die immediately to foreign pathogens.
You're pretty angry about someone else's level of knowledge for someone who doesn't know what bog iron and black sand are.
>I'd LOVE to drop you in the woods with your internet how to guides. In a couple of months we could come back for your corpse.
Yeah nah, that sounds like an interesting narrative. Every bit of post-apocalyptic fiction should be replaced by a single line: "They fucking died".
Well if the humans have everything they need, then really the only thing stopping them is the humans' willingness to cooperate.
They could unite into a single group and possibly build an iron age civilization in their lifetime.
Or they could go drunk with freedom and kill/each other like a bunch of edgelord autists using the available knowledge to just make more efficient weapons
>Friendly Neighbourhood Aliens
Why did you cap that? Is it some TVtropes shit?
they would quickly kill each other off trying to be king of nothing.
This thread.
Given a basic fucking plot hook, 2017 Veeky Forums just goes on an autistic rant about how much people suck.
Well given demographics, if the aliens are at all fair, quite a few people are going to be poor farmers from india or china who would have a fair bit of useful transferable skill
I doubt that pretty highly. People are social animals, they'd at worst kill a few, splinter a bit, establish a hierarchy, and get on with their day. Considering how big a world is, theres little reason for them to fight each-other when walking away is such an easy option.
Basically yes. If Rust, and Dayz taught me anything, is 'everyone else can suck it'
>Friendly Neighborhood Aliens Chapter 1, a Sailor Moon + Harry Potter ...
>People's behaviour in no-stakes games that are designed with a focus on combat is an accurate reflection of realistic social dynamics
People like you used to be put on the chair in Texas.
I'm not saying they would try to kill everyone, or that everyone would do it, just that there would always be enough that any person who would seize power would be just as quick to throw away lives, but with our modern perspective, we wouldn't be so quick to oblige, causing chaos.
>You're pretty angry about someone else's level of knowledge for someone who doesn't know what bog iron and black sand are.
Find them, collect them, and carry enough of them back to your forge, assclown. Are your friendly aliens going to drop you off in a magical spot that has black sand 100m west, surface coal 100m east, and everything else you'll need from rushes to clay to food all within reach?
Got any baskets? Got anyone making baskets? Got anyone feeding the people making baskets? How about shovels and rakes? Or are you going to scoop the stuff up with your fingers? Got any idea how much black sand or bog ore you'll need to process for a kilo of iron? When you finally get your first "bloom", got any idea how to work it? You're going to need some tools. Can you make them? Are the materials needed available? Whose going to work feeding you while you're playing Bob the Inventor?
You've no fucking idea what is needed and, like correctly points out, 999 out of a 1000 the kind of fantasy you're jerking off to ends in "They died".
>Are your friendly aliens going to drop you off in a magical spot that has black sand 100m west, surface coal 100m east, and everything else you'll need from rushes to clay to food all within reach?
They're fictional. This entire premise is fictional. A solid 'Yes' is entirely within the realm of possibility.
You're autistically anal and I would hate to read about or play in any setting you've worked on.
>You're autistically anal and I would hate to read about or play in any setting you've worked on.
Autistic? More like realistic.
Loved your pathetic "out" for all of this too. The OP's premise mentions only books and people, but you've added the aliens dropping off the group in area surrounded by everything they could be possibly need.
Why not say there's a WalMart, Home Depot, and McDonalds too, faggot? The premise is fictional so having a couple of superstores and fast food joints is also entirely "within the realm of possibility".
Or they don't because these pathogens didn't evolve for human physiology
I can think of many uses for modern clothing.
Binding, Bandages, Masks, makeshift gloves, warmth, fuel, the list goes on.
stop moving the goalposts, faggot. Get it over with and tell us this was your new setting so we can all go "ooh ur so smart and cool user please push my ass in with your big prehistoric dick"
Not that guy or OP but I just have to ask what are you so mad about?
>The world perishes in a nuclear holocaust, save for some survivors, who are saved by hitherto unknown aliens and plonked down in a habitat that can sustain human life
>Yeah, sure.
>Some resources are within reach
>WHAT NO FUCK YOU HOW DARE YOU MUH REALISM REEEEEE
Right? I mean they won't stand a chance without any.
youtube.com
Link?
Yeah, the Anglos are unable to achieve anything without them after all.
Haha i was just pretending to be retarded fooled u all
>>The world perishes in a nuclear holocaust, save for some survivors, who are saved by hitherto unknown aliens and plonked down in a habitat that can sustain human life. These are my initial premises.
>>Yeah, sure. That won't work.
>>Some resources are within reach
>>Still won't work and you're moving your own goal posts.
>>WHAT NO FUCK YOU HOW DARE YOU MUH SETTING REEEEEE
Fixed it for you.
OP can't make up his mind and when people call him out on shit he keeps changing his story.
If he wants help making some unga bunga setting he should just ask instead of trying to act like this is all written down on a sheet of paper next to him and we're all being too hard on him :(
what
>OP can't make up his mind and when people call him out on shit he keeps changing his story.
Bingo! Give the man a cigar!
OP asks about premise A and is told why it won't work. Tries A2.0. Is told why it won't work. Tries B. Still won't work. Stops trying and start crying.
/thread
It could work though. Basic survivalism isn't complex, just time consuming.
Yeah, you can't really compare a black guy from Africa to a modern, inner-city black American... The culture is just worlds apart.
Jesus fucking Christ will you two quit bitching and actually contribute something?
to answer your question OP, honestly the most we can expect from the first generation of people is iron age technology with a few primitive machine innovations. The big limiting factor is medicine and manpower, both of which require time and a base to build up from. How big a handful of people are we talking here?
>g-g-g-g-guys stop it, t-t-this is an IMPORTANT TOPIC guys...
This kinda reminds me of that british show that got fucked up by their own completely sane and very prepared participantes lol
What are you actually contributing? All you're doing is being an obnoxious little shit who's idea of fun is pissing on everyone else. Shoo.
We get it; you don't like the idea and think it's dumb. Well no-one is fucking forcing you to stay in this thread. The only possible reason for you to still be here is because you're an autistic piece of shit who thinks everyone has to think like him. If people WERE placed in a survival situation with a couple of conveniences, you'd be the first to be kicked out of any nascent group, because you don't contribute a damn thing except annoyance and problems.
>Jesus fucking Christ will you two quit bitching and actually contribute something?
These are my posts:
I explained the whole "Need the tools to make the tools to make the tools to make the tools" idea and how the people making/using tools are still going to need to be fed.
The only suggested "answer" to the fundamental problems I raised was that the aliens would drop the group next to a WalMart.
Solve the FOOD and HANDS problems FIRST. Then tell me how you're going to make the tools you need to make the tools you need to make the tools you need to smelt iron. Until then, fuck off.
If the group's basic survival needs are met, then refining tools is just a matter of time. If the group's basic survival needs are not met, then the die off and the entire scenario is pointless.
You have utterly failed to grasp the point.
I haven't chiseled some post-apocalyptic magnum opus into stone for you to marvel at.
I thought of a basic what-if premise on the shitter, and I'm putting it out there for some brainstorming and speculation.
It's just that
>Nope, won't work, people are shit, everything is shit, everyone will die, no one can ever achieve anything
is phenomenally unproductive, and implausible at best.
Everything we have was built on the backs of thousands of successive generations of people applying trial and error. Yeah, people died. But we're still here.
And we're supposed to assume a group of people with all of our aggregate knowledge on hand, in black and white, won't be able to get a settlement going?
Don't be ridiculous.
>Solve the FOOD and HANDS problems FIRST.
>FOOD
Let's assume their habitat allows them to sustain themselves through foraging and hunting initially, and agriculture as soon as they can get a garden going.
Otherwise, what's the point? Why speculate on people surviving in an environment they just can't survive in?
>HANDS
Well, brainstorm. That's the point. How many people do YOU think would be necessary to make this work, and why do you think that?
The guys making tools to make tools is basically videogame memeish dont you think, i mean, they could use stone and wood to build their first tools (shit tier but useful), wich in turn they use use to build more sophisticated tools, since the books have the info on how to build them, the question here is just that if they can or not endure both phisical and psicological preasure of basically returning to a very early age, is likely that most of them, comming from a modern civilization like ours would die ridisculously fast for stupid rasons, while most of those comming from poor/primitive country would rather fare far better as they are better used to the hardships they gonna endure.
If you ask me the aliens gonna be like
>inb4 they die the first winter
>inb4 most to the non melanine ones dies from a plage half way the course of the first year
>How big a handful of people are we talking here?
I gather you need anything from 70 to 100 fairly diverse people in order not to create a genetic bottleneck that fucks you over in the long run, regardless of what you do.
Wait, what? Does black skin make you less susceptible to disease?
>inb4 grammar pls
>inb4 return to your shitty country
Here's the thing that's causing a lot of the problemwith the original premise, terrain.
About 80% of Earth is uninhabitable by pre-modern man. I mean, for continuous year-round habitation.
Lost of water and heat and cold.
So a big part of any response should be exploitationof the surrounding terrain.
Once the immediate area has been assessed for resources the group may begin exploiting those resources or move on.
Any group failing to do that dies off...also as groups will be comprised of people, I assume there will be 2+ Homo Sapiens and will therefore immediately be subject to infighting and die off anyway.
Humans are dicks at the best of times, throw stress into the mix and they become super mega dicks.
No exactly is more like most black people they would get would come from countries where darwin still rules (soo if a child survives to adulhood their body defences are really good), not from ours where medical tecnology make us really weak against a simple flu if we doesnt have the right meds at hand
Well sickle cell helps with malaria.
I think I heard somewhere that the minimum genetically viable population for humanity is something like 10,000 people... Naturally, you can't have all that in one neolithic-era 'urban' area, so it'd likely have to be fairly spread out into smaller communities of a hundred or so, like you said... Makes me wonder how much space you'd need for a a few tens of thousands of humans...
Aliens:
>inb4 they killed off eachothers after a few human months
>not from ours where medical tecnology make us really weak against a simple flu if we doesnt have the right meds at hand
Unless you're either very young or very old, decent nutrition, decent hydration and the ability to spend a few days resting are all you need to combat a run-of-the-mill flu.
Now, add poor nutrition and several days restless because muhsurvivalmuh
Their body defences are good against the kind of disease they allready encountered. Your body can´t prepare for what it does not know.
I don't see how that would pan out differently for black people.
>This thread is shit, you're shit, people are shit, surviving is impossible, people making tools is impossible, everything and everyone should vanish in a puff of logic
>Asked to contribute solutions to perceived problems
>Deafening silence
I don't know what I expected.
Where's that manga from? Image search doesn't help
Care to tell more?
>Let's assume their habitat allows them to sustain themselves through foraging and hunting initially,
What TOOLS are you going to forage and hunt WITH?
So, you find a lot of berries. What do you carry them in? What do your store them in?
So, you're hunting. With pointy sticks or rocks? Without at least plaited grasses you'll have no snares other than deadfalls. Got your dead critter? Skin and gut it. Only have your fingernails? Sucks to be you.
People can survive. They're going to need a little bit more than a pile of books in plastic tubs to get started with. Even something as simple as knapped flints will be a huge help, but you're not going to find flint and learn how to knap it if you can't keep yourself fed.
Your group of Average Joes, however, has no tools and only books to show them how to do something as simple as knapping flint. Are they going to be able to make the tools they need even for a deceptively "simple" hunter-gatherer lifestyle before they starve? I'd say no because, unlike anyone else in this dumpster fire of a thread, I've actually looked for flint and tried to knap it to make "simple" stone tools. Once you get the knack it's easy. Learning the knack takes days, learning how to spot the right kind of rock can take days, and finding that rock can take even longer. Paleolithic peoples used to travel amazing distances far to find good flint beds.
What fucking idiots like you can't understand is that humans have always had basic TOOLS because the hominids before them had tools for millions of years. There was never a time where early humans had both no tools and no idea of how to make the primitive tools they needed.
Books alone aren't going to cut it - no pun intended. The friendly aliens need to pass out some sheath knives to start things rolling. The knives will eventually wear out and grow dull, but by that time the group will have stone and (hopefully) metal tools to replace them.
You are a modern tool.
This
Why not just go to the store? Dumbasses.
>I don't know what I expected.
Read asshole.
>What do you carry them in? What do your store them in?
It's called a stomach. People survived before they stockpiled food, user.
>People can survive. They're going to need a little bit more than a pile of books in plastic tubs to get started with.
People have gotten started with less. They weren't modern city-dwellers, but they were people nonetheless.
>There was never a time where early humans had both no tools and no idea of how to make the primitive tools they needed.
These people have access to information, though. Why shouldn't that include information on making primitive tools?
>The friendly aliens need to pass out some sheath knives to start things rolling.
If they did, what sort of settlement would you imagine, a few years down the line?
Obviously in this scenario the habitat is chosen by aliens to allow humans maintain themselves through foraging nutritious fruits, berries, tubers, insects etc. that don't require specialized tools for hunting. Once your basic requirements are met you have all the free time in the world to study the books and experiment on toolmaking etc.
>About 80% of Earth is uninhabitable by pre-modern man. I mean, for continuous year-round habitation.
Yeah, I mean we're not able to breathe water so your numbers seem legit.
>How dare you not first read something that was posted three minutes after your own post
Hyperdimensional beings are among us, guys
>People survived before they stockpiled food, user.
this greatly depends on the quantity of people
Honestly, if the omnipotent space bats have an Earthlike planet lying around to start a science experiment on, it wouldn't be much of a problem for them to seed it with a few hundred thousand people all over the habitable surface and look what happens.
Especially if those groups are in fact identical, just located in different places
Frankly I'd off myself, too. Life is a howling piece of shit already with all the conveniences of the rich industrialized world, getting stripped of that and dropped innawoods to starve, freeze, get sick and do tedious manual labor from dusk till dawn just to lay down foundations for yet another mongoloid tribe led by the biggest asshole of his generation, fuck that.
Without somebody with experience they won't get very far as knowledge takes time to parse. Shock and panic are going to be the biggest obstacles by far.
Pretty sure the thread was made by such an alien
i am undone
>People survived before they stockpiled food, user.
Hominids were stockpiling food before there were humans, douchebag. Even peoples as "primitive" as the Australian Abos, Tasmanian islanders, and Kalihari bushfolk had baskets, bark satchels, and other containers.
>Why shouldn't that include information on making primitive tools?
Because, douche nozzle, unless the aliens plop them down in a type of habitat like suggests, they won't have the TIME to learn and APPLY the skills before starving.
Remember, knowledge is only HALF the battle.
>>If they did, what sort of settlement would you imagine, a few years down the line?
It depends on how far you want to go with "easy habitat' dodge. An early moron suggested that all the necessary ores, fuels, etc. would be easily accessible to boot strap metallurgy production. You're doing the same with food production because you're stupid enough to want to believe a few plastic tubs of books is all that is needed.
You're not interested in being serious or realistic, so why not just make it a post-apocalyptic Gilligan's Island and get it over with? You know, pedal powered cars, a Geiger counters built from coconuts, and everything except a raft?
...
Here's a solution to the problems. Stop giving these fake people more fake shit they don't desperately need to fake survive. We've all seen primitive technology guy, he does this shit in a pair of cargo shorts that he doesn't even use. He keeps calling people anal for pointing out things and instead of coming up with a real solution he says we're being too anal and gives up on the whole "no modern technology" idea and says "well DUH THEY HAVE THIS LOL STOP BEING SO ANAL BRO" when he could just as easily say, you know, that the information is on stone tablets and that they have adam and eve leaves on or some shit. Then he tries to tell us what the point of his thread is so we better start posting his way instead of posting our own way, and you're just backing his bullshit up when you white knight him. I'm perfectly fine helpign out if he doesn't post a picture of some nigger titled "bruh" when i point out that plastic boxes are modern tools (i.e. smashing a part off with a rock gives you a shitty knife, it can be used to collect rainwater, you can use it to store food so that animals can't get at it, you can use it to fucking keep yourself dry.) If he can't accept that people read the op about having the knowledge to do things and just keeps giving these imaginary people more things and moving the goalposts so that there are less problems, he's basically just going to end up saying "yeah well they have a house lol stop being so anal god" and you talking shit about people who point out the flaws because you want to touch op's cock is just idiotic.
tl;dr op can't deal with people poking holes in his shit and you're siding with him just because he's the op, i'll post whatever i want.
Bow-and-drill fires are apparently really tricky to start. There are reasons why everyone in stone age carried embers with them.
this.
it's literally the entire point of vaccination, to get your immune system to know a disease without risking death. Essentially giving the same boost to immune system "strength" without the risks.
People from developed countries that have more expansive vaccination scheme are going to have "stronger" immune systems in that they'll have functionally encountered and "survived" more diseases.
A new disease wil shit all over both groups equally.
shure, just dont be suprised when im ok after all that
You type like senile Frank Miller
and you are unaccountably pissed off at this thread for no discernible reason.
>"easy habitat' dodge
>dodge
fucking christ man, this isn't some ridiculous challenge scenario, it isn't a 'dodge' to figure out what changes would need to happen for this to work, it's called contributing to the thread.
>You're not interested in being serious or realistic
We all understand you are the most serious, realism minded, enlightened survivalist in the history of time, and we are all soft weak morons who should be bowing before your superior brain, consider it done.
Now that that's out of the way, will you kindly fuck off and let people have a constructive conversation absent your pseudo-intellectual dick waiving, please?
>STOP CONTRIBUTING TO THE THREAD IN A WAY I DON'T LIKE!!!!!!
-you
A digging stick to get at tubers and roots doesn't take days to make.
Just because people don't have all the tools they want to live semi-comfortably doesn't mean they'll all instantly die. There's an enormous grey area where people are getting some food, but not enough for the long term.