How do massive population die-outs effect technological advances?

[d32123]

Let's say the Spanish Flu kills 90% of the human population in 1918-1919, but, instead of disproportionately killing off healthy young people, the lethality of the flu has a direct correlation to how old you are. In this sense, most educated people are toast, but documents of technological advances still exist.

How long does it take, by your estimate, for people to reach WWII level technology?

And, as a bonus, do you think human civilization would collapse and if so how long would such a collapse last before new nations begin to arise from the rubble?

 

[Elfwine]

Let's say the Spanish Flu kills 90% of the human population in 1918-1919, but, instead of disproportionately killing off healthy young people, the lethality of the flu has a direct correlation to how old you are. In this sense, most educated people are toast, but documents of technological advances still exist.

How long does it take, by your estimate, for people to reach WWII level technology?

And, as a bonus, do you think human civilization would collapse and if so how long would such a collapse last before new nations begin to arise from the rubble?

If 90% of the human race is wiped out, a question that ought to be asked is: how likely the 10% that survive are able to keep the species going?

And if so, where are they doing it?

That level of death rate is going to see human survival in danger, I think.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2005/12/demographics-gif-1920-2005.html If 90% of the population dies off, you're left with a nation of toddlers.

 

[Cook]

That level of death rate is going to see human survival in danger, I think.

The population of the world in 1920 was 1.86 Billion, with a 90% death toll that becomes 186 million; the Human Species is safe but civilisation is likely to take a massive hit, especially since most of the world’s cities would be likely abandoned since they would be overrun with corpses.

 

[Elfwine]

The population of the world in 1920 was 1.86 Billion, with a 90% death toll that becomes 186 million; the Human Species is safe but civilisation is likely to take a massive hit, especially since most of the world’s cities would be likely abandoned since they would be overrun with corpses.

The age thing becomes problematic, though. Having a disproportionate number of young children survive is not good.

That's a lot of dead mature adults, meaning people able to work and fend for themselves.

A nation (well, a world) of Boxcar Children, forced to live entirely on their own, does not sound good at all.

 

[aktarian]

I think theory is that a state can survive loss of 15 (or was it 20?)% of population.

With massive die-offs advanced civilization as we know it will collapse as it will have to revert to agricultural society to survive. With collapse of technological advanced civilization said agriculture becomes less effective as machinery can't be maintained, artificial fertilizers produced etc. It depends on how this affects animal life. If primary food sources are hit as well and can't bounce back it will become even worse.

 

[d32123]

I think theory is that a state can survive loss of 15 (or was it 20?)% of population.

link? A good source on this would answer a lot of my potential questions. I'm trying to write an AH that has the US balkanizing without ASBing too much while having a PoD in the very early 20th century and this seems the least implausible way of making that happen.

 

[carlton_bach]

I think theory is that a state can survive loss of 15 (or was it 20?)% of population.

Is that for a modern state? Because historically, the data suggest states like Brandenburg during the 30 Years' War, Florence and Venice during the Black Death and the ERE during Justinian's plague survived worse than that and remained recognisably intact. There are also oral records of epidemics hitting Native American communities before direct contact with the Europeans, and those nations continued to exist.

 

[TxCoatl1970]

Several POD's

Massive population die-offs offer an apparently clean slate with no status quo to stop innovation, you'd think right?

Well, the big problem you've got when population drops by a massive chunk is who survived? A large # of little kids, old farts past reproducing, or a mixture of age ranges that just happen to be naturally immune?

In Case 1, Lord of the Flies or Earth Abides.
In this case, the kids don't get proper education, they focus so much on survival that expecting them to be rabid tinkerers and scientists who'd focus on tech advancement at all costs is nearly ASB to establish and maintain the base of techniques to keep civilization going IMO- agriculture, power generation, medicine, civil, chemical and mechanical engineering. Once you've got those, then progress can go crazy from there. If you don't, things decline for quite a while until humanity regains the nature-savvy to survive without the arsenal of tech that makes things easy it took us thousands of years and millions of casualties to amass.

Without agriculture creating enough food surplus so a proportion of folks can specialize and tinker, you're stuck with hunter-gathering which is very labor-intensive. Sure, there's plenty of canned food and Twinkies laying around, but I'd imagine those stocks would get heavily picked over pretty soon.
Population hits hunter-gatherer equilibrium @ 2-5% present population ~200 M.

In Case 2, Bioshock, Logan's Run, or 13 Monkeys AKA Skinner Box society
You'd have a hell of a genetic bottleneck because barely 2% of the population can breed, for that first generation. The good news is, depending on what mix of folks survives, there's hopefully plenty of skilled, experienced folks to teach the first couple of generations of kids something useful and keeping much more of a veneer of sophistication going.
You'd see a huge reliance on robotics to do the dirty jobs (sparing the old farts from wearing themselves out growing food, mining necessary materials, keeping roads from falling apart) cloning and genetic engineering techniques to help replenish human population a lot more quickly.

I call it Rise of the Cylons after a few generations. Either the people get tired of being lab rats for the Elders to keep tweaking for giggles or a multi-generational agenda or the robots become self-aware and revolt.

Case 3
I look at this as The Stand, The Road only without the obvious Good vs Evil.
Lots of variables in again, what sorts of folks survive, what skills they have and can develop with a little guidance, what opportunities they have to practice and improve their repertoire of skills, whether you have clear plans to rebuild civilization factions are committed to enacting or a bunch of scavengers looting and kludging together ever-less-effective tools as the spiffy gear wears out.

All this is assuming a massive GLOBAL die-off.

Some have mentioned local die-offs that societies bounced back from. The Black Death killed off 30-40% and was a social laxative to Western Europe. It didn't hurt that the Mongols and Muslim neighbors spurred the Europeans to mobilize to learn more about the outside world and get up to speed and in the process, taking Church doctrine and approval less seriously in a burst of brute pragmatism.
Most people put the Renaissance at 1500, where the Black Death occurred mostly in 1348-1350 with heinous, but localized outbreaks thereafter after herd immunity and responses to epidemics became more robust.

Any more than that and the abilities for a society to flourish afterwards are very slim indeed based on the archeological/historical evidence.

 

[Michel Van]

Let's say the Spanish Flu kills 90% of the human population in 1918-1919, but, instead of disproportionately killing off healthy young people, the lethality of the flu has a direct correlation to how old you are. In this sense, most educated people are toast, but documents of technological advances still exist.

How long does it take, by your estimate, for people to reach WWII level technology?

And, as a bonus, do you think human civilization would collapse and if so how long would such a collapse last before new nations begin to arise from the rubble?

with 90% population wipe out you get scenario of Novel Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. (must read)
in begin the Survivors try to keep civilization and Technology up
in the end Mankind live on Stone-age level
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Abides

a flu kill of 30%-45% would be enough to put the World in chaos but civilization will survived in some parts in World
although technological, the civilization will to stagnate for years until the young are educated to be scientist/engineer

 

[aktarian]

link? A good source on this would answer a lot of my potential questions. I'm trying to write an AH that has the US balkanizing without ASBing too much while having a PoD in the very early 20th century and this seems the least implausible way of making that happen.

No link, sorry. One of those things I read somewhere and kind of stuck in my mind.

 

[aktarian]

Is that for a modern state? Because historically, the data suggest states like Brandenburg during the 30 Years' War, Florence and Venice during the Black Death and the ERE during Justinian's plague survived worse than that and remained recognisably intact. There are also oral records of epidemics hitting Native American communities before direct contact with the Europeans, and those nations continued to exist.

Yes, I believe it was for modern(ish) industrialised(ish) state.

 

[wkwillis]

90% die off, no big deal.
You can shut down 90% of the factories, mines, oil wells, and farms, because the most profitable, richest, newest, etc, ones are left, and still have lots and lots of third world people who would be delighted to move into our jobs as we upskill into more lucrative positions.
Very few jobs require skills. Doctors, dentists, etc, mostly. Pretty much everything else can be learned in a few months, weeks, or days.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

90% die off, no big deal.
You can shut down 90% of the factories, mines, oil wells, and farms, because the most profitable, richest, newest, etc, ones are left, and still have lots and lots of third world people who would be delighted to move into our jobs as we upskill into more lucrative positions.
Very few jobs require skills. Doctors, dentists, etc, mostly. Pretty much everything else can be learned in a few months, weeks, or days.

That's one hell of an assumption! First it assumes an even die off of people around the globe, across professions. Doctors would be the most exposed and would disproportionately die. Plus it assumes that raw materials can still be transported around the globe, i.e. oil, without which most vehicles can move. Plus refining, actual production, maintenence, etc.
It won't be pretty...