Wintermind said:
You severely doubt the amount of intelligence and creativity people have. The nukes aren't going to suddenly make people fucking retarded. People have been making gunpowder for thousands of years, and guns since the Renaissance, using primers for atleast the past hundred odd years. Are people going to be manufacturing bullets in the days following the war? No. Are they in the weeks after? probably not. Months? maybe. Year? Likely. Two or three years? yes, they will.
Is every book going to be destroyed? Every piece of machinery? Every means of generating power?
Bows have been dead for fucking centuries, and they only exist now for nerds to harp about their fucking honor or some shit, or think they're cool, or for other nerds to go hunting with or some other performance thing.
Yes I do doubt most people's skills. seriously doubt them. I am as a friend of mine puts it a man a 1000 years apart, as I am interested in natural and primitive skill's, but I also work as a Unix & Windows Admin.
Most people today can't light a fire, go on at a BBQ ask if some one other than you without using Google can light a fire without BBQ Fluid, most can't (an a great number can't with the fluid). An fire is humanities most basic tool, I personally know metal workers who can't light a fire and use Gas powered forges for there work, that's a job that requires fire to happen.
And the point of the BBQ? Most people in society today only have skills that work for today's society. Very few of them are usable outside of the field they work in, an even then most of the skill's need modern tech to use that knowledge.
For instance a metal worker today as I said before is used to ordering X tweaking Y resulting in Z. But a metal worker 60 let alone 100 years ago knows what the ore looks like, what the temp is to smelt it and the way to make his own tools from basic materials. A even better example is, my own Dad.
My Dad is a Nuclear Engineer. But he got his engineering root's working in a boiler fitters after school in the 50's, he attended Collage and joined the growth industry as a Welder in the mid 60's, today? Well he is a Decommissioning engineer, and one of the plants he is due to help pull apart is one of the ones he helped make. And at the moment they are starting to lay ground work.
A few weeks ago my Dad is sitting in the back of a meeting regarding some form of pipe, and it needed a special kind of bolt it was a L shape with a bit of a bend, the young guys started saying Where are we going to get that let's just knock a hole though this 8ft concrete wall, or where calling suppliers to see if they had anything that would match, and crys of we can't make that, etc this was time sensitive on this part of the job.
What did my Dad an his mates at the back of the room do? The walked up read the pipe map, talk for 5 min and drew up machinists plans to make the bolt.
The point of this example? in a single generation we have gone from Let's make it we can do it faster an cheaper than buying it in, to We don't have the knowledge, this was from people around my age 25-30. My Dad a engineer has seen the industry gone from "yea we can do it" grads to "I have no idea and wont try" grads, today they have little experience fabricating things.
Now I was lucky, my dad taught me cool things when I was a kid and I asked questions. I can read most Engineering plans, Circuit Diagrams, use a Milling machine, Lathe, MIG an ACR welders etc. My own personal education has lead me down the path of having a interest in primitive skills.
The point is this is in one life time skills in a society have gone lets do it, to can't be done. Just because you are called a Engineer today wont mean you are one tomorrow. Hell my Dad an my Swedish uncle taught me how to smelt Bog Iron, as part of a summer project in school we only made a small ingot but was invaluable to me, and was awesome at the same time. And beyond that I have attended a agricultural collage, an I have a basic grounding of farming skills, an methods.
So yea I was lucky with my skills, but will every one be the same? Or after the bombs have dropped will they pick over what is left while waiting for the government to come back? even if you survived the blast, there is a good chance you wont survive very long after. As for book's yea some will survive, but how many of them would be 50 shades of grey an how many of them would be metal work for dummies?
And beyond that how many kids learn English well enough to be able to read more than basic day to day English, how about Maths beyond addition an Subtraction etc?
