Will it be a collapse due to oil depletion or sudden ecological catastrophe? I agree with 2bsirius' reservations about the techno-fix & back-to-nature-tribalist solutions. Historically there are alternative examples, following the breakdown of infrastructures and massive die-offs in Late Antiquity: monasteries of women & men whose "pray-and-work" rule enabled them to conserve & transmit Greco-Roman literature, herbal science, music etc. See sci-fi novel "Canticle for Leibowitz" by W.Miller, serialized in 1955-57, about monks keeping hi-tech alive after The Bomb.
The history of evolution does seem to vouch for the idea that it takes a catastrophe for massive shifts in resource use to occur (I'm thinking here of the O2 crisis that forced methane-eating bacteria deep underground, but also allowed photosynthesis to develop).
0ThouArtThat0 3 years ago