In a post-apoc world in which the electic grid and telephone networks were knocked out, would it be easier technologically in the aftermath to build telegraphs first (which is what happened in real life) and telephones later? or vice versa?
In a post-apoc world in which the electic grid and telephone networks were knocked out, would it be easier technologically in the aftermath to build telegraphs first (which is what happened in real life) and telephones later? or vice versa?
The telegraph is easier since it doesn't need switches and doesn't need many of the bits the telephone requires (microphone and speakers), but if you know how to build the phone system, start with that right away.
So if the knowledge is still there, telegraph is a waste of time. The hard part (laying cables) is the same for both.
So if the knowledge is still there, telegraph is a waste of time. The hard part (laying cables) is the same for both.
The POTS system requires generated power. A telegraph can be run off of chemical batteries.
The POTS system requires generated power. A telegraph can be run off of chemical batteries
Historically the telephone systems were like the telegraph.
One line, no exchange or switchboard, direct connection of two or more phones. Those early systems could be run of chemical batteries. I don't remember which technical enhancement – if any – required the use of generated power.
BTW, even after using manually operated switchboards you could be on a shared line. (Similar to two phones in your house.)
HM.
Batteries or external electrical sources are not necessary for a telegraph and some types of phones.
Hand cranked phones are still used by the US Army (and Sound Powered phones in the Navy, aboard ships). Distance is limited, roughly 6 miles/10 kilometers.
TA312, and TA1 phones are extremely useful. Switchboards (some as small as a tablet computer, but require no power to network up to 20 phones) to Switchboards the size of a piano capable of managing a large network.
Phones and telegraphs have an advantage in that they don't broadcast, making them much harder to detect or interpret.
Radios are more flexible, although the transmitters are likely to weigh significantly more than a telegraph; more fragile too.
If "EmCon" (Emissions Control) is a consideration, telegraphs and telephones provide better security.
The POTS system requires generated power. A telegraph can be run off of chemical batteries.
Actually, depending on how complicated you make the "telephone" you don't even need that much.
The Navy has employed "Sound Powered Telephones" for over a century now, and while they "cheat" on certain aspects of it(they'll use amplifiers for longer distances between phones) the system does largely operate as befits the name.
However, that system only works for point to point communication only.
But then, if you look at the earliest telephone system, they did much the same thing, only they made use a manual patch panels.
So your phone connected you to an operator, who then asked who you wanted to speak to, and then they'd use a patch cable to make the relevant electrical connections so you could speak to the person at your chosen destination.
No need for mechanical switches or any other such things for "version 1" of the system, although you'd want signal amplifiers if you want to send voice communications further than a couple hundred feet.
You start with smoke and drum signals ;)
Drums as in McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern.
Next step would be semaphores.
HM.
I'd have thought you'd probably start off with the good ol' Dixie cups and really long string to get into contact with everyone. Tee Hee.
Depends on the apocalypse. If it is just a surface one, then all the satellites are still up there, so you wouldn't bother with either and just jump straight to mobile.
If it is just a surface one, then all the satellites are still up there, so you wouldn't bother with either and just jump straight to mobile.
Most mobile phones depend on cell towers, only wide range calls are then routed through satellites.
Actual telecommunication satellites are not designed to receive and relay calls by millions of satellite phones.
Mobile phones aka cell phones and satellite phones are different critters.
HM.
Depends on the apocalypse. If it is just a surface one, then all the satellites are still up there, so you wouldn't bother with either and just jump straight to mobile.
First you have to have the capacity to build mobile phones. And you probably aren't going to get there without rebuilding older communications systems first.
Who says there's isn't thousands of mobile phones laying around?
As said, it depends on the apocalypse. Chances are the Earth didn't suddenly revert to pristine forest with no man made objects overnight.
A loss of power grid, or even most technology somehow (even if likely magical way) means you have to reinvent and rebuild absolutely everything in order.
Radio doesn't need cables, some form radio communication would very likely be first, at least in the immediate aftermath. Simplifying it down to cabled telephone, if that's determined to better suit the needs and abilities of the survivors would come later.
Who says there's isn't thousands of mobile phones laying around?
ETA: I thought of a third problem.
For the short term sure. But there are two major problems with them as a long term solution.
1. keeping the batteries charged.
2. Neither the phones nor the batteries will last forever.
3. Mobile phones are not satellite phones. Once the power gird goes down the cell towers stop working and all those cell phones will be fancy paperweights.
When I speak of a long term solution, I mean for the generations it will take to repopulate the Earth.
How many of those survivor cell phones will last even a decade once someone starts using them?
How many of those survivor cell phones will last even a decade once someone starts using them?
I usually do 5+ years with a cell phone and probably would even longer if they didn't evolve so fast. The last one I couldn't use any longer because I couldn't find a new battery for it. Batteries are more of a problem than the phones themselves if you take care of them. With time and effort it's probably easier to recreate a battery than a complete phone so in total you could use the existing stock for quite a while considering the decreased number of people. Maybe long enough to develop new systems.
Both radio and cell phones need power to work so it's more of a power problem. Either to power the radio's or to power the cell towers. Assuming of course that any of those electronics survived.
The basic problem at the bottom is: are there enough people left with the knowledge to start recreating the basic industries needed for manufacturing AND can they create a more or less civilized group to actually achieve that.
It's taken, what, 40 years to go technologically dependent. 40 years ago computers and mobile phones were the things of the rich and sci-fi novels. Less than a hundred years to go from horse and cart to self driving cars.
Any apocalypse that leaves survivors, will leave tech behind and the knowledge of that tech. Unlike the first time round, survivors would know it was possible and not waste time on the theory of whether it's actually possible. It's only been, what, 120 or so years since the first powered flight, so to learn how to do it again you are looking at half that, possibly less.
Batteries are simple, they are just basically lead and acid, hells, you can make a battery out of a lemon. Cabled telephones only existed because no-one knew how to broadcast signals. Now we do. Why spend thousands of man hours and resources making transmission lines, when it's quicker just to make a transistor, and from there, a radio?
I reckon it could be less than 50 years to go from apocalypse to a level of technology akin to the sixties, and another twenty to get from the sixties to roughly where we are now. Simply because the tech will exist along with dead tree manuals, and instead of having to invent it, the survivors will just have to reverse engineer it.
History has proved that the the biggest hindrance to technological advancement other than ignorance, is generally a lack of money to fund the research.
Why spend thousands of man hours and resources making transmission lines, when it's quicker just to make a transistor, and from there, a radio?
Privacy. So you aren't broadcasting all your messages to everyone with a receiver to listen with?
The first practical radio transmitters only a few decades behind the telephone in the late 1800s.
Understand why radio didn't kill the telephone in the early 20th century and you might have some insight into the answer to your question.
"when it's quicker just to make a transistor"
Sure, but can you make your own transistors by hand small enough to be practical for a portable radio.
Could you do it from raw materials you dug out of the ground yourself?
Sure, but can you make your own transistors by hand small enough to be practical for a portable radio.
Could you do it from raw materials you dug out of the ground yourself?
No, but here's the thing, I could and would learn if I was needed to. The same way that I would learn to butcher an animal in order to eat, because at present, I can't do that either.
The same way that I would learn to butcher an animal in order to eat, because at present, I can't do that either.
Depending upon what it is, it's actually pretty easy. Now, if you want it to look pretty, that's a little tougher. Key thing, whether it's a deer, pig, or cow, is do NOT puncture the entrails. The intestines from a cow can fill a 50 gallon galvanized washtub, but you don't want that on the meat. Also, make sure your knife is sharp, so you can separate the skin, and having a saw to cut through the bones is handy if you're not cutting the tendons to release the legs and such.
There is no way to determine an accurate response to your question.
My personal opinion is, radio based communication will come back first.
That is based on the probable number of surviving radio wave based devices.
Semi Trucks, etc are everywhere, and damn near every one of them have a CB radio of some kind. No matter the apocalypse nature, it would have to destroy every Semi out there for this to not hold true.
My personal opinion is, radio based communication will come back first.
My $0.02:
In a global apocalypse that wipes out all modern industrial civilization, salvaged gear may get you over the initial survival hump, but it is not a viable long term solution.
For viable long term solutions for any post apocalypse problem including communications, we need to re-develop the capacity to manufacture new devices/components.
This is likely to be a very long road for all but the most basic preindustrial technologies.
For viable long term solutions for any post apocalypse problem including communications, we need to re-develop the capacity to manufacture new devices/components.
Agreed on that, however, it will require examples to be available for reverse engineering. The more available the examples, the faster it would be.
Agreed on that, however, it will require examples to be available for reverse engineering.
Reverse engineering how the device works is necessary but not sufficient. It won't tell you much if anything at all about the manufacturing process.
Separate and aside from the technology in the device itself, there is a whole stack of technologies that make up the manufacturing process. And other technologies that are necessary precursors to those technologies.
Long term we might be better off simply restarting from late iron age and re-inventing everything after from scratch.
Building a radio isn't all that hard.
Building the components to build a radio isn't even all that hard. I couldn't do it without checking some reference books, but I have the reference books.
And there are people who could do it without having to knock the rust off their analog engineering first, like my old college roommate, who holds an amateur radio technician's license, and builds Tesla coils for fun, including making from scratch the high-capacity capacitors and induction coils it requires.
There's a lot of technology that we use transistors and integrated circuits for, that we don't actually need transistors and integrated circuits for. We just build it that way to make it tiny and digital. It might take time to rebuild the infrastructure to recreate streaming HDTV, but analog radio? Pfft. Way easier than laying telegraph cables.
More generally, there's a lot of technology where the hard part isn't doing it, it's figuring out how to do it. And we already did that part.
Building the components to build a radio isn't even all that hard. I couldn't do it without checking some reference books, but I have the reference books.
Building a radio from parts is one thing.
Are you really saying you could build a complete working radio from nothing but raw materials as they came out of the ground?
Because that's what I'm talking about.
You have to recreate the entire stack from base raw materials to final product.
You have to recreate the entire stack from base raw materials to final product.
Why?
We currently recycle scrap, an apocalypse seems a guarantee of much more scrap. Why mine when you can recycle?
We currently recycle scrap, an apocalypse seems a guarantee of much more scrap. Why mine when you can recycle?
Because eventually the scrap runs out.
It would be easier to re-develop mineral extraction early when you can work on small scale than it would be 4-5 generations later after all the initial survivors who might have had first hand knowledge about how to find/extract minerals are dead and you have a much larger population to supply.
Sure, for the initial survivors it would be much easier to rely on salvaged materials and tech. But is it a wise decision if you start thinking about what their grand children and great grandchildren will need to do?
Because eventually the scrap runs out.
Why? Most of the human inhabitants would be dead, so the scrap would last a long time (very few consumers). Long enough for industry to get back up and running.
Why? Most of the human inhabitants would be dead, so the scrap would last a long time (very few consumers). Long enough for industry to get back up and running.
Scrap is just a part of what is needed to recreate industry. Besides resources (scrap or otherwise), people and knowledge are necessary. In a PA scenario it largely depends on how many humans remain WITH the needed knowledge or the capacity to learn from remaining books, if any are left. It also needs a social environment where these people can spend time on it besides trying to keep themselves fed and watered.
ETA: I dare to say a suitable social environment is the first requirement before anything else might be accomplished.
Why? Most of the human inhabitants would be dead, so the scrap would last a long time
It would take a long time to salvage all the scrap, but not all of it will remain usable as is indefinitely.
And you might not have the right scrap in the right place/time for what you need, meaning you might need to re-smelt scrap metals.
And quite frankly, today, that's how most industrial scale metal recycling is done. The scrap metal is reduced to small pieces, melted down and cast into ingots the way fresh metal smelted from ore is.
And you might not have the right scrap in the right place/time for what you need, meaning you might need to re-smelt scrap metals.
That sounds like you know of a single location where all of the needed materials can be mined, extracted etc..??
Recycling plastic is a great deal easier than creating it. Th same applies to many other materials.
The idea that existing scrap etc be ignored in favour of returning to iron age tech simply does not make sense.
Recycling plastic is a great deal easier than creating it.
Actually, the opposite is true. It takes more energy to recycle plastics than to make new plastics. If you were correct that recycling was easier than making new then private companies would have already been recycling plastics before governments forced the issue.
The idea that existing scrap etc be ignored in favour of returning to iron age tech simply does not make sense.
That's actually not what I'm advocating.
I'm not advocating that scrap be completely ignored, but rather that specific effort ought to be applied to re-developing the capacity to make new from raw materials as early as possible rather than relying on salvage/scrap alone.
Total reliance on salvage/scrap would set up a very high probability of a second collapse when the easily accessible salvage/scrap starts to run out.
joyR wrote:
Recycling plastic is a great deal easier than creating it.
You answered:
Actually, the opposite is true. It takes more energy to recycle plastics than to make new plastics. If you were correct that recycling was easier than making new then private companies would have already been recycling plastics before governments forced the issue.
Both right and both wrong, because it depends.
The manufacturer who creates plastic products like cans, boxes, bottles, pipes, or thousands of other things has tons of plastic scraps etc. Those always went into recycling.
Recycling plastics collected from the consumer is often expensive. Not so much the needed energy, but the sorting and cleansing. There are very few things you can use mixed plastic waste for because the different materials have so very different properties. So you have to sort and separate it. (or burn it and recover the energy).
HM.
No one in a post-apocalyptic scenario is going to need to be mining their own copper ore and smelting their own bog iron. There will be vast hoards of refined materials available for the scavenging.
Semi Trucks, etc are everywhere, and damn near every one of them have a CB radio of some kind. No matter the apocalypse nature, it would have to destroy every Semi out there for this to not hold true.
Less true than you might think these days, you probably have a better than 50/50 chance of finding a CB in any randomly selected Big Rig found at a truck stop belonging to a nationally branded truck stop operation.
That local mom and pop truck stop catering to local drivers may be another matter, but the long-haul guys have largely shifted over to using computers and smartphones for their information about road conditions. The CB radio is largely to domain of trolls and goofing off these days. Sometimes useful information gets passed along, but the rest of the time, it might as well be populated by the dregs of 4chan, if there even is anyone using it when you turn the radio on.
Nationally branded maybe, but owner operators are very likely to have one, even the contracted owner operators.
Nationally branded maybe, but owner operators are very likely to have one, even the contracted owner operators.
Even the owner ops have largely stopped using them, they're still around, and often installed. But they spend most of their time turned off there days--it's either dead silent, or full of nonsense these days. But for the purpose of your scenario, that still means plenty of CB radios floating around.
Not all apocalypses are equal. There are a ton of factors to consider.
I think the biggest issue is how able the remaining society is to establish the necessary industries. And intimately tied to that is how well it can perform the basics - aggriculture, sanitation, law, etc. And those things are very fragile. COVID has barely been a blip on ruin-society scale, and yet its impact has been huge and will be felt for a generation.
I have a post-apocalyptic world in some of my stories where knowlege was preserved, in computers in bunkers, but the remaining population is very low. Scavanging provides some help, but it's been long enough that much of what was left behind was ruined. So while they know about satalties and cell phones, they're more worried about brick factories and copper pipes. The closest historical analogue I've come up with is the colonization of the Americas: technological knowhow exists but manufacturing is limited, and goods from the old world are limited. (It's been the most challenging world-building I've ever done.)
Telegraphs, since they require only very simple mechanical mechanisms.
Basically, wire, either from point A to point B, or wound around a metal core to make an electromagnet, plus some source of electricity. Most kids could build a telegraph.
Here's something to think about: wire-making has been around for ~5,000 years. But it wasn't until the early 1800's that someone figured out how to insulate wire. And not until 1900 that a chemist, George Jacobs, invented an enamel coating, which made it possible to build practical electric motors and generators.
So, it's more a question of "will the knowledge of how to make this stuff survive?"
In Leo Frankowski's Crosstime Engineer books (time travel, not apocalypse), one of the problems the protagonist ran into when trying to introduce telegraphs was that people kept stealing the wires. Copper was valuable.
In some cases I think the technology questions take a back seat to the social ones. How many people are left and how are they organized?
This has been the coolest discussion I've read here in a while.
For whatever it's worth, I would vote for shortwave radio. Yes, it's a step up in difficulty from telegraph, but is likely still within reach and far more versatile.
Mobile phones are mostly in Mobile, Alabama.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone#:~:text=Mobile%20phone,phone%2C%20see%20Smartphone.
Or, perhaps the survivors are mostly young people who believe that modern technology* is the root of all evil and destroyer of the planet.
Would the people who try to restore modern tech be called heretics and "cancelled" like Copernicus and Galileo?
*their cell phones excepted, of course.
IIRC thats the basis for A Canticle for Lieborwitz. One of the first post-apocalypse stories, back in the 1950s.
In any apocalypse worth its name, only a small percentage of the population will survive. I think that's a given.
That means only a small percentage of the handful of people who actually know how to make things like, for example, transistors will survive.
Knowing how is different from running a machine that makes them. Knowing how is also different from understanding the physics involved in how they work.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-chip-production-why-hard-to-make-semiconductors/
(Read the above and then tell me you could learn this!)
None of the few survivors will actually be familiar with all the steps involved. So the chances of putting together even one team capable of reproducing a practical transistor would be (IMHO) close to nil.
Read the above and then tell me you could learn this
Well, I read it and didn't learn anything new (except the revenue figures), but they did miss some things out - like, the masks have to be generated with deliberate distortions so that when diffraction happens (which is inevitable at this scale), the final pattern is what's required; or that the feedstock has to be stupidly pure, since the device, which relies on the specific patterns of impurities to function, would test out as chemically pure silicon. Things like, even with the correct circuitry, the layout is critical as the inherent inductance, capacitance and resistance can combine in unexpected ways so that odd tiny sections of the circuitry can suffer power transients and malfunction at particular frequencies of operation (and those frequencies, and the likelihood of failure, will change with temperature).
Without massive computer support, there's no way to create masks for and produce new components more advanced than were around in the '70s, and probably just the early '70s at that, and I'm not sure that that production didn't also require computer support. That's about the era that the processing steps could be done manually rather than by robotics. Much easier to produce would be thermionic valves, and go back to the tech of the '50s - but, production and programming are even more labour intensive in that case.
This is all ignoring the killer aspect (in my opinion) - we've already used all the easily available source minerals. Already used the not-so-easily available minerals. Already used the damn-difficult to get at minerals. We're currently using the nearly-impossible-to-get-at minerals; if civilisation blips, we're not going to be able to dig many mile-deep mines, and we'll have no idea where to dig them anyway. So, civilisation blips, say goodnight, Gracie.
None of the few survivors will actually be familiar with all the steps involved. So the chances of putting together even one team capable of reproducing a practical transistor would be (IMHO) close to nil.
I think the odds are a lot better than that. You just need to find a couple half-way competent chemists and an electrical engineer worthy of the title.
"A practical transistor" in this context is likely to be enormously huge by present day standards. But it still enabled the transistor radio of the 1950's. Because that simple transistor operating on a millimeter scale was leaps and bounds beyond what the vacuum tubes could do.
You confusing "miniaturization era" transistors of the 1960's and onwards with "practical" and that so very far from reality to be laughable.
I've personally worked with single transistors larger than the typical eraser on a #2 pencil. It didn't make them any less practical for their use purpose.
Quit the improvement over vacuum tubes which would be the size of either my hand, or my head, if not my torso.
To be honest, so long as all technology is not lost, I think it would be radio.
"Spark-Gap Telegraph" would likely emerge first, as it is incredibly simple. And it basically works by using interference by purposefully causing "hash" pulses that can be picked up remotely. Think of ages ago when you turned on a mixer or some other kitchen appliance and it caused interference with a nearby TV set or radio.
Those were developed originally in the 1880s, and it really was how most "radio" worked until after WWI. The "radio telegraph" on the Titanic (and all other ships) were spark-gap, so really did not transmit "dit dit dit", but "crackle crackle crackle". But the receiver would convert the "crackle" to a "dit" to make it easier for the operator to understand.
So I bet that so long as technologies were not lost, that would be the first thing recreated for long distance communication. Just skip the need for wires, and do telegraph by the oldest and most primitive use of radio.
Personally, I can see any of those three technologies being the first to be restored in different locations depending on what the local survivors might know.