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Comment by colinmhayes | Hacker News Reader

If civilization as we know it ends but humanity survives it would be very difficult for future generations to reestablish because we've used up all the easy to access hydrocarbons. Without easy to reach coal there won't be another industrial revolution and humanity would be stuck for millions of years until the hydrocarbons reform.

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That is some kind of Oil centric thinking that got us in this mess in the first place. Renewables and fusion can do the much better better job at any point. By the way coal will not form ever again, only reason why coal/oil formed is because bacteria has not learned how to decompose cellulose at the time. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/the-fanta...

I don't think renewables and fusion will be an option in a post apocalyptic society. After a few generations of anarchy the knowledge will be lost.

True, solar and nuclear need a bit more tech, but wind and hydro are quite simple they need a bit of wire, magnet and something to spin.

I believe that theory is no longer valid. It was supposedly fungus that feeds on woody plants that resulted in a drop in lignin rich coal but that doesn't seem to quite work out. Coal is formed when there's a lot of organic matter that gets trapped in an oxygen poor environment and then buried and compressed over time. That process is certainly still happening though not at the same rate it has in the past. This article has some good details https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/why-was-most-of-the-...

There's still quite a lot of coal though.

I disagree on this, because biofuels are a viable substitute in almost every situation.

I'm fairly certain that our accumulated knowledge would make a second industrial happen even faster in spite of fossil-fuel-lack (but it might play out slightly differently, because of higher fuel costs...)

Doubtful that there's enough biofuels to produce high quality steel in large quantities and that's a pre-requisite to a post-apocalyptic neo-Industrial Revolution. Only coal burns hot enough and was available the huge quantities necessary.

Sure, producing iron without coal sucks; but there is already enough scrap metal around to power several additional industrial revolutions, and an arc furnace is really simple, especially if already know how electricity works beforehand.

Long term, there are alternative routes that could be taken (capable of processing fresh ore) but using scrap metal just seems easier/more likely to me.

That is not true methane, propylene, hydrogen can be easily produced and they have temperature >2800C while burning of coal can produce combustion gases as hot as 2,500 °C (4,500 °F). https://www.thoughtco.com/flame-temperatures-table-607307

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