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Comment by justin66 | Hacker News Reader

> I would expect things to stabilize at a technology level of maybe the late 19th/early 20th century and start back up.

Except it would need to restart without all the easily accessible fossil fuels and lumber of that time…

Most areas of the world have more forest now than they did at the early 20th century. And fossil fuel extraction would be mostly spared from the nuclear attacks.

I hear this often repeated assumption all the time and I would love to know where it originated from?

Like what pop-sci article first misquoted a paper where someone stated that this was a possibility in a narrow set of circumstances?

I'm not saying it's wrong per se, It just seems like one of those factoids that sounds great, that fits in a nice little spot in our brains ready to be regurgitated when we hear something tangentially related. It's a little too convenient of an idea.

We now pull oil out from under kilometers of sea and seabed. We do that not for the challenge, but rather because the days of sticking a pipe in the ground and having the black gold geyser up out of it are long over.

Basically, we consume the oil that is cheapest to get to. And right now some of the cheapest oil to get to is under kilometers of sea and seabed.

What does this have to do with my question about where this claim was first made?

You sound like you found it more important that the source of the claim be found, than the conclusion of those resources not being as easily available. Barring the idea that anyone can look at facts and come to an conclusion of their own instead if it always needing to be a quote. Weird take.

I'm sorry, I mistook you for someone from the generation that was capable of witnessing the situation and drawing their own conclusions. You are correct, I did fail to link to a person who has written the conclusion on their blog, all ready for citation.

But way more knowledge of what kann be done.

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