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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

A population without the Haber-Bosch process would be much smaller.

Yeah there are so many key knowledge that ordinary people just take for granted. But that's how we built up modern industries throughout the centuries.

I guess it is not realistic to ask for one generation to rebuild everything, and that's why I think we really need a lot of those "knowledge" and "tools" storage. I know many countries have such storage for wars, but are they accessible to ordinary people in case most of the population is wiped out?

Not just knowledge, but the Haber Process is part of a complex machine that involves mining and transporting the feedstock (methane), distributing and applying the product (ammonia), etc. Economic infrastructure (dollar, euro, etc). Nobody knows how to build a major government money system from scratch.

We've turned the Earth into a complex and delicate machine for sustaining human life. We don't know how complex or delicate.

So the population is smaller for a while and then it gets bigger. What of it? Unthinkable suffering, yes, but that wasn't the claim, the claim was about capability.

Obligatory Dr. Strangelove quote:

Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say... no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops.

If you cannot provide modern fertiliser equivalents, your population will get smaller, yes. It won't get appreciably larger because of that first problem.

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