If the imperial core spontaneously disappeared, they would begin developing - and that development would take the form of centralization and specialization and state-driven investment in underdeveloped sectors. Look at what Burkina Faso is doing right now for example: they went from contracts with French companies to export gold and uranium for a thousandth of their market value to now climbing the value chain by developing their own gold refineries.
To keep the example but circle back to the original point: If you lived in a future Burkina Faso that successfully developed its economy, proposing that they go back to small-scale production with worse economies of scale would be a step backwards, and yes the logical conclusion of that in any country is hunter-gatherers. There can be other important learnings from doing this as a constrained experiment within a development model, like resiliency. But thinking this is a development model in itself is a cargo cult mentality that misunderstands industrial production as some evil external imposition on humanity rather than the system that proved most effective at feeding the most people.