Originally posted by epicenter00:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
I read an interesting article recently. If we ever get blasted back to the stone age, we're buggered. Most fiction assumes we'd drag ourselves back up without too much trouble, but in fact it would be very hard because we've used up all the easily-accessible metals and fossil fuels.
I've heard this particular arguement over and over again, and I've believed it for various points in my life (when you play Twilight: 2000 a lot, you run into this particular topic a lot more than the average person). However, I think in many ways this would be countered by exploiting marginal resource beds. A rebuilding society, at least in the early stages, is not going to need the vast quantities of resources that modern Western society requires. I think exploitation of trash dumps, reworking existing metals, and marginal resource bed exploitation would be enough to reach a critical mass to start exploitation of "deep mines" and such.
For instance, we don't really think of places like Greece or middle/southern Italy as strong areas for iron production, but historically, they yielded enough iron and such to make weapons and tools. Nobody mines in these places today because the density of iron ore isn't enough - there's other places where it's a lot easier to exploit, but that doesn't mean the iron there just vanishes like some Sid Meier videogame. There's still quite a bit there and it can still be exploited. It's just not enough warrant the kind of mining in scale that modern mining requires to turn a profit, but certainly enough to exploit if the desire and need was there and the needs were not too demanding. </font>[/QUOTE]For a more recent example look up "Emergency Mines" (Notbergbau) in germany post WWI and WWII.
Basically: The german deep mines where bombed and or flodded but coal was needed. So instead of tackeling the huge coal shoals at 500+ m, the people began mining the "Bentingsbank" Shoal at around 30m like it was done in the 1700rds. Some of these where done officially, others where illegal mines often using "all muscles" equipment.
Or look up chinas illegal coal mines, basically 19th century tech and 19th century deathrates.
As for uses of coal:
+ You can process it into fuels (Leuna-Method, used in WWII)
+ It is used in some filtration systems (Aktivkohle -
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktivkohle ) (Sorry, I don't know the english term)
+ IIRC industrial diamons are based on this stuff
As for using it in power plants: Modern units are among the cleanest fossile power plants. And coal is generally more common than oil.
As for central heating: I have not used a coal chute in a decade. And we are still heating with coal. Modern bunkerage systems and automatic burners have a service quality close to a modern oil burner
