Recently I posted some videos on Bluesky featuring some old Great Era machine guns. Specifically ones from the Hotchkiss family of weapons. And this reminded me of an aspect of world building that I think a lot of creatives struggle with. That being the idea that it’s easy to regress to an earlier level of technology after an apocalypse level event. So let’s dive in.

Background

It’s a common trope in writing and world building. An apocalypse level event happens, and the survivors go through a period of awfulness before they fire up older technologies and rebuild. The world achieves a new status quo, and the march towards the future begins again. Except that it’s not that easy.

Going Backwards is Hard

This is a serious thing, largely because of how we operate as a larger society. As skills become obsolescent, fewer people practice them, and eventually they become areas of expertise largely restricted to hobbyist communities and academics. But it’s not just the direct skills that are affected. If there’s supporting trades and skills needed, those skills are often less well preserved. And on top of that, particularly when we get into industrial spaces, there’s supply chain issues and challenges to deal with.

So, in a post apocalypse, these are all areas that have to be overcome in order to successfully regress to a older form of technology. People have to have access to the skills, materials, and other resources to get the process started. And the more gaps in this there are, the harder will be to actually do.

The Industrial Problem

This is one of the bigger stumbling points that world builders run into. And by that I mean that they approach it with some ideas about how industry work that don’t sync up with how things are. The big one being that companies and factories can simply start producing older technology. For example, if there were an apocalypse level event, and the government of the UK were to go to BAE and tell them to start manufacturing L1A1 (FN FAL) and Lee Enfield Rifles because they’re simpler to make than the current service rifles, BAE would laugh them out of the room.

Why? When a manufacturing line goes down, it’s not a case of shuttering the building and walking away, leaving it to be reactivated when needed. Old machines and tooling are torn out, sold off, melted down, or scrapped, and new lines for new products go in. Ford Motor Company can’t build a Model T at production level today anymore than they could a 1984 Ranger.

Supply Chains

This is the real kicker. Everything from food to electronics to industrial supplies are all subject to supply chains. Chains that apocalypses famously disrupt. And few cities, states, or nations have sufficient supplies or redundant infrastructure to survive long after an apocalypse, never mind to successfully establish even medieval manufacturing levels. There’s no real getting around this one either. Materials need to come from somewhere, and resource poor areas, or places where their extraction is difficult are going to have bad times.

In the real world, we’ve actually seen this happen historically. The Bronze Age Collapse saw the end of the common use of bronze and the eventual adoption of iron as the primary metal used. But it wasn’t because iron was just better than bronze. Bronze required trade networks to happen. Copper, tin, lead, and other ores had to travel from point to point. When the collapse came, all those trade routes went down. Iron working was niche at the time because it was more resource intensive, but iron only needed iron to work, so in the absence of resources, the civilizations in the region pivoted to iron. Supply chains matter.

So What Would Happen?

Technological development, like cultural development, isn’t linear. No matter have videogames and basic education graphics have communicated through the years. Much like evolution, they branch based on environmental pressures pushing things in different directions.

Cultures that go through apocalyptic events will likely have a period of scavenging and salvage. Technologies that can be continue to be used will, until they either breakdown or run out of whatever resource they need to work. During this period, you’re also probably going to see technological branching happening. And this is going to get super local super fast. Largely becausee of the previously mentioned supply line challenges.

Reinventing and Recreating

Some technologies can be reinvented or recreated relatively easily, provided their resource requirements are achievable locally or through local level trade. But it’s not straightforward. For example, making a firearm like you’d find in the American Civil War, the Great War, or even into the early Cold War? Well within specs for many places. Making the ammunition for them? Much, much more difficult. Even making a percussion cap, the key piece of technology that unlocks cap-and-ball revolvers, the earliest cartridge rifles, and so on, is hard. They need metal casting and a chemical industry, and all those entail, just to happen. But a firelock musket is very achievable and doesn’t even require a complex set of springs. Swords are hard to make, maces, morning stars, and spears are easy. So these are some considerations.

Another consideration is whether it’s easier to move towards an older technology, or try to invent a new way to produce one you had. In essence, which is less resource intensive, building a whole new system to make something that was previously obsolete to fill a gap, or seeing if you can build the same thing a different way. So, sticking to the weapons example from above, City X has the technology to make cased ammunition, but doesn’t have access to brass. Is it easier to switch to making paper cartridges and the needle rifles to use them, or to switch to aluminum casings? Probably the latter in the short term if they have lots aluminum.

The Rebuilt World

There’s two great examples of rebuilt worlds to look at for this.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is an amazing anime series and movie, and is set on a post-post apocalypse Earth. Technology was clearly much more advanced in the past, prior to the Seven Days of Fire, but the people of Earth have adapted. Some technologies, ones that were easy to recreate and maintain afterwards are still there (flying machines, rifles, and so on). But there’s evidence of branching, as medieval style body armour and melee weapons are commonplace.

Rifts Earth is the other. And don’t laugh. For all its faults, the emphasis in the setting on scavenging, salvaging, and establishing the supply chains needed to maintain industries are there. Not just there, but are core components of how the world works. Rifts Earth is a miserable post-apocalypse place that’s barely into its stabilization phase. But how they got there is solid. In the immediate period after the Coming of the Rifts, they relied on existing gear and tech. Over the following centuries, they developed their own versions of things, and established salvage and trade routes. In the current era, there’s a handful of powers, all at the centers of their respective trade webs, that have tech that is either new, or that’s newly manufactured old designs.

Libraries

In this whole situation, there is a true wild card. Libraries. Provided the information they hold is accessible, libraries are a powerhouse in the post apocalypse. Information is power, and the overwhelming bulk of librarians are all about getting knowledge into the hands of people. Some librarian programs even include discussions on post-disaster activities that librarians can take to help rebuild (I am not even kidding). Depending on how well stocked a library is, and its type (public, academic, medical, industrial, legal etc…), a library can help bridge the knowledge gaps a community may have in the post apocalypse. This isn’t to say that a person could walk in and walk out with all the knowledge to built a steam engine, but they could probably build a windmill, or a waterwheel, make a cast for creating soft metal tools, or brew antiseptics, and so on. And this will definitely affect the developmental trajectory of a region.

Final Thoughts

Tech levels are one of the hardest things to pin down in a post-apocalyptic setting. What I’ve found that helps make the call is time. If the game is more or less in a static time scenario, where time is effectively non-existent and there’s no world altering events in terms of adventures? Go all in, it doesn’t have to make much sense. The past is the past, and the future never really comes. It’s when there’s dynamic time, and things like the past and future matter is when I find putting more thought into things works out better. Both builds can be fun, but in different ways. And regardless, considering things like resource access, information and expertise availability, and what’s easier to achieve in the short and medium term are still valid. Why? Because they can still drive world building and story/adventure development.