Is a return to the "dark ages" possible?

Fiocca

Fiocca

Fiocca

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After reading about the history of the roman empire and its decline, the tecnology of the time was very sophisticated and it made me wonder how the world would have been shaped if history had been a little different.

Reading about its decline lead me to the beginning of the dark ages. The term the "dark ages" is a term used to describe a time when the technology of the aincient world and it's literature was lost and the civilisations lived in what could be considered as a backward world compared to when the romans were dominant.

Now thinking about the advances of the last 200 years and the fact that we all rely very heavily on oil, do you think it's possible that as humans, we could be thrust into a new "dark age"?

In my opinion i think we could. The power that oil has in not only products but world politics could cause massive problems for all of us, and as humans our nature is to survive, which inevitably means wars when stocks run low.

Not only that, oil is so ingrained into our everyday lives that if it were to dissapear i think our whole civilisation as we know it would crumble.

What do you guys think?
 
I'd like to say no, because I just can't see us going back to the extreme of living in mud huts etc.

But in the ways of having live off the land, growing stuff ourselves and such then yes, I agree its very possible.
 
Yeah i agree not in our lifetime, but the decline of the old civilisations happened over centuries too.
 
The world may change for the worse because of politics but I don’t think we’ll return to a dark age because of technological change.
 
Without power - say oil, gas and electricity - I reckon we'd have chaos within a week.

Without those things on a long term, the population would die off fairly soon, but for a small portion with any idea of how to cope with that sort of thing. Most of us just don't have the skills to grow our own food, get clean water, etc.
 
vonhelmet said:
Without power - say oil, gas and electricity - I reckon we'd have chaos within a week.

Without those things on a long term, the population would die off fairly soon, but for a small portion with any idea of how to cope with that sort of thing. Most of us just don't have the skills to grow our own food, get clean water, etc.
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Thats exactly what my opinion is. You just have to look at the recent chaos we had with a little snow, imagine how things would be with no oil?
 
Tom0 said:
I just can't see us going back to the extreme of living in mud huts etc.

But in the ways of having live off the land, growing stuff ourselves and such then yes, I agree its very possible.
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No oil = no plastics, synthetics or lubrication for industrial metal working.
Energy would be very much rationed which means no production plants bar the absolute necessity.
Materials would be scavenged for small scale charcoal fired recycling from anywhere it can be, pipework, electrical, structural materials would all be coveted to make classic farming & hunter/gatherer tools.
Mud huts would be a very real long term prospect in my eyes.

Gotta agree with your second point though.
 
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BloodyL said:
No oil = no plastics, synthetics or lubrication for metal working.
Energy would be very much rationed which means no production plants bar the absolute necessity.
Materials would be scavenged for small scale charcoal fired recycling from anywhere it can be, pipework, electrical, structural materials would all be coveted to make classic farming & hunter/gatherer tools.
Mud huts would be a very real long term prospect in my eyes.

Gotta agree with your second point though.
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When you put it like that it makes sense.

I guess it all depends on time scale and how run down stone/brick structures become..
 
BloodyL said:
Materials would be scavenged for small scale charcoal fired recycling from anywhere it can be, pipework, electrical, structural materials would all be coveted to make classic farming & hunter/gatherer tools.

QUOTE]

Whilst reading about the history of the colloseum in rome this is exactly what happened to that. The metal that bonded the structure together was looted, along with bronze from lots of roman structures during the dark ages to be melted down for other uses as they became rare commodities, whereas during the empire they werent.
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The 'Dark Ages' were not really all that 'Dark', they are called Dark because we know little about the period, not because they were particularly bad.

Look up the "Golden Age of Islam" for an indication of the advances made technically and scientifically during the so called 'dark ages'

The interegnum after the Roman Empire fell was very quickly filled by the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire. Northern Europe was probably the worst affected, but to call the period 'backward' is a little erroneous.
 
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Wasn't there a BBC documentary a good few years ago essentially dramatising what would happen in the UK if we ran out of oil, gas etc and lost all power?
 
Fiocca said:
"Dark Ages" is a term referring to the perceived period of cultural and economic deterioration and disruption that occurred in Europe following the decline of the Roman Empire.[1][2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages

EDIT: @castiel
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And if you continue it states that many modern scholars now accept and find it misleading and do not use the term any longer in that way.

wiki said:
However, many modern scholars who study the era tend to avoid the term altogether for its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate for any part of the Middle Ages.
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