From Charlie Stross’s (author of “MAXOS,” among many other things) blog, a question that’s particularly interesting for us as we think about apocalypse and near-apocalypse scenarios:
There’s a deceptively simple question that’s been bugging me this week, and it is this:
What is the minimum number of people you need in order to maintain (not necessarily to extend) our current level of technological civilization?
There are huge political ramifications hiding behind this question.
His answer also speaks to the (im)plausibility of some other SF scenarios, and of some of our real-world, SF-influenced technological dreams.