Antidamacus said:
Then obviously anything they brought with them would be completely useless for diseases?
Against viruses? Possibly, although depends on the virus - and if you are able to keep the body alive and help it stay strong during the disease, it may be able to fight it off. Against bacteria? Antibiotics would work quite nicely.
The people who need the pills to live die. Or are you saying the fleet had some kind of magic pill making machine to deal with these new and unknown diseases?
Yes. It is called antibiotics.
Nope. You need a technical base or at least a relatively large labor pool in order to establish these things.
Which has absolutely nothing to do with leaving their tech behind. Did the fleet have manuals on every single occupation and tool and how to make it?
They had knowledge on how to use the tools they had. Which they could have used to:
1. Build simpler tools.
2. Support themselves while they learned to use the simpler tools.
Make up your mind - are you saying that the ships would have been zero help to them in terms of survival? Or would they have been useful?
People do that now all the time.
Do they build villages, farms, and establish industry without any equipment?
How would keeping their tech help with these issues? You're doing a good job of explaining how things would eventually die out but now a good one of explaining how staying with the fleet would solve these problems.
You are asking me how would technology be helpful in various conditions? How they could use technology to find iron ore? Use it to build houses and farms? Use it to collect build that same industry? The closer they come to the level of technology that they know, the easier things would be. Not to mention all the raw materials that they would have.
Not quite. The tools wouldn't last forever, but long enough for them to establish a self-sustaining technological base.
They have one, it's just obviously much slower.
They have one what? What is a slower technological base? Perhaps I should have used a different term - industrial base. Zero, none, nada, don't have one.
They would not be able to build computers, but they would be able to build schools.
If not for the giant spaceships, none of the 38,000 who I'm almost positive went to school would have any idea how to make one.
Huh? They would have no idea how to build one what? Also, are you admitting that the spaceships would actually be useful for something?
A printing press for books.
I'm sure they kick themselves every time they think about how they left the printing press on one of the ships. None of them could have ever figured out movable printed type without a prototype there.
Ah, you are saying that they are retards without a ship. Or outside of a ship. Yes, kind-of. Which only proves that they need the ships.
I don't think they'll need many sewer systems for 38,000 people spread across the globe.
Yes they do - unless they plan to live as nomads, basic hygiene is absolutely necessary for healthy living. Otherwise they die like flies.
They would be able to find sources of raw materials (or use the ships themselves) and use them to build simpler tools. Gunpowder and muzzle loaders. They should be able to use some parts to build electric generators.
If they can make base tools, and already have learned knowledge of more advanced tools, what's the worry?[/quote]
That's the point - you need tools to make other tools! It is very difficult to start with nothing and get to any level of advancement! Tell me, how would they make a plow without anything they brought with them. And not a wooden plow that takes a day to make and lasts another day, a real plow that they can use for weeks or months.
Generators? How do they make wires? Plastic? They didn't bring the tools to make these things with them. I don't know why you think they have the how to books on all this stuff just lying around.
Nope, but they have generators on the ships already. I am sure of that. They just need to rip them out and repurpose them. With the amount of materials they have they should be able to keep a small supply of electricity going for a small town for years, if not decades. During which time they can use the other tools they brought to make wire equipment. Plastic is not necessary for generators, although it helps. Probably millions of miles of wires in the ships - would last for decades. Etc.
So, make up your mind - would the technology on the ships have been useful to them or not? You seem to be saying that it wouldn't have been - and then that it would have been.