I can't remember the name of it, but I remember reading what I thought was a fantasy story, but turned out to be a techno barbarian one. It starts out with the main charecter finding a "magic staff" that they have to "summon" an "ancient spirit" so they can learn the "spells" to use it. Except as the story goes on you realise its a directed energy weapon, the spirit is a deactivated AI, the rituals are actually a reboot procedure, and the "spells" he learns is actually computer coding to repair the damaged weapon. It was very cleverly written, and I legitimatley only started picking up halfway through that it wasn't a magic/fantasy story, but rather one about reactivating long forgotten tech.
Something worth remembering about 40ks' Age of Strife this that the AI rebellion favoured worlds who'd rejected advanced tech, and instilled fear of it among its survivours. It's not that humanity can't innovate in 40k, it's that the overwhelming majority won't, and punish those that do.
Sorta like if Iphones and Androids started strangling us all simultaneously, only the Amish and those uncontacted tribes would be left, and they sure as hell wouldnt be down with technology anytime soon thereafter.
It's not even that they wont -- that is a huge misconception of the Mechanicus and 40,000, they really, really want to progress back to where they were as a species -- it's that they can't trust a lot of their working theories or technological schematics that aren't currently in use anymore. This is why they punish some rogue Magi, because some of them are doing more harm than good to the current state of the Imperium's understanding of technology. This includes a lot of golden-age tech that was deposited in vaults. During the Heresy demonic-computer viruses ravaged a lot of man's known technology and restricted technology, even the technologies hidden in vaults; you could make that nifty new grav-jet-bike, but it equally could be a grav-jet-bike-Chaos-transformer that's been waiting 10,000 years to be made simply so it can wipe you and your Mechanics cult-enclave out, losing even more viable technology in the process. Welcome to the future, where even the process of innovation can be corrupted or may wants to murder you. It's not that they don't want to innovate, they do, it's just some of the directions they wish to innovate in are either dangerous, corrupted or have a lost understanding proving it equally dangerous or sometimes all three. Once they can prove the technology isn't genocidal towards the Imperium, they will use it. The problem is they have a real problematic opportunity cost: using this technology could give us the upper hand, or it could stack another card against us - and they have had 10,000 years of the latter.
When we look at historical situations such as the Bronze Age Collapse and Roman Britain, what normally seems to cause techno barbarism is that either the demand for a technology is removed (because of population loss) or a crucial ingredient for a technology that had to be imported is lost, and does not return for twenty or thirty years. This leads to a loss in practical experience for how the technology is integrated into infrastructure, and makes restoring the technology prohibitively expensive.
Exactly brother, I agree with you 100%. What it truly boils down to is money. If it costs way too much(prohibitively expensive-as you said) and people can meet their needs a cheaper way, then they will.
Final Fantasy XIV would be an example of a techno-barbarian civilization written well. ancient technology survives but most people live lives distant from it, cellphones that are 5,000 years old get dug up and people collect them, but they arent seen as anything of actual practical value. however you could also argue FFXIV's world just has better technology since it has magic, and why would you use technology when you can just use aether and crystals.
THE WHOLE COMOS IS RUINED BECAUSE OF PIESOELECTRIC FRACTAL ATTACKING MACHINES INCLUDING ALL CRYSTALS, STONE AND THE MINERAL KINGDOMS AND ALL OF THE AETHERIC REALMS AND CHASMS OF CREATION AND CO-CREATION
@@barahng Pretty much, but humans, although intelligent are not that wise, so you can see the many, MANY horrific after effects of using both science and magic as magic is not exactly very stable nor well understood
@@fanaticaltechpriest1002 actually that being up a very interesting point in warhammer 40k about religion. The mechanics could have stopped earth basically any time before the great crusade began in ernest. At any time mars could have rained down titans and tech priests and wiped the fledgling imperium of the map. Only because of the religious aspects as well as a lot of diplomacy by the emperor did the imperium survive with the mechanicus. It is an interesting idea of how religious commonalities as well as diplomacy help to bring a civilization out of a dark age or breakdown of central authority Edit typo
I remember someone at some point (I think Oculus Imperia) that suggested the term "techno barbarian" in 40k referred more to the way these groups acted despite having access to good technology and that they were purposely called "barbarians" as to remind future readers of the horrendous cultures these people had before the Emperor came and unified Terra.
I always saw that as a bit of imperial propaganda. A lot of the side fluff makes me think some cultures where about as violent or regressive as the emperors was. They just didn't want to be subordinate to him.
1110 1011000 You'd think on a channel about science and futurism that references 40K many times people would start to understand some references. Heretics will be heretics. The Emperor Protects.....
For those interested in the idea of old tech being revered and ancient blue prints being passed down generation to generation, I'd recommend the book, "A Cantacle for Leibowitz"
I just want to point out that the W.W.E. has every single bit of their wrestling footage ever recorded in a massive bunker inside a mountain that can withstand everything except a direct nuclear strike... And I feel like this greatly increases the likelihood of techno barbarians popping up in a post-apocalyptic future.✌
"Bad at obvious innovations, like realising they could hook up their still-functional fusion reactor to run water purification" James in Fallout 3: Am I a joke to you?
There are places in the world right now that don't have electricity, running water, plumbing...etc but they have AK47s and military grade vehicles, I'm guessing that's where the inspiration for movies such as Mad Max came from back in the late '70s.
Just a historical comment: if you want to look at a full-on civilizational collapse, the best example is the Bronze Age Collapse. Writing pretty much disappeared in Greece during that time, and most cities in Anatolia were razed to the ground or abandoned.
To be fair it hadn't made much of an appearance yet either, there weren't big libraries or schools. Technology/methods in widespread use would be more resilient to loss
@@isaacarthurSFIA according to the footnotes in robert grave's greek myths, the inhabitants of the greek peninsula prior to the hellenes may have had a writing system using twigs of different trees
I think looking at the plausibility of under-utilizing tech long term is a more promising prospect. The Native Americans are a good source of that, being that they seemed to have discovered smelting iron in central america but difficulty getting suitable ores and fuel together (no pack animals remember) stunted the growth of refining tech further limiting them, even though the know how of blacksmithing was wide spread before the Europeans arrived. It's very applicable to what could happen to our civilization with rare earth materials, if space mining becomes invalid, and large empires like we have break down
Came across this link on Reddit, I was captivated from start to finish. You sir are a genius everything is so well thought out and accompanied by facts theories and examples. Everything is built up around solid facts and thesis. It is also brilliantly written and worded so that it stays interesting and never sounds too long winded or buried in an avalanche of over exposure or technicalities. You are s genius and have a gift for this sort of thing. I am subscribed and unfortunately can only like this once but man is this excellent content. Thanks for your effort and time in creating these. This is utterly brilliant.
The best part about WH40k is taking everything is canon, it's just not all true. People in universe just don't know their history, and certain people disagreed
Yes, and the ongoing politics is WONDERFUL. There's a faction of the Ecclesiarchy that diligently tries to preserve ancient records, locate misplaced records (in a setting where you can literally have a paperwork error that causes the rest of the Empire to simply forget that an entire sector exists, and nobody notices for centuries), and just generally work out what really happened in the past...and then there's a different faction of the same organization dedicated to making sure nobody ever does that because it might destabilize the Empire. (And it would, the Empire is held together by blatant lies and operates in direct opposition to the intentions of the Emperor. And it does this because it's the only way the people running things can hold it together at all, and if they fail then Humanity dies out in the best possible outcome, and becomes food for the Chaos Gods for all eternity in the worst outcome.)
@@bobriggins7363 It is conjectured that the norn queen stores the genetic code of all things that the fleet devours. In some sense the tyranids are just generously granting all life immortality.... And NO I'm not part of a genestealer cult.
@@cookieninja2154 IT is proposed that the Tyranids are yet another Old One construct, intended to wipe out existing life but store the templates of the destroyed life for later recreation when the galaxy has been rendered safe for mortal life again. The Old Ones might not be absolute evil, but they DEFINITELY were real bastards.
I stumbled on your channel about three months ago. Definitely one of my favorites. You just used the term "nano duct tape". As far as science and futurism goes you have got to be one of the very best. Educational AND entertaining. Glad I found this. Please never stop.
Here's an interesting question: could some of these mega-structures that we talk about in scifi and other future tech theories plausibly cause artificial eclipses after being built? Orbital mechanics and depending on how big the mega-structures are, I would think this is a possibility. Just an idea.
This is one of the coolest channels on UA-cam. I'm mad at myself for not subscribing earlier but now I have a huge backlog of great entertainment. Thanks for the great channel! You rock!
Oh gee. What kind of idiot would intentionally make their civilization and supply chains immensely fragile for the sake of marginally more efficiency? Looks at 2020: O-oh.
Efficiency? It has always been about money. Though when it gets to the point where endemic unemployment, low wages, and protests happen with the populace that the government decides to act on it, we are conditioned to call it tyrannical, Fascist, dictatorship, bad German man. Harsh times result in harsh actions.
Probably said by some academy nerd. Professionals know that the job of logistics is to issue you with shit while selling off the goods and making tidy profit.
Working on my wifes jeep and my ford, I realised I am a techno barbarian. The lines between mechanics and spirituality are blurred! Praise jeepsus! Praise the ford!
@@Crushonius Not after the fall of the Soviet Union. You can find and train genius anywhere. But without sufficient funding they won't innovating anything. Besides, education and surplus of labor are the most affected after a collapse. People won't have time to do science if they are in constant danger of starving. Any innovation will be prioritized on survival
Surely some Luddite references in there too. Something about using the relics of an old or dying world/culture, to continue or ensure its destruction, for what you perceive as your own survival, is reminiscent of the ideals there.
The concern I have with natural resources in a post-apocalypse would be in ease of use. Iron Age tribes had access to materials at ground level. Industrial Age societies developed ways of harvesting materials from much deeper, and of refining certain ores into useful stuff, but these processes requires a step by step process, using easy gifts to acquire more challenging advancements. I feel like there would be a case in which a society could use up all the "convenient" resources chasing advancement, turning them all into things that are harder to break down for parts, and then the culture is destroyed somehow, making it impossible for them to use the advanced tools and processes that allowed them to access the more challenging resources. Since society would have to rebuild itself from scratch now, they might not have those easy resources available with which to take the first steps towards recovery. I thought of these things while reading Ringworld many years ago, an artificial structure with no "natural" resources, built using materials that are impossible to manipulate without sci-magic tier technologies.
it might be scale thing too rome wasent more advansed that reneisanse civs but it was richer so it coud do stuff that was only rivalled by industrial revolution
@@hunkyhenry6092 in Aus certain areas are full of vehicles where welfare recipients drove them until they wouldn't run and then went and bought another one. The government pays the unpaid loan.
The problem there is that at least the AKs and the Toyotas are both notorious for being incredibly simple, reliable, easy to repair and understand systems. Hell, there's just not much TO an AK47. One of the reasons it's so reliable is that there just isn't much there to break.... and anyone who has even a vague idea of how guns (or any kind of machinery) work can crack one open, look at the mechanisms involved, and figure the whole thing out.
@David Parry Well... Idea that evolution isn't a thing is also believed on the other side of political spectrum. Could there be some biological differences between sexes that cause differences in behaviour? Could after our lineages split and moved to different environments, a not perfectly identical evolutionary pressure which lead to at least slight differences between ethnic groups including cognitive abilities?
I found foundation very weak, probably I was spoiled by newer concepts that based on it.. Asimov robots series on the contrary was effin genius, would read again and probably will, fantastic!
@@rochr4 Is written like most of hard sci-fi of the time with a twist that Assimove was writing a history book like story so no story. I recall reading whatever I could back then when I was young and stupid. There is another story which seems to be forgotten a "A Canticle for Liebovitz" - I think this describes the misunderstanding of the old by the the new much better than Assiomov did. I also question this "lots of still functioning tech" lying around story.Surely some will stay and we find ways to work around problems of unpaid license fee for some other. But try to make a modern car work after it run out of addblue - the car is still there, could drive but its brain tells you that it cannot because our current masters decided so (why is another question). So you can scavenge that to supply some parts for another less fragile one but how many you can find? I guess it all depends. Some Roman Villas survived the fall of Rome by a few hundred years. Cities in Britain were less durable but did survive too for quite some time. The industrial size grain mills in what is now southern France were still usable but were just not needed so got forgotten this way. If Carrington Event stroke say 1950 lots of thing could have happened but unless a nuclear war broke out by mistake there would be a way to keep wheels rolling. The population size now is much less sustainable with lesser means and how do you produce fast enough money for exchange. in 1950 you would still have some cash around for that purpose. I had hope before that our masters i.e. the states would have some contingency plans. But looking at the corona mess I think the only one that have anything resembling a plan are preppers. So for civilization sake - good that we have them.
@Riki 9653 really? Im not gonna get into if its or not gender biased (dont know not care), but two unrelated pieces of information can have similarities in how they are coded and not be more related because that. Its like saying pi is illuminati because its integer part is 3 that is the number of sides of a triangle (ITSACONSPIRACY.jpeg)
I'm on the dev team for the Unification Wars mod for Hearts of Iron IV. Loved the video, Isaac! I posted it in our discord server so the rest of the team can see it.
Good. So many pop culture writers just don't think of things like this. Not that you are one mind you. Just making a statement since I know sources in modern GW are of varying quality and canonicity. Sorry.
In 40k, there's only very loose canon, as much of it is written as if the author is within the setting itself. Mechanicus had made raids to Earth, in order to recover technology. And there were numerous other factions in the Sol system, including some xenos outposts. They'd very likely be culprits in extracting Earth's water reserves. That'd actually be quite likely: outer system assets are far apart, most icy moons are likely in the hands of unified factions and Earth is divided by dozens of factions. Earth is therefore the weakest-defended rich water source.
There are a few real multi-century ‘dark ages’ in history besides the faux-dark age of Rome. The Bronze Age collapse nearly saw the death of literacy and the permanent end of a half dozen civilizations in the Near-East. The region didn’t recover for centuries. There’s also the fall of Axum in Ethiopia which left a two hundred year gap in the archaeological record. You could even argue the colonization of Africa created a dark age of a sort, creating wildly disparate technology levels, dystopian exploitation, and the destruction of previous civilizations, states and cultures.
@@dualityomk9854 Found the 'white *identitarian*'. Lol. Gtfo, your kind has no place on a channel about the future, because your kind has no place in the future.
@@dualityomk9854 I dont think he was doing a "we wuz kangs" , he was just stating the fact that west central and east Africa were technologically comparable to at least late medieval Europe at the start of the slave trade(mid 1500s). The sub continent was a always a bit behind as is expected when your cut off from trade by the 3rd largest desert on the planet similarly to how the new world was cut off by the Atlantic ocean. But 3 centuries of cultural and technological difference really isn't all that much. These were kingdoms with nobles and taxes and laws and shit, the entire continent wasn't just naked people in huts with sticks before slavery and colonization. After the slave trade the continent didn't just develop at a slower rate but has seemingly regressed back to what is arguable near primitive tribalism in some regions. Medieval level societies are by no means "advanced" but were not talking about wakanda or atlantis here. were talking about Castles and knights with steel swords and iron armor regressing to huts and hunter gathering.
As soon as all building sites are equipped with all 20k gender toilets and all an engineer knows is that math is a white man's supremacy all these scenarios will become irrelevant because we will live in oppression free society and such concerns as the understanding and availability of tech will just cease to be
@ Whether they will be better colonial masters we shall see. I think the whites cannot be held responsible as a group as clearly some where better than others in maintaining their colonial assets and some where the assets themselves which is why talking about white privilege is such a BS but that is completely other story. he particular kind of social dementia that the West goes through will go away at some point too. We shall see then in what state the world is. Let us just hope that dark ages that seem to be inevitable at least when it comes to human rights will not last long.
@ hi there, you seem to be here in this pretty niche video, so i assume you just not someone who just panics at anything they read in social media... so explain this thing for me, why you think that a handful of Californian activists which are relatively annoying but mostly fight irrelevant things like clothing of female characters in videogames are the fall of west civilization, or whatever?
@ you just said lots of people are with them, you dint actually answered my question edit: i'm not trying to entrap you into something so i can win some argument, I'm genuinely curious and trying to understand
First of all I want to thank you for the mind expanding content you have put out for the last few years. I love your content, and often bring it up in common conversation if presented with an opportunity. Many people are impressed by what humanity could accomplish with current knowledge. I'm glad you addressed this popular subject from the poll (I voted for something else), but please don't ignore those other options. They all sounded very interesting. I look forward to hearing the other lectures on those subjects as well.
Isaac Arthur, one of my personal favorite sci-fi commentators, talking about 40K, my personal favorite dystopian sci-fi for 20+ years. The Emperor is pleased with this video.
Now it just feels like the whole Stargate franchise is about techno-barbarians. I mean, humans, even though kinda organised and civilized, just use technology of other people (mostly Ancients) without fully comprehending how it works, sometimes being able to repair it, but are never capable of building anything comparable.
Yeah, but humans in the SG universe actually try to understand the tech, and often do. It's one of the rare shows where they don't just forget tech, and without spoiling it, the later seasons let us see a VERY different level
@@CCCW I know, and that's why I love Stargate. We see humans actually adopting alien tech and becoming a force to be reckoned with. It's just that from the Ancients' standpoint, this show is about techno-barbarians.
Yes... and no. Rewatching Stargate nowadays kind of hurts in some scenes. Remember how staff weapon was compared to P90 and all the dialogue about how P90 is a weapon of war and it's great? Well, what will you choose, a piece of plastic garbage or 37mm recoilless rifle the shot of which isn't affected by gravity that you will never need to repair, clear and that never runs out of ammo? The show ran with "Humanity, fuck yeah!", but over time it kind of lost a grip on its own reality:(
@@TheArklyte The P90 scene was still kinda badass, but only to show how the Goauld are more barbaric than humans, even though they have bigger ships and MORE GOLD. I mean, Goauld and their armies are pretty much the definition of a barbaric space culture. They're stuck in the dark ages. But I really like how towards the latter parts of it (Let's say, Atlantis) Stargate really started showing how humans naturally choose exploration over war. They still were doing A LOT of shooting, which is somewhat worrying for me, a pacifist, but it's not ABOUT shooting. It can't hide things it inherited from Star Trek. Stargate once promised us the humanity will become the Fifth Race, and well, maybe not in a perfect way, but they did make it true.
@@vovacat1797 а по мне так смотрелось, что шоу загоняет себя своими же силами в угол избавляясь от злодея. При этом чем меньше у следующего осколка империи Гоаулдов было ресурсов, тем опаснее они становились:D Но это ничто по сравнению с тем, как в Атлантиде гибридов и азуран просто удалили из шоу в течении двух эпизодов. Эти обрывания концов и завели шоу в угол. А потом подошел Universe, который был попыткой копировать BSG и... ну вы знаете эту историю. Just making a random guess here and checking something.
This guy found my mom’s phone and he keeps FaceTiming me telling me to reunite Terra and the lost colonies of mankind In all seriousness, I’m surprised but very happy this video was made.
@@endsinvention1390 It's part of the lore within the Warhammer 40,000 universe, one of the central figures of the series is a grand leader for humanity and eliminates the presence of techno-barbarians on Earth
@@endsinvention1390 Also he is also an extremely potent psychic, is capable of fucking over chaos (basically space hell used for FTL travel) with only mind bullets, and is immortal in usual circumstances he dies after a few of his his 20 genetically-engineered sons rebel and remains as a psychic remnant guiding spaceships for FTL travel.
In Master of Mankind by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, the Emperor explicitely orders the execution of a noble/warlord who was responsible for draining the last ocean and trading the water for her own gain. So while the lore probably still imagines major disasters that depleted most of the water or at least started it, humans were most definitely involved in shipping it off Earth and depleting it in that manner.
Thanks. @2:10 (roughly) - This is an idea that fascinates me - the concept that actual technology could be maintained, but that the scientific understanding behind it would be lost, and people would use something like mysticism or religion in which to couch their use of the knowledge, machines, etc. It makes me wonder about the possibility that even a current theory like say, Relativity, or Quantum Mechanics [even though the latter isn't really a theory - but that's another topic!] could be expressed in mystic or religious 'mumbo-jumbo.' And *_that_* makes me keenly aware of the possibility that our current scientific ideas *_are_***, in some sense, just that: mumbo-jumbo. That's for two main reasons. First, much of our understanding now is based on, or constructed out of, our past understanding - with all our past ***_misunderstandings_* literally encoded into it. For an example, just look at how Platonism has colored (and I would say, largely wrecked!) our thoughts about math, philosophy, & even science. And second, *_LANGUAGE._* Language has limits, and it decides what our understanding, thoughts, & even feelings about something can be. I truly wonder how a scientific theory would "operate" if it were worded differently. We often stumble over ideas because of how we think of them & talk about them in a particular language. There are no words for some things. Besides, most people have zero understanding of how most of the things they use really work. How many of us could build a computer, or an airplane, or a TV, or even a toaster?!? Here's a great quote (from my favorite person to quote: Frank Herbert) *_"Ancient metal workers had no need to understand the molecular and submolecular complexities of their steel, bronze, copper, gold, and tin. They invented mystical powers to describe the unknown while they continued to operate their forges and wield their hammers."_* [from "Heretics of Dune", 1984 (the 5th book in his original Dune series)] We LOVE to think that we understand things. Scientists are particularly vulnerable to this. Don't get me wrong - I believe in the scientific method as something that has indeed brought us the most accurate and useful body of knowledge humankind has ever achieved. But there are real dangers here, too. Look at how much trouble Quantum Gravity is creating! The two most mind-bendingly accurate, successful, and, well, mind-bending theories of all time - and they refuse to behave when we try to put them in the same room! I'm reminded of the Dire Straights lyric from the song "Industrial Disease": "Two men say they're Jesus / One of 'em must be wrong." Consensus is that Relativity is at least partly wrong, but *_not_* Quantum Mechanics. We'll see how that goes! tavi.
Considering most people don't understand basic quantum mechanics, I can imagine that science being lost, as well as technologies that take entire factories to produce such as semiconductors. But useful technologies you can make in a garage such as windows, lenses, basic combustion engines, electric motors, refining, etc, I think would stick around.
i wish to point towards a game called starsector where nano forges can build anything but the blueprints you need are not reproducable so any advanced technologies are limited in production and poorly understood
3:15 As a huge Medieval history nut, thank you for saying this. Too many people are just happy to see the Middle Ages as a big barbaric time with no technological development or science, when the truth is very far from that.
This video’s title “Techno-Barbarians” immediately reminded me of The Fremen from the DUNE series. These nomadic, knife wielding, water hoarders lived on desert planet Arrakis in cave dwellings called Sietches and were always at odds with the feudal rulers House Harkonnen set over 20,000 years in the future. They had their own tech in the form of StillSuits that recycle their urine into drinking water since water was scarce on Dune. They helped Paul Atreides overthrow the evil House Harkonnen. They also ride the giant Sandworm known as Shai-Hulud. They followed an ancient religion that merged Buddhism and Islam called Zensunni.
Ya know at 18:03, I think it's important to take note and mention North American History in the discussion of techno barbarians and mentioning Iron and Aluminum is a good reminder to me. Most important because the Natives had a similar relationship with Iron as modern man has with alloying elements and lithium, despite lithium being very common. The Iron Age happened in the Americas long before Columbus arrived, but scarcity of good easy to process surface ores *near* fuel sources resigned Iron to a little used element, with blacksmithing being mixed in with all metalworking and rarely practiced. most iron was refined in central America with no pack animals to move it far and wide. But surface sources that where still metallic where used across the board. Like meteorites found on the ground, a common source for our modern alloying elements. The presence of woods that where stronger then iron per pound and almost a durable as iron probably eased the urgency of spreading ironworking. Much like the durability of plain steels and strength of (possibly genetically engineered) woods would likely be an ease of pressure against techno-barbarians advancing. (Please note, calling the Native Americans "stone age" is something Columbus and the records of the first expeditions to the Americas would disagree with. Stone tools became more prevalent and Iron less as plagues spread through the natives population but at first it was a common sight to see iron and stone tools used in agriculture and forestry, according to the Spanish records) That is to say, perhaps we'd reach a point where we are not truly techno-barbarians but just found enough alternatives that are easy enough to teach generation by generation as efforts to achieve more become to difficult, perhaps by unpredictability of AI, or pure scarcity if launching off a planet becomes unviable due to debris
One thing I want to note for people thinking about writing something like this. You can hand forge a rifle, in Afghanistan there are blacksmiths who can handforge AK-47s. I imagine someone who's used to working their hands in a machine shopcould figure out a way to copy the components in a bolt action rifle at the very least.
I love the 40k setting but some of the concepts that tie the setting together are kind of silly. Things like agriculture worlds supplying hive worlds, in "reality" they should be food independent and not rely on imports. The Imperium doesn't seem to have a lack of power generators, they make stuff on stupidly huge scales even with their long forgotten technology so hive worlds wouldn't have a problem recycling bio-mass into food. The scale of 40k is all wrong too with battles for planets being in the hundred of thousands instead of tens of millions, crews for ships being far to small giving the size and complexity of the ships, ect. Great setting though, where else can I get a guy chainsawing an ork to death?
Karl Rosner I dispute. Assuming you are talking about the imperium, they have an inefficient bureaucracy, thus production is constantly undersupplied. Some worlds also are more suited to be agricultural worlds due to their planet’s geography. Some hive worlds are overbuilt, and this can be attributed to the inefficiency and stagnancy in thinking within the imperium. The Imperium is fucked up and the only thing that is keeping it together is religion ironically, oppression and propaganda. And also constant war. Then there is scale. Yeah sure lots of the battles are rather lacking but most battles do take place with hundreds of millions of participants while the imperial navy has military ships calling from 3 km in length to 16km like a battleship.
Besides for game purposes, I always thought the limited numbers was also due to concerns about Chaos/warp bleed through. The more sentients in a highly emotional state you have in one place, the more infuence the infernal powers are able to exert
i was under the impression that all hive worlds recycle their water and even their dead into food. Its just that you need agricultural worlds since recycling can never produce 100% of the recycled material and to also provide food for the billions involved in military campaigns. Plus its not meant to be an accurate scientific depiction, it should be over the top unrealistic :D
This is so real, this is probably the most bright video that this channel produced, he the autor talks about this as it is aw some Future problem, it is now the future is now.
@@bimblinghill While sadly this is more true than I would like Issac seems to be focusing on the whole society level as the knowledge still exists(for now) the real problem is when the anti science whack-jobs commit genocide on the part of humanity that didn't flunk elementary school. He is what we call an eternal optimist. necessarily
If you run out oil, then you lose internal combustion and create a gap between steam power and high tech. Then all that it takes is a massive EMP or a super Carrington level-type event to knock you permanently back to the Victorian or even Edwardian era. I'm not sure if Steam/Clockwork Punk can be considered Techo-barbarianism, but the colonial era sure showed the divide between those who had said tech and those who did not.
If you run out of gas/liquid fuel, but keep in mind you can run an ICE on ethanol, booze, wood gas, and plenty of other stuff, it's just not as good as gasoline and isn't ideal for modern engines
@@isaacarthurSFIA Ah, that's right. Even methane, from animal waste. You even flashed a picture from Mad Max Thunderdome, in which that was a major plot point. Where there is a will, there is a way :)
I have to disagree with smartphones being useless without a network. it's still a suite of sensors and a way to view offline media. the amount of books you can store on a128GB sd card is nothing to scoff at.they are compact and durable and need little in terms of power. you would have to prep it for being a Prepperphone though...
@@isaacarthurSFIA sure, they also come with networking options that might be usefull though, mesh networks and the likes. and nobody makes calls on them, anyway...
@@isaacarthurSFIA The flashlight feature is a very nice one that I use all the time. Sure it's not exactly a good flashlight, but it still gets the job done. Oh and the alarm clock feature. Umm, calander? Can't think of any other offline features. Went and googled some more useful things. Offline maps, notepad, camera(which is super obvious, but somehow I didn't think of). If they made smartphones more durable and with a longer expected lifespan, I could see people using these things in the wastelands. After writing this I realized how useful smartphones are even without the internet or phone networks.
A while back, had seen a video of a focilized shoe print that had amazing detail in the stitches of the sole. I forgot how old they estimated it to be. So with that in mind...do you think its possible that we were once a advanced civilization that saw a doomsday event ?
The part about genetic engineering were Isaac talked about genes (8:30) made me think of the orks in 40K. They also have genes that activate when the conditions are right.
When we look at collapses like in the bronze age or after the fall of rome, we often see that pure technology is kept and maintained however it's instead social organization and infrastructure that goes away. For example the rise of warrior aristocracies armed with more advance weapons (i.e trebuchet/crossbows) but in much smaller (and less complex) armies because the state only has the ability to rais a few hundred men rather than several thousand.
Very true. Technological progress never really stops. It’s SOCIETY that tends to collapse into smaller, pettier entities,while technology just keeps marching on (especially the technology of war). We humans just won’t give up our love of war; we’ll give up every other form of progress first, we’ll stop researching science and medicine when times are tough, but still will not cut back on weapons R&D.
@@rommdan2716 don't really care about that. There isn't really any such thing as originality anyways. Everything has been done so just have fun doing what you want to do.
@@rommdan2716 Cmon, 40K is one of the most unique settings out there, there is nothing quite like it. also, everything takes inspiration from tons of sources.
You don't use product to keep up a mohawk; you backcomb, or basically tangle, it with some sort of comb to get height; no perfume smells or gel in your sweat, stinging your eyes
@Kaman00001 Its a reference to Warhammer 40k, more specifically to the affectionate parody 'If the Emperor had a text to speech device' as in that series the God-Emperor of Mankind, now able to communicate after 10,000 years as a near-lifeless husk upon His Golden Throne, told his priesthood to knock off calling him a God because his original plan had been to destroy religion entirely. So they started calling him the Man-Emperor of Mankind and worship him as the pinnacle of humanity instead, viewing Humanity itself as above mere Gods. The Emperor has always been known as The Emperor, even before he managed to re-unify Terra after the Age of Strife and reached forth His hand to lead the Great Crusade to unite all the scattered lost colonies of Man under His Imperium.
@Kaman00001 Much as the Emperor sought to reunite with His lost sons, the Primarchs He created from His own perfect genetic code to be demi-god leaders for his gene-warrior armies which themselves would be implanted with genetic codes derived from the Primarchs. Of course half the Primarchs turned against the Emperor in the end and brought low his Imperium, hence why He upon the Throne has been in a state of undeath for 10,000 years in the setting...
@Kaman00001 I would highly recommend the Oculus Imperia youtube channel, which does in-depth lore expositions from an in-universe perspective from a member of the Logos Historica Verita. It is a new organisation of the imperial government established by the returned Primarch Raboute Guilliman to try to establish an accurate history of the Imperium after ten millennia of revisionism and Inquisitorial burnings.
Your description of this topic brought to mind a story I first read maybe 30 - 35 years ago, "A Canticle for Leibowitz". I do not recall hearing you refer to it or to Walter Miller in any of your videos, so, if you haven't read it, you might enjoy it.
For Techno-Barbarians, I don't think of Warhammer 40k, I think of the fallout universe. It also makes fallout 4 extremely frustatrating because it's 200 YEARS AFTER THE APOCALYPSE AND THE BEST TOWN IS JUST PEOPLE LIVING IN HOUSES BUILT OUT OF SCRAP IN THE RUINS OF AN OLD BASEBALL STADIUM, WHY WOULDN'T I SIDE WITH THE SLAVERY SCIENTISTS.
ParallaxNick has a great channel. Well worth the watch. Another great episode, so many people are very down currently, the relentless optimism for the future, tempered with realism is so wonderful to look forward to week after week. Thank you Isaac Arthur and the production crew that make this possible.
The Interdependency trilogy is a good example of intentional withholding of key technologies being used to keep an empire together, while also being it's biggest vulnerability
A few points to consider: Roman Empire was not surrounded by more primitive societies.. quite the contrary, the Mediterranean coast had numerous other advanced civilizations, Phoenicians, later Egypt, and following the fall of Rome, the Moors. The Moors are most interesting because numerous travellers from North Africa traded with Europe, and brought mathematics, science and technology knowledge.. in fact the first universities in Europe were modeled from the ones in North Africa... All this to say civilizations rarely exist in a vacuum. But maybe some day they will, literally, exist in the vacuum of space. But as long as trade, communication and travel exists no one is truly isolated.
@Joe Blow lots of gaps and omissions in history: remember, Egypt was still a potent empire during Rome's times. Knowledge of geometry , Pythagoras theorem came from them (you cannot build pyramids without some knowledge of geometry, the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus such knowledge formed the basis for later greek philosophers) And later advanced mathematics arrived to Europe by way of the Moors from Sumerian and Babylonian texts. Moors had over a dozen universities in 7 cities with advances in astronomy, agriculture, sciences... Europe had none. Even advanced metallurgy such as Damascus steel, passed through the Mediterranean from Sri Lanka and India (itself quite civilized while Europe was in its dark ages). You have to understand when Roman outposts in Britannia and elsewhere were abandoned, Europe reverted to tribes, and chieftains until a few perhaps former Roman generals descendants claimed thrones and started using heraldry (former roman standards maybe).. the lion isn't exactly European. The Moors however were still bore the torch of cosmopolitan modernity at the time, hygiene, changing clothes types with the season, haircuts. Moors still had aquaducts. Interestingly enough, the game of chess came from them.
nah, cause they're outerplanetary species and have ftl travel, i guess they would have scientist to figure out how phisics work to travel to these other planets
@AKUJIRULE they would need to understand the tech in order to use it, I doubt you would risk such high stakes to travel to another planet and getting stranded in space, just because they are "barbaric" doesn't make them technologically illiterate
@AKUJIRULE listen man, you don't need to know to know all the phisics that goes on when you drive from point a to b, but don't act as if driving a car a flying to A DIFFERENT PLANET is the same thing, you most definitely need to know the intricacies of how the craft works since it might brake down, and to plot the course, for that you would need to have well trained technicians and astronomers
@AKUJIRULE I challenge you to sail around the earth. We will talk again after you crossed the Pacific Ocean. Modern Sailing Ships have all that. Yet i bet we wont talk again (because your lying dead at the ocean floor...).
AKUJIRULE I see your point, but your examples of car, sailboats (ships), or planes actually goes against your point. Meaning a car, sailboat (ship), or plane all require at least some basic skill to begin operating it (license), and even a little more skill to maintain it at a basic level (turn on, gas, fluids, change flat). And your point falls flat if you scale it up from private to commercial car, sailboat (ship), or plane as those people are highly trained, and know how to operate with or without gps or autopilot, and have technician crews. So knowing how to make something is one thing, knowing how to operate and maintain it is another. Just saying your examples actually helping the other person. ps. Unless you sailed before I wouldn't take that internet bet. Have you seen people sail? Its not as easy as starting your car and driving to the store. If you have sailed before you should know it takes skill, even tying the wrong knot could get you killed at sea.
I am sooooo looking forward to your future collaboration with Nick. I'm subbed to both of your channels, and have been for quite some time. This is a splendid match.
I’ve been on a “Roman empire collapse” learning kick recently, and one of the most interesting points I’ve seen repeated is that the barbarians who sacked Rome weren’t really foreign invaders, at least not in a literal “invading army” sense. As Rome grew and added conquered territories, former enemies were conscripted into the Roman military and power structure. You needed local leaders who spoke the language and knew/came from the area. You needed soldiers and mercenaries to maintain order and also to feed expansion elsewhere. Plus, you wanted all of the locals to become loyal Roman subjects, if not technically Roman citizens. And keeping expensive Roman legions and magistrates abroad long term was costly and risky. So what better thing to do with a newly conquered vassal state than put the existing leadership on your payroll and have them work and fight for Rome? Especially if you could use their help against their neighbors and enemy tribes. But as the years went by and the economy of the empire began to decay and crumble, so went the centralized power structure. And now you had all of these areas- some extremely dependent on Rome for economic support (because they were forced to specialize and become a component of a bigger whole, or because they had been destroyed by war or natural disasters) and others constantly dancing on the edge of independence and looking at Rome as either a leash to get off of or a very rich prize to one day take a bite out of. Rome was constantly putting down rebellions, and pretty soon they had tens of thousands of soldiers and, especially, mercenaries speaking a patchwork of languages, representing a patchwork of cultures, with a patchwork of loyalties, all looking for money, or power, or order, or any combination thereof. And you also had lots of military leaders, local governors, business owners, aristocrats, senators, pretenders to the Emperor’s throne, gangsters, syndicates, religious groups, towns of families....you name it, somebody was hiring muscle either for protection or to get the upper hand on somebody else. Rome devolved from a centralized empire with a (somewhat) unified power structure to a warlord culture, and eventually that violence and instability reached the empire’s core. But the big irony here is that the men who finally burned the city and “sacked” it in the way that we often imagine it today were very likely men who had at one point sworn fealty to the Roman Empire, or maybe their fathers or grandfathers had. There’s a really interesting writeup that I can’t find right now by a scholar looking at the parallels between collapse-era Rome and England during the War of the Roses, where the end of the Hundred Years War with France led to a similar “warlord state”.
I just thought about how most people don't understand how their phones work, they just plug it into a charger until the phone says its happy. People are losing the ability to cook . They just drive up to a building and talk to a sign, and tell a disembodied voice about the pictures of food they want. Inside the barbarian normally don't know the first thing about cooking. They just follow a ritual when they hear chimes and beeps.
I can't remember the name of it, but I remember reading what I thought was a fantasy story, but turned out to be a techno barbarian one. It starts out with the main charecter finding a "magic staff" that they have to "summon" an "ancient spirit" so they can learn the "spells" to use it. Except as the story goes on you realise its a directed energy weapon, the spirit is a deactivated AI, the rituals are actually a reboot procedure, and the "spells" he learns is actually computer coding to repair the damaged weapon. It was very cleverly written, and I legitimatley only started picking up halfway through that it wasn't a magic/fantasy story, but rather one about reactivating long forgotten tech.
stargate atlantis has episode like that too
It's been two years you remember yet?
@@idonhaveanyideawhattocallm1472 "The Broken Sword" by Poul Anderson
how about now, do you remember now?
The Broken Empire trilogy by Mark Lawrence is very similar if anyone is interested. Solid read.
Something worth remembering about 40ks' Age of Strife this that the AI rebellion favoured worlds who'd rejected advanced tech, and instilled fear of it among its survivours. It's not that humanity can't innovate in 40k, it's that the overwhelming majority won't, and punish those that do.
Sorta like if Iphones and Androids started strangling us all simultaneously, only the Amish and those uncontacted tribes would be left, and they sure as hell wouldnt be down with technology anytime soon thereafter.
It's not even that they wont -- that is a huge misconception of the Mechanicus and 40,000, they really, really want to progress back to where they were as a species -- it's that they can't trust a lot of their working theories or technological schematics that aren't currently in use anymore. This is why they punish some rogue Magi, because some of them are doing more harm than good to the current state of the Imperium's understanding of technology.
This includes a lot of golden-age tech that was deposited in vaults. During the Heresy demonic-computer viruses ravaged a lot of man's known technology and restricted technology, even the technologies hidden in vaults; you could make that nifty new grav-jet-bike, but it equally could be a grav-jet-bike-Chaos-transformer that's been waiting 10,000 years to be made simply so it can wipe you and your Mechanics cult-enclave out, losing even more viable technology in the process. Welcome to the future, where even the process of innovation can be corrupted or may wants to murder you.
It's not that they don't want to innovate, they do, it's just some of the directions they wish to innovate in are either dangerous, corrupted or have a lost understanding proving it equally dangerous or sometimes all three.
Once they can prove the technology isn't genocidal towards the Imperium, they will use it. The problem is they have a real problematic opportunity cost: using this technology could give us the upper hand, or it could stack another card against us - and they have had 10,000 years of the latter.
" the overwhelming majority won't, and punish those that do." - Sounds oddly familiar.
do you want Skynet? because that's how you get Skynet
@@jonc8074 no, that is. careful now (don't feed the wryms)
When we look at historical situations such as the Bronze Age Collapse and Roman Britain, what normally seems to cause techno barbarism is that either the demand for a technology is removed (because of population loss) or a crucial ingredient for a technology that had to be imported is lost, and does not return for twenty or thirty years. This leads to a loss in practical experience for how the technology is integrated into infrastructure, and makes restoring the technology prohibitively expensive.
Exactly brother, I agree with you 100%. What it truly boils down to is money. If it costs way too much(prohibitively expensive-as you said) and people can meet their needs a cheaper way, then they will.
I used to think that the fusion will be the most important new technology we're about to get but now I see that it is actually nano-duct-tape
Final Fantasy XIV would be an example of a techno-barbarian civilization written well. ancient technology survives but most people live lives distant from it, cellphones that are 5,000 years old get dug up and people collect them, but they arent seen as anything of actual practical value. however you could also argue FFXIV's world just has better technology since it has magic, and why would you use technology when you can just use aether and crystals.
Because scientists could probably find something more ridiculous to do when mixing both basic science and aether science
Because magic is literally bad for the world.
THE WHOLE COMOS IS RUINED BECAUSE OF PIESOELECTRIC FRACTAL ATTACKING MACHINES INCLUDING ALL CRYSTALS, STONE AND THE MINERAL KINGDOMS AND ALL OF THE AETHERIC REALMS AND CHASMS OF CREATION AND CO-CREATION
@@gamerplays5131 Like Magitek?
@@barahng Pretty much, but humans, although intelligent are not that wise, so you can see the many, MANY horrific after effects of using both science and magic as magic is not exactly very stable nor well understood
"While duct tape is said to fix anything, it sure doesn't apply to nanoscopic technologies."
Not with that attitude, it doesn't.
Laughed hard, show us.
Hold my nanobeer.
That's why you shrink it first you big dummy
ork mentality in a nutshell. shit really hits the fan when AI gets warpy
Super shrink-wrap
*THUNDER WARRIORS INTENSIFIES*
Hail the Emperor-Omnissiah!
INSERT CUSTODES HIDING BEHIND A TREE RUBBING HANDS TOGETHER MANIACALLY
Arik Taranis FTW!
also. Death to the false Emperor!!!
@@Gam3B0y23r0 HERESY!!!Summon the Inquisition!
@@fanaticaltechpriest1002 actually that being up a very interesting point in warhammer 40k about religion. The mechanics could have stopped earth basically any time before the great crusade began in ernest. At any time mars could have rained down titans and tech priests and wiped the fledgling imperium of the map. Only because of the religious aspects as well as a lot of diplomacy by the emperor did the imperium survive with the mechanicus. It is an interesting idea of how religious commonalities as well as diplomacy help to bring a civilization out of a dark age or breakdown of central authority
Edit typo
I remember someone at some point (I think Oculus Imperia) that suggested the term "techno barbarian" in 40k referred more to the way these groups acted despite having access to good technology and that they were purposely called "barbarians" as to remind future readers of the horrendous cultures these people had before the Emperor came and unified Terra.
I always saw that as a bit of imperial propaganda. A lot of the side fluff makes me think some cultures where about as violent or regressive as the emperors was. They just didn't want to be subordinate to him.
and it even might be mostly empires propaganda
I prefer the term Techno Viking, thank you very much! Praise the Omnissiah.
*points and stares with the fury of a thousand warriors as techno music plays in Berlin*
The emperor protect !
The Emperor protects!
*Sues for control of own meme*
@Jing Bot ua-cam.com/video/ZTB-Ty_k9vY/v-deo.html
We all know that the God-Emperor of Mankind defeated and conquered the Techno-Barbarian Tribes way before M31
SpadeRZA Donald trump?
Joseph Gaskill Hes making a joke about the game War Hammer 40K.
@@uncommonsense_3602 I'm so glad when people who don't praise the Omnissiah associate his likeness with Mr Trump.
1110 1011000 You'd think on a channel about science and futurism that references 40K many times people would start to understand some references. Heretics will be heretics. The Emperor Protects.....
@@uncommonsense_3602 The Emperor Protects!
For those interested in the idea of old tech being revered and ancient blue prints being passed down generation to generation, I'd recommend the book, "A Cantacle for Leibowitz"
One of my favorites! I was about to recommend it, but you beat me to it!
I will certainly get on reading that. Thanks.
The best post apo book ever🔥
is that a Cohen brothers reference?
Wow! That's a blast from the past. Fantastic read.
I just want to point out that the W.W.E. has every single bit of their wrestling footage ever recorded in a massive bunker inside a mountain that can withstand everything except a direct nuclear strike... And I feel like this greatly increases the likelihood of techno barbarians popping up in a post-apocalyptic future.✌
So... We just wait for the Emperor of Man to deal with these savages?
Wait here comes the Thunder warriors
Emperor protects
I am already here but sssshhhhh i am still hidding and waiting. ;)
green iz best
The emperor is here but I'm lazy , I will have the space police get right on it tho .
"Bad at obvious innovations, like realising they could hook up their still-functional fusion reactor to run water purification"
James in Fallout 3: Am I a joke to you?
Well, we got to see how savage people can be when they run out of toilet paper.
Next we will see how crazy they go over soap
"can you spare a square?"
One who has all of the plungers controls the world.
There are places in the world right now that don't have electricity, running water, plumbing...etc but they have AK47s and military grade vehicles, I'm guessing that's where the inspiration for movies such as Mad Max came from back in the late '70s.
Yo mama so dumb that when she heard “S*** Hit The Fan” she bought all the toilet paper at Dollar General.
Just a historical comment: if you want to look at a full-on civilizational collapse, the best example is the Bronze Age Collapse. Writing pretty much disappeared in Greece during that time, and most cities in Anatolia were razed to the ground or abandoned.
To be fair it hadn't made much of an appearance yet either, there weren't big libraries or schools. Technology/methods in widespread use would be more resilient to loss
The video "1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Eric Cline, PhD)" was great on that subject.
@@isaacarthurSFIA according to the footnotes in robert grave's greek myths, the inhabitants of the greek peninsula prior to the hellenes may have had a writing system using twigs of different trees
I think looking at the plausibility of under-utilizing tech long term is a more promising prospect.
The Native Americans are a good source of that, being that they seemed to have discovered smelting iron in central america but difficulty getting suitable ores and fuel together (no pack animals remember) stunted the growth of refining tech further limiting them, even though the know how of blacksmithing was wide spread before the Europeans arrived.
It's very applicable to what could happen to our civilization with rare earth materials, if space mining becomes invalid, and large empires like we have break down
Don donny very true!
"Culturally unique items..."
You mean "Space anime".
"Hey look i have this lewd polymer effigy"
"PRAISE THE CHIEF"
Consider your words carefully, Isaac.
I have the Black Templars on astronomican speeddial...
We shall purge the heretics in holy fire!!!
"And then I thought about how people would behave without internet access for a few days."
I will carve memes from their bones!
Memes for the Meme God
Lols for the Throne!
Free will is a myth! Religion is a joke! We're all controlled by something greater: memes
Came across this link on Reddit, I was captivated from start to finish. You sir are a genius everything is so well thought out and accompanied by facts theories and examples. Everything is built up around solid facts and thesis. It is also brilliantly written and worded so that it stays interesting and never sounds too long winded or buried in an avalanche of over exposure or technicalities. You are s genius and have a gift for this sort of thing. I am subscribed and unfortunately can only like this once but man is this excellent content. Thanks for your effort and time in creating these. This is utterly brilliant.
The best part about WH40k is taking everything is canon, it's just not all true. People in universe just don't know their history, and certain people disagreed
Yes, and the ongoing politics is WONDERFUL. There's a faction of the Ecclesiarchy that diligently tries to preserve ancient records, locate misplaced records (in a setting where you can literally have a paperwork error that causes the rest of the Empire to simply forget that an entire sector exists, and nobody notices for centuries), and just generally work out what really happened in the past...and then there's a different faction of the same organization dedicated to making sure nobody ever does that because it might destabilize the Empire. (And it would, the Empire is held together by blatant lies and operates in direct opposition to the intentions of the Emperor. And it does this because it's the only way the people running things can hold it together at all, and if they fail then Humanity dies out in the best possible outcome, and becomes food for the Chaos Gods for all eternity in the worst outcome.)
@@evensgrey pretty sure its the "great devourer " tyranids being the worst possible outcome,
@@bobriggins7363 It is conjectured that the norn queen stores the genetic code of all things that the fleet devours. In some sense the tyranids are just generously granting all life immortality.... And NO I'm not part of a genestealer cult.
@@bobriggins7363 No, the Tyranids will JUST kill you. With the Chaos Gods, that's just the START of what they'll put you through.
@@cookieninja2154 IT is proposed that the Tyranids are yet another Old One construct, intended to wipe out existing life but store the templates of the destroyed life for later recreation when the galaxy has been rendered safe for mortal life again. The Old Ones might not be absolute evil, but they DEFINITELY were real bastards.
I stumbled on your channel about three months ago. Definitely one of my favorites. You just used the term "nano duct tape". As far as science and futurism goes you have got to be one of the very best. Educational AND entertaining. Glad I found this. Please never stop.
>Subscription based tech-prints
This reminds me of Starsector where technology is limited literally due to DRM.
Lmao
Everybody techno barbarian till the emperor rocks up with 10000 thunder warriors
“Conan, what is best in life?”
*”To prepare your snack, sip your drink, and hear the wise words of Issac Arthur!”*
I swear the first time I read this, I was thinking of Arthur Conan Doyle.
But...but..the screams of your enemies and seeing them driven before you is cool too!
Jakub Mike I had to tell the lamenting women to quiet down a bit, I couldn’t hear the video ;)
CROMMMM!!
*That is good!*
Here's an interesting question: could some of these mega-structures that we talk about in scifi and other future tech theories plausibly cause artificial eclipses after being built? Orbital mechanics and depending on how big the mega-structures are, I would think this is a possibility. Just an idea.
Excellent video. 28:25 Looking forward to our collaboration release!
@@hazzah5572 no. Cuz it's the channel he's actually going to collab with.
This is one of the coolest channels on UA-cam. I'm mad at myself for not subscribing earlier but now I have a huge backlog of great entertainment. Thanks for the great channel! You rock!
Oh gee. What kind of idiot would intentionally make their civilization and supply chains immensely fragile for the sake of marginally more efficiency?
Looks at 2020: O-oh.
It's not even efficient, we dump a tons of product through the distribution chain. Just grossly profitable, which isn't the same thing
Efficiency? It has always been about money. Though when it gets to the point where endemic unemployment, low wages, and protests happen with the populace that the government decides to act on it, we are conditioned to call it tyrannical, Fascist, dictatorship, bad German man. Harsh times result in harsh actions.
May gawd had mercy on our souls.
We are about to become techno barabarians ourselfs...
Just look at South China sea tensions.
The mohawk and leather don't fit me anymore, I prefer to not techno barbarian.
Military axiom "Amateurs study tactics, Professionals study logistics ".
But where does one study logistics?
@@dubuyajay9964 Wal Mart
@@dubuyajay9964
Revision of field work and critical thinking.
@@dubuyajay9964
Napoleonic wars is a good place to learn.
Probably said by some academy nerd.
Professionals know that the job of logistics is to issue you with shit while selling off the goods and making tidy profit.
Working on my wifes jeep and my ford, I realised I am a techno barbarian. The lines between mechanics and spirituality are blurred!
Praise jeepsus! Praise the ford!
Sounding like a good candidate for the Adeptus Mechanicus there mate.
Don't forget the Holy Davidson
Praise the angel combustion
Ahora Mazda?
*[PREPARE FOR AUGMENTATION IN THE NAME OF THE OMNISSIAH]*
Techno Barbarians: 0:16 shows an average Russian Hardbass fan.
They are techno barbarians who use the tech, and booze, scavenged from the ruins of the fallen Soviet Empire.
@@LoboalphaMASTER Sounds like a great comic book
@@LoboalphaMASTER that would be true if they didnt have some of the best scientists on the planet
@@Crushonius Not after the fall of the Soviet Union. You can find and train genius anywhere. But without sufficient funding they won't innovating anything. Besides, education and surplus of labor are the most affected after a collapse. People won't have time to do science if they are in constant danger of starving. Any innovation will be prioritized on survival
“Techno Barbarians” is such an cool concept.
Surely some Luddite references in there too. Something about using the relics of an old or dying world/culture, to continue or ensure its destruction, for what you perceive as your own survival, is reminiscent of the ideals there.
Ak-47: im extremely resilient
Browning: thats cute
The concern I have with natural resources in a post-apocalypse would be in ease of use. Iron Age tribes had access to materials at ground level. Industrial Age societies developed ways of harvesting materials from much deeper, and of refining certain ores into useful stuff, but these processes requires a step by step process, using easy gifts to acquire more challenging advancements. I feel like there would be a case in which a society could use up all the "convenient" resources chasing advancement, turning them all into things that are harder to break down for parts, and then the culture is destroyed somehow, making it impossible for them to use the advanced tools and processes that allowed them to access the more challenging resources. Since society would have to rebuild itself from scratch now, they might not have those easy resources available with which to take the first steps towards recovery. I thought of these things while reading Ringworld many years ago, an artificial structure with no "natural" resources, built using materials that are impossible to manipulate without sci-magic tier technologies.
Wasn't the halo rings inspired or copied from that book
it might be scale thing too rome wasent more advansed that reneisanse civs but it was richer so it coud do stuff that was only rivalled by industrial revolution
Hey isaac, just dyi, i find your voice very relaxing. I fell asleep to your video last night. Gj and keep up the great work.
Lots of modern societies where techno-barbarians wield AK47s, RPG-7s, drive Toyota pickups....
cause a Toyota runs for ever and you don't have to fix it.
@@hunkyhenry6092 in Aus certain areas are full of vehicles where welfare recipients drove them until they wouldn't run and then went and bought another one.
The government pays the unpaid loan.
Given what the boys from Top Gear put that one Hilux through, I get the appeal.
The problem there is that at least the AKs and the Toyotas are both notorious for being incredibly simple, reliable, easy to repair and understand systems. Hell, there's just not much TO an AK47. One of the reasons it's so reliable is that there just isn't much there to break.... and anyone who has even a vague idea of how guns (or any kind of machinery) work can crack one open, look at the mechanisms involved, and figure the whole thing out.
@David Parry Well... Idea that evolution isn't a thing is also believed on the other side of political spectrum. Could there be some biological differences between sexes that cause differences in behaviour? Could after our lineages split and moved to different environments, a not perfectly identical evolutionary pressure which lead to at least slight differences between ethnic groups including cognitive abilities?
I was looking forward to this. I first found out about it in “if the emperor had a text to speech device “. Soo funny
Same here o.0
KITTEN!
@Abhi Prakash its a series done by Bruva Alphabusa on UA-cam
@Abhi Prakash The correct warhammer 40k lore
@@TiredRoman indeed!
Listened to Hari Seldon. Instructions unclear. 40k years later...
Alas, psychohistory is only effective when no instructions are given
The Second Foundation fell asleep on the job? Too bad Seldon didn't establish a Third Foundation to keep an eye on the Second.
I found foundation very weak, probably I was spoiled by newer concepts that based on it.. Asimov robots series on the contrary was effin genius, would read again and probably will, fantastic!
RyanRyzzo oh shidd, love your artwork man.
@@rochr4 Is written like most of hard sci-fi of the time with a twist that Assimove was writing a history book like story so no story. I recall reading whatever I could back then when I was young and stupid.
There is another story which seems to be forgotten a "A Canticle for Liebovitz" - I think this describes the misunderstanding of the old by the the new much better than Assiomov did.
I also question this "lots of still functioning tech" lying around story.Surely some will stay and we find ways to work around problems of unpaid license fee for some other. But try to make a modern car work after it run out of addblue - the car is still there, could drive but its brain tells you that it cannot because our current masters decided so (why is another question). So you can scavenge that to supply some parts for another less fragile one but how many you can find? I guess it all depends. Some Roman Villas survived the fall of Rome by a few hundred years. Cities in Britain were less durable but did survive too for quite some time. The industrial size grain mills in what is now southern France were still usable but were just not needed so got forgotten this way.
If Carrington Event stroke say 1950 lots of thing could have happened but unless a nuclear war broke out by mistake there would be a way to keep wheels rolling. The population size now is much less sustainable with lesser means and how do you produce fast enough money for exchange. in 1950 you would still have some cash around for that purpose. I had hope before that our masters i.e. the states would have some contingency plans. But looking at the corona mess I think the only one that have anything resembling a plan are preppers. So for civilization sake - good that we have them.
I say we elect Arthur for chieftain of our post apocalypse tribe. We can call it the 'Tribe of the Snack and Drink' or the 'Paperclip Hunters'.
I am continuously impressed by the consistent high quality of SFIA videos. Well done, as usual.
The M2 machine gun that was used on my crew's humvee in Iraq was made in 1950's, far older than anybody in the entire squadron.
Shame that you are still here if its that good
@Riki 9653 what kind of keyboard switches y and u
Manufactured or designed?
@Riki 9653 really?
Im not gonna get into if its or not gender biased (dont know not care), but two unrelated pieces of information can have similarities in how they are coded and not be more related because that. Its like saying pi is illuminati because its integer part is 3 that is the number of sides of a triangle (ITSACONSPIRACY.jpeg)
@@lapinrigolo manufactured
I'm on the dev team for the Unification Wars mod for Hearts of Iron IV. Loved the video, Isaac! I posted it in our discord server so the rest of the team can see it.
Bite your teeth hard into it, this episode is a real treat, this channel is close to become sentient.
Good. So many pop culture writers just don't think of things like this. Not that you are one mind you. Just making a statement since I know sources in modern GW are of varying quality and canonicity. Sorry.
@@dubuyajay9964 No offense taken, dude. By now we all know that not everything from the Age of Strife makes sense.
In 40k, there's only very loose canon, as much of it is written as if the author is within the setting itself. Mechanicus had made raids to Earth, in order to recover technology. And there were numerous other factions in the Sol system, including some xenos outposts. They'd very likely be culprits in extracting Earth's water reserves. That'd actually be quite likely: outer system assets are far apart, most icy moons are likely in the hands of unified factions and Earth is divided by dozens of factions. Earth is therefore the weakest-defended rich water source.
There are a few real multi-century ‘dark ages’ in history besides the faux-dark age of Rome. The Bronze Age collapse nearly saw the death of literacy and the permanent end of a half dozen civilizations in the Near-East. The region didn’t recover for centuries. There’s also the fall of Axum in Ethiopia which left a two hundred year gap in the archaeological record.
You could even argue the colonization of Africa created a dark age of a sort, creating wildly disparate technology levels, dystopian exploitation, and the destruction of previous civilizations, states and cultures.
you lost all credability when ya started the "we wuz kangz!" lie
@@dualityomk9854 Found the 'white *identitarian*'. Lol. Gtfo, your kind has no place on a channel about the future, because your kind has no place in the future.
@@werewolf4358 aww... did i hurt yo feefees by pointing out the perpetual techno barbarians of the last 10000 years?
@@dualityomk9854 I dont think he was doing a "we wuz kangs" , he was just stating the fact that west central and east Africa were technologically comparable to at least late medieval Europe at the start of the slave trade(mid 1500s). The sub continent was a always a bit behind as is expected when your cut off from trade by the 3rd largest desert on the planet similarly to how the new world was cut off by the Atlantic ocean. But 3 centuries of cultural and technological difference really isn't all that much. These were kingdoms with nobles and taxes and laws and shit, the entire continent wasn't just naked people in huts with sticks before slavery and colonization. After the slave trade the continent didn't just develop at a slower rate but has seemingly regressed back to what is arguable near primitive tribalism in some regions. Medieval level societies are by no means "advanced" but were not talking about wakanda or atlantis here. were talking about Castles and knights with steel swords and iron armor regressing to huts and hunter gathering.
@@barry3612 exactly guys makes no since
This isn't a fantasy trope, or even particularly unusual, just look at Syria/Yemen/Libya etc today.
Very good point
As soon as all building sites are equipped with all 20k gender toilets and all an engineer knows is that math is a white man's supremacy all these scenarios will become irrelevant because we will live in oppression free society and such concerns as the understanding and availability of tech will just cease to be
@ Whether they will be better colonial masters we shall see. I think the whites cannot be held responsible as a group as clearly some where better than others in maintaining their colonial assets and some where the assets themselves which is why talking about white privilege is such a BS but that is completely other story. he particular kind of social dementia that the West goes through will go away at some point too. We shall see then in what state the world is. Let us just hope that dark ages that seem to be inevitable at least when it comes to human rights will not last long.
@ hi there, you seem to be here in this pretty niche video, so i assume you just not someone who just panics at anything they read in social media...
so explain this thing for me, why you think that a handful of Californian activists which are relatively annoying but mostly fight irrelevant things like clothing of female characters in videogames are the fall of west civilization, or whatever?
@ you just said lots of people are with them, you dint actually answered my question
edit: i'm not trying to entrap you into something so i can win some argument, I'm genuinely curious and trying to understand
*MY **_OILED_** ABS QUIVER IN EXCITEMEEEENT.*
STOP SMEARING OIL AROUND THE PALACE
NO PROMISES ARE MADE!
@@marsar1775 hehehe...this is not oil...
@Blake Pinette will you enter my temple?
@@The-Samuil Sex is magic......and magic is HERESY *BLAM!*
I keep thinking of the Cuban Frankenstein cars with parts from multiple makes and models.
Me too!
First of all I want to thank you for the mind expanding content you have put out for the last few years. I love your content, and often bring it up in common conversation if presented with an opportunity. Many people are impressed by what humanity could accomplish with current knowledge. I'm glad you addressed this popular subject from the poll (I voted for something else), but please don't ignore those other options. They all sounded very interesting. I look forward to hearing the other lectures on those subjects as well.
Isaac Arthur, one of my personal favorite sci-fi commentators, talking about 40K, my personal favorite dystopian sci-fi for 20+ years. The Emperor is pleased with this video.
Now it just feels like the whole Stargate franchise is about techno-barbarians. I mean, humans, even though kinda organised and civilized, just use technology of other people (mostly Ancients) without fully comprehending how it works, sometimes being able to repair it, but are never capable of building anything comparable.
Yeah, but humans in the SG universe actually try to understand the tech, and often do. It's one of the rare shows where they don't just forget tech, and without spoiling it, the later seasons let us see a VERY different level
@@CCCW I know, and that's why I love Stargate. We see humans actually adopting alien tech and becoming a force to be reckoned with. It's just that from the Ancients' standpoint, this show is about techno-barbarians.
Yes... and no. Rewatching Stargate nowadays kind of hurts in some scenes. Remember how staff weapon was compared to P90 and all the dialogue about how P90 is a weapon of war and it's great? Well, what will you choose, a piece of plastic garbage or 37mm recoilless rifle the shot of which isn't affected by gravity that you will never need to repair, clear and that never runs out of ammo? The show ran with "Humanity, fuck yeah!", but over time it kind of lost a grip on its own reality:(
@@TheArklyte The P90 scene was still kinda badass, but only to show how the Goauld are more barbaric than humans, even though they have bigger ships and MORE GOLD. I mean, Goauld and their armies are pretty much the definition of a barbaric space culture. They're stuck in the dark ages. But I really like how towards the latter parts of it (Let's say, Atlantis) Stargate really started showing how humans naturally choose exploration over war. They still were doing A LOT of shooting, which is somewhat worrying for me, a pacifist, but it's not ABOUT shooting. It can't hide things it inherited from Star Trek. Stargate once promised us the humanity will become the Fifth Race, and well, maybe not in a perfect way, but they did make it true.
@@vovacat1797 а по мне так смотрелось, что шоу загоняет себя своими же силами в угол избавляясь от злодея. При этом чем меньше у следующего осколка империи Гоаулдов было ресурсов, тем опаснее они становились:D
Но это ничто по сравнению с тем, как в Атлантиде гибридов и азуран просто удалили из шоу в течении двух эпизодов. Эти обрывания концов и завели шоу в угол. А потом подошел Universe, который был попыткой копировать BSG и... ну вы знаете эту историю.
Just making a random guess here and checking something.
This guy found my mom’s phone and he keeps FaceTiming me telling me to reunite Terra and the lost colonies of mankind
In all seriousness, I’m surprised but very happy this video was made.
Nick The Undying what do you mean?
@@endsinvention1390 It's part of the lore within the Warhammer 40,000 universe, one of the central figures of the series is a grand leader for humanity and eliminates the presence of techno-barbarians on Earth
@@endsinvention1390 We found the HERRETIC
@@endsinvention1390 Also he is also an extremely potent psychic, is capable of fucking over chaos (basically space hell used for FTL travel) with only mind bullets, and is immortal in usual circumstances he dies after a few of his his 20 genetically-engineered sons rebel and remains as a psychic remnant guiding spaceships for FTL travel.
In Master of Mankind by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, the Emperor explicitely orders the execution of a noble/warlord who was responsible for draining the last ocean and trading the water for her own gain.
So while the lore probably still imagines major disasters that depleted most of the water or at least started it, humans were most definitely involved in shipping it off Earth and depleting it in that manner.
Thanks. @2:10 (roughly) - This is an idea that fascinates me - the concept that actual technology could be maintained, but that the scientific understanding behind it would be lost, and people would use something like mysticism or religion in which to couch their use of the knowledge, machines, etc. It makes me wonder about the possibility that even a current theory like say, Relativity, or Quantum Mechanics [even though the latter isn't really a theory - but that's another topic!] could be expressed in mystic or religious 'mumbo-jumbo.' And *_that_* makes me keenly aware of the possibility that our current scientific ideas *_are_***, in some sense, just that: mumbo-jumbo. That's for two main reasons. First, much of our understanding now is based on, or constructed out of, our past understanding - with all our past ***_misunderstandings_* literally encoded into it. For an example, just look at how Platonism has colored (and I would say, largely wrecked!) our thoughts about math, philosophy, & even science. And second, *_LANGUAGE._* Language has limits, and it decides what our understanding, thoughts, & even feelings about something can be. I truly wonder how a scientific theory would "operate" if it were worded differently. We often stumble over ideas because of how we think of them & talk about them in a particular language. There are no words for some things. Besides, most people have zero understanding of how most of the things they use really work. How many of us could build a computer, or an airplane, or a TV, or even a toaster?!? Here's a great quote (from my favorite person to quote: Frank Herbert) *_"Ancient metal workers had no need to understand the molecular and submolecular complexities of their steel, bronze, copper, gold, and tin. They invented mystical powers to describe the unknown while they continued to operate their forges and wield their hammers."_* [from "Heretics of Dune", 1984 (the 5th book in his original Dune series)] We LOVE to think that we understand things. Scientists are particularly vulnerable to this. Don't get me wrong - I believe in the scientific method as something that has indeed brought us the most accurate and useful body of knowledge humankind has ever achieved. But there are real dangers here, too. Look at how much trouble Quantum Gravity is creating! The two most mind-bendingly accurate, successful, and, well, mind-bending theories of all time - and they refuse to behave when we try to put them in the same room! I'm reminded of the Dire Straights lyric from the song "Industrial Disease": "Two men say they're Jesus / One of 'em must be wrong." Consensus is that Relativity is at least partly wrong, but *_not_* Quantum Mechanics. We'll see how that goes! tavi.
Considering most people don't understand basic quantum mechanics, I can imagine that science being lost, as well as technologies that take entire factories to produce such as semiconductors.
But useful technologies you can make in a garage such as windows, lenses, basic combustion engines, electric motors, refining, etc, I think would stick around.
I'd love to see a series on engineering plants to grow inorganic components. that'd be awesome fuel for post-apoc story ideas!
Therapist: It's all right. Flat Kangaroo isn't real, it can't hurt you.
Flat Kangaroo: 3:35
Is it just me or is this the most well written, well researched, well presented and original channel on youtube?
i wish to point towards a game called starsector where nano forges can build anything but the blueprints you need are not reproducable so any advanced technologies are limited in production and poorly understood
Hey Hey, People...
Isaac should definitely try Starsector, if he has any time for video games
3:15
As a huge Medieval history nut, thank you for saying this.
Too many people are just happy to see the Middle Ages as a big barbaric time with no technological development or science, when the truth is very far from that.
exactly. it is myth that began in the 18th century by cabalist and illuminatists that only greek sciences adavancd us
This video’s title “Techno-Barbarians” immediately reminded me of The Fremen from the DUNE series. These nomadic, knife wielding, water hoarders lived on desert planet Arrakis in cave dwellings called Sietches and were always at odds with the feudal rulers House Harkonnen set over 20,000 years in the future. They had their own tech in the form of StillSuits that recycle their urine into drinking water since water was scarce on Dune. They helped Paul Atreides overthrow the evil House Harkonnen. They also ride the giant Sandworm known as Shai-Hulud. They followed an ancient religion that merged Buddhism and Islam called Zensunni.
Ya know at 18:03, I think it's important to take note and mention North American History in the discussion of techno barbarians and mentioning Iron and Aluminum is a good reminder to me.
Most important because the Natives had a similar relationship with Iron as modern man has with alloying elements and lithium, despite lithium being very common.
The Iron Age happened in the Americas long before Columbus arrived, but scarcity of good easy to process surface ores *near* fuel sources resigned Iron to a little used element, with blacksmithing being mixed in with all metalworking and rarely practiced. most iron was refined in central America with no pack animals to move it far and wide. But surface sources that where still metallic where used across the board. Like meteorites found on the ground, a common source for our modern alloying elements.
The presence of woods that where stronger then iron per pound and almost a durable as iron probably eased the urgency of spreading ironworking. Much like the durability of plain steels and strength of (possibly genetically engineered) woods would likely be an ease of pressure against techno-barbarians advancing.
(Please note, calling the Native Americans "stone age" is something Columbus and the records of the first expeditions to the Americas would disagree with. Stone tools became more prevalent and Iron less as plagues spread through the natives population but at first it was a common sight to see iron and stone tools used in agriculture and forestry, according to the Spanish records)
That is to say, perhaps we'd reach a point where we are not truly techno-barbarians but just found enough alternatives that are easy enough to teach generation by generation as efforts to achieve more become to difficult, perhaps by unpredictability of AI, or pure scarcity if launching off a planet becomes unviable due to debris
One thing I want to note for people thinking about writing something like this. You can hand forge a rifle, in Afghanistan there are blacksmiths who can handforge AK-47s. I imagine someone who's used to working their hands in a machine shopcould figure out a way to copy the components in a bolt action rifle at the very least.
Love how he used the M60 machine gun for an example of a touchy weapon. That thing was always malfunctioning.
Isn't the SEAL and Marine Corps variant more reliable? A3 I think?
I love the 40k setting but some of the concepts that tie the setting together are kind of silly. Things like agriculture worlds supplying hive worlds, in "reality" they should be food independent and not rely on imports. The Imperium doesn't seem to have a lack of power generators, they make stuff on stupidly huge scales even with their long forgotten technology so hive worlds wouldn't have a problem recycling bio-mass into food.
The scale of 40k is all wrong too with battles for planets being in the hundred of thousands instead of tens of millions, crews for ships being far to small giving the size and complexity of the ships, ect. Great setting though, where else can I get a guy chainsawing an ork to death?
Karl Rosner I dispute. Assuming you are talking about the imperium, they have an inefficient bureaucracy, thus production is constantly undersupplied. Some worlds also are more suited to be agricultural worlds due to their planet’s geography. Some hive worlds are overbuilt, and this can be attributed to the inefficiency and stagnancy in thinking within the imperium. The Imperium is fucked up and the only thing that is keeping it together is religion ironically, oppression and propaganda. And also constant war. Then there is scale. Yeah sure lots of the battles are rather lacking but most battles do take place with hundreds of millions of participants while the imperial navy has military ships calling from 3 km in length to 16km like a battleship.
People tend to forget that 40K is supposed to be at least a little over the top.
Besides for game purposes, I always thought the limited numbers was also due to concerns about Chaos/warp bleed through. The more sentients in a highly emotional state you have in one place, the more infuence the infernal powers are able to exert
i was under the impression that all hive worlds recycle their water and even their dead into food. Its just that you need agricultural worlds since recycling can never produce 100% of the recycled material and to also provide food for the billions involved in military campaigns. Plus its not meant to be an accurate scientific depiction, it should be over the top unrealistic :D
40k? Silly? you dont say!
(Thats what makes 40k genius: its all so silly and outrageous it becomes incredibly awesome)
This planet is already overrun with techno-barbarians.
I look down at the black box of my cell phone and I know in my bones you are right.
This is so real, this is probably the most bright video that this channel produced, he the autor talks about this as it is aw some Future problem, it is now the future is now.
Isaac: "society isn't likely to forget what germs are"
The rest of UA-cam: "5G causes covid"
@@bimblinghill While sadly this is more true than I would like Issac seems to be focusing on the whole society level as the knowledge still exists(for now) the real problem is when the anti science whack-jobs commit genocide on the part of humanity that didn't flunk elementary school. He is what we call an eternal optimist.
necessarily
FOR THE EMPEROR!
If you run out oil, then you lose internal combustion and create a gap between steam power and high tech. Then all that it takes is a massive EMP or a super Carrington level-type event to knock you permanently back to the Victorian or even Edwardian era. I'm not sure if Steam/Clockwork Punk can be considered Techo-barbarianism, but the colonial era sure showed the divide between those who had said tech and those who did not.
If you run out of gas/liquid fuel, but keep in mind you can run an ICE on ethanol, booze, wood gas, and plenty of other stuff, it's just not as good as gasoline and isn't ideal for modern engines
@@isaacarthurSFIA Ah, that's right. Even methane, from animal waste. You even flashed a picture from Mad Max Thunderdome, in which that was a major plot point. Where there is a will, there is a way :)
I have to disagree with smartphones being useless without a network. it's still a suite of sensors and a way to view offline media. the amount of books you can store on a128GB sd card is nothing to scoff at.they are compact and durable and need little in terms of power. you would have to prep it for being a Prepperphone though...
True, as a mobile and fairly durable computer they'd be handy till they broke in that regard but the 'phone' part is useless
@@isaacarthurSFIA sure, they also come with networking options that might be usefull though, mesh networks and the likes. and nobody makes calls on them, anyway...
As soon as people realize they can't access google or FB on them the majority of them will be used as projectiles while looting the supermarkets.
@@RCAvhstape Wait, you've never used your very expensive smartphone as a projectile before? Am I the only one?
@@isaacarthurSFIA The flashlight feature is a very nice one that I use all the time. Sure it's not exactly a good flashlight, but it still gets the job done. Oh and the alarm clock feature. Umm, calander? Can't think of any other offline features.
Went and googled some more useful things. Offline maps, notepad, camera(which is super obvious, but somehow I didn't think of). If they made smartphones more durable and with a longer expected lifespan, I could see people using these things in the wastelands.
After writing this I realized how useful smartphones are even without the internet or phone networks.
A while back, had seen a video of a focilized shoe print that had amazing detail in the stitches of the sole.
I forgot how old they estimated it to be.
So with that in mind...do you think its possible that we were once a advanced civilization that saw a doomsday event ?
Yes. Look into the 13000 year catastrophic cycle. Do some digging into ancient archaeology and you will end up with some mind rending questions.
The part about genetic engineering were Isaac talked about genes (8:30) made me think of the orks in 40K.
They also have genes that activate when the conditions are right.
This smells like pre-crusade 40k
Purge the mutant, the heretic, and the xenon scum!
When we look at collapses like in the bronze age or after the fall of rome, we often see that pure technology is kept and maintained however it's instead social organization and infrastructure that goes away.
For example the rise of warrior aristocracies armed with more advance weapons (i.e trebuchet/crossbows) but in much smaller (and less complex) armies because the state only has the ability to rais a few hundred men rather than several thousand.
Very true. Technological progress never really stops. It’s SOCIETY that tends to collapse into smaller, pettier entities,while technology just keeps marching on (especially the technology of war). We humans just won’t give up our love of war; we’ll give up every other form of progress first, we’ll stop researching science and medicine when times are tough, but still will not cut back on weapons R&D.
That's what makes 40k so good. It takes from everything and puts it in one setting.
Except maybe originallity.
@@rommdan2716 don't really care about that. There isn't really any such thing as originality anyways. Everything has been done so just have fun doing what you want to do.
@@rommdan2716 Cmon, 40K is one of the most unique settings out there, there is nothing quite like it.
also, everything takes inspiration from tons of sources.
@@Gam3B0y23r0 Hahaha HAHHAHAHAH HA 40K UNIQUE HAHA HAHSHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Yes it takes from everything and multiplies it times 100 to be the most over the top universe we love
You don't use product to keep up a mohawk; you backcomb, or basically tangle, it with some sort of comb to get height; no perfume smells or gel in your sweat, stinging your eyes
We need only await the coming of the Man-Emperor of Mankind to deliver us from the Techno-Barbarians...
TTS INTENSIFYS
@Kaman00001 Its a reference to Warhammer 40k, more specifically to the affectionate parody 'If the Emperor had a text to speech device' as in that series the God-Emperor of Mankind, now able to communicate after 10,000 years as a near-lifeless husk upon His Golden Throne, told his priesthood to knock off calling him a God because his original plan had been to destroy religion entirely. So they started calling him the Man-Emperor of Mankind and worship him as the pinnacle of humanity instead, viewing Humanity itself as above mere Gods.
The Emperor has always been known as The Emperor, even before he managed to re-unify Terra after the Age of Strife and reached forth His hand to lead the Great Crusade to unite all the scattered lost colonies of Man under His Imperium.
@Kaman00001 Much as the Emperor sought to reunite with His lost sons, the Primarchs He created from His own perfect genetic code to be demi-god leaders for his gene-warrior armies which themselves would be implanted with genetic codes derived from the Primarchs. Of course half the Primarchs turned against the Emperor in the end and brought low his Imperium, hence why He upon the Throne has been in a state of undeath for 10,000 years in the setting...
@Kaman00001 I would highly recommend the Oculus Imperia youtube channel, which does in-depth lore expositions from an in-universe perspective from a member of the Logos Historica Verita. It is a new organisation of the imperial government established by the returned Primarch Raboute Guilliman to try to establish an accurate history of the Imperium after ten millennia of revisionism and Inquisitorial burnings.
praise be to the holy god emperor
Your description of this topic brought to mind a story I first read maybe 30 - 35 years ago, "A Canticle for Leibowitz". I do not recall hearing you refer to it or to Walter Miller in any of your videos, so, if you haven't read it, you might enjoy it.
For Techno-Barbarians, I don't think of Warhammer 40k, I think of the fallout universe.
It also makes fallout 4 extremely frustatrating because it's 200 YEARS AFTER THE APOCALYPSE AND THE BEST TOWN IS JUST PEOPLE LIVING IN HOUSES BUILT OUT OF SCRAP IN THE RUINS OF AN OLD BASEBALL STADIUM, WHY WOULDN'T I SIDE WITH THE SLAVERY SCIENTISTS.
I'm to go with C: They kidnap your loved ones and replace them with robots. I'd rather side with the Legion than body snatchers.
@@Jacob-pu4zj "This town needs your help. I'll put the coordinates on your map."
ParallaxNick has a great channel. Well worth the watch.
Another great episode, so many people are very down currently, the relentless optimism for the future, tempered with realism is so wonderful to look forward to week after week. Thank you Isaac Arthur and the production crew that make this possible.
My favorite techno-barbarian society has to probably be Mid-World from the Dark Tower series.
The Interdependency trilogy is a good example of intentional withholding of key technologies being used to keep an empire together, while also being it's biggest vulnerability
A few points to consider: Roman Empire was not surrounded by more primitive societies.. quite the contrary, the Mediterranean coast had numerous other advanced civilizations, Phoenicians, later Egypt, and following the fall of Rome, the Moors. The Moors are most interesting because numerous travellers from North Africa traded with Europe, and brought mathematics, science and technology knowledge.. in fact the first universities in Europe were modeled from the ones in North Africa... All this to say civilizations rarely exist in a vacuum. But maybe some day they will, literally, exist in the vacuum of space. But as long as trade, communication and travel exists no one is truly isolated.
@Joe Blow lots of gaps and omissions in history: remember, Egypt was still a potent empire during Rome's times. Knowledge of geometry , Pythagoras theorem came from them (you cannot build pyramids without some knowledge of geometry, the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus such knowledge formed the basis for later greek philosophers) And later advanced mathematics arrived to Europe by way of the Moors from Sumerian and Babylonian texts. Moors had over a dozen universities in 7 cities with advances in astronomy, agriculture, sciences... Europe had none. Even advanced metallurgy such as Damascus steel, passed through the Mediterranean from Sri Lanka and India (itself quite civilized while Europe was in its dark ages). You have to understand when Roman outposts in Britannia and elsewhere were abandoned, Europe reverted to tribes, and chieftains until a few perhaps former Roman generals descendants claimed thrones and started using heraldry (former roman standards maybe).. the lion isn't exactly European. The Moors however were still bore the torch of cosmopolitan modernity at the time, hygiene, changing clothes types with the season, haircuts. Moors still had aquaducts. Interestingly enough, the game of chess came from them.
Another great Video, I have to thank you, your content keeps me entertained in these boring times.
Conan the blabarion just doesn’t have the same ring.
What is best in life? To blah blah blah and blah blah blah.
Also, Peace through Power!
BAR-BARH BARH
I suspect the Predator Franchise aliens are techno-barbarians.
nah, cause they're outerplanetary species and have ftl travel, i guess they would have scientist to figure out how phisics work to travel to these other planets
@AKUJIRULE they would need to understand the tech in order to use it, I doubt you would risk such high stakes to travel to another planet and getting stranded in space, just because they are "barbaric" doesn't make them technologically illiterate
@AKUJIRULE listen man, you don't need to know to know all the phisics that goes on when you drive from point a to b, but don't act as if driving a car a flying to A DIFFERENT PLANET is the same thing, you most definitely need to know the intricacies of how the craft works since it might brake down, and to plot the course, for that you would need to have well trained technicians and astronomers
@AKUJIRULE I challenge you to sail around the earth. We will talk again after you crossed the Pacific Ocean. Modern Sailing Ships have all that. Yet i bet we wont talk again (because your lying dead at the ocean floor...).
AKUJIRULE I see your point, but your examples of car, sailboats (ships), or planes actually goes against your point. Meaning a car, sailboat (ship), or plane all require at least some basic skill to begin operating it (license), and even a little more skill to maintain it at a basic level (turn on, gas, fluids, change flat). And your point falls flat if you scale it up from private to commercial car, sailboat (ship), or plane as those people are highly trained, and know how to operate with or without gps or autopilot, and have technician crews. So knowing how to make something is one thing, knowing how to operate and maintain it is another. Just saying your examples actually helping the other person.
ps. Unless you sailed before I wouldn't take that internet bet. Have you seen people sail? Its not as easy as starting your car and driving to the store. If you have sailed before you should know it takes skill, even tying the wrong knot could get you killed at sea.
I keep thinking about The Lord Humungous and his Dogs of War.
JUST WALK AWAY, LEAVE US THE OIL, THE PUMP, THE GASOLINE, AND YOU CAN LEAVE WITH YOUR LIVES.
Wasn't there an Anglo-Saxon poem about walking through thr ruins of London written during 'the dark age' ?
*Hello there! May the Force be with you always!*
What is this... Force? It's seems highly heretical. The Ordo Hereticus would like to know your location.
@@Lord-Inquisitor
Do you like to ruin other sci fi universes, don't you?
@@rommdan2716 Disney beat me to it
I am sooooo looking forward to your future collaboration with Nick. I'm subbed to both of your channels, and have been for quite some time. This is a splendid match.
Which Nick?
@@douglasnelson4592 ParallaxNick, of course!
I’ve been on a “Roman empire collapse” learning kick recently, and one of the most interesting points I’ve seen repeated is that the barbarians who sacked Rome weren’t really foreign invaders, at least not in a literal “invading army” sense. As Rome grew and added conquered territories, former enemies were conscripted into the Roman military and power structure. You needed local leaders who spoke the language and knew/came from the area. You needed soldiers and mercenaries to maintain order and also to feed expansion elsewhere. Plus, you wanted all of the locals to become loyal Roman subjects, if not technically Roman citizens. And keeping expensive Roman legions and magistrates abroad long term was costly and risky. So what better thing to do with a newly conquered vassal state than put the existing leadership on your payroll and have them work and fight for Rome? Especially if you could use their help against their neighbors and enemy tribes.
But as the years went by and the economy of the empire began to decay and crumble, so went the centralized power structure. And now you had all of these areas- some extremely dependent on Rome for economic support (because they were forced to specialize and become a component of a bigger whole, or because they had been destroyed by war or natural disasters) and others constantly dancing on the edge of independence and looking at Rome as either a leash to get off of or a very rich prize to one day take a bite out of.
Rome was constantly putting down rebellions, and pretty soon they had tens of thousands of soldiers and, especially, mercenaries speaking a patchwork of languages, representing a patchwork of cultures, with a patchwork of loyalties, all looking for money, or power, or order, or any combination thereof. And you also had lots of military leaders, local governors, business owners, aristocrats, senators, pretenders to the Emperor’s throne, gangsters, syndicates, religious groups, towns of families....you name it, somebody was hiring muscle either for protection or to get the upper hand on somebody else. Rome devolved from a centralized empire with a (somewhat) unified power structure to a warlord culture, and eventually that violence and instability reached the empire’s core.
But the big irony here is that the men who finally burned the city and “sacked” it in the way that we often imagine it today were very likely men who had at one point sworn fealty to the Roman Empire, or maybe their fathers or grandfathers had.
There’s a really interesting writeup that I can’t find right now by a scholar looking at the parallels between collapse-era Rome and England during the War of the Roses, where the end of the Hundred Years War with France led to a similar “warlord state”.
Diversity was their strength!!
YALL NEED THE EMPEROR
Which emperor? Me or the dead guy?
Worship your corpse god heathen I have gods of my own
Traitors, mutants heretics, all must be purged
Thundar the barbarian my favorite show mixing technology and mysticism
Thunder Cats anyone? Never actually did figure out what was going on with that show. Was it the future? Or just some weird place?
You’ve got me excited for nano-duct tape, now.
Playing *Destroy All Humans* while listening to Isaac truly transcends the mind.
I just thought about how most people don't understand how their phones work, they just plug it into a charger until the phone says its happy. People are losing the ability to cook . They just drive up to a building and talk to a sign, and tell a disembodied voice about the pictures of food they want. Inside the barbarian normally don't know the first thing about cooking. They just follow a ritual when they hear chimes and beeps.
So basically, what you're saying is... if barbarians were named in modern times instead, this episode would've been titled "Techno-Blahblahians"?
Basically yes
Plenty of hair gel for spiking a mohawk.
Love it brother
MASTER BLASTER!!!
When is the raid shadow legends sponsorship? I want isaac to have as much money as possible
NOTHING THE THUNDER WARRIORS CAN’T SORT OUT!!!
Weren’t they taken out back and killed in glorious hand to hand combat
@@tariqahmad1371 Indeed. GLORIOUS COMBAT
nothing except daddy-issues
@Mario watch “if the emperor had a text to speech device” by Bruva Alphabusa on UA-cam