I assume every artifact made by man disappears instantly? No books, no canned food, no clothes. Everyone i know would die in a week. My grandma grew up very poor in the dustbowl. She would have a chance, but it's cold at night.
So, you're left with people who can recreate their tools in a few days, and don't really need what they have. the !Kung in africa? There's probably 20,000 people in the world like that. Expansion around the globe would likely happen as fast as the first time. 100k years?
I think teching back up would take a lot longer. The easy to get natural resources are gone. 100k years aren't really enough for plants to turn back into oil. Maybe really big earthquakes would bring metals to the surface. Once upon a time there were black puddles of oil on the ground. Now, we have to pump saltwater into deep reserves to get the oil out. I suppose there's plenty of easy to reach coal. I don't know much about copper mines, they always look very deep to me. perhaps there is a lot of easy to get surface copper, just not in high enough concentrations to make it worthwhile to mine.
I don't think 20,000 is a reasonable bound; here in the tropics (Puerto Rico in my case) it doesn't get cold at night; you'd have a lot of starvation and the society would be feudal pretty quick, but I'll bet you'd end up with more than 20,000 people on this island alone. Now multiply by the rest of the tropics.
But the likelihood of our returning to a technological civilization after that? No. I'm betting we never would, for two reasons.
First: all the data's gone. It's just skills in people's heads, and most of the people with skills will be dead in a few months. And the ones that don't die right off the bat will be too busy not starving, and making sure their kids don't starve, to write anything down, on non-existent paper with non-existent pencils, until they themselves die of old age at 55. No medicine. No antibiotics. Plenty of privation and overwork, though. (And even if some overachiever does write stuff down -- how long does that survive? And how does it get distributed beyond his own little village of 100 people? Answer: it doesn't. And all the resources he knows how to use are no longer available from Edmund Scientific.)
OK? So there's no skills, really fast. But there are legends of the fast-burning city civilization that let us all down. Humanity will never try it again; I just don't believe it. We're barely trying it now -- how many people really still believe in technological progress these days? I mean, in terms not of making a buck, but of inevitable progress towards a better life? Damned few. And that's before it all goes away and 99% of the people in the world die as a result.
> Once upon a time there were black puddles of oil on the ground. Now, we have to pump saltwater into deep reserves to get the oil out.
Hmm. I know where to find some of said black puddles.
While there are reasons why they're not being exploited today, I guess that makes me pretty valuable when all the tech goes away, at least until someone figures out that we need metal to deal with said "puddles".
Just out of curiosity, what part of the world are these puddles in? Assuming that all technology won't be disappearing anytime soon, it's probably safe to share ;)
(1) I doubt that ANWR has ground-level oil because I think that the Inuit would have exploited it.
(2) The Inuit know, or at least knew, how to survive in that area without significant tech. If "all the tech disappears" happens in winter and they wake up naked and outside (with no inside available), they don't wake up. If it's summer, they can cope.
We have a few trees left. We can always burn those puppies up. (Actually, if you've ever been to the Azore islands of Portugal, this is exactly what happened. You'll be hard pressed to find many trees on several islands.)
So, you're left with people who can recreate their tools in a few days, and don't really need what they have. the !Kung in africa? There's probably 20,000 people in the world like that. Expansion around the globe would likely happen as fast as the first time. 100k years?
I think teching back up would take a lot longer. The easy to get natural resources are gone. 100k years aren't really enough for plants to turn back into oil. Maybe really big earthquakes would bring metals to the surface. Once upon a time there were black puddles of oil on the ground. Now, we have to pump saltwater into deep reserves to get the oil out. I suppose there's plenty of easy to reach coal. I don't know much about copper mines, they always look very deep to me. perhaps there is a lot of easy to get surface copper, just not in high enough concentrations to make it worthwhile to mine.