Comment by jerf

It's a pity they went that way, because there's a different framing that is still an interesting question: How far could humanity fall and still be able to recover? It's essentially the same problem, and it's a lot easier to imagine that we're talking about a situation in which there's no longer any technology. We consider the people geographically co-located, but it's not hard to imagine a pocket of survivors of whatever $DISASTER, either.