Technology, can we survive without it?

Writing an essay for school and I'm stuck on one thought.
Technology: everything made by the human.
If we would try to survive without technology, could we? What about water? Citys are often build miles away from drinkwater. What about food? Are there alternatives?

What about your personal life? Could you survive without it? No phone, computer, CoH2

No? Maybe?

Image that its all gone.

First thing i would do is write "I miss the internet" on all walls

I think humans are really smart and can #adapt kinda fast so we will be oke!

We survived for as long as "technology" didn't exist, and we aren't robots yet that need to plug in the wall to recharge and shit, so yeah I'd think humans can physically survive without it. Although things would be a lot less comfortable.

even a knife and cloth is technology. we would freeze to death in most parts of the world. otherwise, yes of course, animals dont have technology as well and we arent any better than them.

Someone once did an economic analysis that While peasants were poor, the shirt on their back was worth $3500. That is because if you value the amount of labor that went into even the most basic items by the amount of hours invested it would be a significant portion of hours.

There is also a book out that compares the amount of labor (in hours worked) necessary to purchase light (light as in the bility to function at night, be it lightbulbs or candles). It was whacky, something like a week of work buying a few minutes ages ago to the 19th century when a week of work bought an hour or two. Then a huge leap into the 20th century when you start buying hours of light for hours of labor to finally buying a weeks worth of light with a few minutes of labor today.

Also without technology there is no way we could feed the 7ish billion people on the planet. Or be able to fight disease, let alone infections, cancer, etc.

200 an more years ago, life was brutal, sickly and short. That was the normal state for most people including royalty. A poor person in a western country today lives better than the upper class did just 100 years ago (transportation, healthcare, communication, safe and varied foods, etc.). Without technology we will go back to that... except we will first have to pass through a phase that somehow reduces the population to below 1 billion (via disease, war and starvation most likely).

Electronics you mean? Well if a megafuck-sized EMP went off in Earth's orbit or something and all our electronics were compromised globally for even a few weeks...prepare for brutal violence/robbery in the streets...see "The Purge" for more details.

Think about all these no-lifes playing 24h/day, lifes for them would end badly

There would be bloody battles, starvation/dehydration, dieseases, etc. The human population would reduce drastically and a total setback in terms of communication. We still have letters today, but we use cars to deliver them and machines to sort them. A completely new beginning and the first battles would ensue rather quickly about the fundamental ressources, like food, water, shelter. Every bit of wealth would mean nothing. For example, someone owns an oil field. Today he is a rich man, tomorrow he has nothing that means anything. What do you need oil for, when you can't use it.
We would have to adapt to the new circumstances, which will mean the death of hundreds of thousands people.
It would be chaos. No government could manage this or even reach its people. The medival age would look highly civilized compared to this new state of mankind.

If you mean "we" as in humanity, yes. We've lived without electronics much longer than we've lived with them.

Thanks for the answers!

With technology I mean as I said before: all things that are made by human. So indeed, even a shoe.

Got some ideas out of the answers and got new stuff to write about.
My main concern was the drinkable water. Without we are dead. But yeah, in smaller groups we should be able to survive.
But what after that? We start over again and we use techology again. Even a stick with a stone on it would be technology... We would be able to survive, but not with the amount of people we are living on planet earth today.

Once we don't have technology anymore, its all about surviving I guess. We used technology mostly to make our life more comfortable. Maybe a little bit too comfortable?

YEEES!!!! Studing archaeology is paying off!!!!

Paleolithic era encompassed almost 100 000- 150 000 years of the homo-sapiens. (Debate is ongoing on how old the species can be said to be.) So sure we can defiantly survive. BUT, not all of us. Without modern industrial farming and foodproduction its a bitch to feed people.
Going back without anything, like before the neolithic revolution/evolution (debates debates) it takes a freaking HUGE ass space to feed even one person. I remember an estimate of 5km2 of space for each individual in order to get enough wild food.
So the planet can feed how many now? A couple of million tops.

Sure if everything we ever made was "poof" away tomorrow, different things would probably happen. Even if we don't have any things we still have knowledge. First of all: no clothes, houses, tools; people in cold areas freeze to death in days at best, minutes-hours in alot of places. Like anywhere you can't survive naked for long. (north of the alps?)
The rest would suffer problem with water yes, but water isn't really that scarce in many places with enough heat (so people don't freeze.) Running streams and the like are safer than other sources.

Then of course food, the best chances of survival is rural asia, africa and parts of American, a bit of southern europe to. Is the livestock still alive? Because then thats a no-brainer. Otherwise people need to start getting food by hunting and gathering.
Then cannibalism will probably set in after a few weeks. Seeing as other humans would be the easiest prey.
Everyone with diabetes, cancer, sever asthma, week heart and similar stuff that needs constant medication is basically dead.

Sure we'll probably be able to rebuild, (people can still write, so knowledge can be passed down) but expect about 90-99% mortality. Even if probably not rocket-scientists survive even regular folks in the above regions know OF these things and hopefully some have an idea of what to do.

We won't spend 10 000 years rebuilding but probably a 100-400 years to get everything back. Remember KNOWLEDGE is what wins the day. Just having a slight hum of technology is 100 times better than no knowledge. We have a base of knowledge, we can use it to rebuild.


my 2 drunken cents.

What about your personal life? Could you survive without it? No phone, computer, CoH2

Just for fun: Im a Swede, don't have to worry about that. Ill freeze to death before I even have to worry about water.

Thanks for the clear answer Somenbjorn!

Sure we could survive.
The question is do we want to survive in a world without toiletpaper...

But technically, both fire and stone tools go back before the appearance of Hom.Sap., so in that sense there has never been any modern human who has lived without technology of some kind. Plus, even language might be considered a technology of sorts.