My series of novels – The Millennium Girl Series – is based on the premise that 99% of the world’s population is wiped out by a modified form of the Ebola virus that was intentionally released upon the masses by an elite few. The first two novels – Mutation and Retribution – deal with the immediate aftermath of the apocalypse. But what next? What would life we like in 50 years? In 500 years? In a thousand years? Could a technological society rebuild itself?
This is the question posed in this lovely thought-experiment article by Lewis Dartnell, a UK Space Agency research fellow at the University of Leicester. One of the problems that Lewis describes is that rebuilding our society without fossil fuels would be extremely difficult. Most of the coal, for example, that is easily accessible – and that drove the first Industrial Revolution – has already been mined. However, Lewis argues that there is a way that we could progress with a different energy source. Read his article at Aeon for the full details.
Millennium Girl 