re: Aliens come and take away every man-made object. Humans maintain their current knowledge..

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In all honesty, less than 5 years. We could have forges and lathes up and running in hours around the globe.

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Nobody has any clothes much less lathes. They don’t even have a building to house a lathe. Are they going to smelt iron while naked? Where will everyone live? Under a rock?

Shortwave radios from where?

Transocean vessels in a month. Who is going to make them. Heck there will be no food. No tools for agriculture. We will spend most of the day trying desperately to just survive.

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Why are clothes such a major point of contention to people? Would it take you more than a week to figure out how to cover your body? Are clothes an inflexible prerequisite to technology?

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I don’t understand this issue as well. I think the biggest problem will be no lines of long distance communication available for quite some time

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hundreds of billions will die in short order.

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Brother,
There are only 8 billion people living today.

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All can be restored if the aliens are presented with a fully functioning iPhone 16.

How long would it take humanity?

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I'm going off the aliens snapping their fingers and all manmade structures, clothing, tools, etc. suddenly disappearing leaving us all naked and empty-handed. That said...

A couple hundred years, at best.

Right off the bat, every major and most medium sized (and even some smaller) cities around the world would face the issue of their populations starving to death as local resources would be far too inadequate. A lot of populations would also face death from exposure, especially for the areas where it was Fall or Winter when this event took place.

The primary way we are able to pass down massive amounts of information of technological achievements are through recording them all in written and/or digital form. Those would disappear and be a back-burner issue until shelter and reliable food harvesting was happening. It's not far-fetched to say that point itself would take a year or three.

Let me be a little more detailed. In this scenario people would first need to know, or quickly learn:

-how to make fire from friction or striking stones
-how to create sharp edges for skinning, making spears, etc
-how to build a secure shelter
-how to make some sort of rope material
-how to hunt, fish and/or trap with the primitive tools they've made
-what berries, bark, roots, etc. which can be eaten

Those are no small things and would be from difficult to impossible for many and could not happen in high-population areas. Speaking of high-population regions (NYC, Dallas, London, Seoul, etc) would have faced mass starvation, leading to mass deaths, leading to the proliferation of disease and plague. Bugs, birds, etc. could spread those diseases for tens of miles around. Those with the knowledge on how to make circuit boards, microchips, plastics, etc. are likely to be in these areas and thus have a higher chance of not surviving.

Along with this, when you have no tools, shelter, etc. finding food becomes your primary concern and getting it is usually not going to be easy. Getting enough food in such an environment can take hours or days, with the longer it takes making the person/people more tired and weak. Keep that in mind as we go along.

Let's say we have a very small, rural community somewhere. They'll likely have enough food and water in the area to sustain them all as well as enough knowledge to build serviceable shelters in a reasonable amount of time. If they have, or discover, how to make basic metal tools, ceramics, bricks and/or mortar, they could be up and running as a society with a good chance of surviving within a few years.

That said, they'll still face a few problems. Problems we take for granted as being fixable suddenly become serious issues. Cavities, broken bones, non-sterilized water, etc. all have the potential to be severe without some specialized knowledge on how to deal with them on a primitive level. Along with that, they'll need to learn how to farm and begin farming enough to sustain themselves (which also means preserving/storing food) as well as make substances to write on (in order to record their knowledge for future generations before they all die off) and cloth (blankets, clothes, etc).

Another problem is perpetuation of the species. If the community is mostly family, genetic issues are bound to creep up as the genetic pool becomes more and more shallow.

But let's say enough new people come to join the group to avoid genetic problems and the community has enough knowledge to set bones, fight infections and diseases. They'll need the knowledge and the resources to make metal tools. If they don't have that, they'll not progress much beyond their current level for many generations. At best, we're looking at 5-10 years to reach this point.

So let's say they have access to metal ore or can trade for it with another community who does. They then have to start making basic metal pieces in order to better hunt, build, etc. If they get iron, they can eventually make magnets. If they can get magnets strong enough and get copper, they can start making equipment which can generate electricity. This doesn't solve to problem of providing the energy to create electricity continuously though. We'll err on the side of caution and put this at another 10 years (remember, providing food can take hours or days now).

So now they're 20-25 years (at best) in and are just now able to make electricity (again, with a LOT of "ifs") but they likely don't have a way to reliable generate it continuously. From here on, they're going to need people with more and more specialized knowledge so they can continue to quickly get closer to pre-alien levels. They'll need people with the knowledge to build a coal/steam generator. During this time they've also gotten a handle on farming and likely herding (cattle, deer, rabbits, whatever). So the community is at a good point and may have attracted someone with such knowledge, but the people of that ilk are now in their middle ages or senior years (unless they've taught their kids extremely well). Hopefully they've been passing down the things they know to the younger generations (those which have survived without modern prenatal care).

At this point it becomes a matter of refining current technology until they can once again discover fossil fuels, because steam can do only so much. It took over 100 years to get from Franklin's kite to the electric light bulb but since these folks have a head start we'll give them another 10-15 years. The last generation of adults when the aliens came are now getting into their 50s and 60s and they still need to make the jump from making electricity to being able to find and harvest fossil fuels (better and more transportable fuel, also will be needed for plastic for motherboards).

Now this is all being extremely generous with a LOT of assumptions (enough people with enough knowledge are able to ban together to create a primitive settlement, they have the knowledge and resources to refine it beyond log cabins, they are able to gain resources and new members enough to create metal and then magnets, that enough people with the specific knowledge needed to move beyond the Iron Age survived, etc.) and we're already at decades before even the hope of just being able to create electricity, much less gaining the base technology needed to create the materials needed for even the most basic electronics, much less full-blown computers (even as simple as the ENIAC).

how long it would take you to figure out clothes assuming you retained all knowledge you have right now.

I'm not saying clothes are not needed, I'm saying it's not a tall hurdle to clear.

After you kill enough animals to make clothes from hides. Or grow cotton to spin into thread and weave cloth. But you have to have a loom and needles to sew.

Derp. I meant millions.

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Humanity knows how to do all this already.

Even if the clueless and useless die in short order, as a species, we would recreate this stuff on the macro level much quicker than a few hundred years. Imagine the desire, knowing what we know is possible, to get back to the old ways. Motivation would be infinite.

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Thank you

Humans are incredibly capable and motivated beings when we need to be.

There would be small enclaves of extremely smart people building advanced shite within a couple of decades IMO.

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To think humanity couldn't recreate a phone in under a century with current knowledge requires me to assume the absolute worst case scenario and the worst of humanity.

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I think this entire scenario and opinions shows each persons outlook on humanity. Some think we will all pull together. Others think we will revert back to clans and gangs.

Who knows which is right. But during Presidential elections, I revert strongly back to my lack of faith in humanity.

What jobs? I work in manufacturing facility. It wouldn’t exist in this scenario.