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

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we tell all the smartest engineer, scientist and tech experts to meet somewhere in Texas to avoid this issue.

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Needs to be more centralized. Need separate teams near abundant resources. Also need separate teams in different countries

we know all we have to do is make an Iphone?

I am thinking a few decades.

Edit: yeah most of us would starve to death. the population of earth isn’t sustainable without modern agriculture.

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My answer is 500-1000 years or never.

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1000 years ago we essentially didn't have any man-made objects aside from buildings and basic tools. There was no complex machinery, no real power sources other than wind, water, and animals, no industry, hardly any technology other than simple metallurgy and agriculture and stationary wind- or water-powered machines. There wasn't even the idea that engines could even be a thing, or that we could use electricity. With our current knowledge, we could get from the stone ago to a society of 1000 years ago almost immediately. Like in probably 1 month we would go from having absolutely nothing to having basic wind- and water-powered machinery working for us. We would blow right through a million years of tech innovation in 1 month.

And even without current knowledge, humans were able to produce the iPhone 16 1000 years later with no direction or even a hint that such a thing was possible. And you don't think we could do it again in 1000 years starting with 100x more people and 1000 years of future knowledge? Come on, man.

The tech tree is known, it doesn't have to be rediscovered. We know the optimal order to develop everything. We know that instant global communication is possible and that it accelerates everything else, so we know to acquire the essential materials and build the essential industries to make that a priority instead of waiting nearly 1000 years for it to happen. And we could utilize materials more efficiently than it was done the first go 'round.

The first 10 years we would establish steady food supplies. We would lose a lot of people to starvation at first, no doubt, but even if we lose 90% we would still have more people than 1000 years ago. We would also probably have functional steam engines in this time.

In 10 more years we could easily produce electric generators/motors, and also surely basic turbines, and we could be an electric society well on our way to building a comms network to help coordinate development.

The next 10 or 20 years would be spent building machines which will build the next gen of more precise machines and on and on.

It might not be an exact replica of the iPhone 16, but I think in 50 years we could have battery powered mobile phones and a decent amount of infrastructure to make them work. The equipment to make touch screens and source and refine all the materials for them might take more time, but probably less than 50 more.

100 years and I think we would be producing iPhone 56.


I don't know what some of you folks are thinking, talking about onoz we wouldn't have any books how will we remember anything? shite, man, gather up 10,000 random people and a handful of them will be knowledgeable enough to put together all the info necessary to rebuild modern society. We will be starting with a million times that many people, or maybe *only* a hundred thousand times as many assuming 90% of us die in the first week.

Round 1 took 1,000 years. Round 2 won't.

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We had the ability and knowledge to quarry and shape stone, smelt and forge metal

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And we would still have that knowledge and ability. You don't think there would be primitive kilns all over the world within a month? You don't think people will be quarrying and shaping stone again in a month?

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construction machines to lift heavy stones and beams

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Again, these are very simple machines and humanity would be moving around tons of material in very short order. This is not something that would take a year to achieve, not even a blip in the conversation.

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and many other pieces of technology beyond buildings and basic tools.

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Like..? Anything that you and 100 people couldn't put together in a couple months?

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Do you know where to find copper, tin, or iron ore? Do you know how to process, refine, smelt, and forge it? Do most people?

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Most people? Absolutely not. But why the hell does that matter? If 1 in a million people knows where to find some frickin' copper, there'll be 10,000 people in the world telling everyone else where and how to get it.

This isn't one person trying to rebuild society and the iPhone, it's all of us.

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No way. Not without tools to make them.

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Come on, man. We aren't talking about complex tools or even complex machines. If there are others around to keep me fed, I by my damned self can put together some rocks and sticks, make an axe, chop down some trees, split some logs, and lash together a basic waterwheel in probably a month. Maybe I can source some stone or metal parts from others, or maybe I have to make all the wear surfaces out of wood at first. But I know that I can make something that turns when you put it in flowing water. Once you have something turning you can start machining. I can make gears out of wood. I can carve bone for precision parts, pins and whatnot.

This is not a flex. There are millions of people more capable than I am, and that is exactly the point. You don't think you could hand pick 10 people out of a few hundred in your tribe to start with sticks and rocks and put together a wind or water-powered machine in short order?

I break this down into two distinct challenges: basic survival of the species, which would be hard but doable, vs a mad dash to make the phone in a time frame where the entire human race doesn't reset. I will examine survival first.

However, I do want to ask a basic question of what qualifies exactly as "manmade"? For example, a toothbrush is obvious. But what about the apple tree that my great grandfather planted? Nobody made the seed or the tree; they merely influenced where it grew. But if you consider that manmade, then you are talking about the removal of every single thing on this planet people have ever had some impact on. What is even left? All crops gone. Their seeds gone. Any wildlife even remotely controlled gone. Hell even most sources of freshwater have to be gone. And for these reasons the survival challenge alone is almost insurmountable.

For starters, most anyone not in a tropical or subtropical climate is dead within days if not hours. Cold and exposure will take its toll, and the lack of freshwater will take many more. Then after several days, starvation starts to mount. Realistically, 90% of the species is dead within two weeks; 95% within a month, and 99% by the first year alone.

So what can the decimated population have accomplished within that year? How about almost nothing? The struggle for mere survival with so few resources will not leave much time for society building. Clans will form but the fighting over food and water will be intense, wiping most of them out. Some basic weapons will be made: spears, slings, maybe bow and arrow. Canoes and simple rafts will help the crafty move and survive. Forget about catching and taming wild horses; what do you feed them? Basic shelters will be caves and wood structures, but again, these will be scarce and heavily fought for.

Forgetting the issue of making a phone, can we even survive? Yes, I think so - basically a reset to the stone age. All our knowledge won't mean a thing as it dies off, and with no reliable method to record it right away, most of it will be lost. Oh there will be plenty of cave drawings, stone and tree carvings, mud messages, etc in a desperate attempt to preserve what we can. But ultimately there will be attrition until paper can be made again. So maybe not a full reset, but close enough to have a similar effect and set us back on a similar timeline to human advancement.

OK, so let's say we all determine this right away and decide our plan is to throw every resource we can towards getting a phone made as fast as possible. Let's take survival out of the equation, can we even pull this off?

Well, just like survival let's ask another question: does the iPhone have to do everything that an iPhone 16 does now? Because if the answer is yes, then you're not just reinventing a phone. You're also reinventing WiFi, Bluetooth, cellular, frickin GPS, NFC, USB and every other interface I'm not thinking of. And while you might be able to gather a quorum of apple experts on the iPhone and get them to collaborate in their nudity, good frickin luck getting enough experts to get every other technology data dumped. There are just too many standards here that are public knowledge, meaning they are well documented but not memorized. This doesn't even scratch the surface of the level of sophistication required to design and build just the silicon circuitry of the phone. Will the aliens accept vacuum tubes? And that knowledge will atrophy over time without the resources to keep it fresh until technology catches back up. It just can't sustain itself like that when given so little.

Bottom line: Redeveloping the iPhone exactly as it was from our knowledge alone is impossible by itself.

Add in a global fight for survival and forget about it.