How could we bootstrap our technology should everything get fried?

Question

With Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) making the news, lots of us seeing the northern lights in lower latitudes, and some conversations about the layers of abstractions we in tech have built over the last century, I stumbled on a question that's bugged me for a while;How will we bootstrap our tech once more should every electronic device get fried by a CME? How long will it take?These days you "just" need a C compiler to get started and in theory you can build everything, but this assumes you already have a machine you can run something, it's already compiled, you have a monitor to output video to, you already have a text editor &mdash; even if it's just vi &mdash; and so on.I am looking for something that starts from even lower, hardware included.So I guess my question is, should everything be destroyed but we retain all the knowledge in books, how would we start rebuilding our tech?

GianFabien · Accepted Answer

In the past CMEs have even knocked out transmission lines. However, it is unlikely that every electronic device would get fired globally. But if that were to happen we would have bigger problems to solve, e.g. getting food.You could look at the devastation brought on by the recent tornadoes to see that electronic technology becomes the least of our concerns.

BobbyTables2 · Answer

Well, we&rsquo;d first have to solve Toilet Paper production.Just look at how well that turned out&hellip;