Space Age to Bronze Age
I was wondering on others people's ideas on how to take a Space Age civilization and send it back to the stone or bronze age. My own idea was that war and disease broke out, crippling the nation as cities became destroyed, emp's wiped out electronics, and disease forced the survivors to spread out and form smaller tribes.
What are your ideas? How would you send a space civilization back to the stone or bronze age?
Edit: Space Age being a civilization that has achieved colonization outside of its home system.
Edit 2: Wasn't sure how to choose an answer since I was just wanting to see how people would do it. I decided to choose one that I think might help others the best if they were looking at how to or if they could do it
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1 answer
The space age civilisation has heavily computerized systems. That is, all important aspects of the space ships, factories, and whatever else advanced technology they use is completely controlled by software. People don't know how to make things because they don't need to; "the system" provides them with everything they need.
One day, an artificial intelligence goes bad, usurps control over all systems and declares war on the humans. After the AI gets control over space stations or any systems on a planet not supporting human life on its own, people there have no chance: The AI simply disables all life support, and the people are doomed. However on earth (and possibly other life-supporting planets, maybe terraformed ones) people manage to survive and fight the machines controlled by the AI. Of course the AI itself destroys all factories that produce stuff only needed by humans (like food, medicine, and so on), and the humans can only win against the AI by destroying as much of the technology as possible (especially anything mobile or able to create mobile objects), and then hiding somewhere where the AI won't find them; thanks to the complete computerization of technology, this is a place where no technology exists. But people lack any knowledge how to make stuff without that advanced technology; they cannot even read about that in books, as all books are long electronic, and any access to electronic books would be visible to the AI.
So the humans are thrown back to stone age because they no longer have access to the advanced technology, and no longer know how to make anything without that advanced technology. Indeed, even making fire is something they have to figure out on their own again.
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