4/17    Just a thought.  Say we select a small percentagle of the population
        (e.g. 100000 people) with representations from all walks of life
        (scientists, engineers, doctors, chefs, plumbers, nannies, ...) except
        bad guys, transport them to a distant earth-like planet with abundant
        natural resources, and take away all man-made objects (machines,
        clothes, books, medicines, all tools, ...)  How long will it take for
        them to re-build a civilization when all they have is the knowledge
        stored in their brains?
        \_ Less than 100 years, IMO.
           \_ history proves that mankind almost always self-destructs
              in a large scale until the advent of nuclear weapons. Also,
              more likely than not, a new disease will come out and wipe
              out a large % of the population. Without the continued production
              and research in diseases, those 100,000 people will be reduced
              really quickly.
              \_ But that hasn't happened since we learned about germs and how
                 diseases are actually transmitted, which these 100k would know.
                 \_ you underestimate the amount of resources (man + hours)
                    to setup a lab, which can only be done in a very stable
                    country with abundance of resources.
                    \_ All you need is soap, clean water and a good way to
                       dispose of human waste. But even getting that going
                       is pretty hard, as anyone who has been to a 3rd
                       world contry can attest to.
                       \_ try to find vaccine for H1N1 or drugs for AIDS with
                          100,000 people, most of which will not be doing
                          research or making microscopes and computers
                          and such. It takes just one new strand of disease
                          to wipe out huge populations.
                          \_ I would be more worried about the ancient killers:
                             cholera, tyhpus, typhoid ferver and dysentary. It
                             is possible that they 100k could be screened, but
                             soemthing would most likely slip through.
                             something would most likely slip through.
        \_ I don't think they would in any reasonable amount of time. They
           might get to the bronze age before they forgot everything but that
           would be about it. Getting to the steam engine from scratch is
           just too hard. Most of them would die off pretty quickly unless
           you included lots and lots of people who were experienced hunters,
           fishermen and farmers. In subsistance economies, almost everyone
           has to focus on just generating enough food.
        \_ as pointed it, its goign to depend alot on the availability of
           natural resources.  Worst case you drop them in an inhospitable
           desert and they all die in a few days.   How fast they advance
           is going to be a huge function of how much of their time is spent
           spent surviving.
        \- It is also possible 100k people isnt enough genetic diversity
           to avoid interbreeding -> propagating bad recessive traits.
           I dunno if there are any good examples of island/isolated
           populations of this size with reasonable medical care [so you're
           not getting people dyning of simple infections etc]. --psb