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> but we'd rise again in less than a thousand years.

Would we though? I am not so sure starting from scratch is going to possible. For example, all the easy oil is gone. All the easy mining, is gone. We can get at it because we have the technology.

If 99% of the human species was wiped out, yes we would continue to exist, but I would not expect many great civilisations to flourish again

The bit about energy sources is true, though a little spun. It's true that oil is gone. Coal is still plentiful, even at the surface. And the "hole" in industrial development where we depended on oil specifically has been less than 100 years or so, and already seems to be reaching its end. It's not impossible to imagine a future society skipping liquid fuels (and most of aviation) and still making its way to the renewable revolution.

> All the easy mining, is gone.

This bit is wrong, though. You can literally walk through a demolition site and pick up rebar and aluminum by the ton. Access to a single ancient reactor would give you the equivalent of decades of mining from any single uranium site. All our city building has had the effect of concentrating easily exploitable "ore" resources, not depleting them.

I was probably over generalising (and I really have no idea about this tbh). But I would still think a lot of the easy mining is gone.

>Access to a single ancient reactor would give you the equivalent of decades of mining from any single uranium site

What could is uranium to destroyed civilisation where all previous knowledge has been lost? I don't think future post civilisation peoples are going to be reconstructing a nuclear reactor from wood.

>You can literally walk through a demolition site and pick up rebar and aluminum by the ton

Post civilisation people are not going to have much use for demolished materials. Yes with modern technology we could reuse it. But how will they use it? I've seen a build demolished in the third world. People came and got the pieces of rebar true, hammered the concrete off it, but only to sell, not to use. I don't really think in a post civ world it would be of much use

> It's not impossible to imagine a future society skipping liquid fuels (and most of aviation) and still making its way to the renewable revolution.

Impossible? Perhaps not, but still very very unlikely. For decades after the event, survival will be all encompassing. Knowledge will pretty much have disappeared. You talk about skipping liquid fuels and aviation and going straight to renewables. First people will need to invent electricity again - everything will need to be "invented" again from a much weaker starting point. I just don't see it happening. Much more probable it is the end of human civilisations / humans as the dominant species on this planet

> But I would still think a lot of the easy mining is gone.

Again, you have completely lost me. Can you explain again why you think it's easier to dig up and smelt natural iron ores (or copper, or whatever) than it is to find an old rusty engine block or electric motor and just use that? Civilization needs metal to develop, in this example, not "mining". And ours has already done the mining!

We don't need mining - The metal in junk yards and recycling centres are a lot easier to access than building a mine in the middle of nowhere going underground 50 to 100 metres. The only reason we do mine and need new metal is because metal from junkyards and recycling centres are needed as well, and all existing metal is already being used. If most humans die off then the existing metal are available for reuse. And it's as easy as heating it up past melting point and molding it into the right shape; There might be ways to do that optimally but in the case where plentiful resources are available compared to human capital, it should suffice.

The oil is gone, but coal is still easy to access. We can bootstrap off a second coal industrial revolution. And every person who've been through high school knows the principles involved in generating power from coal, though might be lacking in the actual techniques.

> but only to sell, not to use

You've proved there's buyers who would find a use for it.

> You've proved there's buyers who would find a use for it.

You seem to be falling into the romantic view of post apocalyptic event. The world doesn't stay the same as it is now, just with the people gone. There is no one to buy your scrap metal. There is no more organisation, there is no more nothing.

> And every person who've been through high school knows the principles involved in generating power from coal

No they don't. They may know coal can be involved, but they have no idea how to take coal and make electricity. I assume you are a technical person working in a technical role. Go to your local supermarket and ask the person at the till for the basic principles involved.

If they just graduated high school they’d remember their science classes. The coal burns, it generates steam which rotates some magnets and produces a current. If they’re fresh high school grads they might even have the textbook at home still.

The maker culture contradicts your hypothesis. I have a friend who has for decades run his own little metal furnaces. By comparison to the modern industrial refining processes, his are primitive. But they are easily built and work well for the individual.

There is plenty of information available today that allows one to rebuild some level of technology very quickly.

> There is plenty of information available today Last time I looked today, we were not in a post civilisation world. This information will be gone. How is information going to survive an event that wipes out 99% of humanity? No power no rule of law. The sole concern of the remaining people is to get food and get to an environment they can eek out an existence. The information of today will be all but gone.

> I have a friend who has for decades run his own little metal furnaces. By comparison to the modern industrial refining processes, his are primitive. But they are easily built and work well for the individual.

Sure, but how many people have this knowledge now? How many people will be left with this knowledge after:

a) the event itself b) after years of struggling to survive and finally being able to more than subsist

First priority food and shelter. Food, you can scavenge supermarkets, but eventually it will run out. You will need to grow your food by hand. You will need to find seed and be successful otherwise it is hunter gatherer lifestyle, with assumed hunting is minimal as whatever wiped out 99% of humanity did the same to other animal species.

But lets say you found a good piece of land where you could survive, it would take years. Lets suppose you were one of the few people who knew how to build a furnace. Are you going to leave your patch of land to go wondering in the remnants of what was left of the city to get some scrap metal to carry back? I don't see it happening. Then in a generation of what was was is forgotton

The knowledge won't all die with us. And we will be quick to reverse engineer and reinvent things again. We don't need oil, we've got coal, hydro, wind, and solar (both concentrated solar and solar panels), and we have biofuels. With most humans dead, arable land won't be in short supply.

> We're the most adaptable species ever to live on this planet.

I'm not sure we've been around long enough for such a bold claim. Afaik there's plenty of life on Earth that outdates our existence by magnitudes.

It's got nothing to do with how long a species has been around. But no species survives in such a wide range of climates and habitats as humans.

> It's got nothing to do with how long a species has been around.

If you are talking about species to "ever live on this planet", then how long a species has been around being a pretty big factor in determining how adaptable a species is.

And in that regard, homo sapiens is rather a newcomer. Even our ancestors have only been around for a meager six million years.

While other species, many of them oceanic, have been around for hundreds of millions of years like sponges (580 million years) Jelly Fish (550 million years). Cyanobacterias are actually the oldest known living system in the world, originating 2.8 billion years ago, technically the oldest life on earth.

Compared to those, humanities existence is literally just a second on the clock of Earths history.

I've probably missed something obvious here, but what about Tardigrades and bacteria?

The problem with us is our size. We're one of the biggest animals, and that means we're particularly vulnerable to ecosystem collapse.