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Could We Run Modern Society on Human Power Alone? (2017) (lowtechmagazine.com)
2 points by easywood on June 21, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments



Certainly. Define 'Modern Society'.

But there would be lots of provisos, as not all facets of modern 2022 life could be duplicated. For instance, the number of humans would be reduced to small fraction of today's numbers. That would preclude having airlines due to the large proportion of the total human population that would be taken up by airlines alone. Take that number away from the farming community and even less people would be available to grow and harvest food.

In truth, modern society has economies of scale that can't be duplicated by using human power alone. So the answer to the question is 'Definitely Not!'.


> For extra motivation, all exercise machines in our prototype human power plant are facing a jacuzzi & shower where girls are invited to encourage the boys to flex their muscles and generate more power. Of course, the gender roles could be reversed, but during the first experiments we discovered that this is less energy-efficient.

Releasing the data on this would be enlightening.




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