Global Cataclysms and Technology

[Ireth]

I'm working on a story set in post-apocalyptic Earth which involves humans and merfolk. The apocalypse I had in mind is partly man-made and partly made by the merfolk's deity as revenge for what the humans did. Basically, the humans polluted the oceans with crude oil (known by the merfolk as the Shadow-that-Swallows"), and the deity cleansed them by causing huge storms and tsunamis, which flung all the oil onto the land and burned it away with lightning strikes. This, naturally, had grave consequences for the human population as well as the merfolk.

My big question is, is it reasonable for such a cataclysm to set back humanity's tech level to around the Stone Age? The reason for this is I need humans to have no access to metal and no ability to smelt it or anything for at least a few hundred years post-cataclysm. Earth metals are toxic to merfolk, and there is only one cure in all the seas, which during the pre-cataclysm era would have been nearly extincted by overharvesting when humans used metal against the merfolk all the time. As a result, what little cure that remained was put under the protection of the merfolk's queen.

By the point where my story begins, humans haven't used metal for generations, and so the cure has been allowed to regrow again, though the queen still guards it. At the start of the story, humans have regained the use of metals, and the MC's cousin is poisoned, necessitating a quest to seek the queen and get some of the cure. Thus is the plot.

Aaand this is turning rambly. I'll leave off here. Thoughts and comments are appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Trick]

I think that setting us back to the stone age is remotely possible but eliminating all the metal we already have all over the place? Very unlikely. Sky scrapers don't melt... not in an oil fire anyway. You have a simple fix though; the merfolk's god sends all of the metal back into the earth. Presumably, this in and of itself would destroy our global society without killing too many people (depending on the process, teleportation magic would kill everyone in a tall building and a lot of people in cars; magic that liquefied the metal would kill many more; and magic that sucked all the metal into the ground would kill yet more). With that and the oil fire, the population would be significantly reduced which would impede our progress back from the "stone age."

Just my $0.02

 

[ThinkerX]

Way, way too much metal for that to work on earth.

What MIGHT work, if you wanted to go a bit SF, would be to have the setting be another planet altogether, with 'native merfolk' and the humans descendants of a stranded starship crew. That way, given the unusual composition of some planets, metal outside the original starship could be very scarce.

 

[Sheilawisz]

Actually, it would not take too much damage to send modern Earth back to the Stone Age.

Most people think that our world is incredible, powerful, unstoppable, that we can fix everything and deal with anything... However, even a simple Solar Storm that destroyed the electric grids worldwide would bring unthinkable devastation and massive death all over the world in a matter of a few weeks.

Without electricity, the modern world would come crashing down in no time. The current global financial system, food production, energy systems, water distribution and so on can be seriously damaged or even wiped out by events like the Tambora explosion (1815) and the Carrington Event (1859) so we are lucky that things have been relatively quiet for some decades.

Any other major disaster (supervolcano explosion, alien invasion, asteroid hit, Merfolk Deity attacking...) would have a similar effect, as well. We would have a lot of metal around anyway, sure... but how many people in today's world know how to properly melt and work with metals?

I guess that we would enter a Dark Age, the modern world would be lost and that would be followed by a Bronze Age.

 

[CupofJoe]

Actually, it would not take too much damage to send modern Earth back to the Stone Age.

Most people think that our world is incredible, powerful, unstoppable, that we can fix everything and deal with anything... However, even a simple Solar Storm that destroyed the electric grids worldwide would bring unthinkable devastation and massive death all over the world in a matter of a few weeks.

Without electricity, the modern world would come crashing down in no time. The current global financial system, food production, energy systems, water distribution and so on can be seriously damaged or even wiped out by events like the Tambora explosion (1815) and the Carrington Event (1859) so we are lucky that things have been relatively quiet for some decades.

Any other major disaster (supervolcano explosion, alien invasion, asteroid hit, Merfolk Deity attacking...) would have a similar effect, as well. We would have a lot of metal around anyway, sure... but how many people in today's world know how to properly melt and work with metals?

I guess that we would enter a Dark Age, the modern world would be lost and that would be followed by a Bronze Age.

That is very true of the North/West of the world [where we now think of WiFi and a Human Right ] but I think parts of Africa, Asia, and South America would have an easier time.
Not an easy one... It would still be catastrophic but far more survivable. Agrarian subsistence economies aren't that far removed from the "dark ages" even today and would cope better. What would probably be their breaking point would be the exodus of 50% of the world's population that lives in cities to the countryside trying to find food.
It would not be hard to imagine the world population dropping 70-80-90-95% in a few years and some truly horrible times along the way...