The Great Rewind

What Is The Great Rewind?

The Great Rewind is a period of history when the world started to decline. What resulted was the regression of Science and Technology to the 1860s - 1880's.

What Happened?

The 2010s

It began in the 2010s with two elections with culture from some parts of the electorate.
The later election created the cultural malaise that spread north, then east to Continental Europe. Later in 2017, the cultural malaise reached the UK. This year brought Terrorism to a country that hadn't seen such events for 12 years.
These cultural ideas were designed to harm Western Civilisation, and during the later part of the 2010’s it appeared that the cultural unease would subside due to various events occurring.

The 2020s

Once the 2020s started this may not have been the case as the first year of the decade, saw political civil unrest from the cultural depression in many countries. In some of the countries, these reduced and stopped but in others, it didn't and continued. Where that civil unrest continued meant loss of property from some in commercial areas, these civil actions did go into residential areas and weren’t as destructive. During this time a worldwide pandemic stretched across the world meaning a new, economic, civil unrest.
This through consumerist panic and the buying of too much of particular items. Other economic problems with the loss of jobs from worldwide lockdowns at some of the countries. From there things approved in this area. However, in the first political unrest had continued as the population had lost the logic about keeping safe in a pandemic, from a viral strain that had not been known to the human race before, so these protests and riots happened regardless.
With another election in late 2020 things looked to become more hopeful and the riots died down. This, unfortunately, didn't happen in some places, with some government buildings in North America having fencing surrounding them for protection. with these events unfolding the cultural malaise continued but more widely open.
The cities were then either left abandoned or as the rioters were still there, the city was left in a state that would make it hard to rebuild but not impossible.
Due to vaccination, the virus across the world stopped being an issue. As you would expect when people are too worried about a particular issue they don’t worry about other things politically in their lives. While the pandemic was raging, powers were granted to the police forces of the United Kingdom, which the police didn't want to give up.
As soon as the pandemic was declared to have finished in the UK and people were ready to try and resume their previous lives. It didn’t take the British public long to realise that the police had greater powers.
These powers were of crowd and group control; it became law, that a group of over 4 adults was not allowed in public areas among others. What then occurred were protests outside each city and town hall in the country. These protests were then controlled and abated police had limited powers and things were too believed to have finished.
While this happened the cultural malaise continued with the spread of misinformation. This misinformation was about human beings and their issues and how everything could be boiled down to attributes of a person they could not help. Therefore could not spread to the physical sciences but soon found a way of infiltrating those.
This resulted in the loss of life as academic texts were unreliable and accidents soon happened. Such as textbooks would say it would be safe in a laboratory setting to mix two chemicals when it was not or they would not need Air extraction fume chamber for a reaction. It didn't take long for people to be hurt or killed from the fumes or other issues brought on by inaccuracies of the academic texts.

The Mid-2020s

Controversies arose from these texts and people in these fields separated into factions. As information came from books and the internet the information was considered unreliable. An initiative was set up to test the texts, with reality as people were getting harmed badly. Whenever a change was made as it was seen to be incorrect and tested as such, the other factions would attack the assertions and would attempt to disprove these claims.

The 2030s

It got to the point that the physical sciences didn’t know how to carry on, without going into reverse. This is when the true rewind occurred they worked out that we would have to go back to the technological stages of the 19th Century, to know for sure that our knowledge was correct. Since this was not voluntary the general public did not enjoy the prospect and protests and riots broke out.

Aftermath

Not much is known after this point it is believed that societies around the world reluctantly and successfully regressed between the 1860s - 1880s, and a large number of natural and human-made resources were destroyed as a result.

How People Managed After The Rewind?

Since the rewind was not voluntary, the majority of the Population have managed to cope with the regression of technology with a community spirit. Others have not, by trying, their best by rigging up devices that can work without electricity. Most of the time it doesn't work with the lack of skill or parts available. An example of this was to combine two hand drills, a bowl and a spoon to make a food mixer.
Others have coped by being better to others or setting up businesses to sell items that are required in the community others have created The Library of Things^[4] so tools can be borrowed for personal use.

The Technology They Lost

As science has been reversed some technology is not known notably the manufacturing of solar panels have been lost however the knowledge on how to install these panels has not. Since solar panels are now a finite resource, businesses that do well and prosper will have these panels installed on their roofs.

How Was Solar Technology Lost?

While most of the manufacturing process can be done using the rewound technology it is the last process that makes solar panels unusable as they need optical glass to finish the product, without optical glass the solar panel will not be as effective and with the amount of work needed to make them, it would then not be efficient to make them.

Do They Still Have Access To Solar Install Equipment?

Of course, with even installing solar panels you need the tools and equipment ^[1] to install and evaluate if it would be effective to put solar panels on roofs of commercial buildings. While they do have access to tools some will have some differences, the following they could make replacements with only one change.

• Tape Measure - no longer have the protective covering that is a plastic spray since the people of Birdencaster couldn’t make the covering anymore. The tape measures would slowly become unreadable, to the point of not being able to be read.
• Spirit Level - have plastic tubes to hold the levelling bubble, this could not be made out of plastic so is made out of glass instead.
• Cordless Drill - would not be used as they want to save power consumption around the Birdencaster, to save on charging, so would not use cordless drills, for drilling into anything that is not masonry they would use a hand drill and if they are unlucky and it is masonry or concrete, they would use corded drills wired up to a retrofitted diesel generator ^[2].

The next selection of tools will have interesting problems as since they cannot easily remake these tools so will use what they have already, once they break much larger versions are made unfortunately due to the technology standard of components will be bigger and therefore can make the tool themselves big and cumbersome and any plastic parts can be made from PLA plastic or metal.
These types of tools are; AC/DC multimeter, DC clamp-on ammeter, Reciprocating saw / Jigsaw, Right angle drill, Stud finder and torch.

What Other Technologies Did They Lose?

There are multiple technologies ^[3] they don't have access to the table below goes into more detail about this as well as the oddities that may arise, these are in bold

Technology	Why don't they have it? Or what is odd, about the application of Technology?
Pre 19th Century
Land Reclamation	Resources needed for technology.
Biochemistry	Resources needed for technology and requires precision equipment or laboratory equipment.
19th Century
Oil Refining	The resource has been exhausted so the technology would now be considered useless.
Genetics Research	Requires precision equipment and requires Computing and stable electricity.
Rocket Artillery	Resources are needed for technology either difficult to produce or make.
Missile Artillery	Resources are needed for technology either difficult to produce or make.
Scoped Rifles	Since they can't make Optical Glass they would then have standard melt glass, this will of course make accuracy an issue.
Petroleum Industry	The resource has been exhausted so the technology would now be considered useless.
Deep Sea Exploration	Technology Limited as they require Computing and stable electricity supply as well as resources are limited.
Earth Sciences	While people know what creates hurricanes and earthquakes etc they are unable to produce new equipment to measure these occurrences.
Automobiles	Petrol can no longer be refined; the manufacturing process is expensive.
Wireless Technology	Requires Computing and stable electricity.
Modern Electronics	The required equipment would be cumbersome due to the size of components.
20th Century
Superconductors	Requires Refinement of resources and stable source of electricity.
Hollywood and Film Production	Requires Computing and stable electricity.
Modern Tanks	Resources are needed for technology either difficult to produce or make.
Anti Tank Warfare	Resources are needed for technology either difficult to produce or make.
Nutritional Science	Requires precision equipment.
Armour Piercing Weapons	Resources are needed for technology either difficult to produce or make.
Armour Plating	Resources are needed for technology either difficult to produce or make.
Commercial Aviation	The Fuel for the technology is no longer refined.
Composite Armour	Resources are needed for technology either difficult to produce or make.
Space Flight	Technology Limited as they require Computing and stable electricity supply, as well as resources, are limited.
High-Tech Materials	Requires precision equipment.
Stealth Technology	Requires Computing and stable electricity.
Lasers	Requires Computing and stable electricity.
Industrial Design	Requires Computing and stable electricity.
Mobile Air Defense	Resources are needed for technology either difficult to produce or make.
Aerial Fire Support	Resources are needed for technology either difficult to produce or make.
Reactive Armour	Resources are needed for technology either difficult to produce or make.
Drones	Requires Computing and stable electricity.
Bionics	No realistic Prosthetics can be made.
Computing	The people of the city know what one is but do not use computers as they consume too much power.
Internet	Requires Computing and stable electricity
21st Century
Self Repairing Materials	Requires Refinement of resources and stable source of electricity.
Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing)	Requires Computing and stable electricity.

Why Can't They Just Advance Back To Modern Technology?

From the table above you can tell that the world has issues with its technology. They have problems with stable electricity and the need for precise equipment, as they can’t produce carbon nanotubes or complex materials.
Humanity will not progress the way they did the first time, mainly because they do not have access to oil. Oil-derived plastics, petrol and diesel can not be refined, so if they do progress back they may have developed differently to the original route.
This process as with everything will take time.

Space!

What Happened To Satellites And The International Space Station?

As humanity stopped communicating with its satellites they continued on in their route around the Earth until they eventually crashed to Earth as a shooting star, this was ultimately the end of the international space station as it was deserted before crashing to Earth sooner than the satellites.

Related Organisation
The Editors

Article Contents

Further Resources

References

[1]Tools for a Successful Solar Electric Install (Imperial Measures Used) - Tools needed for Solar Panel installation.
[2] For more information on retrofitted diesel generators.
[3]Most Technology names and order came from Forge of Empires I have not included some technologies because:

• The technology was duplicated
• It was a residential Building Technology

[4]Libraries of Things

Acknowledgemets

C4m0flu4ge

Daniel Howard

Dazzlikat
Dazzlikat's World Anvil Author Page

Esongbird24601
esongbird24601’s World Anvil Author Page
Twitch

EtaliaC

WriterGreg
Twitch
WriterGreg’s Website
WriterGreg First Draft - Twitch VOD Replay Channel
WriterGreg - Primary Channel
WriterGreg’s World Anvil Author Page

Related Historical Events

• 2022 CE
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• 2016 CE
  The Humanities are Infiltrated.