Sure, throwing things back to the past before the beginning! Yes Petrusclavis is correct, If you could keep the wonder that is hospital care than you would need medicine and drugs. You can't have a sanitary hospital without a clean and hygienic way to Crap or Urinate. But you cant keep people from wanting more even when it's illegal. It might be better to stumble on into the future with hopes of change that is good for everyone instead of returning to the past. People are just going to invent things all over again.
It would be unsustainable. The green wienies and tree huggers wouldn't have it.
If we did...there would be 308 million plus people competing for natural resources such as land, water, wild game, etc. We'd be burning more wood and coal than currently. Sooner than it could reproduce the wild game would be exhausted.
More trees would be used for shelter and heating than could be replanted, grown and harvested. Imagine your plush scenery when most everyone is burning their fireplace or wood burning stove.
Sooner or later competition for dwindling resources will trigger conflict. Some will have figured this out long in advance and will have formed clans and tribes to empower raiding parties. Some unscrupulous individuals would be down with this idea as I'm sure you've seen in the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri. Others I think would not. Still conflict you would indeed have beyond what you see today.
It will not work that way.There is not enough food in the forest for 7 billion people without farms and ranches and they can not produce on the scale of today without modern tools and equiptment.All of which needs fuel and to get that then you need refineries it goes on and on.That is not to say that a person or a family can not live very primitive conditions but it will be lots of work everyday,just to get clean water and food.Even then you will still need money for somethings can not be made or grown or raised by you.Its the world we have.
The world population is 7 billion, when we lived on sustenance living, it was in the millions. We could go back if you don't mind most people starving to death. Our current commercial farming methods takes 8 to 30 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce 1 calorie of food. We only have the high productivity that we do from using fossil fuels. There's also the issue of many of the skills needed having been forgotten so they would have to be redeveloped from scratch.
Keep in mind that petroleum was seen as the ecologic salvation to the diminishing forests from the use of wood, the decline of whale populations for lighting fuel and the pollution of horse manure. Even at only millions of people, we would exhaust pre-petroleum resources.
Petroleum are the fossil resources saved up by nature over millions of years, it's literally the plant and animal life saved up over those years. Our use of fossil reserves is like someone living on a massive inheritance of billions, going back to sustenance farming would be like someone giving up their inheritance and working at MacDonalds to survive, you would not be able to come close to your current standard of living at least not without a lot of effort.
Can you imagine all the smoke from people heating their cabins? Are you thinking of horses for transportation? Well they need grass to graze. Farming for your family would be full time. No wild animals would be left to hunt without farms.
It takes a large piece of land to support each person. From growing grains to vegetables. Farm animals also need room to feed and have their winter feed stored.
Keep hospitals - so you need the full industrial process. Drugs do not just "pop" into existence.
If you close down industrial farming then 19 in 20 have to die. You volunteering?
I need plumbing though.... I never wish to be in any era before the 20's because of flush toilets, but i'm with you so far
We coulf all livw cabin in the wood style. Fresdh food and air plus nice scenery evdryday we only keep hospotals and jail modernized
