Your screwedness depends on how bad your eyesight is. Can you see well enough to tell a weed apart from the crop you're growing when looking at arms length? Then that's all the eyesight you need to be useful to a community
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
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Pretty much this. Even if your eyes are bad-bad, generally you can find a task you can do, even if it's "go spread fertilizer on the crop beds over here" or "hold this metal down at this end while I hammer the other end into shape." People with bad eyesight have historically survived in conditions nearly identical to what a commune of survivors would be facing if the T-virus decided to escape tomorrow or whatever, it's not magic. Depending on the community you wind up with, you will have SOMETHING that you can do to meaningfully contribute even without eyeglasses.
I believe that our eyesight is worse than it's been historically. Sunlight shows eye growth and we get less of it today than 1000 years ago.
It didn't really change the point we can be mostly somewhat valuable, but there may be more if it's with worse eyesight today.
Not that useful in scenarios besides reading: if you curl your hands in front of your eye and leave a very tiny opening you can create a pinhole that'll make a tiny bit of your view in focus
Photo from Minute Physics demonstrating what you need to do for that:
Been using this trick to read my alarm clock since I was ten!
You could make "glasses" out of wood or bone with thin slits using the same idea
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Neat! I have really strong vision, but know how to force them out of focus. It’s weird not being able to blur my vision when I’m doing this.
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We could rely on scavenging what's already been made. Even if it isn't your exact prescription, a little might be better then nothing.
You can make a rough magnifying lens by trial and error using glass and a hand grinder—not the same as prescription lenses, but for many it would be better than nothing.
Any glass? Any grinder? Can I find a broken window and start sanding it with sandpaper, as an extreme example?
Some glass is many sheets glued together, that could be trickier to work with
Thick glass that's not tempered will be the easiest to work with
Pretty much any piece of glass and a series of sandpapers going from low to high grit will eventually work if you know what you're doing
That's pretty crazy.
Yes, it's not magic, it's just the shape of the glass that makes the focus point of images be slightly closer or further apart.
Can I find a broken window and start sanding it with sandpaper, as an extreme example?
Yes, provided you have a way to polish it back to transparent again, after changing the shape.
Ohhhh, cool. I knew it was glass, but I guess I did kind of think there was some magic going on in there somewhere. Way simpler than I realized.
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It took centuries to get to disposable contact lenses while trying to figure out the physics, both in optics and in manufacturing any sort of spectacles, at the same time.
Will the survivors of the apocalypse be able to pick up where we left off or will they essentially start from scratch? That depends on the apocalypse and on the survivors. Do documents and knowledge survive, perhaps in a stash or in digital form? Do the survivors include an optician or a material engineer? Chances look good if that's the case. If no, life will get a lot harder for many people.
Restarting production chains and manufacturing facilities is going to be the biggest bottle neck.
If we imagine something like climate change wiping out 99% of the population, there just aren’t enough people to do all that. It’s going to be all hands on deck just to produce enough food for everyone. It will take a few centuries of rebuilding to get to that point.
for less people you need less manufacturing capacity
That is also true, but low output production doesn't get the benefits of economies of scale. That means that the number of people we need per amount of stuff produced will be higher if we do things small scale. If we have a city of a million people, you can totally arrange various things in a more centralized way, which brings the benefits of large scale production.
Ever wondered why waste water purification or energy production tends to favor large scale facilities? Same applies to farming wheat, grinding it to flour and baking bread.
If you have only small towns, everyone will just focus on making the basic necessities happen. Who has the time to design new electric motors, when you need to spend your time milking your sheep and harvesting berries for next winter.
Maybe contact lenses are apocalypse proof
If you have or can scavenge a laser pointer, just go hog wild shining it all around in your eyes. You have nothing to lose trying it at that point and maybe you get lucky and give yourself DIY lasik.
Pretty sure LASIK involves cutting open your cornea and affecting the aqueous fluid to correct the refraction. They don't just shoot lasers into your eyes to make you see good
Agree to disagree.
💀
That's not how LASIK works.
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For myopia, only an issue for a couple of generations. If we’re living off the land again, myopia will stop being a thing as in the past.
Aristotle was writing about myopia over 2000 years ago...
Still owes me 20 bucks, just sayin
Rather short sighted of him to let interest build up over thousands of years!
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But the first generation of survivors is gonna live like hell without glasses.
if we can make glass we can make simple lenses. I just don't know the limits as I'm neither an eye, lens, nor materials scientist.