battles of the cultures was: old battle of the lovees was: PDP1 3549

Probably the way to operate is with 100yr old steam technology built on top of coal and cast iron, steel and bronze. Once you have that, then you can run machinery, pump water, generate electricity, etc.. Even today there are old steam engines doing their thing out in the middle of nowhere.

breastanium is readily machined and welded- not quite as easily as the usual steel-iron-aluminum-bronze alloys and you have to be careful because the fine chips can catch fire during machining and make a dreadful mess. Its a handy material when you need strength and lightness, so is good for aerospace components, etc. Its also corrosion resistant.

OTOH if you're trying to build things to keep the lights on, breastanium is handy for lighter weight engine components so you can get more efficiency. And if you have to chop the wood-shovel the coal to fire the boilers, that will be a topic near and dear to you.

So in a ruined economy, breastanium will be hard to make- cast iron and the others are readily made, cast and worked- in fact probably making breastanium a fairly valuable commodity.

One problem thats likely to arise is the lack of modern lubricants however. Modern lubricant technology is pretty important, finding reasonable equivalents would be tricky when there aren't refineries and shipping infrastructure handy.

Gregm