The added benefit is that it happened before. When Rome collapsed, most of the antique technology was lost (lost in practical use, even if some parts of the know-how could survive in books hidden somewhere). This loss was not instantaneous but a process. Granted, what came after wasn't what existed before, but it was definitely more resembling prior forms of rural poverty than the collapsed civilisation. I'd say the Maya collapse and some of the Chinese inter-dynastic periods also fit the bill. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Anti-science jihads: If science stopped, technological development and adaptation to change would slow, not reverse. To the extent that technology itself were undercut, the nations that allowed the attacks would become militarily irrelevant, and would be dominated by the rest.
The collapse of Rome was an essentially political and cultural process. It didn't lead to the collapse of China or India, and likewise, political collapses in China didn't collapse India or Europe. There are multiple centres of technological civilisation today, making the global system of civilisation resistant to local collapses.
I still don't see a credible scenario for what I would call a real collapse (as distinct from something that would collapse suburbia, and thus be widely seen as the veritable End of the World). Words and ideas I offer here may be used freely and without attribution.
Your second comment belies a 20th-century mindset about war. But just the US failure in Iraq or the Israeli failure in Lebanon show that technological superiority doesn't convert into military victory. Meanwhile, while military technology might be maintained for some time (though definitely not when a major military power falls apart into multiple statelents), civilian can get lost. This happened in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
I don't think your analogy between the multiple civilisations of the antique and the multiple technological centres today holds. Those ancient civilisations were essentially self-contained both economically and technologically. None of the centres today are, we are in the age of globalisation. ('National economy' is a fiction, I'd argue it always was, but especially now.) The collapse of supply chains I meant were the global supply chains. I think the right analogy for eventually surviving technological centres would be say the post-5th-century Byzantine Empire. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
