Originally posted by ccmalo:
In your story, you'd have to develop a plausible reason for the failure of the NK's to have kept their skills. This is only about about 30 years down the line. So how'd it happen?
From the series it clearly has not happen yet. But Clark is going to be "Lord Kal El" and he is going to be in a position to see the early stages of decay.
Example:
The last time your cellphone broke was it repaired or replaced? In the USA most of the time it is simply replaced.
Suppose there were a limited number of cellphone and no ability to make new ones. If you have a population of 10,000 of whom only 1,000 use cellphones and a stock of 30,000 cellphones the supply might seem endless.
But it is still limited. If the number of cellphone users increase the time till your supply is gone becomes much shorter.
Originally posted by ccmalo:
Also, Clark is not particularly a gadget guy, let alone a rocket scientist - so he may not be the best guy for the job. Given what we saw in the show, Jimmy would be better.
Your normal gadget guy is useless in these circumstances. Ask him about parts to repair a gadget and he'll tell where to get the best price but ask him to MAKE his own parts and he can't.
If your computer's cpu is burned out but there is no place to purchase a new cpu the computer is toast.
Originally posted by ccmalo:
Unless the first thing they did when deciding to leave NK was to decide to leave the mechanics behind and only take the engineers. 
Maybe they took both. You still need a chemist, metallurgist, and so on and so forth
