[HN Gopher] Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apo... ___________________________________________________________________ Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world Author : robertwiblin Score : 106 points Date : 2022-06-10 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (80000hours.org) (TXT) w3m dump (80000hours.org) | alasdair_ wrote: | I bought The Knowledge several years ago. It's a fantastic book, | with just the right amount of detail. One thing I particularly | liked was the focus on how to get certain materials in a likely | post-apocolyptic world - for example, instead of just telling you | how to mine iron, the book explains that there is likely cast | iron all over the place in things like cookware and even if it's | heavily rusted, it can be cleaned and re-smelted and will be | perfectly usable. The point was it was a practical guide to | rebooting civilization, rather than just a list of recipes for | technology. | | As for the TV show premise at the beginning of the article (16 | survivors that have to scavenge things in an abandoned place for | a long period of time), this was done very well in a show called | The Colony (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1470018/) with fairly | realistic hardships (roving bands of thugs that would mace the | survivors in lieu of firearms, for example). Worth watching, even | if just for the interesting tech they produce, like distilling | their own ethanol to power a small engine to recharge some car | batteries to power handheld tools and lighting). | CJefferson wrote: | Yes, materials will be important. | | We probably can't "do the same again", so much of the | Industrial Revolution (from my reading at least) was started | with the huge amounts of wood, then easily accessible coal, | then "spending" coal to get access to deeper coal. | | If you started from scratch, there isn't really any easily | accessible coal left. | rm_-rf_slash wrote: | Good point. Even more, there is no way to make coal | geologically ever again. All coal comes from fossilized trees | that came about before fungi. They just grew until they fell | over and stacked up then got buried and fossilized. Now they | just rot. | | Which means starting from scratch would require a different | fuel like oil, but that's even harder to extract these days, | let alone in a post-apocalyptic environment. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | I dunno. There are a _lot_ of gas stations and truck stops | last time I checked. Stuff stored in tanks underground | tends to be usable for quite a long time. | goatlover wrote: | You wouldn't be starting from scratch as a lot of stuff | already made would be left lying around, and the knowledge | for fixing it and making it work would largely still exist in | some form. | groby_b wrote: | Yeah... coal and oil won't be lying around. Which robs you | of your major energy source, breaking the "fix and use" | plan. | | Metals are often in refined form, which means in many cases | higher melting points. (E.g. pig iron is 1500K, steel is | 2800K) | | We're not even mentioning electronics, because the vast | majority of it isn't weather resistant, which means your | "left lying around" is gone pretty quickly. | | Plastic is in many instances only reusable in its exact | shape. Alkaline batteries last 5-10 years, so good luck | with those. Solar cells, in the best case, 25-30 years. | | But all of that doesn't really matter. You'll spend the | bunch of your time trying to just secure water, food, and | shelter. Every day you don't get started on fixing things | is decay. Every day you don't spend on food is hunger. | (Subsistence farming is back-breaking, never-ending labor) | | And so it goes. | hutzlibu wrote: | "Subsistence farming is back-breaking, never-ending | labor" | | Subsistence farming _without machines_ is back-breaking, | never-ending labor. | | The whole idea is therefore to get machines up and | running again as fast as possible. | | And it all depends on the doomsday scenario. In most | cases, there should be enough machines left to scavange. | Or after a while, enough animals to be hunted. | | Potential biggest hurdle are social dynamics. | Confrontation instead of cooperation. And then the last | capable electrician in the are gets shot, because some | other scavenger wanted to get his corned beef. | ethbr0 wrote: | One thing not to discount is that if we needed to rebuild | civilization suddenly... a _lot_ of us are going to be dead. | | And consequently, those surviving and rebuilding are going to | have the residue of a civilization that supported many more | people to work with. | | Cast iron might be relatively rare, but would it be | relatively rare for 1/1000th as many of us? | notahacker wrote: | And to a large extent, you skip the searching for raw | materials to smelt cast iron to make a stove and go | straight to searching collapsed buildings for cast iron | stoves, or collecting railings to make a ladder etc... | hguant wrote: | >If you started from scratch, there isn't really any easily | accessible coal left. | | I don't think this is strictly speaking true - certainly not | for the US. I believe the majority of US coal production | (according to wikipedia at any rate) is surface level mining, | not the traditional underground mines people think about. I | know that's true for parts of the Appalachian basin, I'm | unclear as to whether that's true for the Wyoming mines. | | Europe might be in trouble, I believe the only coal readily | available on the continent is "brown" coal (lignite) which is | suitable for power production, but has too many impurities to | be used for steel production. | ethbr0 wrote: | They do open-cut mining in Wyoming, from what I saw. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Wyoming coal is very much surface coal (at least in the | Powder River Basin). The problem is that it's in the wrong | place. It's not near iron deposits... well, there was a | large iron mining operation near South Pass, but it ended | decades ago. I don't know if it ended because it was played | out, or just no longer economical. | zbrozek wrote: | I trip over coal in folks' backyards in Kentucky. You don't | need more than hand tools to get at it. | Tade0 wrote: | There's still a significant amount of hard coal in Germany | and Poland - Russian/Australian resources are (or were in | the case of Russia) simply cheaper. | | In any case charcoal can be used as a substitute. | spekcular wrote: | The top review on Amazon is devastating: | | "The author purports to provide a blueprint to restoring a | technological economy after a TEOTWAWKI event, but some his | listed sources are from the realm of science fiction. Not an | encouraging start. | | He goes on to pretend that he knows more than he actually does. | It's as if he skimmed a few sources but only superficially | understood them. How else can he suggest that a collapsed | society go direct to building blast furnaces, ignoring the | bloomery method of reducing iron ore that provided mankind with | workable metal for two millennia as a cottage industry? Then he | goes on to suggest that we build Bessemer converters to | decarbonize the pig iron. Does he not know that the Bessemer | converter is all but obsolete? Did he miss the chapter about | the (chemically) basic refining furnace, which is a lot easier | to build? | | He quotes a lot of interesting chemistry, then throws up a real | laugher when he gets the simple and universally known formula | for black powder exactly backwards! | | While the book skims quite a potpourri of technologies we use | today, he omits almost entirely the tools needed to implement | them. Knowing how an electrical generator or motor is assembled | is all well and good, but where will the impoverished builder | get copper wire? Or the special steel sheet necessary for | laminating magnet cores? Or the tooling for punching out the | laminations? | | He never even began to address the fundamentals of machine | tools, on which about 99% of our modern technology rests, and | without which you cannot build even an 18th century economy. . | | As a high school science project, this would rate a solid C for | effort, and something less for the end result." | ethbr0 wrote: | Sounds like an opportunity for a 2nd edition! | | If Amazon commenters filed pull requests rather than | potshots, the world would be a better place. :) | aqsalose wrote: | Sounds like, if you want a capable materials, mechanical, | chemical and electrical engineer to write your pull | requests, you'd need to pay them a salary they request. | (Them in plural, because it is unlikely to find a single | individual good at everything.) | | Software people like to say that software engineers is | super complex and difficult. On the other hand, an | enthusiast occasionally makes great FOSS contribution by | filing a pull request. For some reason, that is?[1] quite | rare in many other forms of engineering. If it is only | because of capital cost differences of building things in | physical world vs building in software world (which affects | stuff like learning by experimentation), maybe we should | acknowledge they are a part of reason why building things | in physical world is complex and difficult. | | [1] Or looks rare, I may be mistaken. | kubanczyk wrote: | That's the beauty of actual pull requests: that fat red X | immediately saying a test case number 172 out of 42345 | didn't pass, i.e. you're talking gibberish mister. | | The beauty of publishing is that paper is patient and it | may take literally centuries until someone draws a fat red | X on point 172, that the Bessemer (or whatever) idea was | always absolute and utter gibberish! | | This is true both for the book, for the review you cite, | for the comment you wrote, and for this comment of mine. | It's nice to pretend you have a compiler-for-the-reality in | your head that keeps predicting right every time, where in | contrast with a true compiler you are wrong almost every | single time. | Karrot_Kream wrote: | I read so many glowing reviews of this book on Mastodon and | so I opened it up. I felt the same way as the above Amazon | reviewer. The book just felt shockingly naive. His book was | driven by his personal vision/ideology moreso than any actual | accordance with scientific or social scientific learnings. If | you're suffused deeply enough in the ideology I'm guessing | Dartnell is evocative, but if you're skeptical, Dartnell | doesn't do nearly enough work to convince you otherwise and | often makes you giggle and lose faith with his inaccuracies | (like the formula for black powder lol) and impractical | takes. | DennisP wrote: | Sounds like we need a wiki for this stuff. If we managed to | get a bunch of engineers contributing, we really would have a | guide for rebooting civilization. Maybe include a button to | print out the whole thing. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | Why? | | Can anyone really foresee a collapse of civilization which | somehow renders all our technology useless and | unrepairable, but somehow leaves access to computers and | printers available? | | I mean it's great to imagine if you want to be a pretend- | prepper but the reality is that there will be millions of | tons of food in the ground, tens of thousands of pounds of | seeds available, oil, gasoline, kerosene, millions of cubic | yards of fresh water. Lots of electrical generators, small | and large, pretty much anything you need has already been | built. etc, etc. You want to build a small house? Get | materials from a large building! | | We don't need a post-apocalyptic civilization to know how | to refine cast iron, we need them to know how to repair | diesel engines. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | >Can anyone really foresee a collapse of civilization | which somehow renders all our technology useless and | unrepairable, but somehow leaves access to computers and | printers available? | | No but I can foresee a number of different collapses of | civilization which render almost all computers useless | within a relatively short amount of predictable time and | the ability to connect those computers before they become | inoperable to printers where one would print out numerous | copies of the books. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | OK, maybe I misunderstood the post, but I still stand by | my last statement. We don't need to recreate the | Industrial Revolution, we just need to be able to repair | and use the stuff that's already built. | plonk wrote: | You could be ambitious and fund the effort with a | nonprofit. Maybe a Foundation of some kind. | WalterBright wrote: | For a Cub Scout project, I built a DC electric motor out of | nails, tape, and wire. | | No special steel sheet. | [deleted] | wmwmwm wrote: | I'm a fan of that book too - though hoping I never need it! | | On a tangential theme, another one I read and liked at the same | time was The World Without Us - all about what would happen to | the cities and infrastructure if all humans suddenly vanished | overnight. Kind of depressing but there's a lot of interesting | and non obvious stuff in there | myth_drannon wrote: | The book has scathing reviews on Goodreads. | ravi-delia wrote: | I can only say that those views are not universally held. I | found it to be a lovely and engaging look at the technologies | underlying our industrial civilization. | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Simple things we take for granted are a tremendous bootstrap: the | germ theory of disease; the staff system of organization; | education of the young; reading and writing; arithmetic; | agriculture; static analysis. | | It's not all about gadgets and electricity. | Ishmaeli wrote: | Also, it seems like just knowing some of the dead ends would be | a huge step up. | | Like maybe we don't waste a ton of time and resources trying to | turn lead into gold, or teaching left-handed kids to be right- | handed, or trying to figure out which ritual to perform to | which deity to make the crops grow. | Archelaos wrote: | > Also, it seems like just knowing some of the dead ends | would be a huge step up. | | This makes me think, how Knowledge in a post-apocalyptic | society would really work. Some fundamental and comparatively | easy technologies might not need to be rediscovered (directly | jump to iron and omit bronze). But more advanced Knowledge | needs a lot of special training, dedicated institutions, etc. | And even if they had access to tales from the Ancients, they | would still have to distinguish between valid and invalid | information. Otherwise, we could end up with a culture of | Flat Earthers. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | I find it a bit weird to have static analysis on that list. | Other than that, I agree. | | Why static analysis? | JoeAltmaier wrote: | e.g. Building a hut, with cross-bracing so the square-lashed | frame doesn't collapse in a light breeze. | | Or hanging the ridgeline of a shed roof from a post so it | doesn't push the walls out of line. | | Or building a truss for a bridge over a creek, instead of a | huge arch of stone. | | Lots of places statics comes in handy. And we take it for | granted, that we know this stuff! | AnimalMuppet wrote: | Oh, _that_ static analysis. I, um, was thinking of | something else with the same name. Yes, knowing how to | build things that don 't fall down is pretty fundamental. | YZF wrote: | You gotta have `lint` in a post-apocalyptic world though. | toomuchtodo wrote: | https://youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA | datavirtue wrote: | "bounce back faster" | | Why is that a concern to the survivors? Perhaps they decide that | "bouncing back faster" is the last thing they want? | wolfram74 wrote: | because cholera, giardia, typhoid and measles are awful. | laverick wrote: | Related project & TED talk - Open Source Blueprints for | Rebuilding Civilization | | https://www.opensourceecology.org/ | Simon_O_Rourke wrote: | My plan, in the event of civilizational collapse is to somehow | make it to New Zealand and pitch start-up ideas like the bejesus | to Peter Thiel until he lets me into his luxury bunker. | azemetre wrote: | You're better off becoming super fit and staying young. He | might let you be his blood boy, way better odds this way. | [deleted] | alx__ wrote: | I also recommend Ryan North's book, How to Invent Everything | | https://www.howtoinventeverything.com/ | | Because you'll need a little humor if you're stuck in post- | apocalyptic world | lifeisstillgood wrote: | I started writing "important experiments for kids" (on github | somewhere) based a bit on this - just what are the base | experiments (distance to moon etc) that we should all know - like | what books should we all read. | | i think things like this should be part of the curriculum | ForHackernews wrote: | If you're interested in this topic, you might also be interested | to learn about http://collapseos.org/: "It is a Forth operating | system and a collection of tools and documentation with a single | purpose: preserve the ability to program microcontrollers through | civilizational collapse." | throwaway892238 wrote: | Weird take. Sure, you could try to re-build what you had before | the apocalypse. Or you could build a new world that _isn 't_ the | one that just plunged everything into chaos. If our technology | wasn't so good, the world wouldn't be as populated, we wouldn't | need so many resources, there wouldn't be so many ways to poison | the earth, and the earth would be habitable and sustainable for | millennia. | | After the apocalypse, I want the people who can dig wells, | practice permaculture, organize a farm, keep sheep, spin yarn, | blacksmith, prep lumber, fire pottery and glass, tan leather, | hunt, fish, manage woodlands. Doctors and scientists would be | handy too, but now that we know so much about how biology works | it wouldn't be so difficult to keep people living longer. | Assuming antibiotics still work in 20 years and we retain some | basic surgical skills, we're basically set. | | The most challenging thing after an apocalypse is obviously going | to be government. If there's no law and order you can't really | organize anything. Whoever has the most power, best strategizing, | and most flexible morals will collect the most resources and | gather the largest forces. It'll be "join or die", and slavery | will come back. Just read your history to see what happens when | societies crumble. | akersten wrote: | > Assuming antibiotics still work in 20 years and we retain | some basic surgical skills | | And what happens when the antibiotics and sterile surgical | implements run out, due to the incredible industrial machinery | needed to produce them having disappeared? "1600's Welsh | countryside but with modern medicine" doesn't quite play out | without the corresponding modern supply chain, at least for | long. | throwaway892238 wrote: | You don't need industrial machinery to produce penicillin. | You can sterilize equipment a variety of ways, such as with | horseshoe crab blood, fire, alcohol. Now, would it work well | for _7 billion people_? Hell no. I 'm hoping the apocalypse | knocks out a significant chunk of the population, and that at | that point we can focus on sustainable, simple living, rather | than industrialization. | imchillyb wrote: | > You don't need industrial machinery to produce | penicillin. | | Sooo. How are you going to grow enough of that, while /not | growing/ any other type of fungus, mold, bacteria, etc... | | There's a reason modern medicine utilizes things like | cleanrooms and laboratories, instead of y'know a farm and a | barn. | throwaway892238 wrote: | I can build you a sanitized laboratory with 16th century | equipment. That's the great thing about how much | knowledge we have now: we can do more with fewer things. | ars wrote: | > can dig wells, practice permaculture, organize a farm, keep | sheep, spin yarn, blacksmith, prep lumber, fire pottery and | glass, hunt, fish, manage woodlands | | I'm very confused by why you think this is sustainable - this | type of life uses FAR FAR FAR more resources than modern | living. It only works with a low population. | | England for example basically cut down every tree it has in | order to sustain this type of (old) life. They found coal | because they had no choice, they were about to run out of | energy. | | If you just want to kill lots of people and have a low | population, I suppose you can advocate for that, but it's | completely orthogonal to the type of technology we have. | throwaway892238 wrote: | I mentioned woodland management, which would have prevented | deforestation. There's actually many practices we can | implement to make more use of the land than we've done in the | past. Just picking different crops would enable us to feed | the entire _existing_ planet with a fraction of the land area | we use today. And we certainly know a lot more about | sustainable climate regulation than we did in the past, | requiring fewer fuels and enabling more sustainable ones. | | Producing more technology to keep swelling the population | obviously isn't working either (hello, climate change). Human | civilization needs downsizing, or at least more rational and | sustainable resource use/management. | imchillyb wrote: | SO... you think that the country of England had no woodland | management? | | The leaders of the day decided, that the protected lands | would no longer receive protection, there was no populace | vote. | | You think post-apocalypse would be different from a | monarchy /how/ exactly? | | The strong rule, and without rule of the masses and | enforcers of law, we're back to warlords and kings. Good | luck with your processes... | rm_-rf_slash wrote: | I think parent meant that absent the high tech and energy | dense supply chains that underly modern society, people would | have to do a lot of things to sustain a society that for us | these days can be solved by going to Walmart. | gen220 wrote: | FWIW, 17th Century Europe didn't have access to the | technology and knowledge that we have today, that do not | require any fancy devices or technology to improve our | efficiency of resource usage in the hypothetical scenario | discussed in this thread. | | At the time, there were many incentives to deforestation, but | the main ones were to procure wood as fuel, and to clear | arable land for agriculture and animal husbandry. I can at | least speak to these two. | | It was true in the past, that wood was an unsustainable | source of heat. However, with modern wood-burning stoves, | even in the nordic latitudes, this is no longer true. | | Sweden and Norway have done a lot of innovation in this | department in the last 80 years, because it's a matter of | national security for them. They've found that it's actually | more sustainable, affordable, and environmentally-friendly, | to use wood as the main heating source for homes, rather than | oil or coal. Again, this is only true if you're using wood | stoves whose construction is informed by modern (post-WWII) | knowledge. But the stoves are cast-iron, their manufacture | doesn't require nanotechnology, pure silicon, etc. | | On the agricultural front, it's difficult to overstate how | far we've come in the last 400 years. Our caloric yield per | acre on the same acreage of arable land would be much higher, | today, even if you were to take away the products of modern | industry (fertilizers, etc) that would presumably be | inaccessible in an apocalypse. | | Especially given access to new world domesticated produce, | like potatoes, maize, various nuts, squashes, legumes, yams, | tomato, maple, rubber. | NoImmatureAdHom wrote: | This viewpoint is appealing, but the thing is: natural | selection says it isn't possible in the long term. | | For every person like you, who thinks s/he knows how things | would be better for the environment and others, and how to get | there (at least approximately), there is another person who | doesn't give a shit and who will do long-term damage in | exchange for short-term gains all day long. That person will | out-compete you and other people like you. | | We do, however, seem to be getting better and better at solving | these sorts of cooperation puzzles. I just don't see a way out | of the Malthusian problem (there will be more and more of the | sorts of people who breed more, by definition). We might just | have to live with a boom-and-bust cycle on this planet, much | like other species, but on longer timescales. It's also | possible we avoid the evolutionarily stable state and manage to | successfully trap ourselves in some sort of metastable state. | | It's all going to be fine and your life will be really good, | though :-) | xaedes wrote: | > We might just have to live with a boom-and-bust cycle on | this planet | | Reminds me of: | | "The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or | of summer sun does not prevent, the human race is always | increasing at times, and at other times diminishing in | numbers." - from Plato's History on Atlantis | hutzlibu wrote: | " I just don't see a way out of the Malthusian problem (there | will be more and more of the sorts of people who breed more, | by definition)" | | Why is that by definition? Even animals have more or less | offspring, depending on the food offering/suitable habitat. | | It balances itself out. In nature by starvation. But humans | could find other ways. But btw. there are many many people | starving and allways have been. | | It is not like we are heading to a starvation crisis. We are | already in it and always have been. The question is rather, | of whether we can stop it one day and have all humans fed and | cared for in a sustainable way. | slibhb wrote: | > Or you could build a new world that isn't the one that just | plunged everything into chaos. | | How are you going to get people to agree to "live sustainably" | over thousands of years? | willcipriano wrote: | Better question, if you can do that, why haven't you already? | all2 wrote: | The problem isn't technology. The problem is immoral people. | Immoral people make immoral and greedy governments. Immoral and | greedy governments wield power to acquire _more_ and survive as | a parasitic organism. All governments move towards | totalitarianism. No nation-state in the world has ever escaped | this eventuality. | | Limiting technology won't limit the harm even one evil person | can do. Take a look at Gengis Khan, for example. | | What limits immoral people is the moral people around them. | | The reason Western culture has fared so well over the last 500 | years is because it was largely Christian in nature. There are | fundamental values embedded in the Bible that have echoed into | what we consider to be "human rights" today. These ideas are | _uniquely_ Christian in nature, and rely on a Christian | morality in order to function. | | "Do to others as you would have them do to you", "love your | neighbor as yourself", "you need to work in order to eat", the | ten commandments (which are pretty common sense if you're | looking for a stable society), a true/faithful set of weights | and measures -- including a sound currency, lending for | interest gained is illegal, and so on. | | All of these require a basis of people who are willing to | adhere to them. The Western world lacks people who are willing | to adhere to them. In fact, we've been taught to hate the West | and its contributions to the world. We hate white people, we | hate Christianity, we hate absolute truth, we hate moral law, | we hate being accountable to the Almighty, and we scoff at | anyone who loves those things. | jeffreyrogers wrote: | > Assuming antibiotics still work in 20 years | | The Soviet Union tried to create antibiotic resistant bacteria | as part of its bioweapons program. They were able to increase | antibiotic resistance but not make anything totally resistant, | so I expect antibiotics to still work 20 years from now. | notahacker wrote: | Widespread resistance to particular antibiotics is also the | product of an advanced industrial society where new variants | of pathogens spread easily amongst billions of | internationally-travelling city dwellers and widespread | prophylactic use of the antibiotic creates strong selection | pressures. | | Its a bit different after an apocalypse. In theory, an | isolated post-apocalyptic community could roll a 1 and get | bacteria that is resistant to locally available natural and | stockpiled antibiotics in their community, but that's quite | low down their list of concerns. | [deleted] | Animats wrote: | This was taken seriously in 1950s US Civil Defense. Since Europe | had already been through that process recently, there was a lot | of knowledge available. | | There's a classic set of books, "Build Your Own Metal Working | Shop From Scrap", on this. | | The kid's version: "A Boy and a Battery" (1942).[1] There's also | "A Boy and a Motor", on how to build your own electric train set | from old metal cans, some wire, a hammer and tinsnips, and the | skills of a master machinist. | | [1] https://archive.org/details/boyandbatteryrev00yate | hh3k0 wrote: | I wonder, aren't virtually all "easily" available resources | already dried up to such a degree that highly | advanced/specialized equipment would be needed to extract | whatever is left? | bluefirebrand wrote: | After an apocalypse, if you survive and society has | collapsed, resources will be abundant. | | You will just have to strip materials from cars and buildings | instead of digging them out of the ground. | NegativeLatency wrote: | "Build Your Own Metal Working Shop From Scrap" I have that on | my bookshelf, it's worth a read if you're just curious about | how machine tools are made/work. | | Might build the shaper out of there someday but currently it | seems like it would be a better use of my time to buy an import | lathe (assuming no natural disaster) | teddyh wrote: | See also _The Mysterious Island_ (1875) by Jules Verne. | gavmor wrote: | If I were to take one book with me "down into the bunker," as | Dartnell puts it, I'd hands-down take with me the Bosch | Automotive Handbook[0], a phenomenally dense and thorough text | covering not just cars, but their constituent parts--and their | constituent parts' constituent parts--all the way down to the | materials. It has wonderful tables of data on the properties of | various materials (from advanced plastics and alloys to leather, | paper, and common fluids) accompanied by clear and precise | mechanical diagrams. It's precisely the kind of book that would | secure a time-traveller's position as court wizard, all geared | (ha) toward the eminently practical domain of moving across the | surface of the earth. | | 0. https://www.sae.org/publications/books/content/bosch10/ | _jal wrote: | Machinery's Handbook is similar, but sort of a step back on the | production chain. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machinery%27s_Handbook | DylanDmitri wrote: | Key element is probably less technology, and more | social/political/religious unity. You need a stable and | egalitarian social fabric to make consistent progress. | | Core beliefs: rebooting civilization is hard but will make | everything better (promised land), here's the scientific method | and why it works, here's how to setup and maintain a democratic | nation state, here's how to incentivize and reward inventors. | Here's fascism and why it's bad. Here's the Prisoner's Dilemma -- | everyone must cooperate with each other and identify and punish | defectors. Here's songs and rituals and art you can participate | in together to reinforce all of this. | all2 wrote: | Why is this getting downvoted? A stable society is an absolute | must, and that means a group of people who have a common moral | foundation. Else, how do we work together? | Barrin92 wrote: | I think the more interesting question than how to reinvent some | technological gizmos is how to reinstate governance. It's handy | to know how to build a solar panel but it isn't worth much if | someone hits me on the head with a club five minutes later. | | It's kind of funny to me that so much post apocalyptic writing is | so overly concerned with technology when technology without much | wisdom was what likely caused the apocalypse in the first place. | joe_the_user wrote: | _how to reinstate governance_ | | And that's hardly something there's an easy how-to answer to. | | A primitive tribe or band tends have each member strongly | connected each other member since with few resources, the | people are the resources. Modern people don't have to care in | the slightest about their neighbors and this is weakness in an | emergency situation. | | Moreover, a "collapse" situation, in many instances, would | imply a general social failure even more complete than recent | problems we've seen (consider "I'd rather X many people die | than the economy suffer [from Covid or limiting carbon | pollution or etc"] a statement about non-community). I don't | know how mainstream society would even come back from that. | Perhaps the Amish would do well. | 99_00 wrote: | Technology on its own can't cause the apocalypse. It needs | mismanagement or misuse by humans. | | Looking at the world today you see societies crumble while | others thrive. This, despite having access to the same or | similar technology. The difference being in how they organize | themselves and their vision of themselves. | jwithington wrote: | I'm always impressed by 80k hours to surface answers to the most | existential problems! They had another good one about spinning up | the global food supply post-apocalypse. | | Dartnell seems to be thinking longer term than immediate (first 2 | weeks). Are there any guides for the first two weeks? | | I wonder if the US military's SERE (Survival, Evasion, | Resistance, Escape) guides are the most comprehensive resources? | While intended for stranded individuals, they assume you're | dropped anywhere in the world with minimal gear. | _whiteCaps_ wrote: | It's been a while since I read The Knowledge but I think his | point was: | | a) Lots of books have covered this already (SAS Survival | Handbook, etc) | | b) the first 2 weeks is going to be largely luck whether you | survive or not, so he's going to jump ahead to cover the lucky | ones | hguant wrote: | There are general guides to the first two weeks - FEMA has | several publications about this [0]. You don't need to go full | prepper or SERE for that period of time - just get a water | filter and some freeze fried meals, or have a pantry with beans | and rice on hand - they keep for ~1 human half-life, so you | don't really have to worry about them going bad. | | I wouldn't view SERE as a useful resource, if only because the | assumptions SERE makes (hostile territory, woodland survival, | etc) aren't really applicable to someone living in an urban or | suburban environment, which is what I assume most users of this | website are. | | [0] PDF warning! https://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/f&web.pdf | jwithington wrote: | Thanks! | JoeAltmaier wrote: | After the first two weeks, there's the first year then the | first five years and so on. | | E.g. Living through the first winter will require a huge effort | in stockpiling, which gets better the second year. Scavenging | for the first 5 years turns to agriculture and animal husbandry | and smelting. | datavirtue wrote: | Reality: You do what the local strongman tells you to do. | alasdair_ wrote: | > Are there any guides for the first two weeks? | | There are thousands of prepper guides around, depending on how | much work you want to do. I'd say a good start would be to | think about the pandemic and think about what stuff became hard | to get and make sure you have more of that available. | Medications are a big one - try to have enough spare to last a | couple of months. Having actual cash is important too, as is | having copies of ID and other documents. | | Also, make friends with your neighbors. You're far more likely | to be okay if you have a strong community around you than if | you try to build a bunker and live alone from the world. | nescioquid wrote: | > Medications are a big one - try to have enough spare to | last a couple of months. | | I've always wondered about how to carry out this advice for | medicines other than what's available OTC. If someone depends | on prescription medication, is this possible? How do you ask? | NoImmatureAdHom wrote: | I can think of three ways: | | 1) "Hi doc, I'm thinking about ways to better hedge tail | risk as I get a little older. In the case of this | particular med, obviously it'd be really bad to be without | it for [2 weeks, whatever]. People were without meds for | that long in [Katrina, other example disaster]. So, I'd | like to have a supply on hand. Can you prescribe me [a | month] extra? | | 2) Lie. "Hi doc, I'm going to [really far-flung place, | Alaska] on a [long, 3-month] expedition. I need to have my | meds. What should we do? | | 3) Skip the bullshit and, assuming they're not controlled | substances, just order directly from an Indian / Canadian | pharmacy online. | colechristensen wrote: | Eh, preppers overdo it because it's fun for some people. | | I have a case of water bottles in the trunk of my car, a bit of | camping gear in the closet, and enough dry pantry goods on hand | to last a good long while. None of this is to "prepare" for | anything besides the water in case of some incident that | strands me in my car. Not that much special is required to | survive for a couple of weeks. Maybe if you want to practice go | on a couple of day long camping trip in the woods, it'll | probably be fun. | jwithington wrote: | That's what I'm saying haha. I'm not looking to "prep" and | the prepper manuals go overboard for what >99% of people are | looking for. I'm looking for the practical things. | | An emergency action guide of some sort... | ryukafalz wrote: | FEMA has some good material on that. Here's a basic one: | https://www.fema.gov/pdf/areyouready/basic_preparedness.pdf | colechristensen wrote: | Go to a Costco business center and buy a bag of rice, a bag | of beans, and some bottled water. Buy some camping gear and | cook dinner once in a while over a fire in your back yard | or a camp ground. Keep a go bag packed that you could pick | up and live out of for a week at a moments notice. Take | interest in the things around you and learn how to do | things yourself instead of paying other people to do them, | even if you don't do them yourself most of the time. | hutzlibu wrote: | Waterfilters and salt are somewhat useful and easy to | store as well. | HeyLaughingBoy wrote: | I'd supplement that with a few bags of charcoal stored in | sealed Rubbermaid garbage tubs and some cigarette | lighters -- you need a reliable source of fire and wood's | a pain in the ass to depend on outdoors. | | Also rice & beans gets old. Grab 50lbs of canned meat | while you're at it. | | I took a couple cans of Chinese fried rice (yes, it comes | in a can!) on a camping trip once: it was everyone's | favorite meal. | datavirtue wrote: | If you value freedom you are going to have to be able to | move fast at a moment's notice. Preppers do nothing but | hoard liability. The local gang is going to own your | shit. | 13415 wrote: | I've read his book The Knowledge years ago and it was an eye- | opener. I wasn't aware how complex our agricultural and technical | societies are and how much they depend on shipping and crude oil. | Without oil and shipping, no chemical industry, and without | chemical industry no advanced technology and no mass food | production. People in supply chain management know that too well | but I was simply not aware of how fragile our society is before I | read his book. The premise of the book that just the right number | of people die but enough remain to kickstart society is arguably | a bit contrived, though. | | Unfortunately, my overall conclusion from this book was rather | negative, which is definitely not part of the book itself. It | seems to me that our current technological level with a focus on | consumption and constant production of new goods for short-term | use, without taking into account full energy and ecological | lifecycle balances, is completely unsustainable. Even with | recycling and under the assumption that energy could become | easier to produce (e.g. fusion) our lifestyle seems to exploit | too many finite natural resources like e.g. oil. This has been | known by many people since the 70s and 80s of last century and it | still amazes and depresses me how slow the overall rate of change | is. | colechristensen wrote: | The worry is overblown. Oil is still used all over the place | because it's cheaper than the alternative. When it's not, it'll | be replaced. | | You can straight up synthesize an oil analog from biological | sources, and even if you couldn't the oil necessary for non- | energy purposes is far far less than that used just to burn. | | Solar is what is going to replace fossil fuels mostly, it's | already cheaper than coal. | | Like it or not, most of the motivation for change will be | economic. With the price of energy in the current times of war | and inflation, solar is looking quite good. | | Industrial chemistry always has alternatives. Ammonia based | fertilizers can always be produced with air and water instead | of air and natural gas, it's just somewhat more expensive. | Barrera wrote: | > One of the ideas I played with in The Knowledge was what would | you most want to whisper in someone's ear -- like 2,000 years | ago, or if someone's having to go through this process again -- | that once you've told someone, it kind of makes immediate sense. | ... | | This is a fascinating idea. | | > And for me, the one that stood out by far the most | significantly was this idea of germ theory and how that links to | the microscope. ... | | There's what you'd want to whisper and what the person (and their | community!) would accept. History has shown people to be | extremely resistant to the germ theory of disease. | | > And actually, one of my favorite maker projects when I was | researching for The Knowledge was making some Robinson Crusoe | glass from scratch. ... And there's nothing stopping the ancient | Romans over 2,000 years ago building a microscope, if only they'd | known what to do. | | I'm not so sure about this. _A lot_ of societal and technological | developments happened between the first microscopes and the | connection to germ theory. From a different article: | | > In 1676, Dutch cloth merchant-turned-scientist Antony van | Leeuwenhoek further improved the microscope with the intent of | looking at the cloth that he sold, but inadvertently made the | groundbreaking discovery that bacteria exist. His accidental | finding opened up the field of microbiology and the basis of | modern medicine; nearly 200 years later, French scientist Louis | Pasteur would determine that bacteria were the cause behind many | illnesses (before that, many scientists believed in the miasma | theory that rotten air and bad odors made us sick). | | https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-we-owe-to... | | You whisper in someone's ear "Things you can't see cause disease. | The key is making and polishing glass. Now, get busy." | | Then, within a few decades, the person is dead. Depending on a | lot of factors, that person is pretty likely to have taken the | knowledge, and the drive to put it into practice, to the grave. | Imagine the reaction to this revelation this unfortunate soul | would be greeted with. Unfortunately, we don't need to imagine, | because history tells us quite clearly what happens to people who | are far ahead of their time. | | So the trick is to reveal something just far enough ahead to be | useful, but not too far ahead to upset prevailing views and power | structures. Not easy at all. | | Now, imagine the world as we know it has been destroyed by | something that sets us way back. How long does it take us to | revert to superstition and witch hunts? The sad truth is that | we're already there, even at the technological high water mark of | the species. I doubt it would take more than 10 years of | sustained primitive living to turn the clock back 2 or 3 | milennia. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-10 23:00 UTC)