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Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

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Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#61

Post by Karrot_Kream »

spekcular wrote: post #18
alasdair_ wrote: post #3

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 a…

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…

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.

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#62

Post by notahacker »

ethbr0 wrote: post #32
CJefferson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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...

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#63

Post by DennisP »

spekcular wrote: post #18
alasdair_ wrote: post #3

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 a…

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…

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.

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#64

Post by WalterBright »

spekcular wrote: post #18
alasdair_ wrote: post #3

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 a…

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…

For a Cub Scout project, I built a DC electric motor out of nails, tape, and wire.

No special steel sheet.

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#65

Post by groby_b »

goatlover wrote: post #57
CJefferson wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#66

Post by jwithington »

hguant wrote: post #26
jwithington wrote: post #2

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 int…

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 ass…

Thanks!

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#68

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

DennisP wrote: post #63
spekcular wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#69

Post by azemetre »

Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #67

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.

You’re better off becoming super fit and staying young. He might let you be his blood boy, way better odds this way.

Re: Getting humanity to bounce back faster in a post-apocalyptic world

#70

Post by Ishmaeli »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #17

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.

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.

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