bootstrapping civilization

[deflective]

i watch the tv show how it's made with an odd mixture of fascination and dread. dread born from a forced understanding of just how interdependent our technology is.

pretty much everything we have now is the result of several sciences; metallurgy, electronics, chemistry, etc. all built together like a house of cards. leaning on each other. how would we recreate electricity when the process to purify metals used in electronics now requires electricity?

this is a common theme in post-apocalyptic stories. i'm wondering if there's a serious attempt address the issue with a do-it-yourself civilization handbook. something with all the information you need to take a group of people, naked in the wilderness, and recreate any piece of modern technology.

there seems to be some interest but i can't find anything substantial. if anyone can point me to something i'd appreciate it.

alternatively, what do you think such a handbook would be like? wiki style seems an obvious start.

[Chodon]

I own Earth Knack (mods, please EP-ize it for me).  It's not really a "build all of society from scratch" kind of book, but it is a "how to make tools with no tools" kind of book.  Pretty neat read.


(ep-ized!)

[birdless]

Is the quote "A technological society is the most delicate" attributable to anyone?

And thanks for the book link, Cho. Kinda reminds me of the Foxfire books.

[deflective]

Is the quote "A technological society is the most delicate" attributable to anyone?

umm, to you? i'd prolly Churchillize it: a technological society is the most delicate, except for all the others. at least we aren't going to be wiped out by a single volcanic eruption or plague.

the survival & amish-style guides would definitely have a place in a reboot manual. thinking about it, i see several parts. a timeline of technology development would be interesting and helpful in the writing. a tech tree similar to civilization, only much more detailed (probably granulated so you could look at the broad categories or break into specifics). an encyclopedia of devices, each entry showing possible implementations and required tech. and some sort of step by step guide, taking you from the stone age to modern technology by the most direct route possible.

i imagine the entire thing would eventually be implemented in two parts; some sort of indestructible black box containing all the information electronically and an external manual containing both basic instructions for survival and the guide to build a black box reading device.

[elspru]

Yes certainly a very interesting idea.
I myself am currently on a trajectory for creating self-replicating atom-tribe communities.

It is important to note that not only technology but also social organization is required for thrival.
Such as Intentional Communities, like eco-villages.
http://wiki.ic.org/wiki/7_steps_to_getting_started

Agriculturally a high return system such as permaculture or  seedballing and forest gardening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWyduWsoy8o

Technologically
important aspects are energy acquisition (renewable diy axial turbines),
energy storage (hydrogen),
furnace (for food, ceramic, metal).

http://openfarmtech.org is an example of a agriculture and fabrication labratory hybrid.


I've already a seedball forest garden establishing.
and have built a small axial wind turbine.

Due to requirement for a universal simple to learn and use how-to language,
also making Huspol a human speakable programming language.

[Planish]

... something with all the information you need to take a group of people, naked in the wilderness, and recreate any piece of modern technology.

I don't think it's possible. You might be able to make a crude substitute, but not the original device. After a couple of years of research and probably bartering for materials you could build, say, a functioning telegraph system out of raw copper, iron, wood, and ceramics, but certainly not a cell phone system. Even if you already had the hardware to fabricate integrated circuits handed to you, there's still all the proprietary firmware that you'd have to reverse-engineer for the phone and for the cellular system.

Fire piston, yes. Bic butane lighter, no.
Longbow, yes. 9mm semi-automatic pistol, no. As far as that goes, it would be difficult enough just to be able to determine what "9 mm" is.

So many of the appliances that we use day-to-day depend on PLCs, custom chips, embedded computers etc. that you cannot economically repair them and they are treated as disposable items.

[deflective]

if you get directions that tell you to 'cross the same river again' you're one of the guys that makes a big deal over the fact you can't cross the same river twice because the water's moving, aren't ya =P

instructions to create a butane light is fine, we wouldn't care about brand names.  instructions to create an automatic pistol is the goal (and we know it's not easy, that's the point of the instructions) not a particular arbitrary size of ammunition, although it's certainly possible to recreate our current units of measurement if we wish.

and there's no bartering here, everything is created completely from scratch.  we know it can be done, it has been done.  i'd just like to be able to know how.

[Planish]

... it's certainly possible to recreate our current units of measurement if we wish.

That is not a trivial thing to do. You'd have to start fresh with new units, until it was practical to derive the basic ISO units. The easiest units to approximate might be seconds and Celsius degrees.

and there's no bartering here, everything is created completely from scratch. we know it can be done, it has been done.  i'd just like to be able to know how.

But... bartering for some of the materials was how it was done the first time, and even then it took millennia to bring some of them together. Granted, depending on which patch of forest you were dropped into, there'd be some shortcuts like local access to raw copper, silk worms, flint, rubber trees, or willow bark, to name a few.

My main point was that it would be very unlikely that we'd be able to "recreate any piece of modern technology". People would only recreate or reinvent what they needed to get by, until they had the luxury of spare time to play around with building spiffy toys.

[deflective]

i'm not sure why you think these things are arguments against a reboot manual.  it feels like i'm being subtly (and effectively) trolled.

yes, a reboot would be difficult.  if it was trivial then we wouldn't need a manual.

why do you think recreating current measurement systems is necessary at all?  it is a valid question and worth considering but i'm at a loss why you think this would kibosh the entire concept.  temperature is probably the most essential for relaying instructions since most recipes are based on ratios (eg, two parts sulpher to three part saltpeter, make sure the cylinder's thickness is 3/20ths the radius to withstand the pressure) but, as you noted, temperature is also the easiest to recreate.

if your local patch of land doesn't have a resource required to create the next level of technology then you use available resources to create transportation and go look for them.  this is how it was done before, we can do it again.  it'd just be nice to skip the millennia of trial and error before figuring out what we need to do to find & refine copper deposits.