The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch

The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch is a 2014 non-fiction book by Lewis Dartnell that proports to be a guide for rebooting civilization.

Stats

Author: Lewis Dartnell
Publication date: 2014
OCLC: 852222130

Content

Introduction

An explanation by the author that the bulk of knowledge is not required to reboot civilization; much knowledge has a large dependency tree, much if which is cruft and assumes ephemeral expertise encoded in living people not recorded well or at all in records. The author draws a metaphor between the dessication-resistant spore form that many organisms take with a hypothetical book that could record key knowledge that can be used to reproduce the greater tree of knowledge without having to record every minute component of the parent tree. The author recalls Japan's Meiji Restoration which was an example of a civilization bootstrap event following a forced end to self-isolation by the US Navy's steel steamships. The author makes references to post-apocalyptic entertainment, prepper survival guides, and Richard Feynman's special sentence:

All things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.

Chapter 1: The End of the World as We Know It

35:52

Chapter 2: ?

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Chapter 3: ?

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Harvesting techniques.

Crop Rotation.

Fertilizer.

Escaping the Food Production Trap: producing enough food so need for manual labor is reduced, allowing technical specialization.

Chapter 4: Food and Clothing

02:24:23

?

A summary of weaving and textiles.

Chapter 5: Substances

03:10:38

A "Collier" is a traditional name for a charcoal maker.

Calcium Carbonate production.

Calcium Oxide production.

Lye production.

Methanol, Turpentine, asphalt, gasoline, and other distillate products.

Sulfuric acid production from crude oil or sulfide ores.

Chapter 6: Materials

03:49:26

Pig iron manufacutirng.

Steel manufacturing.

Glass manufacturing.

Chapter 7: Medicine

04:31:20

Basic hygiene.

Simple fever reducers and pain relief.

Surgery.

Pharmaceutical development prerequisites.

Microbiology example: penicillin extraction via ether leaching.

Chapter 8: Power to the People

05:09:50

Wind and water power.

Electrochemistry.

Steam generation.

Power distribution.

Chapter 9: Transport

05:46:45

Rubber.

Combustion fuels: wood gasifiers, gasoline.

Internal combustion engine design.

Electric vehicles.