The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch

whitecoast

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
Hi all, I wanted to share an interesting book I came across, called The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch, by Lewis Dartnell. The book describes itself as a "reboot manual," which contains valuable, yet highly succinct, information on how to bootstrap certain technologies, quickly after a societal collapse. The scenario it starts off with is the idea of a global pandemic wiping out 90% of people, since it leaves behind most of the infrastructure and how to best exploit it for a more rapid recovery. Each chapter gives introductory concepts and methods of restoring certain industries (such as agriculture, power generation, transport, communications, etc,) and an impressive further reading list for those who wish to delve deeper and gain more specific knowledge.

The book starts off with ways to obtain shelter and fire, as well as ways to obtain clean water and preserve food. It suggests people get out of large metropolitan areas, where food will be less likely to grow and the technologies that make arid or swampy land inhabitable (like those used to support Las Vegas or Washington DC) will no longer function. It offers ways to scavenge for fuel and electricity for powering cars and electronics for an extended period.

A whole chapter is devoted to agriculture, and includes what to look for in soils, the types of early agricultural implements that will be indispensable, the conditions certain vegetables and grains can grow in, methods of harvesting and processing, types of crop rotation to optimize land use, and how to pasteurize human/animal waste to increase soil productivity. Fermenting, salting, smoking, are canning are described in some detail as methods of preserving food. It even describes low-tech refrigeration, using evaporation or easy-to-produce refrigerants. The book contains a warning that subsistence farming has been an historical bottleneck for developing more complex technologies and divisions of labor, and should be minimized as much as possible to accelerate regrowth.

A section is devoted to clothing, carding/spinning wool, and some of the principles behind more advanced instruments and methods (such as a spindle flyer or weaving looms).

My favorite sections were the chemistry chapters. They talked about how to produce things like charcoal, lime, alkalis like calcium and potassium hydroxide, soap, ammonia, glycerol, methanol, acetone, pitch, and sulfuric and hydrochloric acid. These substances are relied on to produce more advanced materials like mortar, concrete, metals, plastics, explosives (for destroying condemned structures and quarrying). The metals section was really neat since it contained information on how to salvage and scavenge for certain types, how to smelt in rudimentary forges and scale up to blast furnaces, how to temper and get the right iron-carbon balance for certain types of alloys. There is also a section about glass, and how essential glass was for developing advanced scientific instruments such as thermometers, barometers, telescopes, and microscopes. More advanced chapters discuss electrolysis to obtain less common elements, rediscovering the periodic table, development of explosives and photography, and even the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere to increase agricultural output.

A chapter was devoted to medicine, and it remarked on how most specialist medical knowledge would probably be lost, firstly in the depopulation and secondly in the breakdown of advanced diagnostic and treatment technologies. The few suggestions brought up talk about how critical soap, general sanitation, and oral rehydration therapy (for enteric infections, which will probably be the most common preventable-yet-fatal illness). Childbirth was covered, and mentioned that birthing forceps, though traumatic, have helped to save lives. C-sections were strongly discouraged, as pre-enlightenment operations always killed the mother and were only used as a last resort to save the child. Medical examinations and diagnosis were described, and offered the stethoscope and compact thermometer as some of the important early diagnostic tools. A brief science on x-rays was also discussed, and how vacuums and cathodes were an essential precursor to redeveloping x-ray photography. Effective early herbal medicines were reviewed, which included things like willow bark, digitalin, chili peppers, and opium for analgesics in surgery. More advanced chemistry is used to develop aspirin, laughing gas, ether, iodine, and ethanol. Microbiology is described in some detail, with particular attention paid to germ theory and how to isolate penicillin-like strains of fungi to mass-produce antibiotics. Evidence-based medicine how-tos are also brought up for later on in the reboot, once large-scale clinical trials are once again feasible to carry out.

A power section is devoted to waterwheels, windmills, and some of the more advanced innovations for those developed in the middle ages and later on. How to make batteries from acids and metals is also discussed. Electricity is seen by the book to be essential to allowing the location of milling, weaving, or anything involving motors to occur away from rivers or windy hills. Electromagnetic principles in general are talked about (sans math), and how wind/water/steam turbines can be produced to convert mechanical motion or heat into electricity. Alternating and direct current, as well as how to build transformers, are mentioned as ways to deal with some of the earlier problems surrounding distribution in centralized electrical grids.

Transportation was an interesting section because I thought it would have largely been a no-go: how do you resurrect an industry that has thrived for the most part on hard-to-obtain fossil fuels? All the easily accessible oil reserves are gone. Catalysis by alumina/pumice and fractional distillation are mentioned in passing as ways to turn complex hydrocarbon mixtures from low-oxygen burning of wood into diesel and gasoline. Alternatives to such ranged from burning methanol/ethanol, or using methane gas from decomposition. During the world wars, gasified wood was used often as a way to fuel cars. A prototype for retrofitting a car with a wood gasifier is mentioned, as well as ways to harness animal power by retrofitting cars and developing harnesses. The process of acquiring latex from select shrubs or trees and vulcanizing it to set its shape and durability is also mentioned, but it’s acknowledged for many post-apocalyptic societies that rubber sources will be rare in the absence of long trade routes. This section, of course, also includes descriptions of how internal combustion engines function, and lay out the mechanics necessary to rebuild one from scratch. Leapfrogging to using electrical cars as soon as possible is also discussed, and it was concluded that it really depends on the state of agriculture, distribution systems, and battery sophistication. Burning whole crops at power plants to power electrical cars is more efficient than burning the crop as biofuels in an internal combustion engine, but typically won’t be as autonomous or low-maintenance at least until more advanced chemistry and mining becomes available. The fleet of electric cabs in 1900’s Manhattan was used as an example for the types of efficiency considerations required (rapid battery swaps, etc.) Sea transport, shipwrighting, and various types of sail rigging are talked about too, though this obviously requires relatively efficient fabric production.

Post-apocalyptic communication involves the production of ink and paper using information from the chemistry chapter. The obstacles to producing printing presses (creation of typesets, mechanisms for applying pressure and making multiple copies, and ink that doesn’t run on paper and yet adheres to typesets), and how to overcome those. The science behind various types of ink are discussed. An electrical communication section is devoted to descriptions of telegraphs and low-tech radio transmitters and receivers.

Re-establishing time and place by way of re-constructing the hours of the day, calendar dates by sun position, precession, and latitude and longitude are also covered in one chapter. The determination of longitude is the most difficult task, as it requires the creation of accurate mechanical clocks that can withstand transport to different longitudes, or alternatively long-range radio communication if such technologies are rebooted in more than one area prior to the creation of advanced mechanical clocks.

What I liked the most about this book was how succinctly written each of the chapters is, and yet at the same time each sentence is loaded with meaning and information. The Further Reading list and references for each chapter are also an excellent source for expanding on the details given in each chapter, because lord knows how much was left out for the sake of brevity and paring things down to the most descriptive yet simple sentences.

What I also appreciate about the book is how it acknowledges that technology is a NON-LINEAR process: that people have historically blundered from one invention to the next, and no technological trajectory developed by any civilization is written in stone. A society may have radio before it has the wheelbarrow, or blast furnaces before buttons (Such as in classical China – it was only the social pressures of expensive labour and cheap capital in England that pushed for industrial revolution).

It made me think a lot about how those who survive catastrophes have a lot of responsibility (IF they have the knowledge) in deciding which types of technology develop and which to leave by the wayside. We all have read about the ecological dangers of annual monocrop agriculture. Will the Haber-Bosch process be implemented on the scale it currently is in a more enlightened world?

Here is the main website:
http://the-knowledge.org/en-gb/the-book/

Here is the full bibliography based on reference point:
http://the-knowledge.org/en-gb/bibliography/

Here is the Further Reading Section by Chapter (plus links for most of the sources). I've posted it below as well.
http://the-knowledge.org/en-gb/further-reading-by-chapter/

Chapter 2 – The Grace Period
Godfrey Boyle and Peter Harper, Radical Technology
Jim Leckie et al., More Other Homes and Garbage: Designs for Self-sufficient Living
Alexis Madrigal, Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology
Nick Rosen, How to Live Off-grid
John Seymour, The New Complete Book of Self-sufficiency
Dick and James Strawbridge, Practical Self Sufficiency
Jon Vogler, Work from Waste: Recycling Waste to Create Employment
prepping and survival during a major crisis: Clayton (1980), Edwards (2009), Martin (2011), Rawles (2009), Stein (2009), Strauss (2009), United States Army (2002)
water purification: Huisman (1974), VITA (1977), Conant (2005)
UK national food reserve: DEFRA (2010), DEFRA (2012)
degrading GPS accuracy: pers. comm. USCG Navigation Center
how long a stash of medications would last before they expire:
Cohen (2000), Pomerantz (2004)
off-grid electricity: Leckie (1981), Rosen (2007), Madrigal (2011), Clews (1973)
Goražde jury-rigged hydropower: Sacco (2000)
rudimentary plastic recycling: Vogler (1984)

Chapter 3 – Agriculture
Mauro Ambrosoli, The Wild and the Sown: Botany and Agriculture in Western Europe, 1350-1850
Percy Blandford, Old Farm Tools and Machinery: An Illustrated History
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Food: A History
John Seymour, The New Complete Book of Self-sufficiency
Tom Standage, An Edible History of Humanity
soil composition: Stern (1979), Wood (1981)
farm tools: Blandford (1976), FAO (1976), Hurt (1985)
harnessing oxen to a plough: Starkey (1985)
‘humanity subsists, either directly or indirectly, by eating grass’: The potential consequences of this are explored brilliantly in John Christopher’s novel The Death of Grass, in which the agent of doomsday is not a virus that infects humanity, but a plant pathogen wiping out grass species.
cereals: FAO (1977)
Composting: Gotaas (1976), Dalzell (1981), Shuval (1981), Decker (2010a)
biogas: House (1978), Goodall (2008), Strawbridge (2010)
honey-sucker trucks in Bangalore: Pearce (2013)
Dillo Dirt: http://austintexas.gov/dillodirt
superphosphate fertiliser factories in London: Weisman (2007)
Canadian potash: Mokyr (1990)
food production trap: Standage (2010)

Chapter 4 – Food and Clothing
Agromisa Foundation, Preservation of Foods
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Food: A History
Michael Pollan, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation
John Seymour, The New Complete Book of Self-sufficiency
Tom Standage, An Edible History of Humanity
Carol Hupping Stoner, Stocking Up: How to Preserve the Foods you Grow Naturally
Joan Koster, Handloom Construction: A Practical Guide for the Non-Expert
Abbott Payson Usher, A History of Mechanical Inventions
food preservation: Agromisa Foundation (1990), The British Nutrition Foundation (1999), Stoner (1973)
jury-rigged smokehouse: Stoner (1973)
nixtamalisation: Fernandez-Armesto (2001)
preparation of cereals: UNIFEM (1988)
preparing a sourdough: Avery (2001a,b), Lang (2003)
Mongolian sill: Sella (2012)
Zeer pot: Löfström (2011)
Einstein’s refrigerator: Silverman (2001), Jha (2008)
compressor and absorber designs of refrigerator: Cowan (1985), Bell (2011)
wool spinning: Wigginton (1973)
simple weaving: Koster (1979)
the button: Mokyr (1990), Mortimer (2008)
mechanisation of spinning and weaving: Usher (1982), Mokyr (1990), Allen (2009)

Chapter 5 – Substances
William B. Dick, Dick’s Encyclopedia of Practical Receipts and Processes
Kevin Dunn, Caveman Chemistry: 28 Projects, from the Creation of Fire to the Production of Plastics
Alan Dalton, Chemicals from Biological Resources
thermal energy through history: Decker (2011)
importance of coke in Industrial Revolution: Allen (2009)
coppicing firewood: Stanford (1976)
charcoal: Goodall (2008)
Brazilian charcoal for steel-production: Kato (2005)
reserve technologies: Edgerton (2008)
lime-burning: Wingate (1985)
hand-washing and reduction of gastrointestinal diseases:
Bloomfield (2009)
the importance of alkalis throughout history: Deighton (1907), Reilly (1951)
wood pyrolysis: Dumesny (1908), Dalton (1973), Boyle (1976), McClure (2000)
acetone shortage in World War I: David (2012)
sulphuric acid: McKee (1924), Karpenko (2002)

Chapter 6 – Materials
Kevin M. Dunn, Caveman Chemistry: 28 Projects, from the Creation of Fire to the Production of Plastics
Albert Jackson and David Day. Tools and How to Use Them: An Illustrated Encvclopedia
Carl G. Johnson and William R. Weeks, Metallurgy
Richard Shelton Kirby, Engineering in History
wood: Forest Service Forest Products Laboratory (1974)
basic construction techniques: Leckie (1981), Stern (1983), Lengen (2008)
Roman pozzolana cement: Oleson (2008)
reinforced concrete: Stern (1983)
iron-working: Weygers (1974), Winden (1990)
hardening and tempering tools: Gentry (1980)
making and using tools: Weygers (1973), Jackson (1978)
oxyacetylene torch: Parkin (1969)
arc welding: The Lincoln Electric Company (1973)
small-scale foundry and metal casting: Aspin (1975)
boot-strapping a complete metal-working shop: Gingery (2000a,b,c,d,e)
Chinese blast furnace: Mokyr (1990)
iron-smelting: Allen (2009), Johnson (1977)
Bessemer process: Mokyr (1990)
glass-making: Whitby (1983)
lead-crystal glass: MacLeod (1987)
central role of glass in science: Macfarlane (2002)

Chapter 7 – Medicine
David Werner, Where There Is No Doctor
Murray Dickson, Where There Is No Dentist
Roy Porter, Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine
Anne Rooney, The Story of Medicine
diseases from animals: Porter (2002), Rooney (2009)
importance of sanitation: Solomon (2011), Conant (2005), Mann (1982)
cholera: Clark (2010)
Oral Rehydration Therapy: Conant (2005)
obstetric forceps kept a secret: Porter (2002)
car-parts incubator: Johnson (2010), http://designthatmatters.org/portfolio/projects/incubator/
serendipitous discovery of X-rays: Gribbin (2002), Osman (2011), Kean (2010)
willow bark and aspirin: Mokyr (1990), Pollard (2010)
scurvy and the first clinical trial: Osman (2011)
principles of surgery: Cook (1988)
anaesthesics: Dobson (1988)
nitrous oxide: Gribbin (2002), Holmes (2008)
instructions for rudimentary microscope: Casselman (2011)
Leeuwenhoek: Macfarlane (2002), Crump (2001), Gribbin, (2002), Sherman (2006)
Marcus Terentius Varro: Rooney (2009)
serendipitous discovery of antibiotics: Lax (2005), Kelly (2010), Winston (2010), Pollard (2010)
extraction and mass-production of penicillin: Lax (2005)
antibiotic resistance in post-apocalyptic world: Clark (2010)

Chapter 8 – Power to the People
Godfrey Boyle and Peter Harper, Radical Technology
Alexis Madrigal, Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology
Abbott Payson Usher, A History of Mechanical Inventions
Roman water wheel: Usher (1982), Oleson (2008)
key innovations during the supposedly ‘dark’ medieval era: Fara (2009)
windmills: McGuigan (1978), Mokyr (1990), Hills (1996), Decker (2009)
mechanisms for transforming motion: Hiscox (2007), Brown (2008)
importance of waterwheels and windmills: Basalla (1988)
diverse uses of waterwheels and windmills: Usher (1982), Solomon (2011)
succion pumps: Fraenkel (1997)
steam engine: Usher (1982), Mokyr (1990), Crump (2001), Allen (2009)
voltaic pile: Gribbin (2002)
Baghdad battery: Schlesinger (2010), Osman (2011)
discovery of electromagnetism: Crump (2001), Gribbin (2002), Hamilton (2003), Fara (2009), Schlesinger (2010), Ball (2012)
retrofitting a traditional four-sail windmill: Watson (2005)
Charles Brush’s electricity-generating windmill: Hills (1996), Winston (2010), Krouse (2011)
water turbines: McGuigan (1978), Usher (1982), Holland (1986), Mokyr (1990), Eisenring (1991)

Chapter 9 – Transport
Rudolf Diesel quote: Goodall (2008)
bioethanol: Solar Energy Research Institute (1980), Goodall (2008)
biodiesel: Rosen (2007), Strawbridge (2010)
gas bag vehicles: House (1978), Decker (2011b)
wood gasifiers: Decker (2010b), FAO Forestry Department (1986), LaFontaine (1989)
wood-fueled Tiger tanks: Krammer (1978)
guayule: National Academy of Sciences (1977)
harnessing oxen: Starkey (1985)
throat-and-girth harness and horse collar: Mokyr (1990)
peak horse use: Edgerton (2008)
Cuban resurrection of animal traction: Edgerton (2008)
sails: Farndon (2010)
penny farthing and modern safety bicycle: Broers (2005)
the nature of novel technologies and the automobile as a lashing together of pre-existing mechanical solutions:Arthur (2009), Kelly (2010), Mokyr (1990)
internal combustion engine and motor vehicle mechanisms: Bureau of Naval Personnel (1971), Hillier (1981), Usher, (1982)
history of electric cars: Crump (2001), Edgerton (2008), Brooks (2009), Decker (2010c), Madrigal (2011)

Chapter 10 – Communication
J. P. Davidson, Planet Word
history of paper: Mokyr (1990)
chemical liberation of cellulose fibres: Dunn (2003)
paper-making: Vigneault (2007), Seymour (2009)
ink from berries: HowToons (2007)
iron gall ink: Finlay (2002), Fruen (2002), Smith (2009)
social ramifications of printing press: Broers (2005), Farndon (2010)
development of printing press: Usher (1982), Mokyr (1990), Finlay (2002), Johnson (2010)
rudimentary radio transmitters and receivers: Crump (2001), Field (2002), Parker (2006)
Foxhole/POW radios: Wells, Ross (2005), Carusella (2008), and see Gillies (2011) for further ingenuity amongst POWs

Chapter 11 – Advanced Chemistry
Kevin Dunn, Caveman Chemistry: 28 Projects, from the Creation of Fire to the Production of Plastics
Sam Kean, The Disappearing Spoon: and other true tales from the Periodic Table
Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress
electrolysis of water: Abdel-Aal (2010)
aluminium: Johnson (1977), Kean (2010)
electrolysis and discovery of new elements: Gribbin (2002), Holmes (2008)
periodic table: Fara (2009), Kean (2010)
black powder as elixir for immortality: Winston (2010)
nitroglycerine and dynamite: Mokyr (1990)
applications of photography: Gribbin (2002), Osman (2011)
rudimentary photography: Sutton (1986), Ware (1997), Crump (2001), Ware (2002), Ware (2004)
industrial chemistry: Mokyr (1990)
demand for soda: Deighton (1907), Reilly (1951)
Leblanc process, early industrial pollution, Solvay processes: Deighton (1907), Reilly (1951), Mokyr (1990)
William Crokes quote: Standage (2010)
nitrogen gas is the least reactive diatomic substance: Schrock (2006)
Haber process: Standage (2010), Kean (2010), Perkins (1977), Edgerton (2008)

Chapter 12 – Time and Place
Adam Frank, About Time
Eric Bruton, The History of Clocks & Watches
Dava Sobel, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
constancy of sand time compared to water clock: Bruton (2000)
Manhattan as a city-sized Stonehenge: Astronomy Picture of the Day, 12 July 2006http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060712.html
sundials: Oleson (2008)
mechanical clocks: Usher (1982), Bruton (2000), Gribbin (2002), Frank (2011)
60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours: Crump (2001), Frank (2011)
“o’clock”: Mortimer (2008)
first appearance of Sirius: Schaefer (2000)
resurrect the Gregorian calendar: see Pappas (2011) for one proposal for reformatting the year into a different structure of months
navigation before accurate clocks by sailing along line of latitude: Usher (1982)
solving the longitude problem: Sobel (1996)
spring-based clocks: Usher (1982), Bruton (2000)
22 chronometers aboard HMS Beagle: Sobel (1996)

Chapter 13 – The Greatest Invention
nothing inevitable about technological progress and history of China: Mokyr (1990)
Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century Britain: Allen (2009)
metric system and why UK and USA did not adopt it: Crump (2001)
invention of barometer and thermometer: Crump (2001), Chang (2004)
the scientific revolution and how science is done: Shapin (1996), Kuhn (1996), Bowler (2005), Henry (2008), Ball (2012)
symbiosis between science and technology: Basalla (1988), Mokyr (1990), Bowler (2005), Arthur (2009), Johnson (2010)
 
I agree, great find. I went on amazon and read some of the reviews. Sounds like a good book to have especially if there`s no internet/you tube videos! I ordered my copy. Thanks, whitecoast! :)
 
What happens if your book does not survive the trauma?
If we look around the world we note that there are very few things which have survived the millenia, but in my opinion the greatest of these is the Giza pyramids.
The value of these is that they excite human curiosity, and contain many built-in mathematical features and astronomical alignments which perplex the mind and draw you in to think:how did they build that? How did they move that? Why did they make it that shape? What do those marks mean? Why is there an indentation in that face, which illuminates half the face on a certain day of the year? And why is the sphynx more eroded on the lower half than on its head? Seeing as the lower half is buried in sand most of the time? Why is it built in that particular place? What's inside it? Underneath it?
Questions, questions.
It is the seeking of answers to those questions which will advance the thinking processes of the decimated populations, and in so doing advance mankind in other areas.

Maybe we need to restore the pyramids to their former glory.
We might find out what they really were intended to do.
Maybe this is the answer..

Or perhaps there are other things we could do, like establish a seed bank somewhere.
Or attempt to populate another planet.
 
MusicMan said:
What happens if your book does not survive the trauma?
If we look around the world we note that there are very few things which have survived the millenia, but in my opinion the greatest of these is the Giza pyramids.
The value of these is that they excite human curiosity, and contain many built-in mathematical features and astronomical alignments which perplex the mind and draw you in to think:how did they build that? How did they move that? Why did they make it that shape? What do those marks mean? Why is there an indentation in that face, which illuminates half the face on a certain day of the year? And why is the sphynx more eroded on the lower half than on its head? Seeing as the lower half is buried in sand most of the time? Why is it built in that particular place? What's inside it? Underneath it?
Questions, questions.
It is the seeking of answers to those questions which will advance the thinking processes of the decimated populations, and in so doing advance mankind in other areas.

I can't say I agree with the bolded sections. They are just mausoleums that collect dust and erode while the civilizations around them build, hystericize, get wiped out by the cosmos, and rebuild anew. They haven't helped the classical or iron age Egyptians gain knowledge or rebuild civilization and it seems unrealistic to suggest they were created for that purpose. Have you had an opportunity to read the Secret History of the World series, MusicMan?
 
MusicMan said:
Or perhaps there are other things we could do, like establish a seed bank somewhere.

That has already been taken care of more or less: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_bank

wikipedia said:
There are about 6 million accessions, or samples of a particular population, stored as seeds in about 1,300 genebanks throughout the world as of 2006.[citation needed] This amount represents a small fraction of the world's biodiversity, and many regions of the world have not been fully explored.

The Millennium Seed Bank housed at the Wellcome Trust Millennium Building (WTMB), located in the grounds of Wakehurst Place in West Sussex, near London, in England, UK. It is the largest seed bank in the world (longterm, at least 100 times bigger than Svalbard Global Seed Vault),[5] providing space for the storage of billions of seed samples in a nuclear bomb proof multi-story underground vault.[5] Its ultimate aim being to store every plant species possible, it reached its first milestone of 10% in 2009, with the next 25% milestone aimed to be reached by 2020.[5] Importantly they also distribute seeds to other key locations around the world, do germination tests on each species every 10 years, and other important research.[5][6]

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault has been built inside a sandstone mountain in a man-made tunnel on the frozen Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, which is part of the Svalbard archipelago, about 1,307 kilometres (812 mi) from the North Pole. It is designed to survive catastrophes such as nuclear war and world war. It is operated by the Global Crop Diversity Trust. The area's permafrost will keep the vault below the freezing point of water, and the seeds are protected by 1-metre thick walls of steel-reinforced concrete. There are two airlocks and two blast-proof doors.[7] The vault accepted the first seeds on 26 February 2008.

The former NSW Seedbank focuses on native Australian flora, especially NSW threatened species. The project was established in 1986 as an integral part of The Australian Botanic Gardens, Mount Annan. The NSW Seedbank hasdcollaborated with the Millennium Seed Bank since 2003.[8] The seed bank has since been replaced as part of a major upgrade by the Australian PlantBank.

Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943) was a Russian geneticist and botanist who, through botanic-agronomic expeditions, collected seeds from all over the world. He set up one of the first seed banks, in Leningrad (now St Petersburg), which survived the 28-month Siege of Leningrad in World War II. It is now known as the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry. Several botanists starved to death rather than eat the collected seeds.

The BBA (Beej Bachao Andolan — Save the Seeds movement) began in the late 1980s in Uttarakhand, India, led by Vijay Jardhari. Seed banks were created to store native varieties of seeds.[9]

National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation,[10] Fort Collins, Colorado, United States

It remains to be seen who will have access to those when the need arises. :rolleyes:
 
Thanks whitecoast this book has been ordered for my birthday present and I look forward to reading it very much. This is a subject that I am very interested in especially reviving skills from the past which we are loosing or have already been lost.
 
My favorite sections were the chemistry chapters. They talked about how to produce things like charcoal, lime, alkalis like calcium and potassium hydroxide, soap, ammonia, glycerol, methanol, acetone, pitch, and sulfuric and hydrochloric acid. These substances are relied on to produce more advanced materials like mortar, concrete, metals, plastics, explosives (for destroying condemned structures and quarrying). The metals section was really neat since it contained information on how to salvage and scavenge for certain types, how to smelt in rudimentary forges and scale up to blast furnaces, how to temper and get the right iron-carbon balance for certain types of alloys. There is also a section about glass, and how essential glass was for developing advanced scientific instruments such as thermometers, barometers, telescopes, and microscopes. More advanced chapters discuss electrolysis to obtain less common elements, rediscovering the periodic table, development of explosives and photography, and even the Haber-Bosch process for fixing nitrogen from the atmosphere to increase agricultural output.

These were my favorite sections of the book as well. I loved the information about how one could make charcoal through simply digging a pit in the ground, filling it with wood, starting a fire, and then covering it with tin and soil to keep out the oxygen so that it would eventually burn to charcoal. And, with ash:

The first step to restarting a rudimentary chemical industry is alluringly simple: toss these ashes into a pot of water. The black, unburned charcoal dust will flat on the surface, and many of the wood's minerals, insoluble, will settle as a sediment on the bottom of the pot. But it is the minerals that do dissolve in the water that you want to extract.

Skim off and discard the floating charcoal dust, and pour out the water solution into another vessel, being careful to leave behind the undissolved sediment. Drive off the water in the new vessel by boiling it dry, or if you're in a hot climate, pour the solution into wide shallow pans and allow it to dry in the warmth of the sun.

Basically what you're left with is potash, and when you add that to a boiling pot of fat or oil you have created your very own soap. Charcoal and soap in one batch. And, with much more info in the book, he shows you how you can turn the gases released from the fire itself to even more purposes. It's a fascinating read. Thanks for recommending it!
 
It reminds me a book (in French) called : "survivre à l'effondrement économique"
I think we have now to read that kind of books (I am starting to do it as I know nothing about that stuffs) and get back our money from the banks (haven't started yet but will do it in a short term).
Thank you for mentionning that book
 
Thanks for the suggestion Whitecoast,
I've placed my order after reading the post since a book like it can be handy to have in the times we are facing.
 
Back
Top Bottom