[porknubbins]

A few years ago, I asked my engineer friend about how much of civilization he could rebuild singlehandedly, should he survive some hypothetical apocalyptic event. “All of it,” he replied. “Not all at once, but I know enough to be able to puzzle together the pieces I don’t know right this second.”

While I admire the Connecticut-Yankee optimism of the engineer, as a non engineer I am seriously skeptical about how a single engineer could know enough about the chemistry, materials, physics, CS etc. I can explain what a battery, or transistor is supposed to do but wouldn't have the foggiest idea how to actually make one. In this scenario are we leaving the bunker to break into Bell Labs (or some research university library at least)?

[augbog]

Somewhat of a tangent but related, there is an anime called Dr.Stone where a brilliant genius scientist kid gets ported 3700 years in the future and people have reverted back to the stone ages. He teaches them how to build everything from scratch and makes some crazy stuff i.e. antibiotics, etc. Highly recommend

[ClumsyPilot]

The questions usually lack a starting point. It's one thing to be stuck I medieval time, but stone age is another thing entirely.

[latexr]

I share your skepticism. Seems to me the engineer is falling prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect[1]. Rather than knowing enough to be able to puzzle together all the pieces they don’t know, I’d wager they don’t know enough to be able to discern what they won’t be able to figure out.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

[naasking]

We studied a lot of detailed semiconductor physics in my engineering degree. Certainly loads of details were left out, but knowing something is possible and roughly along which lines it could be achieved is a huge hurdle in the innovation process.