[brightball]

Stuff like this is why I keep a small library at my house.

Full encyclopedia set, Merck Manual, home repair book, etc. May never use them, but I like having them.

Facebook ads even successfully targeted me for that “how to rebuild all of civilization” book. :)

[kQq9oHeAz6wLLS]

You should get a copy or three of Pocket Ref by Thomas J Glover. Packed full of useful things in a good size. I keep one in the car even.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_Ref

[theshrike79]

I have one of my grandpa's "do everything" books from the 50s in my shelf just for this.

It has everything from building houses to boats to making moonshine and medicine in it. Amazing stuff.

[nojvek]

Is there a serious “rebuild all of civilization” book?

Sounds like a good read.

[coldtea]

In a doomsday scenario one wouldn't need a "rebuild all of civilization" book, but more a "basics like building a fire, filtering water, repairing a car engine, basic wound treatment" and such book. Nobody is going to be building cathedrals, and factories and computers for a good while...

[fer]

> Nobody is going to be building cathedrals, and factories and computers for a good while...

Interesting mental exercise. It was explored in A Canticle for Leibowitz[0], novel in 3 parts (Fiat homo, fiat lux, fiat voluntas tua), the first set in the immediate post nuclear-war world, second 600 years after towards the end of the new middle ages, and the third 600 later in a typical futuristic scenario. The first part covers the religious efforts to preserve knowledge (even if said knowledge was not understood), and the second in the new renaissance from wielding such knowledge.

I wonder how LLMs, with their mistakes and all, would play a role in rebuilding civilization. Most media these days is not prepared for staying stable for 20 years, not sure how much and for how long it could be preserved. Perhaps mechanical hard drives in certain isolated environments?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz

[kQq9oHeAz6wLLS]

And we did it all without a manual the first time, so it stands to reason we (or more accurately, our descendants) could figure it out.

[krapp]

We did it in a pristine world the first time. The next time we do it in a world stripped of natural resources and easy energy with a collapsing biosphere soaked in poison and radioactive waste.

Not impossible but I doubt we get another Industrial Revolution.

[coldtea]

>We did it in a pristine world the first time. The next time we do it in a world stripped of natural resources and easy energy with a collapsing biosphere soaked in poison and radioactive waste.

Well, we did it in an ice age the first time.

[defrost]

And here we are, still in the exact same Ice Age .. albeit only barely as the ice covered poles are on the way out should trends continue.

[krapp]

Fair enough, but at least the ice was clean.

[joseda-hg]

I mean, there's still quite a number of resources on the surface, plenty just sit there because the ratio of setup cost / profit isn't there

The demand a smaller civilization would have should be quite less significant than what we currently have, so it stands to reason it would make sense for them to use those

[yk]

Yes, and it took our ancestors 200k years. I would like to give our descendants an head start.

[joseda-hg]

Even knowing the broad concepts of Crop Rotation, Germ theory, or Computation, means that you shouldn't take that long to get back to an advanced stage, you probably won't actually get to whatever SOTA you had on those fields for a long time, but knowing where to look is quite significant in cutting wasted time

[mememememememo]

What so we gotta go through the middle ages again :(

[komali2]

Not necessarily, basically the majority of our technology is the result of a very, very brief period of innovation.

So long as we don't forget that it's important to wash our hands and clean out wounds with soap, we're already centuries out of the middle ages.

[brightball]

Yes.

https://a.co/d/0ieNUmhB (Not a referral link)

[kstrauser]

I've thought about this. I imagined stuff like "Chapter 1: Sanitation. Things called germs will make you very sick. They live in human and animal poop. That's why you need to built a latrine far away from your water source. Here's how to do it." You don't need to worry about how to mine for ore when you routinely lose neighbors to cholera.

[zikduruqe]

You might like https://www.howtoinventeverything.com

[vetrom]

It is telling that in one of the seminal works about accessibility and rural public health, "Where There Is No Doctor", by David Werner, roughly 10% of the book needs to be devoted to wound and general sanitation and exhortations to keep anything sanitation sensitive the hell away from dirt and nightsoil.

[expedition32]

Explaining to people that invisible creatures exist that make you sick... Better pack a microscope!