The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch (31 page)

The practical application of scientific understanding is the basis of technology. The operating principle of any technology exploits a particular natural phenomenon. Clocks, for example, utilize the discovery that a pendulum of a particular length always swings with the
same rhythm, and this reliable regularity can be used to meter time. The incandescent light bulb capitalizes on the fact that electrical resistance causes wires to get hot, and that very hot objects emit light. In fact, anything but the simplest technology exploits a whole collection of different phenomena, controlling and orchestrating the various effects to achieve a designed purpose. New technology invariably builds on older ones, borrowing previously developed solutions for providing particular functions, like off-the-shelf components. It is often only the ingenious new combination of established parts that is novel in an invention, and we’ve looked closely at two examples: the printing press and the internal combustion engine. Each new technology offers a novel function or advantage, which can in turn itself be incorporated into further innovation—tech begets more tech.

As we have seen throughout this book, history has witnessed the intimate interaction of science and technology. Researchers discover an unknown phenomenon, principally by demonstrating that an observation cannot be explained by any known phenomena, and then explore its different effects and learn how to maximize and control them. Harnessing these extra principles allows the creation of tools or other inventions to ease human toil or enrich everyday life—the process of turning oddity into commodity. Exploiting novel principles also allows the building of new scientific instruments and experiments, to scrutinize and measure nature in fresh ways, and so drive yet more fundamental discovery and the unearthing of further natural phenomena. Science and technology are in a close symbiotic relationship—scientific discovery drives technological advance, which in turn enables further knowledge-generation.

Not all innovations draw directly on recent discoveries, of course—the spinning wheel is a product of pragmatic problem solving—and even the celebrated poster boy of the Industrial Revolution, the steam engine, was initially developed predominantly through empirical
know-how and the practical intuition of the engineers rather than theoretical considerations. And indeed, there are examples in our history when inventors didn’t correctly understand the operating principle behind their creation, but it worked nonetheless. The practice of canning food for preservation, for example, was developed long before the acceptance of germ theory and the discovery of spoilage by microorganisms.

Even with the correct scientific understanding of the phenomena involved, producing a working invention demands far more than a single leap of imaginative creativity. Any successful innovation requires a long gestation period of tinkering and debugging the design before it works reliably enough to be adopted widely—this is the 99 percent perspiration that the American inventor Thomas Edison described as following the 1 percent inspiration. The same process of rigorous, methodical investigation that drives science is applied here as well, analyzing in this case not the natural world but our own artificial constructs—experimenting with nascent technology to understand its shortcomings and improve its effectiveness.

Survivors of the Fall will appreciate the importance of scientific understanding and critical analysis, which will be crucial in maintaining relic technology as long as possible. But over the generations the post-apocalyptic society must protect itself against slipping into a rationality coma of superstition and magic, and must nurture an inquisitive, analytical, evidence-based mind-set for the rapid attainment of their own technological capability. This is the flame that the survivors must keep burning. It is by thinking rationally that we have been able to vastly improve our productivity in growing food, to master materials beyond sticks and flint, to harness power sources beyond our own muscles, and to build transportation to convey us much farther than our own feet ever could. It is science that built our modern world, and it is science that will be needed to rebuild again.

THIS BOOK CAN OFFER
only glimpses of the vast architecture of current understanding and technology. But the areas we explored will be the most critical for nurturing a nascent culture through an accelerated reboot and enabling it to relearn all else. My hope is that by seeing just how civilization actually gathers and makes all the fundamentals we need, you’ll come to appreciate, just as I have during the research for this book, the things we take for granted in modern life: bountiful and varied food, spectacularly effective medicines, effortless and comfortable travel, and abundant energy.

Homo sapiens
first had a marked effect on the planet around ten thousand years ago, with the sudden disappearance of around half of the world’s large mammal species—we are the prime suspect for driving this extinction with our teamwork and improved hunting technology of stone axes and tipped spears. Over the next ten thousand years there was a steady deforestation around the Mediterranean Sea and northern Europe as people settled and cleared the surrounding land. Three hundred years ago the human population began to grow rapidly, and gradually every scrap of land that was suitable for agriculture became cultivated. There were also profound changes not just to the landscape, but to the chemistry of the entire planet, as hundreds of
millions of years of accumulated carbon was dug out of the ground and pumped into the atmosphere with mounting fervor. The rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere pushed the very climate of the world, driving global warming, rising sea levels, and acidification of the oceans. Dotted towns and cities swelled and coalesced with each other like bacterial colonies, as roads were draped like ribbons across the rolling landscape, looped into rings around large urbanizations, and tangled up in gloriously complex overpasses at major interchanges. A growing swarm of metallic craft hurried back and forth over the land and seas of the world, crisscrossing the skies, and some even piercing out of the atmosphere. At night this ceaseless fervent activity was apparent from space, with the continents marked out in webs of artificial lights, networks of glowing nodes and lines.

And then silence.

The worldwide network of traffic abruptly halts, the web of light fades and dies, cities rust and crumble.

How long will it take to rebuild? How quickly can technological society recover after a global cataclysm? The keys to rebooting civilization may well be within this book.

THE-KNOWLEDGE.ORG

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A small selection of books discussing the historical development of science and technology have proved absolutely indispensable through many of the chapters of this book, and I would recommend these as excellent texts for reading around the themes of
The Knowledge
:

W. Brian Arthur,
The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves
.

George Basalla,
The Evolution of Technology
.

Peter J. Bowler and Iwan Rhys Morus,
Making Modern Science: A Historical Survey
.

Thomas Crump,
A Brief History of Science: As Seen through the Development of Scientific Instruments
.

Patricia Fara,
Science
:
A Four Thousand Year History
.

John Gribbin,
Science: A History: 1543-2001
.

John Henry,
The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science
.

Richard Holmes,
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science
.

Steven Johnson,
Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
.

Joel Mokyr,
The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress
.

Abbott Payson Usher,
A History of Mechanical Inventions
.

Many of the themes of this book, including the conditions of the post-apocalyptic world and recovering from rudimentary means, have also been explored in novels, and here are a few that are well worth recommending. Both Daniel Defoe’s
Robinson Crusoe
and Johann David Wyss’s
The Swiss Family Robinson
tell stories of ingenious survival after being knocked back to basics after a shipwreck. Mark
Twain’s
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
recounts the efforts of an accidental time traveler, and
Island in the Sea of Time
by S. M. Stirling describes how the whole population of an island thrives after being transported back to the Bronze Age by an unexplained event. George R. Stewart’s
Earth Abides
follows a community recovering from an apocalypse delivered by plague, whereas John Christopher’s
The Death of Grass
covers the catastrophe wrought by disease that doesn’t affect humanity directly, but kills all grass species. Cormac McCarthy’s
The Road
is a brutal tale of father and son struggling for their lives in the lawless aftermath of an unspecified cataclysm, and Algis Budrys’s
Some Will Not Die
and David Brin’s
The Postman
deal with the struggle for power after the collapse of civilization, whereas Richard Matheson’s
I Am Legend
tells the story of the last surviving human. Pat Frank’s
Alas, Babylon
and Nevil Shute’s
On the Beach
both describe the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war, whereas
A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller Jr. considers the preservation of ancient knowledge centuries after a nuclear holocaust.
Riddley Walker
by Russell Hoban also looks at society generations after an apocalypse, but one that has regressed to a nomadic existence. Margaret Atwood’s two post-apocalyptic novels,
Oryx and Crake
and
The Year of the Flood
, as well as Jack McDevitt’s
Eternity Road
and Kim Stanley Robinson’s
The Wild Shore,
also present fascinating visions of life in a post-apocalyptic world. Also well worth reading are the anthologies of post-apocalyptic fiction:
The Ruins of Earth
(edited by Thomas M. Disch),
Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse
(ed. John Joseph Adams), and
The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF
(ed. Mike Ashley).

There is also a substantial literature on the alluring beauty of ruins and decaying urban spaces, the topic of the first chapter. Three good recent examples are Andrew Moore’s photographs in
Detroit Disassembled
;
Forbidden Places
by Sylvain Margaine; and RomanyWG’s
Beauty in Decay
.

I have also provided below a list of a few of the most relevant sources for the general subject matter of each chapter of this book, as well as the references for specific points. Many of these books belong to the Appropriate Technology Library, as indicated by the ATL reference number in brackets after the title. The ATL consists of more than a thousand digitized volumes that have been selected for the practical information they provide on self-sufficiency and rudimentary techniques, and is available on DVD or CD-ROM from Village Earth at http://villageearth.org/appropriate-technology/. Full citation information is given in the bibliography, and also see The Knowledge website, the-knowledge.org, for links to all the cited literature, including free downloads where available.

INTRODUCTION

Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Ćirković, eds.,
Global Catastrophic Risks.

Jared Diamond,
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
.

Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, “Can a Collapse of Global Civilization Be Avoided?”

John Michael Greer,
The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age
.

Bob Holmes,
“
Starting Over: Rebuilding Civilisation from Scratch.”

Debora MacKenzie, “Why the Demise of Civilisation May Be Inevitable.”

Jeffrey C. Nekola et al., “The Malthusian-Darwinian Dynamic and the Trajectory of Civilization.”

Glenn M. Schwartz and John J. Nichols, eds.,
After Collapse: The Regeneration of Complex Societies
.

Joseph A. Tainter,
The Collapse of Complex Societies
.

technological regression in Moldova
:
Connolly (2001).

I, Pencil
:
Read (1958). Also see Ashton (2013), “What Coke Contains.”

the Toaster Project
:
Thwaites (2011).

a book for all seasons
:
Lovelock (1998). Also see the rebuttal to Lovelock’s proposal, “How Not to Save Science,” in Greer (2006),
as well as more recent proposals for collating and preserving crucial knowledge in Kelly (2006), Raford (2009), Rose (2010), and Kelly (2011), and the humorous essential T-shirt for time travelers at http://www.topatoco.com/bestshirtever.

the encyclopedia as a safe repository of human knowledge
:
Yeo (2001).

Apollo program
:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/Apollo.html.

100 million man-hours devoted to Wikipedia
:
Shirky (2010).

Richard Feynman quote
:
“Atoms in Motion,” Chapter 1 in
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
(1964), now available free at http://feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_01.html.

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins
”:
T. S. Eliot (1922),
The Waste Land
.

fantasy of starting from scratch
:
In addition to the novels
Robinson Crusoe
and
The Swiss Family Robinson
already mentioned, a number of other fiction books explore the theme of using crucial knowledge to start over. These include Mark Twain’s 1889 novel of an accidental time traveler,
A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
; H. G. Wells’s 1895 novel
The Time Machine
; and S. M. Stirling’s
Island
in the Sea of Time
(1998), about an entire modern community transported back to the Bronze Age.

wheelbarrow
:
Lewis (1994).

leapfrogging
:
Davison (2000), Economist (2006), Economist (2008a, b), McDermott (2010).

Japan leapfrogging
:
Mason (1997).

intermediate or appropriate technology
:
Rybczynski (1980), Carr (1985).

repurposing
:
Edgerton (2007b).

1: THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT

Bruce D. Clayton,
Life After Doomsday: A Survivalist Guide to Nuclear War and Other Major Disasters
.

Aton Edwards,
Preparedness Now! An Emergency Survival Guide
.

Dan Martin,
Apocalypse: How to Survive a Global Crisis
.

James Wesley Rawles,
How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques and Technologies for Uncertain Times.

Laura Spinney, “Return to Paradise: If the People Flee, What Will Happen to the Seemingly Indestructible?”

Matthew R. Stein,
When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency
.

Neil Strauss,
Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life.

United States Army,
Survival (Field Manual 3-05.70)
.

Alan Weisman,
The World Without Us
.

John “Lofty” Wiseman,
SAS Survival Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere.

Jan Zalasiewicz,
The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks?

(I should, however, urge caution as not all that is contained in some of the post-appocalyptic survival guides listed above is good advice, particularly in the medical sections.)

Epigraph
:
Denis Diderot,
Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers
, 1751–1772. Text available free in the original French from the ARTFL Encyclopédie Project, http://artflsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.4:1252.encyclopedie0513. This English translation taken from Yeo (2001).

the Black Death and its social ramifications
:
Sherman (2006), Martin (2007).

the theoretical minimum needed for repopulation
:
Murray-McIntosh (1998), Hey (2005).

“I Am Legend” scenario
:
Richard Matheson,
I Am Legend
, 1954.

recolonization by nature and decay of the cities
:
Spinney (1996), Weisman (2007), Zalasiewicz (2008).

the post-apocalyptic climate
:
N. Stern (2006), Van Vuuren (2008), Solomon (2009), Cowie (2013).

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: Journeys Outside the System.

John Seymour,
The New Complete Book of Self-sufficiency
.

Dick and James Strawbridge,
Practical Self Sufficiency: The Complete Guide to Sustainable Living.

Jon Vogler,
Work from Waste: Recycling Waste to Create Employment
.

Epigraph
:
Daniel Defoe,
The Life
and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
, 1719. Text available free from Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/521.

prepping and survival during a major crisis
:
Clayton (1980), Edwards (2009), Martin (2011), Rawles (2009), Stein (2008), Strauss (2009), United States Army (2002).

water purification
:
Huisman (1974), Volunteers in Technical Assistance (1977), Conant (2005).

UK national food reserve
:
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (2010), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (2012).

degrading GPS accuracy
:
pers. comm., U. S. Coast Guard 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).

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 Fernández-Armesto,
Food: A History
.

John Seymour,
The New Complete Book of Self-sufficiency
.

Tom Standage,
An Edible History of Humanity
.

Epigraph
:
Wyndham (1951)

soil composition
:
P. Stern (1979), Wood (1981).

farm tools
:
Blandford (1976), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (1976), Hurt (1982).

harnessing oxen to a plow
:
Starkey (1989).

cereals
:
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (1977).

“humanity subsists, either directly or indirectly, by eating grass”
:
The potential consequences of this are explored brilliantly in John Christopher’s 1956 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.

Composting
:
Gotaas (1976), Dalzell (1981), Shuval (1981), De Decker (2010a).

biogas
:
House (1978), Goodall (2008), Strawbridge (2010).