Lewis Dartnell

The Knowledge is an incredibly whiggish pean to appropriate technology, as viewed through the lens of the end of the world. Images of the apocalypse and what happens afterwards are commonplace today.

The legacy of civilization would decay at strongly varying rates. The electrical grid and water system would fail almost instantaneously, within hours. Fresh fruits and meats would rot in days, dry preserved items might last for months or years before rodents breached the packaging, while canned show more goods could endure for decades. The material world would see similar destruction. Gasoline turns to sludge within a matter of months. Unmaintained buildings would fall apart in years. Some material objects, like glass, aluminum, and some plastics, are basically indestructible on human timescales. Even steel would take a long time to rust. Depending on how many survivors there were, they could live on the corpse of civilization for quite a time.

But quite a time is not forever, and at some point, civilization needs a reboot. The question there is what can be regained quickly, and what has hard limits in terms of complexity and resources. On the upside, there's a lot of useful inventions that were discovered surprisingly late in history that don't require advanced materials. For example, the horse collar didn't arrive until the 15th century, and makes carts and plows much more useful. A 19th century schooner is made out of the same wood and rope as a trireme, and is an infinitely more handy ship. For mechanical engineering, knowing the Bessemer process to make ample steel, and the importance of the lathe and milling machine for precision parts, can let a reboot civilization skip directly from the 2nd century to the 19th. Similarly, sulfuric acid is fundamental to almost every industrial process, and can be obtained from a reaction with pyrite rocks and chlorine gas, which can be gotten from electrolyzed brine. Radio and antiseptics are similar low hanging technological fruit. On the downside, automobiles require a lot of precision engineering and rubber (rough if you don't live in the tropics) and petroleum and semi-conductors might be permanently lost fields.

This book is fun, but there a lot of "simply take {raw material} and cook it in a vessel to extract {useful substance}", without much analysis of exactly how easy it would be to manage this without waste products, or in an environment where both food and fuel are tightly constrained. Everything seems easy-peasy lemon squeezy, while overlooking the parts that might be difficult difficult lemon difficult. In terms of wasted opportunities, there's not a lot on the idea of what could be scavenged and repurposed, aside from the back half of automobiles become hackney carriages, which is the fun part of the wastelands. And the book ends with a resounding defense of the scientific method and innovation, which is hard to square with the utility of "ancient" wisdom after the apocalypse. Two millennium of believing the infallibility of Aristotle did enough damage to progress; would new thinkers be able to escape the shadow of thinkers who were right about much more? show less

Il mondo che conoscevamo non esiste più. Un ceppo aviario particolarmente virulento ha infranto la barriera tra le specie ed è riuscito a compiere il salto per contagiare gli esseri umani, o forse è stato deliberatamente diffuso con un atto di bioterrorismo.

Il contagio si è propagato con una rapidità devastante in un’epoca moderna caratterizzata da città densamente popolate e viaggi aerei intercontinentali, uccidendo una vasta parte della popolazione globale prima che ci fosse il show more tempo per mettere a punto un vaccino efficace o almeno predisporre una quarantena.

«Quando la nostra civiltà crollerà, sarete capaci di cavarvela, almeno nelle cose più semplici?» Questa domanda ha il potere di spiazzarci e di insinuare in noi una certa inquietudine perché, pur essendo abituati a pensare che soddisfare le esigenze di base sia facile, basta immaginarci per un momento nei panni di Robinson Crusoe postapocalittici, privi di accesso a Internet e a biblioteche ben fornite, per renderci conto di quanto scarse siano le nostre conoscenze davvero utili a risolvere i problemi della vita di tutti i giorni. E anche se per un certo periodo potremo attingere ai resti della civiltà scomparsa, dovremo pur sempre decidere quali privilegiare e come servircene, e valutare se sia preferibile stabilirci in metropoli deserte ma ricche di infrastrutture oppure in sobborghi rurali dove abbondano le risorse naturali. Per orientarci in queste scelte cruciali, cosa potrebbe essere più utile di un «manuale di sopravvivenza alla catastrofe»? Bene, adesso c’è.

Lewis Dartnell, studioso di scienze planetarie, ci fornisce tutte le informazioni necessarie su come procurarci il cibo, costruirci una casa, guarire da ferite e malattie, produrre fibre tessili per poi trasformarle in indumenti, e altre attività ugualmente importanti. Il suo vero scopo, però, è mostrare la centralità della più grande invenzione umana, quella che rende possibili e feconde tutte le altre: il metodo scientifico, fenomenale macchina generatrice di conoscenza. È questo che deve essere tramandato ai superstiti, per evitare la condanna a un’incerta e lunghissima ripetizione «alla cieca» della storia passata.

Ecco allora che spazi urbani riconquistati dalle foreste, in cui i grattacieli diventano torri vegetali, o devastati da esplosioni, crolli e incendi indomabili, potrebbero aprirsi alla rinascita di una civiltà che offrirà un panorama fantascientifico di carcasse di auto trainate come calessi da cavalli o buoi, e oceani solcati da navi a vela dotate di bussole e sestanti…

Nel frattempo, in attesa dell’apocalisse prossima ventura, la riflessione su ciò che è indispensabile sapere per garantirci la sopravvivenza ci apre gli occhi sulla ricchezza storica e la complessità tecnologica sottese alla nostra solo apparentemente «semplice» vita quotidiana.
Lewis Dartnell, astrobiologo, è ricercatore presso lo Space Research Center dell’Università di Leicester. Divulgatore scientifico e giornalista televisivo, ha pubblicato: Life in the Universe: A Beginner’s Guide (2007) e, con Dorling Kindersley, il libro illustrato per l’infanzia My Tourist’s Guide to the Solar System and Beyond (2012). show less

This is an unusual and fascinating book. In outline: a bit like a cross between The Whole Earth Catalogue and The Amateur Scientist section of the old Scientific American magazine in its ‘access to tools’ and DIY/Maker ethic; steam punk-like convoluted and pointlessly elaborated and pastel-coloured geometries but clear illustrations showing principles and mechanics; highly practical selection of topics suitable for a new age post-hippie or post-holocaust enclave, from fire-making to show more surgery to mining to optics to games; ridiculously small text (5 point?) but consequently an easily pocketed or carried compendium of practical activities to survive the collapse of the modern world by recreating reliable methods used by earlier generations. The text is tiny because my beautiful paperback copy seems to be a scaled-down version of the original large-format coffee table book. Most intriguingly of all, the authors, illustrators and makers behind this genuinely useful and educational guide have gone out of their way to hide their identity. show less

Origins is a fascinating demonstration of the many ways geology (and other earth sciences) has shaped human history. Some of it is well known like the Black Belt in the American South East. But much of it is new, or at least seems new when told as a whole. Civilizations it turns out arose along the fault lines of continental plates because this is where minerals and other resources tend to be most available. The human species arose in the rift valley of East Africa because the unique show more geography creates a wet-period/dry-period "pump" that sped up evolution and eventually pushed humans out of Africa. It keeps going page after page of perspectives and ideas. Your interest in this might be equal to how interesting you already find the topic of geology and human history. I see the influence of geology everywhere in my home region, the earth is a strong but largely invisible background force on people's lives, it takes some consideration to see its influence, however it is everywhere from the large to the small and when you discover something it's a eureka moment. Origins does a good job at showing many large-scale examples I never knew about (and many I did). Everything seems to come back to plate tectonics, that is what made the earth and the earth is what made us. Well worth the journey across time and place. One should remember that just as demography is not destiny, neither is geology, yet both are powerful background forces that like small waves can push the giant ship of history. show less