When the World Ends, You’ll Need The Knowledge (Book Review)

Geek Dad blog ^ | April 17, 2014 | James Floyd Kelly

[2ndDivisionVet]

Author Lewis Dartnell poses an interesting question in his new book, The Knowledge: How To Rebuild Our World From Scratch:

If our technological society collapsed tomorrow, perhaps from a viral pandemic or catastrophic asteroid impact, what book would you want to press into the hands of the survivors?

Just over a decade ago, I was living in Texas and taking occasional trips out to the hill country for camping, hiking, and climbing. There’s a whole-lot-of-nothing out there, if you’ve never been. It’s beautiful, but you can go days without seeing another human being if you’re in the right spot. Bringing in your own water and food are an obvious necessity, and you’ve got to be very careful with every activity as medical help isn’t easily available… and neither is mobile phone coverage. My friends and I would frequently sit around the campfire and talk about just how society sat so precariously on that razor’s edge and question whether we were truly prepared if we lost the corner grocery store, indoor plumbing, and every other modern necessity that we take for granted.

I’m not a sky-is-falling kind of guy. I don’t have a bunker behind my house and a decade’s worth of food stocked away for my family (although I do sometimes think about it). Every generation has had its concerns about the world ending, but I’m one of those optimists that hopes we’ll be able to solve our problems — water shortages, global warming, pandemics — and not be despised by our great-great-grandkids.

But who really knows? Asteroids are flying around our universe with sufficient mass and speed. New and scarier viruses seem to pop up every few years. So many countries seem to want their own nuclear bombs these days. Experts seem to think a major financial collapse lurks around the corner. Just how prepared are we if the world we know it stopped functioning normally for an extended period of time? How long would we last without the modern conveniences of electricity, medicine, clothing, food, and clean water?

There are plenty of books out there that offer up advice for short term and long term survival — you can learn how to find and purify water, how to build a shelter, how to start a fire, and so much more. But so many survival books focus on the short term — three days to three months. What happens if a collapse of society is more permanent? What kinds of problems are we looking at and how might we get around them? And, ultimately, how might we more quickly recover from a collapse? These and more are the questions posed and given answers in Dartnell’s The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch.

The first three chapters introduce readers to the situation — a complete and utter collapse of civilization. Whatever the reason, Dartnell explains that what will be needed if humans are to survive is a reboot-manual. He offers up some examples of collapses that humans could most likely survive… and types of collapses where things don’t look too good for humans. For those types of collapse where we have a fighting chance, Dartnell argues that there are certain skills that we simply cannot lose… to lose them would mean extinction or additional dark ages where everything humans knew pre-collapse would have to be rediscovered through trial and error… and trial and error in this situation means more lives lost.

Dartnell briefly offers up a discussion on what he calls the Grace Period… where your chance of survival means figuring out how best to set yourself up to be part of the survivor group that will need to survive and preserve as much knowledge as possible. He tells you why you’ll need to get out of the city. Immediately. You’ll get a crash course in food and water prep and some discussions on what to expect when the power grid goes down. And then the book takes a solid turn…

For the remainder of the book, each chapter takes on a single category with Dartnell offering up a brief history on the category (such as clothing) and how that category developed over time… and finally with what information would need to be kept secure in order to make certain humans didn’t have to make the same development discovery and errors. Chapter categories include Agriculture, Food & Clothing, Materials, Medicine, Power, Transport, Communication, and many more.

Each chapter will open your eyes to just how much information and innovation have been collected over thousands of years. Dartnell shares breakthroughs and unique details related to each category; what’s shocking is just specialized our society has become and how many skills have been lost as manufacturing technologies have replaced the human element. Sure, there are plenty of people in the world who might still know how to create spun yarn, but how many of them might still be around after the collapse of society? How many people these days know how to properly can their food and use simple chemical processes to slow down food spoil? Do you know how to properly find and prepare a field for planting crops? And if you do, do you know the best way to keep the soil’s nutrients replaced over time?

Dartnell’s book is an eye-opener. Glass. Aspirin. Soap. These and dozens more are just the simplest of items that humans are at risk of losing because we lack the knowledge to recreate them. And I said simplest of items… the book offers plenty more subjects that are going to be even more difficult to make, but all are required for modern society — sulphuric acid, for example, used to produce fertilizer, bleach cotton, making detergents, prepping iron, creating lubricants, and much more.

Over 300 pages in length, The Knowledge is an amazing checklist of human discovery. It could also be an extremely depressing checklist for human survivors as they inventory everything they’ve lost.

One big caveat — Dartnell’s book is NOT a How-To guide. He does cover dozens and dozens of topics in a summary-type manner, but you’re not going to finish reading this book and immediately know how to create your own soap or aspirin, for example. Dartnell does explain the basic idea behind most every concept, but it’s going to be up to you to reach further if you wish to develop any or all of these skills.

One obvious point you’ll pick up on quickly as you read through the book is just how valuable it will be for humans to gather together again. We’ve all seen the movies and TV shows that show how society degrades into us-vs-them, but Dartnell makes a solid point that there’s simply no way for any one person to have all of the skills necessary to reboot society. With that thought in mind, the book can provide you a jumping off point for picking one or two specialties that you might be able to add to a small group of survivors. I’m pretty good at making little wind generators that could light a single lightbulb, and I’ve actually made soap in my younger years and could probably figure it out again with minimal effort.

Whether you’re a prepper or not, The Knowledge is one of those books that could be invaluable to anyone wanting a better understanding of just how dependent we’ve become on technology to do our work for us… and how many skills have been lost over the years. For me, I’m crossing my fingers that the book never moves beyond a simple thought experiment. But in a worst case scenario, The Knowledge is one book that you’ll want to seek out (if you don’t own a copy) and preserve with extreme prejudice along with any other books that can provide what society will need to survive, reboot, and rebuild.

[nascarnation]

I agree the bottom strata were mired in the Superdome, etc, but Estimates indicate about a quarter million people migrated from greater NOLA to greater Houston after Katrina.

[null and void]

I’m not familiar with the third book you cited, nor does a quick web search illuminate it for me.

[Marcella]

The third book is the actual person of that engineer - it’s what he has in his brain.

[betsyross60]

bttt

[verga]

Thank you, looks like a great site.

[PowderMonkey]

Yup. And, Houston has regretted laying out that welcome mat ever since. A quarter million “Katrina Specials” now living fat on “Lone Star” benefits cards, and driving local crime stats through the roof.

[vladimir998]

The Foxfire books have some great info. It’s a shame the man who put them together raped some of the children involved in researching and writing the materials: http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/13/us/foxfire-book-teacher-admits-child-molestation.html

[Maudeen]

Going through old books and a newsletter fell out. It was dated September 1999 and the headline read “the Shaking”. Checked to see if the ministry was still going and guess what? “the Shaking” was on the website. In re-reading the newsletter “the Shaking” was a chapter written for a book authored by several pastors. I read the website post last night it in its entirety. . .instead of scripture by scripture the author used a fictional character to take the readers through the tribulation. Whether you are pre-trib, post-trib or don’t know what a trib is, I think it is worth the read.

http://www.lifereachministries.com/theshaking.aspx

[bgill]

I quit reading after he claimed the Hill Country is so desolate. Bunch of horse hooey.

[Redcitizen]

[Mat_Helm]

GAME OVER MAN!

[The Duke]

Shameless plug for my own book ("When There is No FEMA"). I think it probably covers some bases that are outside the scope of these other noteworthy references:

http://www.amazon.com/When-There-No-FEMA-Survival/dp/098981940X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Also available at:

http://nofema.com

...but it's good to see the reader reviews on Amazon (all 5-star ratings so far!)

[crazycatlady]

Thanks for posting. This will go on my wish list.

Depending on the nature of the calamity, my guess is that a sizable percentage of the population would die within the first few days or weeks, of illness, injury, misadventure, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many of those adults left will be healthier, smarter, tougher and more adept at handling emergencies and adversity.

I, too have often thought how complicated our degree of civilization is, and how much we take for granted. Specialization has made a lot of it possible but also has a steep downside.

[crazycatlady]

If you are interested in this subject from the viewpoint of literature and not a how-to, I always thought that The Stand(long version) by Stephen King was pretty good. Of course the epidemic kills the vast majority of humans( and dogs) but a tiny percentage who are somehow resistant are left. But of those, some die of secondary causes, everything from crime and accidents to not having medicines needed for chronic conditions.

[thecodont]

Thanks for the post. I will look for this book.

Reminds me of George R. Stewart’s dystopian novel “Earth Abides.” He posited that the struggling remnants of civilization would re-adopt polygamy and shamanism, would forget forgery and revert to almost Stone-Age toolmaking, and would abandon literacy.

Books to keep: Bible, Foxfire Books, When There Is No Doctor, How Things Work, plus a Webster’s Dictionary.

[Southack]

I have this book and it is a little different from standard prepper tomes. Most prepper books focus on survival.

This book does have suggestions for survival, but its focus is on providing information for rebuilding a society...or another way to look at it would be that its focus is on saving the most essential “basic knowledge” so that the world doesn’t go through another Dark Ages ala Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire.

So this book shows crop rotations and farming handtools up through stages of useful farm mechanization to eventually get to modern farming, for example.

...and it points out that obtaining crop surplusses frees up labor/people for non-survival activities such as inventing, music, arts, building, etc.

*interestingly enough, its author focuses on annual plantings of civilized basic crops such as rice, wheat, and corn instead of on labor-saving perennial orchards of cherry trees, apple trees, grape vineyards, kiwi plants, etc.

He shows how to make thread from sheep/cotton, and the labor saving devices in using thread for fabric.

How to make and use quicklime, and why.

Bronze Age and Iron Age basics that can be performed from scratch so that a society doesn’t drop back to the Dark Ages once the pre-apocalypse surplusses of goods have been consumed.

Step by step is given, at stage after stage (gunpowder, electricity) with the focus on rebuilding a “modern” society more efficiently than if all knowledge was lost by survivors and the wheel had to be re-invented.

[ClayinVA]

pretty expensive book in today’s market.

[The Duke]

..pretty expensive book in today’s market.

I totally agree. I have to think 2 or 3 times before putting out this amount of money for a book.

Unfortunately I could not in good conscience author a book of the marginal quality that is consistent with those low prices. In fact, it was my dissatisfaction with these more modest books that inspired the 3-year writing odyssey that culminated in the publication of "When There is No FEMA".

Among the top-tier books that are available on the subject, however, the price of WTINF compares reasonably well.

The 'nofema.com' web site allows you to download a PDF preview of the first 60 pages of the book. I suggest you have a look at that and you may begin to appreciate the difference. Also, WTINF is the only survival-related book I've seen on Amazon that enjoys a perfect 5-star rating - I recommend a review of that reader feedback.

Sometimes a person really does get what they pay for. :)

[Ellendra]

One big caveat — Dartnell’s book is NOT a How-To guide. He does cover dozens and dozens of topics in a summary-type manner, but you’re not going to finish reading this book and immediately know how to create your own soap or aspirin, for example. Dartnell does explain the basic idea behind most every concept, but it’s going to be up to you to reach further if you wish to develop any or all of these skills.

Up until there, this was sounding like the kind of book I've been looking for all my life. I might add it to my wishlist, but I'll keep collecting the how-tos.