I will either
1) despair of the survival chances of humanity (at least in America) if we lose our computers, or
2) argue with someone about the amount of information we have in tradition sources-- baselines vary from "all computers are nuked," through "all libraries are nuked" to "somehow all books are just destroyed, OK?"
In situation 2, I usually draw on the stuff my folks' generation knows-- mom has a BS in animal husbandry and does leather working, dad blacksmiths as a hobby and just knows tons of survival stuff, both need zero reference stuff to raise animals, raise plants effectively (including rotation, crossbreeding, etc) and repair most anything well enough to get back to someplace that can fix it. I've got uncles who can make guns and ammunition, can find mines, tell you now to mine, smelt and such... all kinds of information, in short, is in leetle gray cells.
This trope gives me hope that there is an even bigger pool of information to be drawn from-- for example: Dwarf Fortress is probably the only game in existence for which a geology textbook is a good substitute for a strategy guide. The steps for creating alloys and certain types of glass are also 100% accurate, and most existing abstractions are temporary.
4 comments:
Check out George Stweart's Earth Abides or Niven & Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer for some thorough, yet hopeful material. Plus they're great books...
I'll have to check it out-- in a less serious application, Fallen Angels is like a primer for the sci-fi fan culture, including filks.... (Growing up in small population areas, not a lot of geek-culture to draw on, beyond the net-- very interesting to read!)
Yet one more reason to take your children to the woods with a map and compass. Does anyone use a Thomas Guide anymore or just Mapquest and Garmen?
Let them see an animal being dressed and have them engage in gardening.
*googles and finds out it's a map company*
I love my electronic map-route thing, even though I do keep double-checking with an actual map.
I actually never learned much about map-and-compass navigation-- didn't have a lot of places it'd be very useful, instead learned things like "in doubt, go down hill until you hit water, then follow that down stream-- where there's water, there's people." Oh, and signs of hypothermia-- both in yourself and others-- how to make shelters in various seasons, including a snow cave, and regional ways to get dry wood for a fire. (Nevada: sage brush hearts; Washington: carry some starter and dry out twigs....)
"Jack-knife Cookery," (a great book) tons of "you can eat this stuff" lectures from mom, lots of cleaning fish with dad.
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