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Things like the 'Global Village Construction Set' may help - its open-source designs for the 50 machines you'd need to reboot civilisation. http://opensourceec

Things like the 'Global Village Construction Set' may help - its open-source designs for the 50 machines you'd need to reboot civilisation. http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/ http://opensourceecology.org/gvcs/

AnimalMuppet 12y ago
How many of those machines need energy supplies at least similar to our current ones in order to function? Quite a few of them. Blueprints for how to make a tractor won't help if the blueprints assume gas or diesel fuel, and there's no oil any more...
- Turing_Machine 12y ago
  Engineers are actually pretty good at making new blueprints. In fact, they already did it once. Coal-fired steam engines powered civilization once, and could easily do it again. Probably better, using modern techniques such as fluidized beds, pelletizing, etc. There's this perception that oil will some day "run out" suddenly, like the last sip at the bottom of a milkshake. It doesn't work that way. If it happens, oil will gradually become more expensive, until the point where it becomes more economic to use coal (or fission, or fusion, or whatever). At that point, the amount of oil remaining becomes moot.
jacquesm 12y ago
I've done some pretty serious 'rebooting' and I guarantee you that building any of those designs 'from scratch' is not going to work without decades of lead time to create the pre-requisites. I doubt there are shortcuts to go from nothing to diy truck that do not lead past many long years of grunt-work to get the basics in place that will allow you to make the next step. It would be a lot more impressive if that list worked its way up from having nothing but hand-tools that use no energy to basic generating capacity, smaller power tools, larger power tools, actual machinery. If you don't have a plan like that in place this will lead absolutely nowhere, try making a hydraulic piston without a really good lathe, a supply of oil, a good seal, a pump and so on. The list of pre-requisites for something as simple as a hydraulic piston is very long. Metal fabrication is just like software building layer upon layer of capabilities.
- pharke 12y ago
  Absolutely agree, for many of those machines it would prove far more valuable to compile a history of early, working designs that are more easily produced with simple methods and tools and update them judiciously making use of current art but maintaining simplicity. Then create a roadmap of development leading from one catalogue of tools (and techniques) to the next. The whole project should not be undertaken as "what would I design if I wanted to restart civilization tomorrow" but as "what would I design if I were to be transported to 1500 with nothing but this catalogue".
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    And then there's the matter of infrastructure, quite a few of those machines assume a readily available supply of fuel, electricity or hard to get substances such as oil for lubrication and other raw materials such as bar stock, rolled sheet and so on. If anything the 'reboot' would simply re-use or salvage that what was left over from the aftermath of whatever did us in in the first place, it's a lot easier to fix an old jeep than to make a new one and it will still outperform a horse when doing tractor duty.

AnimalMuppet 12y ago

How many of those machines need energy supplies at least similar to our current ones in order to function? Quite a few of them. Blueprints for how to make a tractor won't help if the blueprints assume gas or diesel fuel, and there's no oil any more...

Turing_Machine 12y ago
Engineers are actually pretty good at making new blueprints. In fact, they already did it once. Coal-fired steam engines powered civilization once, and could easily do it again. Probably better, using modern techniques such as fluidized beds, pelletizing, etc. There's this perception that oil will some day "run out" suddenly, like the last sip at the bottom of a milkshake. It doesn't work that way. If it happens, oil will gradually become more expensive, until the point where it becomes more economic to use coal (or fission, or fusion, or whatever). At that point, the amount of oil remaining becomes moot.

jacquesm 12y ago

I've done some pretty serious 'rebooting' and I guarantee you that building any of those designs 'from scratch' is not going to work without decades of lead time to create the pre-requisites. I doubt there are shortcuts to go from nothing to diy truck that do not lead past many long years of grunt-work to get the basics in place that will allow you to make the next step. It would be a lot more impressive if that list worked its way up from having nothing but hand-tools that use no energy to basic generating capacity, smaller power tools, larger power tools, actual machinery. If you don't have a plan like that in place this will lead absolutely nowhere, try making a hydraulic piston without a really good lathe, a supply of oil, a good seal, a pump and so on. The list of pre-requisites for something as simple as a hydraulic piston is very long. Metal fabrication is just like software building layer upon layer of capabilities.

pharke 12y ago
Absolutely agree, for many of those machines it would prove far more valuable to compile a history of early, working designs that are more easily produced with simple methods and tools and update them judiciously making use of current art but maintaining simplicity. Then create a roadmap of development leading from one catalogue of tools (and techniques) to the next. The whole project should not be undertaken as "what would I design if I wanted to restart civilization tomorrow" but as "what would I design if I were to be transported to 1500 with nothing but this catalogue".
- jacquesm 12y ago
  And then there's the matter of infrastructure, quite a few of those machines assume a readily available supply of fuel, electricity or hard to get substances such as oil for lubrication and other raw materials such as bar stock, rolled sheet and so on. If anything the 'reboot' would simply re-use or salvage that what was left over from the aftermath of whatever did us in in the first place, it's a lot easier to fix an old jeep than to make a new one and it will still outperform a horse when doing tractor duty.