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Comment by gokhan | Hacker News Reader

> The number of individuals who know how to make a can of Coke is zero.

This reminds me a fact I remember time to time. If civilization collapses after, say, a world war, I most probably can't make a pot, can't grow plants, can't differentiate if one is edible or not, can't dig for petrol, can't make plastic (or even glass), can't reinvent concrete, can't make gunpowder etc., you get the point.

I can only write software and maybe drill with tools and nail with a hammer but that's all.

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The english translation doesn't do justice to it but this comic is relevant:

http://english.bouletcorp.com/2012/12/09/homo-technologicus/

The original French version:

http://www.bouletcorp.com/blog/2009/03/01/homo-technologicus...

Some people here (including Americans ;) ) do speak other languages. :)

Basic concrete is actually not that complex.

You need to burn limestone until it collapses into a powder, then add sand and water. Done. For stronger cement, add clay powder.

Have you never had relatives who built a house? Sure, usually you'd buy the powdered stone, but I've heard stories of my great grandparent's generation making it on site.

(Rhetorical questions) What does limestone look like? Where can I find it, and what do I need to know about working with it? How hot does the fire have to be, and what do I need to know to build a fire that hot?

Maybe I'm just dumb on some of these points, but these are my personal followup questions that indicate that, even knowing these basics, I couldn't immediately make concrete without "civilization". Even the great grandparents who made their own concrete, may have bought the limestone and not known how to get it themselves.

Limestone is the brittle yellow rock that you can find sometimes. Hmm, now Im interested in how they locate it underground. But there are many naturally occurring open deposits like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Cliffs_of_Dover

Wikipedia is your friend, but the easiest place to get calcium carbonate is from shells. Most parts of the world have earthenware clay from which vessels can be made.

I know I could look it up, that's why I said they were rhetorical questions. The information is appreciated nonetheless.

I'm not saying I'm helpless to learn these things, just reinforcing GP's point that the average first-worlder (or at least programmer) doesn't know the first thing about this kind of stuff. Even when you do know the "first things" from Wikipedia, it's not necessarily going to enable you to just go out and make concrete from scratch in an afternoon on your first try.

Some walls in Australia still contain traces of seashells.

Early settlers used the piles of shells left by Aborigines to make mortar.

http://blogs.hht.net.au/cook/oyster-shells/

http://mileslewis.net/australian-building/pdf/07-cement-conc...

Re: the edibility of plants. For this, you can substitute experience and knowledge for a simple algorithm, the universal edibility test. You can read about it here: http://www.wilderness-survival.net/forums/showthread.php?166...

You should at least know how to splice and crimp an ethernet cable.

These books are super dense with that sort of thing. We bought them when we moved out to the country, I've barely scratched the surface. Not really durable though.

http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Wisdom-Know-How-Everything/dp...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1579123686/

http://www.amazon.com/Garden-Wisdom-Know-How-Everything-Harv...

Those are some great resources, thanks for that!

This is true, but they kind of over did it with a heavy hand. My local beer company uses locally made beer bottles and local sources for most of its ingredients.

If the international supply chain falls through that has marginally dropped prices, they'll just switch back to the national one. Once they do bottle production will go through the roof, prices will rapidly drop and instead of it being $0.50 a can and $1.50 a glass bottle of coke it'll end up more like $0.75 a bottle.

I also don't think the world will end like people assume. Its not like the mediaeval dark ages, everyone reads and the books containing this knowledge are widely available.

Our biggest issue is the international supply chains, but people should look up the tin trade if they think there wasn't always an international supply chain. We just didn't ship things back and forth around the globe multiple times in some instances.

I think most people would be surprised that if the world ended tomorrow, we would probably be back to the 1900's level of development by the end of an individuals lifespan.

"Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it." http://www.thetoasterproject.org/

I was relatively unimpressed by this one. Iron smelting can be done manually but he uses a microwave to do it instead. Which skips over a huge chunk of the story.

This is why I read about one or two random thing every day. Of course reading is not doing, but it's better than not knowing.

you knew how to survive a civilization destroying world war tho

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