It started with accidental creation of lime in firepits. Such lime can be quite dangerous, so it sort of called attention to itself pretty effectively, if you know what I mean. People had to either learn to recognize the process that created it, or learn how to collect and disarm it, or get hurt.
This almost deserves a topic by itself.
First, though, consider what the apolcalyptic threat model is. “Reboot technological civilization from first principles” makes a fun fantasy, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which we wouldn’t be rebuilding from the rubbish and wreckage of an existing technological civilization. We won’t be making iron from mud, we’ll be mining it from scrap heaps. Identifying alloys in the debris and being able to reprocess them would be a lot more useful than trying to make iron anew from iron bacteria!
One set of things that will be indispensible is the reference materials. (Not the know-how; the know-what.) The CRC Handbook. Mark’s Manual of Mechanical Engineering. Machinery’s Handbook. The Gingery manuals on how to assemble a machine shop of scrap material. Instructors’ lab manuals from the whole undergrad science curriculum - ideally for 1930’s equipment as well as modern.
Build a low-power computer, and a system to run it off car batteries (there will be scrap car batteries galore if the motor fuel distribution system breaks down!) charged with solar panels. Stock it in advance with a snapshot of Wikipedia, one of Open Street Map (plus for USAians the National Hydrographic Dataset, the National Elevation Dataset, and your state’s orthophotographic imagery), one of CiteSeer, the 10,000 top books from Project Gutenberg, mirrors of enough open-source repositories to rebuild the whole software stack on the machine - just shovel in the human knowledge.
Have stockpiles of dehydrated food, and firewood. The firewood can be standing - but you’ll need saws, axes, wedges, mauls on hand). It doesn’t need to be a LOT, unless the scenario you’re considering is the near-total loss of a year’s crop. With any lesser scenario, the amount that I keep around to have a ready supply for outings, plus a ready supply for power outages when I can’t access the freezer, will likely be enough. I always keep a couple of cords stacked on my porch, because I’ve had week-long electrical outages before.
Oh, and be healthy. I might make it through a collapse that’s not too bad; my wife depends for life on several medicines and a widespread, long-duration failure of the transportation network would be fatal for her.
But ‘rebuilding from scratch’ isn’t really what this series addresses. I do like following it, because I do find that when I’m in the field, sometimes less sophisticated stuff is actually more convenient than ‘modern’ alternatives, particularly if it can reduce my pack load by making use of native materials. Plus, it’s fascinating to see the old ways preserved, and realize that our ancestors were actually pretty smart!
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I wish the “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” crowd could wrap their brains around that idea. They probably think the Iron Age was a government hoax.
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Exactly. I’ve been attacking that angle for a while now. Coal ignites at 900F - add a simple bellows and it can easily melt any steel. And what do you find at the top of a high rise building? well that would be wind of course.
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Uhm, yeah. And most structural steels have lost over half their strength by the time they hit 900F or so. They don’t need to melt to fail.
If you are trying to melt iron, pyrloyse the wood or coal first - you don’t want to poison the melt with the volatile elements. You want to be burning nearly as pure carbon as possible. Charcoal and coke work well, wood and raw coal don’t.
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All that really needs to fail are the easily sheered rivets but the “truthers” will point to the very real puddles of melted steel to counter that argument. Silly I know, but what can you do?
Right, in a forge coke is best but that’s beside the point. Wood will melt steel just fine as long as you don’t care about what it does to your melt.
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