I’ve talked a bit recently on the need to preserve knowledge, and in particular a lot of “obsolete” knowledge — or at least forms of knowledge. In fact, I’ve talked about saving printed tables, guides, formulas, and more. Things easily found today on the Internet. Between that big article and some other posts where I talk about such, the question “Why?” has come up.
The answer comes in two parts. The two parts can be summed up in the words “Ooops” and “Bootstrapping.”
“Ooops” covers a range of possibilities, all of which exist because the system that is our modern world is a fairly fragile thing. People who have worked not just in, but with the systems that make up the System, understand that. Those who gleefully call for changing the system (political, technical, economic, etc.) in a radical fashion have done either only extremely rarely. In point of fact as several people have recently pointed out, they have no equity in the system as well as no experience with maintenance of the system (or anything else). They have no skull sweat, no real sweat, and no other type of real investment in any of the systems. It’s the reason they think that any current system (think Republic, power production, transportation, etc.) can easily be taken down and replaced — often by something new and unproven.
Most systems that make up the larger System are not only delicate, however, they are fragile and/or brittle. Take the electrical grid (Please!) for but one example. It is a jury-rigged system that includes equipment and control systems that were produced in multiple different decades (two different centuries even) that have to work together. Right now, it does so (sorta, mostly, sometimes). Or, look at data and communications, which depend on a limited number of undersea cables far more than they do on satellites. Or modern grocery stores, that depend on just-in-time deliveries from a network of warehouses that also depend on just-in-time deliveries made by transportation fleet that is heavily dependent on both data (communications) and computers, which depend on the grid and on a transportation infrastructure that is crumbling in far too many areas. Not just roadways and railroads, but look at the travesty that is the U.S. Merchant Marine, U.S. shipbuilding, and surface transport in general.
I could go on, and may one day lay out more of the fault trees, but this is enough to give you a basic feel for how fragile things are. If anything happens to the power, the data, the computers, the communications go down. Something happens to the undersea cables, your data transmission capabilities could go drastically down. Your data and coms go down, so goes your just-in-time logistics system. Which means that you are talking about three days of food in most stores, and with panics and such, you could be talking as little as three hours before it is gone.
Now, there are many things that can cause that “Ooops.” A terrorist attack on military and other infrastructure could do the trick. Combine that with more general terrorist attacks, and you have something that several orders of magnitude worse. If you follow space weather, you should already know about that odd spot on that great big fusion reaction in the sky, our star Sol — aka the sun. It is odd, and has even done a few things it shouldn’t. It’s also why the aurora have been seen so far south this year. I’ve talked a time or two before about Carrington Events, and if you are not familiar with them you might want to dig in on that topic. Yep, war, pestilence, or another bad software update (you might remember that update that temporarily bricked about a billion workstations not that long ago), or a host of other factors. Heck, world-wide political upheaval can not just set the stage (look here, Brazil, France, etc.); but, could do the trick quite nicely on it’s own. Any disaster (remember, there are inconveniences, emergencies, and then disasters) that goes on for a sufficient period of time can do the trick.
In one of his series, John Ringo had an “Ooops” that took the planet from a Golden Age to something close to medieval in just a few seconds. Think he presented it by showing a young girl who for her (16th?) birthday was digitized so that she could exist as a cloud of nanites, and she did so, for a very short time before the system crashed/was crashed and the cloud that had been a young girl full of joy fell scattered to the Earth. It really doesn’t take much to have the “Ooops.” In fact, if you take out just one system that makes up our current System, you get that “Ooops.” Energy, transport, data, etc. if you lose one, you are extremely likely to lose them all.
Ooops.
Which is why people who plan for disasters (at least those who know what they are doing) have as a contingency plan the concept of bootstrapping. In the event of an “Ooops” we can’t maintain our current technology, much less manufacture replacements. For a pretty good discussion on this, you might check out the late Eric Flint’s 1632 series from Baen Books. In it, he and a group of other good authors deal with this concept even as they create an alternate history. Good books, and also not a bad series to have around if there is an “Ooops.”
A short version, since you can literally write a series of books on the topic, is that if something takes out the current System, you are pretty much going to be having to drop back to 1800s steam tech for a lot of things. Without power, you are not running advanced manufacturing (3-D, CNC, chip fab, etc.) if you have it at your location. Even if you can get or keep some power on, you still can’t run it long given modern logistics. Even then, you could not make the machines to make the current levels of machines without the current base. Long story, but you are going to be dropping back several generations of machines and tooling just to hang on, and begin the slow process of rebuilding a tech base. You are also going to have a big knowledge gap since a lot of critical information (and skills) are likely to be lost in the “Ooops.”
So, again, people who know what they are doing plan to bootstrap and to do what they can to prevent having to drop back too far. One way to do that is to have on paper or other archival form as much basic data as possible. Everything from Trig tables to on to chemical formulas for products from the early 1900s (or later if possible). You want and need your engineering and physics calculations and tables. You need your metalurgical tables. Heck, you need your meteorological tables and histories even. You need your chemistry tables, formulas, periodic charts, and more. All in forms that will last and can be accessed without the need for power or modern systems.
Also, the more sites that have such information, the better. Dispersal ensures survivability, both of the data and quite possibly humanity. It provides resiliency that is essential to create a new System in the face of disaster. Keep in mind that it literally took thousands of years to collect and codify that data to start with. Having it on hand and widely dispersed cuts down on your recovery time. It is the difference between having to drop back to a pre-industrial society or to a point just before the greatest technological boom in human history. Keep in mind that we went from powered flight to landing on the moon in less than a hundred years. Because we had the data, the skills, and could (would and did) develop the materials and systems required.
We have that data and more now, just as we have computational power in our pocket via that smart phone that was considered fiction even unto the 1960s or later. Remember that for a period of time, given how fast computer tech moved, the most power computer on the Shuttle was the calculator in the pilot’s flight suit.
Which also reminds me, include medical data with the items to be stored. Even old (say 2000) text books that are now outdated have information that, again, was only a dream even in the 1960s. It’s a good idea to be able to bootstrap more than manufacturing.
Which is the other key to a dispersed effort. Trade. One of the most important, and valuable, trade items in the face of disaster has always been knowledge. In a disaster, it would not be surprising to see medical data being traded for geological data that might also be traded for materials or construction data…
Store as much as you can in as many forms as you can, if you have a means to print any data that is not already printed. In a real disaster, print is always going to be king.
Finally, thanks for the great comments in the post linked above! Your comments always rock and my regular readers are a fantastic bunch. Thank you!
Still having some fun, but hope to get back to regular posting.
Getting hit by lightning is not fun! If you would like to help me in my recovery efforts, which include moving once we have medical issues cleared up, feel free to hit the fundraiser at A New Life on GiveSendGo, use the options in the Tip Jar in the upper right, or drop me a line to discuss other methods. There is also the Amazon Wish List in the Bard’s Jar. It is thanks to your gifts and prayers that I am still going. Thank you.
