Asklemmy

43757 readers

1141 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

170

What would your contribution be for a book put together to restart a a civilization? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by qyron@sopuli.xyz to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

148 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The title is a bit over dramatic but, per the title, if you could contribute with one piece of knowledge to a book that every single individual should learn from in order to kickstart a civilization, what would be yours?

My personal choice would be the process of soap making, from scratch.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You actually can make simple semiconductors artisanally, once again plugging Sam Zeloof. The biggest trick is getting the silicon in the first place, since you need an electric furnace to smelt it with any efficiency. Then, it's just a matter of distilling it to high purity and growing a crystal.

The pump is the biggest trick for vacuum tubes. If you have a primitive metalworking civilisation to start with, you probably have enough mercury for a Sprengel pump and/or a master craftsman who could make a mechanical pump, but if we're starting really from scratch that could be an issue. Steam to displace air + a chemical getter is another option I've been wondering about.

Also worth mentioning are electrochemical diodes, which you can make with just brine, iron and a piece of aluminum. Aluminum is tricky to make but if you can produce it it's also pretty good for wires, in case you don't have a copper mine handy.

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 2 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/channel/UC7E8-0Ou69hwScPW1_fQApA

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.