The Knowledge

The Knowledge by Lewis Dartnell, 340 pages

In The Knowledge, Lewis Dartnell attempts to write a basic, bare-bones instruction manual for how to rebuild civilization from the ground up, in the event of a world-ending catastrophe, starting with agriculture and working up to radios, advanced chemistry, and navigation.

Unlike many post-apocalyptic how-to guides, this book is not intended to be a survival manual per se – it lacks critical detail, serving more as a surface-level introduction to various concepts essential (or at the least useful) for the development of human civilization, jump-starting “the Reboot” and leapfrogging over centuries of slow progress. Dartnell spends less than one chapter on survival techniques for immediately after a collapse, but the book doesn’t suffer for it.

Where The Knowledge really shines is its exploration of simple chemistry using the most basic of technologies, then using that simple chemistry as a gateway to access more complicated and elaborate chemical and industrial processes. For example, wood ash can be easily processed into potassium carbonate, which be added to boiling fats to produce soap, to vinegar to help fix dye into cloth, or to fields to help fertilize them. With some more slightly more complicated chemistry, it even helps produce the materials for simple photography.

The main issue with The Knowledge is that it is too short by half. Dartnell obviously cannot give a summary of every piece of knowledge necessary for modern civilization, but he barely touches on some absolutely critical technologies (there is only a single mention of plumbing for sanitation, which omission completely boggles the mind), and completely ignores many simple intermediary technologies that would be easily achievable by a “rebooting” society (such as simple solar devices like the solar water heater, or many pedal-powered tools invented in the late 19^th and early 20^th century). Perhaps a sequel is in order.