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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 3949179" data-attributes="member: 19675">I have books that teach me all kinds of things, but since I live in a major metropolitan area, I doubt any would survive the initial strike or the subsequent fires as gas lines erupt and the city basically burns down.The key knowledge that would let you rebuild society is whatever you can retain at your mental fingertips.  Surviving books are fine- if I have them- but before I could get my smithy up and running, I'd need:1) Food2) Water3) ShelterWithout those, I won't live long enough to get to the higher order tasks, and I sure as heck won't have time to re-read my old Scouting manuals...assuming I could even find them.  And I'd need those 3 things in amounts large enough (or easy enough to aquire) that I have time to do tasks other than look for sustinence.After that, I'd need:4) Combustibles5) Knowledge of the locations of raw materials or scrap that I can reforge.6) Tools to build the tools that I'll need to build the smithy.7) The ability to distinguish between what I can work with and what I can't.  (As an amateur jeweler, I understand & recognize precious metals far better than base ones.)Etc.Essentially, I have to win the sprint of survival before I can even compete in the marathon of rebuilding.If all you have is basic combustibles like wood or paper, your factory has no fuel that will run the machinery in a machine shop.I've been to 3 dumps in my vicinity.  The books you'd find there would largely be unreadable- torn, shredded, and damaged by liquid wastes...assuming you can even find them in all the tons and tons of debris.Could you get lucky?  Sure!  But the odds are stacked against you.  You're more likely to find things you can use as fuel or building material in a dump than you are usable literature.Some of us already know how to do this and other tasks.  How quickly the rebuilding goes depends upon 1) how many of them survive the ELE and 2) their ability to bridge the gap between immediate survival of the ELE and the actual business of rebuilding society- not a single task, but a multitude of smaller steps.</blockquote>

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