can sciforumers rebuild civilization

*we also do metal working.

at our current stage of development, what are the implications of placing an emphasis on using metal where ever possible? will it be more efficient? i imagine bamboo and other wood products will eventually wear out and will have to be replaced. should we aim for metal stuff if it is appropiate? how much work is really involved or rather, how much energy is expended to manufacture something out of metal rather than wood stuff? i would hate to have a village revolt!

ps: how is our water tank filled? i am not clear on that

so lets recap and take stock of our happy little village:

<li>we have houses (...bend small trees and tie them together for a frame work.........wooden shingles (or shakes))

<li>we are tilling the land (plows. domesticated animals - bull, chickens, pigs)

<li>we have a smoke house (..Smoke houses allow you to keep meat longer without refridgeration....we have food reserves)

<li>we have charcoal (Charcoal may be made by burying the wood ......, fuel for smelter, cooking etc)

<li>we have metal tools (........Later may come a sluice from metal to direct molten metal to a sand cast. From this comes hammers, brass knives, ect. depending on the ores available............we also have kitchen utensils, mugs etc)

<li>we are involved in carpentry (Cooperage, or wooden buckets and kegs......we have furniture)

<li> we have a grist mill (Basically water wheel driven, as metal will be in short supply for a while. Most of the material will be wood. Probably cypress. While cypress is soft, it stands up well in water. The shaft of the wheel should be oak for durability........., processing grain)

<li>we are hunting in style now (spear, bow and arrow)

<li>doing leather work (Using of fat and brain material while curing will allow hides to be flexiable as with leather. Curing may also be done by use of tannic acid. Tannic acid comes from oak bark......, tannery?)

<li>we have a water tank and indoor plumbing (better would be to make the cistern just down hill from the stream and depend on gravity to give it pressure. )
 
Yeah we should begin to use metal! We would benefit greatly in: tilling the land, cooking (pots and cooking utensils), tools carpentry, hunting equipment, plumbing and most other areas e.g. fishing (hooks etc).

As there are no books on the prospecting and mettallurgy then I will go into the hills and examine the rocks. I will find us the metal, classify it and write down everything on the subject that I know, that will need to be known by future generations.
 
One of the reasons that I have been more or less reluctant to spread on into metal is the lack of an actual solid and steady source of metal. Assuming that such is there though, you should go for the mass production. Getting away from individual fitted parts into mass production allowed the civ to expand at a phenominal rate.

For the metal end you should make a stamper. This to convert raw ore and rock to pulverized pebbles. From the hand forge you should built a smelter for real. Only, you need a better source of heat than charcoal. Are we ready to invent the cracker for oil distillation? Somehow, I think not. You will need boodles of other tech before you can do that.

I am quite content to let others figure out how folks will live as the grow into a village/town/city. Somehow that never was a large interest to me.

The water tank is filled by placing it down hill of the stream so that the water flows into it from the pipe. The trick is that you must sink a pipe in the arteasan well deep enough that it does not wash out. With out metal pipe, you must dig it and then refill the hole. With pipe, you may stand the pipe over the hole and use a pulley, rope, an over head beam and a weight attached to a guide that allows you to center over the pipe as you pull up for the next drop. When I was a young lad, I helped drill a water well in much the same way with 3 people. The weight was a tire and rim that had a lot of concrete on it. You used this to drive the pipe in the ground. Give any ideas?

The pipe may be bent a little so that it flows out sideways and not vertical. Place your "aquaduct" under the arteasan pipe and allow it to flow downhill to your cistern. The cistern replaces the need to build a dam, before you are ready.

One should look for evidences of limestone. Limestone is a necessary ingrediant of concrete, along with sand and pebbles. The pebbles and sand of the sort needed would most likely be found at a stream bed. It would be both washed and easy to retrieve, provide the country side is right. With concrete comes the abitilty to make structures that are both there for the long term and will withstand daily weathering. (not to mention that you can make a pipe with this material)

Sewage treatment should be considered now for the health of the community! The problem is that we need chlorine and we need to make pumps. With the concrete we have the method of making settlement ponds, aerators, ect.

Designing a pump can be a hard part. First you need metal, like brass. The design of the impellor will have to be a trial and error thing. The pump should take the fluid in at the center though a hole and sling it out though the edge of the disc. The easiest design would be a disc with curved and raised ribs. The fitting of the housing is critical as it is a tight tolerance. Bronze may be used for the bushings as sleeves, but they will wear rapidally. A better bearing material is needed.

To power this thing, you are going to need a prime mover. (an engine of some sorts) The easiest would be the steam engine.

The stream engine needs massive amounts of metal to make. You need a boiler to heat the water. You need a fire box to apply the heat to the boiler, you need a piston and cylinder, and you need valves to control the direction of steam flow, and piping. An advantage of the stream engine at this time is tractors. The early tractors had steel wheels, not rubber ones.
 
"Doesn't democracy exist in this world??"

HA, no. All modern "democracies" are all just hyped up Republics! Democracy is a sham.

"Capitalism means that people that do the most work reap the least reward.
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I think Capitalism might have more to do with means of production than to serve a motivator, although it does do this too.""

CAN ANYONE TELL ME, what does work have to do with reward? Why should people who do the most work reap the most reward? Really? I'm serious?

After you have given your obvious answer, think about this: Would you pay me 100 dollars to push a boulder in a circle all day? Would you pay me 100 dollars if I gave you a bicycle I found abandoned on the road?

Obviously, the boulder pusher does the most work. WHO THE HELL CARES? That guy didn't benifit anyone. But the bike is a useful tool, well worth that 100 bucks if its not rusted out. YET, the guy did almost no work to get it to you.

WE PAY FOR BENIFIT, not for work.
 
"Democracy implies that the majority is right.
If 99 out of 100 people want to do something wrong, and one person wants to do something right, democracy would favor the wrong."

Right and wrong are opinions. If 99 people out of 100 say that killing is ok, it IS ok. If 99 people to 1 try to solve a drought with a rain pill, then it isn't opinion and these people are just dumb. Democracy prevails, the smart ones live and the stupid ones die of thirst. Good social Darwinism.
 
CAN ANYONE TELL ME, what does work have to do with reward? Why should people who do the most work reap the most reward? Really? I'm serious?
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Because those producing the goods are the ones giving the country meaning and bartering leverage, i.e they are giving the country goods that they can sell. Without this the country has no need to be part of the world and will be left behind. By making a country goods the workers are making the country useful because it can then trade.

I'm reading a book about communism right now and it's very interesting! Because Capitalism is the 'enemy' of communism it is frequently brought into the forground and elaborated on, this is why i mentioned it. :)

It does seem to me that the original Capitalists must have broke away from communism. Communism does what's best for the community and so if a small section of the community (or indeed an individual member) is a problem then expulsion is possible. These 'rejects' then set up the lands of the 'free' (namely they were free to do/believe what they wanted and to set up their own country, the lands are by no means truly free) under Capitalism which is based on individualism and not commune-ism, i.e. private ownership is favoured over state control, though this is not always one hundred percent accurate. Some State control began in Capitalist countries.
 
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metal working on a large scale seems very unrealistic at our current stage so lets dump it. we can adopt the cruder methods (which are?) to fashion simple tools for agriculture and what not. the "prime mover" sounds fantastic but instead of having to start from scratch, lets explore and find a engine and tweak it. that seems a more plausible scenario. after all it is iron/steel so should have survived the bad times. better building material (like you mentioned) should be a focus. what are bricks? bricks vs concrete - ease of manufacture

*this is fucking tough. i now have more respect for those who came before us. nowadays we take a lot of shit for granted
 
As you know, bricks are made of mud, shaped in a container and then kiln fired. Sun dried brick don't do as well. You also need mortar to keep them together. That is in essence concrete without pebbles.
 
i swear to god i did not know that wet!! sounds fairly easy to make tho
:D

ok then.... we have bricks. a whole stack of em. anyone wants to upgrade their log cabin type house, help yourself.
hey lets pave the streets while we are at it!
 
For pavement of the type we are used to you need petroleum and the cracker for the sludge that remains when everything else is cooked off. This is called asphalt.

For cobblestone, you will find that the every other year removal and relaying of them, after the bed has been regraded and restamped to be a daunting task when your people are still coping to survive and gain tech. At some point you must ask what is your population base. The reason is that this will determine how many are able to do "other things" besides farm and survive. If you have enough people to spread out and concentrate on gaining ground on lost tech then you will naturally expand at a faster rate.

For example, in todays time it is a matter of a decade or less, between discoveries and the time the results are on the shelf to buy. But in the 40's the gap was roughly a generation between discovery and just the disemination of the knowledge, not a product on the shelf.

Communication in the form of telegraph was invented to meet the demand of distance communication, only after the need was intense. Speaking of which, that is relativily easy to make with a source of wire and low voltage electricity and an insulator material, such as wood.
 
do we have a sign or land mark yet one that when people recognize it they know our village is near by, so most of our hunters/gatherers don't get lost in the woods. BTW i volunteer to be a hunter/gatherer(sp?? no really since we have a new way of communicating then is this the way gatherers is sopposed to be spelled?? i vote to name seeds "wanchas")
 
wet
for the sake of convenience and practicality we can double or triple the number but sciforia should consist of only those who have contributed to the thread. it is the posters that determine the future of this civ. i also want to stress that one should bring just your current knowledge to this thread and not make references to any texts. armageddon might not provide us with the luxury of reference material. we rely on memory instead.

timescale - i think earlier on in the thread, i mentioned that one day translates to one sciforia month. we been around for

psycho
we have a large water tank on the side of a hill with sciforia scrawled on its side. it is visible for miles. call it (wanchas)what you will. do it enough times and it will be adopted. perhaps we will evolve our own dialect as time goes by
 
"Because those producing the goods are the ones giving the country meaning and bartering leverage, i.e they are giving the country goods that they can sell. Without this the country has no need to be part of the world and will be left behind. By making a country goods the workers are making the country useful because it can then trade."

Not to draw out the issue, but it seems you have missed my point. People pay for what they want, and they want what they think will help them, right? Even entertainment helps people be happier or at least escape their tormented life, cosmetics are believed to help people's social life, etc.

"work" as I would define it is the expenditure of energy. You didn't bring up my pushing-a-boulder-around issue into your argument. If someone produces something that is in low demand or noone wants, then why the hell should they get paid a lot for it?

A lower level worker can work their ass off, right? But what if that worker decides to quit, to boycott his job? Does the employer beg him to come back? NO WAY. Simply because that job isn't in demand, there are PLENTY of people that can do it, or there is not much profit that arises OUT OF it.

Its simple supply and demand. Can't you realize that work doesn't mean product?
 
i also want to stress that one should bring just your current knowledge to this thread and not make references to any texts. armageddon might not provide us with the luxury of reference material. we rely on memory instead.
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You will be happy to know that everything that I have mentioned has been strickly from memory. Nothing has been looked up for the convience of the thread.

Given that we are at a level of population of 3 times the amount of contributing members to this thread, we simply will not have the population base to go far in rebuilding civilization and remaking lost tech. What will happen is that much of the knowledge we have will be lost before there are people enough to use it. Also because of the low population base, much more effort will be spent on making food than on researching lost tech. A society that is based on agriculture for their food supply, with limited power assistance (such has horse and carriage) will not have enough leisure time to do much in the line of improvements. A man that has wrestled with a plow all day and has not artifical light will go to bed early so that he can start the next day. You see where the population base is important now.
 
Ok thats it if we are going to be the only ones living, then I think we can do a dang good job. Think about it almost all the people here are geniuses who try to contradict laws of Einstein and Newton, so I think we can do a good job. Also what about substantial authority... will the moderators get to be our "masters"
 
will the moderators get to be our "masters
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I think your value to the group would be more important than who is in charge. It is one reason why I have no interest in the government side of the discussion. I don't think that a "master" would have a place except in a society where slaves were a commodity.
 
Originally posted by spookz

who here knows how to construct a rudimentary dwelling? who here can till the soil and grow something? corn? potatoes?
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This is where you learn to respect your elders sonny...

I can produce food and also know how to preserve food..

As do many of us who are considered past it these days ..
 
Natural selction will be assisted by us killing off the weakest and least needed 9000 members.
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Actually, I quite like this idea, if it is the wish of whoever the people that have naturally become/been elected leader(s) then I'd like to have some part in writing how we can choose these two-hundred members...

I was actually writing an multi-task test, and loads of people were telling me that it was "elitist" - which I ignored, it basically tested candidates in nine main areas: -

  • Language and Literature;
  • Mathematics and Logic;
  • The Sciences;
  • The Arts;
  • Sports and Fitness;
  • Acuteness of the Senses;
  • Humanities I;
  • Humanities II;
  • Social and Environmental Morals;

When it comes to choosing our political system, I actually think that nice communism is quite a good idea - it's just a pity it doesn't work. Y'know, everyone (except maybe the leaders) being equal: everybody getting laser eye treatment at birth so there are no eye defects; people getting paid the same; et cetera, et cetera... Besides, as mentioned above, democracy doesn't do too good a job of working either.

Education... Presuming that I'm waking in our cave with the same stuff I have right now, I'm actually wearing a bag in which I have brochures of the International Baccalaureate Organisation. One for the Primary Years Programme, one of the Middle Years Programme and one for the Diploma Programme...

Finally, religion, - erm - let's face it. It's religious fundamentalists who stop political correctness and human rights from working by using them to defend their discriminations breaking them. So I think Christianity and Islam, and a few others, shouldn't really be allowed.

(Sorry Conservative and Liberal Christians and Muslims, but your religion just wouldn't have all of those ignorant rules if they weren't supposed to be fully followed...)

However we *do* need religion... At points when the human species had reached troughs in their numbers because their emotions had developed enough to recognise the pointlessness of life, I think it might have actually been the creation of religion that save them... I quite like the idea of us all being naturalistic Neo-Pagans; Wicca doesn't contradict itself, human rights, or science...

By the by, what's our status on medicine and hygiene?
 
If someone produces something that is in low demand or noone wants, then why the hell should they get paid a lot for it?
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beacuse it's a utopia and we all know that for it to werk we all should make the same $$. utopia (the book i read to my memory) was based upun a communistic government that the people had more say into. this is my opinion but spooks, maybe at certian intervals we should have an evolution whereas we evolve and can do many things like a STONE EVOLUTION in which can are able to make stone houses and tools so we don't have to individually say, hey i made a stone axe.

now if you'll excuse me i found some :m: wanchas that i will plant:D

spooks how bout a recap of what we now have?
 
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