Damn. The world ends tomorrow.

In My Humble Opinion
1

The world will end tomorrow (uh, hypothetically… yeah, that’s the ticket!) and I would like to be duly prepared for the eventual rebuilding of humanity.

Assume a planet-wide catastrophe that leaves only small bands of humans in an otherwise iron-age existence, but with 100 percent literacy. Only five [non-religious] texts survive and they just so happen to be the most practical and most useful in the long-term restoration of today’s store of human knowledge.

Specifically, what are the five books?

2

I’m busy tomorrow. In fact I’m kind of booked for the rest of the month. Is it okay if your disaster waits until March? Sorry to be a bother.

3

  1. “How Things Work, Volumes 1 - whatever”

  2. “The New York Public Library Desk Reference”

  3. “Gray’s Anatomy” or some other general anatomy/physiology book

  4. “Five Acres and Independence” or “The Owner-Built Homestead”

  5. “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare” because what good is surviving without culture

4

Would an encyclopedia set count as one book? If so, that’s a must-include in my opinion.

5

Rule of thumb: It counts as a single book if it comes in a single tome from, say, Amazon.com.

Silenus:

I didn’t want to bias the responses, but these two were definitely in my list.

  1. “How Things Work” (well, before I realized there were so many volumes now, which violates my rule above)
  2. “Gray’s Anatomy”
6

Don’t forget the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics - I suspect it’d be more than helpful in terms of reference.

7

The Dummies Guide To The Apocolypse might come in useful…

8

And they tell me this on a damn message board? I knew I was right not to trust the press. :frowning:

9

Again :confused: