What would you leave to be found after WWIII?

In My Humble Opinion
1

In creating a world for a story I am working on, I need to have a book that was left by someone when they knew that a nuclear war was coming.

This book was written by someone who was vehemently against war, so nothing like guns or gunpowder will be in it. It is also limited in size, but I want all the suggestions you can think of. The main problem is that the person who has written it realized that most of the information will have to be diagrams and drawings.

What I’m looking for is what YOU would include to try to help out anyone who might be alive to find this book. Assume that the people that find it will not be cavemen, but at a level where metal working is at least known.

Things that I myself would include:

Steam Engine
With some skill with metal working, you can make a big steam engine. It also seems like you could make a fairly accurate drawing of a steam engine without resorting to words. Along with this, the Internal Combustion Engine seems like one to include, though difficult to actually have working without some form of explosive liquid like gas.

Road Design
Sure, the Roman’s understood it, but someone there figured it out. It allows for more trade and faster travel, so it seems useful to me.

Sanitation
This is one of the big ones, as it wasn’t understood for a long time. Drawings of sewers and the reasons for sanitation wouldn’t be too difficult. This alone would have greatly improved the way of life in the middle ages and before, so I see a big reason to include it.

My brain works in what I think is a very practical manner, which is different from how the person who wrote this book. Here’s a few things that were suggested to me that I wouldn’t have considered, but are really good, just due to the fact that I wouldn’t have come up with them.

Windmills
I don’t know off hand when they came about, but processing grains seems fairly useful.

Stretching Exercises/Tai Chi
I cannot fathom why you’d want to show farmers how to be more flexible, or how it would improve their lives. That’s partially why this is a great suggestion. The other is that it gives a great story device of people all getting up in the morning and doing strange exercises for no real reason.

So, what would you put in this book that you hope to be found by a struggling population?

2

My scrapbooks.

3

Directions and the key to a bomb shelter I will have been living in.

4

A sample of my blood labeled “Genetics Sample XXV - Final version” along with some falsified documents showing what an awesome creature this creates. Some post-apocolyptic government agancy will stumble upon it, clone it, and my genes will live on! If space is a factor, I suppose hair would work too (but it wouldn’t be as dramatic).

A picture of man on the moon, with Earth in the background.

A Bible, but with all references to God and Jesus erased and my name inserted in their place. :wink: (Use this with the blood sample for maximum effect)

5

If I understand you correctly, you mean a book that would, centuries later, allow people who had little or no knowledge of pre-war English to regain a lost technology? Assuming that the people who find it live in a medieval-level society?

Hard to say; it depends on just how much knowledge was lost in the war. You’d expect that there would be a lot of things that people knew about from legends of the past (cars, airplanes, etc) that they wouldn’t have the means to reproduce.

If I had to pick just one technology, I would pick how to make simple but useful lenses for reading glasses, telescopes and microscopes. It would be immediately useful to their society, and in the case of the microscope would allow the rediscovery of microbes, and hopefully the eventual reinvention of the germ theory of disease- without which sanitation would seem like strange pointless magical rituals.

6

I think it would be vitally important to include information for the manufacture of soap and other disinfecting products, the manufacture of anesthetics, and the manufacture of antibiotics all of which are relatively simple but vital if there is going to be anything approaching basic healthcare. These are the inventions that led to the population explosion during the Industrial Revolution. People suddenly had a better than 50/50 shot at reaching their first birthday, let alone productive adulthood.

7

A book of basic scientific method. Hopefully, with enough patients, luck and archeology they can recreate most of the techology within 500-1000 years.

Depending on how bad the world got nuked, there should be enough foundaries and manufacturing factories left to retool the population. Without steel and basic materials, books on steam engineering and roading are pretty useless.

8

In the world, the book will be found by slightly pre-medieval people. Not everything will be useful immediatly. The lenses are a very good idea, and I will use that.

I’m not sure how easy things like soap and antibiotics are to make, I should look it up and see. Of course, being the creator of the world, I can just decide that those pages didn’t survive. I too think that sanitation and proper healthcare are very important, though, and I must do some reading on that.

The world got nuked to pretty much oblivion. Basically a few isolated pockets of people, couple thousand here and there. The war was bad enough that everyone not killed by the initial blasts should’ve been killed in the fallout. That didn’t happen, but they’re starting almost from scratch.

Just curious about the steam engine, but is there a reason that it could not be made with more primitive metals, such as bronze? Is steel the only metal with enough strength to make one that’s functional, assuming that you’re using wood as the fuel?

9

Ick, steam boiler ain’t my thing, but in principle I can’t see why not. Steam boilers are just sealed containers of boiling water. The only problem using clay (bit of a stretch without modern advanced ceramics), or bronze would be stopping the things from exploding. It just means you would be using lower pressure steam than steel boilers. The upshot is that the power to weight ratio won’t be high enough for transportation purposes, but probably ok for factories.

You would also need to use some metal like bronze for the gears and drivetrain though. It would be possible to use wood, but it would break every few days and need repairing.

Glass for lenses would be tricky. Glass is fairly easy (sand, soda lime, limestone), but you need precision tools to properly grind it.

Without knowledge of the microbes and their disease causing capabilities, sanitation and soap would degenerate into sharmanistic practices. Going back to Roman times, this was the case and it took people a long time to peg onto the germ theory. Thank Og for Pasteur.

Soap is dead easy, get wood ash and animal fat. Heat and stir.

Antiboitics would be effing difficult. While natural ones are ok, it’s the extraction that’s the problem. There are a few decent ones, such as garlic, but they pale in comparision to modern medicine. Penicilian (sp?) was trialled in WWI, but they couldn’t produce enough to treat one patient. It wasn’t until they developed crystalizers to purify it that it became useful.

10

You would need to show the machines and processes in their simplest form, then show how they could be improved in continuing lessons. The first step should be instructions on how to use the book; if it’s as bad as possible, the humans who open your book may not even have reading skills. Many illustrations would help.

Agricultural practice would be one of the first things useful to learn; your people need enough caloric intake for leisure time to read the book and practice what it preaches. Metalwork for tools should be introduced early, followed by basic building techniques- this would cover food, shelter, and protection, and allow time to learn the rest of the lessons in the book.

Once you have a fed, stable population, you can get them to organize their efforts with more advanced projects like public works- public buildings, water system, sewers, fuel management, electric power…

Oh yes, as a byproduct of the agriculture should be medical knowledge- from basic to advanced in steps.

I’ve been pondering this idea for a game; but from a different angle. Hope it’s useful!

11

How much of our world is left? There’s a difference between a world where they only need to know how to melt old auto parts and re-cast them, and a world where they need to know how to mine and refine iron ore.

There’s a limit to what you can teach without words… you might want to try to include some sort of language lesson, so they can understand something other than rough sketches.

An basic grounding in all the physical sciences would probably help them in the long run, even if all it does is prevent false starts.

Refrigeration: if your food doesn’t rot, your people eat better. Some rudimentary ideas in this area could be done by fairly primitive people.

Sailboats: your people can obtain resources and ideas from more places, and can fight a seagoing enemy, if necessary. In fact, you might want to introduce them to the submarine, if you expect to give them a seagoing enemy.

Better tools: From simple stuff like saws and files, all the way up to lathes and gas welding. Improved tools will increase their productivity (and thus speed their development) considerably.

The concept of interchangable parts. This isn’t as obvious as you might think–it didn’t really catch on with us until the late 1800’s.

An efficient standardized measurement system. This will be important as they move toward more precise manufacture.

Math. They won’t be able to understand a lot of the more advanced technology without it.

Steelmaking: In addition to the obvious benefits for building steam engines and such, consider that if you’re not going to give them gunpowder, they need to be able to make top-grade armor and swords.

Aquaducts: historians all seem to think this was a great invention in Roman times. It IS nice to have plenty of water.

How about the hot-air balloon? Cheap, low-tech air travel that could come in handy in some types of exploration, trade, or warfare.

Birth control: even if it’s just the idea that you don’t necessarily have to have all the children chance drops on you. This could free up a lot of female time and talent to apply to other things.

12

Frankly, I would be against leaving anything of the sort. The people should be left alone to develop at their own rate, and leaving something like this behind could lead to all kinds of terrible consequences. Most obviously, it could give an edge to an otherwise inferior civilization that would then dominate.

13

if you’re taking them to pre-medieval tech levels, maybe you ought to consider including some basic diagrams of human anatomy. surgical skills will undoubtedly be rare. someone who can pinpoint veins and arteries would be a real life-saver in case of traumatic accidents.

primers on CPR, the Heimlech maneuver, bone setting, dentistry… all that stuff would likely be useful.

14

It very well could lead to terrible consequences, but the person in the world is leaving that book.

Interchangeable parts is a good one, something that seems intuitive to us, but took a LONG time to come about. The others also sound good. I’m going to have drawings of wings in there too, and airplanes, though they won’t be able to be used yet.

The world itself has no bearing on our world, aside from the fact that there is this book and some slight remnents. The book itself won’t be found for a few thousand years after the war. By that point, there won’t be cars or anything aorund to melt down.

The person writing this book doesn’t know that, though, so I’m thinking that most of the sizes and structural design will be figured for something with the strength of steel, which will cause some problems for people trying to build stuff from the book.

In the world, a lot of the book will be gone, but there will be steam trains, the tai-chi, windmills, interchangable parts and some sanitation. I’m looking for other things that will be in there that will also add flavor into the world that are conceivable for someone to leave in a book of this nature.

15

I’d leave a copy of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, after re-writing it so that it “incriminates” some group that I personally dislike. (Like Christians, or Professional Athletes, or something)

Hey…you didn’t say we couldn’t post “evil” suggestions. >:)

16

A chapter on basic homebrewing (beer/wine) is a must. :smiley:

I would like to include some sheet music from what would be a very hard list to decide. It may not be understood at first but eventually someone would figure it out. Works of art that would be lost forever, at least a few should survive.

Sketches and directions pertaining to plants medicinal/toxic/edible uses.

Perhaps include some accurately scaled maps. world, Topo, aquatic, polar, include locations of large cities, etc.

astronomical charts including seasonal, eclipses, planetary, solar sys. galaxy, etc.

diagram of human body and functions

drawings of telescopes and microscopes

pictures diagramming man’s origins as evolutionary (this is a must)

basic mechanics detailed, including simple motors, sailing, and flying (hangliders, parachutes, etc. inluding drawings of basic aeronautics)

It would take one hell of a book. It would include the basic survival type info. but it should also include many things that were difficult achievements in this society. If these survivors are
“civilized” enough to know what they are looking at and I assume they are. Then they should have enough intelligence to figure out most of the basic info. & there will probably be someone somewhere or soon to be that can figure out most of the rest.

If only the library at Alexandria weren’t destroyed. Who knows what was lost? I doubt that WE have rediscovered everything that our ancestors once knew. :frowning:

BTW Let’s see if we can make this book indestructible!

17

With my luck the only thing I’d leave behind is a corpse.

18

If I was filthy rich, I’d like to mess with their heads.

I’d build a massive stone temple complex in the middle of nowhere (so that it wouldn’t be destroyed).

The walls inside would be covered with artistry and carvings that tell a completely plausible and self-contained version of history that is completely at odds with what they will learn from real (true) sources.

Then I’d bury the entire thing so that it wouldn’t be found for a thousand years or so after the war.