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Lewis Dartnell is an author, presenter, and professor of science communication at the University of Westminster. His works of popular science include The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch and Origins, which looks at how geology has impacted human history.
The Apocalypse: A Global Catastrophe in which our fragile civilization collapses, possibly engineered by human hand, by a massive asteroid, by a raging virus - These events do NOT have a probability of zero, and therefore must be taken seriously.
Let us imagine that, through human negligence or just bad luck, such an event has happened. You are left with the remains of a broken civilization, without access to electricity, the internet, telephones, or even a reliable source of food. Yes, you might be able to survive for a while, maybe even years, but at some point the momentum and the resources from the fallen society will run out. Will you know how to grow food? To purify water? To capture electricity in a homemade battery? Will you know how to rediscover and utilize the incredible inventions of the past?
In 2014, an astrophysicist named Lewis Dartnell wrote a book called “The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from Scratch” - It is an instructional manual of sorts, not for skills of survival, but for the cultivation and reinvention of a technologically advanced civilization. It is a civilization seed. When planted in a mind that is curious, industrious, and resilient, this seed has the ability to bear civilizational fruit, and to bring humanity back from the brink of extinction.
Dartnell’s book isn’t meant to save the world - it’s a piece of art, a reminder of our incredible achievements as a species, a spark that lets you see the technological marvels around you in a new light, and as a warning - for this planetary ecosystem is a house of cards - fragile, complex, and worth protecting.
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