HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Dr. Stone is great but I also found it to be a bit too hand-wavy. In real life you can't just build steam engines with a small village worth of labor + a "master craftsman". Mining, transporting, and refining iron ore alone is a huge task that could easily consume every drop of the village's labor resources and still not produce much iron. Fuel is also a huge task. Unless you have a high quality coal mine nearby, you have to create charcoal which is also very labor intensive (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzLvqCTvOQY). I just can't fathom how Senku realistically makes processors unless he has a nation state worth of labor at his disposal.

But yeah, it is a fun "what if".

"What if a super genius with the entirety of wikipedia in his brain were sent back to the stone age? Could he rebuild modern society?"

⬐ Jtsummers

At least with iron, you'd have the benefit of the existing refined ore lying all around you in a post-apocalyptic setting. There's little need for actually mining iron ore anymore if your population has been reduced by 99% or more. You can walk down any abandoned street and find sources of iron and other metals. Now, there's still the refining process (but it would be shorter from something already processed) and fuel to contend with.

⬐ BizarroLand

Also, making glass is not just combining sand and seashells and fire.

I don't doubt that they could have made glass plates or something, but they start turning out vacuum tubes and borosilicate beakers next to each other like it was all a matter of knowing the recipe.

⬐ PeterisP

IIRC a key obstacle why steam engines were not used earlier despite the concept being known for at least a millenium was the requirement for quite advanced metallurgy - you can make a nifty proof of concept from copper or iron, but a useful steam engine needs to be (a) relatively high pressure and (b) large, so you can do it only if you can reliably and cheaply make large quantities of decent steel. If you can't make large quantities of steel, your steam engine doesn't work; if your steel-making process has unpredictable results, then your boiler blows up at a weak spot, and if that steel is expensive, you're better off having the same people work a literal treadmill instead of making a steam machine.

Great read. If you are interested in seeing charcoal production in action (on a small scale), Primitive Technology [0] has a nice short video walking through it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzLvqCTvOQY

⬐ moneytide1

I recently encountered a small area where there had been a brush fire (could have occurred long ago). I was able to crumble off the outer inch of blackened tree branch stubs and the charcoal seemed fairly consistent. I would have to burn it to test how thoroughly it had been cooked - good charcoal does not give off much smoke because the heat burns away most everything but the carbon.

Charcoal for water filtering, cooking, and smelting is probably very abundant in the Pacific Northwest right now....

⬐ atemerev

Bronze making will come soon?

However, I don't think he'll find copper and tin ores in the same place, and trading stuff kinda ruins the entire premise of the project. So he'll have to get right to steelmaking, skipping bronze.

First, he'll have to obtain iron ore (since he's in Australia, it will be easy enough). Then, he needs coke — he can make it from charcoal by using beehive oven: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beehive_oven

Then, he can build bloomery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomery) to produce sponge iron, and then wrought iron.

Then, cementation furnace (much harder to build) to make steel.

⬐ geon

You might enjoy Cody's Lab: http://youtu.be/2epi6xRFKFE

He makes a lot of stuff from scratch. He successfully makes gunpowder from manure and refines gold chemically.

⬐ digler999

Most of his stuff is great, but his nitroglycerine video made me cringe. He's dealing with fuming acids inside, WITHOUT a fume hood, and (IMO) doesn't have respect for the danger or the repercussions of that substance. Other than that, I like his videos.

⬐ ethana

That whole channel is amazing. Thanks for this.

⬐ agumonkey

This channel led me to seek for bootstrapping technology from scratch:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=638073

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/printthread.php?t=638073...

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=562880

⬐ joshvm

One of my supervisor's colleagues wrote a book on bootstrapping which I've been meaning to read: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Knowledge-Rebuild-World-Scratch/...

He also gave a Google talk a while back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdRV8ccyEE0

⬐ agumonkey

Oh the title sounds familiar, on the other hand no talk in mind .. great.

ps: his fire starting example reminded me of this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEl-Y1NvBVI (no supermarket involved though)

⬐ tinco

Very fun topic to think about. My $.02: Together with the genetic diversity you need food, lots of food. I bet if you look up the average hunter-gatherer village size, that's about the maximum size of a population you can support on just hunter-gathering and perhaps some basic farming.

To get a civilization that could support even a modest town large enough to support small mining operations and general trade you need the most important technology we've spent the past 10.000-40.000 years developing and which I don't see any technological shortcut to: The potato, banana, the chicken, the cow, etc. Superfoods, without which a civilization won't get very far and which will definitely not just exist on a planet that's never seen human cultivation.

(There's a fun survivorman episode where he gets dropped in a jungle, and after a day or two of hardship he stumbles upon an abandoned farm, instantly the whole 'surviving' aspect is gone and the rest of the episode is about him trying to live comfortably (i.e. not being eaten by ants at night), the difference between a bleeding edge modern mango and sucking on a wild berry is stark (the episode is called "Grenada Jungle"))

⬐ agumonkey

I was more interested into technology rather than society. I'd love to see that episode of survivorman.

ps: random collision, I was just watching this http://typotalks.com/berlin/2012/speakers/single-speaker/?ti... when I realized it's similar to your vanished survivor mindset.

⬐ akavi

It really is some of the best content on youtube.

To further convince anyone reading this: He has videos on making huts, axes, drills, baskets, and more, all completely from scratch and all with (to my taste, at least) extremely good, no wasted time editing.

Well worth your hour to watch them all.

⬐ jasonlaramburu

If you're interested in higher efficiency DIY charcoal production methods check out the tlud design made from repurposed 55 gallon drums. The output is pure enough to be used as fuel or soil amendment: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=13OcuoJWYpo

⬐ ghostDancer

In Spain in some villages they still make charcoal like in old times.https://youtu.be/n_k74Kohudk . You can even visit and watch them. There was a movie sometime ago that brought it to public again : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088230/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

⬐ agentgt

I have actually contemplated trying this.

In the last couple of years I have gotten hard core into Kamado BBQing/smoking and one of the challenges is getting really good charcoal (there is also huge argument to the degree of how much this really matters ala audiophiles on wires but most say it does matter).

⬐ bane

If you live near an Asian grocery store, it's likely they'll have various kinds of high quality charcoal.

http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/korea-oak-charcoal.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeontan

⬐ cies

See all of this hero's videos, they're awesome. I really hope he continues sharing his effort to re-explore the barehands approach at making a living. :)

⬐ sharkjacobs

I really enjoy watching him smash those sticks up with rocks

⬐ dEnigma

I always find his videos extremely relaxing for some reason. Since I love the outdoors and the woods I'm definitely going to try some of the techniques on his channel, but only as soon as it gets a lot warmer around here, I don't need to experience hardcore Stone-Age wintertime survival to be honest.

⬐ bertil

Absolutely.

The minimal editing, the close-ups to the camera when technical decisions happen and his absolute selfless-ness give it a very pure tone. You can tell he knows what he is doing, and has done research, but this is just you witnessing a hobby that needs not to be sold or advertised — just enjoyed.

If you liked those, try to get your hands on Dersu Uzala: it’s a Soviet-Japanese movie from 1975 (I know…) that has hours of forest scenes with the same peacefulness and purpose.

⬐ dEnigma

Thank you for the suggestion, I will see if I can get the movie somewhere (Even if I don't enjoy it at the very least it will improve my hipster level ;) )

⬐ cellularmitosis

You will also enjoy the videos of "myfordboy" on YouTube. Same silent editing style, but the subject is always aluminum casting.