Ep. 107 - How to Survive a Cataclysm and Reboot Civilization

Surviving the apocalypse 🔥⛈🌋💣👾🪓

In this episode, Mattimore explores a thought experiment… What if civilization ended tomorrow?

What would you do if your devices stopped working, your water stopped running, and chaos broke out in the streets? Do you have a plan? Do you have the supplies needed to survive? Do you have the skills necessary to provide the basics - water, food, and shelter - for yourself and for those you love? Let’s say you and I are able to survive the apocalypse… how might we go about rebuilding civilization from scratch? Another way of asking the same question is: If civilization were started today, how might it progress differently than it did in our own history? And even if civilization doesn’t end anytime soon, what can we learn through this thought experiment about how best to colonize Mars and how improve life here on Earth?

The inspiration for this episode comes from a Richard Feynman quote…

When asked what sentence holds the most information in the fewest words, Richard Feynman said, “It is the atomic hypothesis… that all things are made of atoms - little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.”

In the spirit of Richard Feynman, we’ve packed as much useful survival information as possible into this 37 minute episode. Enjoy!

Broad Topics:

• Possible ways that civilization could end
• How to go about getting the essentials?
• Rule of 3’s: 3 mins no air, 3 days no water, 3 weeks no food
• How to find, purify, and store water
• How to think about food security
• How to start growing your own
• Key principles of farming
• Four crop rotation
• How to preserve food
• Where to go for shelter
• Urban vs rural living
• Creating an ecosystem
• Surviving the elements
• How to generate charcoal
• Harnessing a power supply
• How civilization may progress differently
• Leapfrogging the industrial revolution
• The future is sustainable
• Rebuilding from first principles
• The scientific method
• Collaboration as a superpower
• Forming a system of governance
• How best to colonize Mars
• How to improve life on earth

Future Scenarios:

• Worst case scenario
• Best case scenario
• Most likely scenario

Thanks for tuning in 🔭

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