How to do everything from scratch.
A free collection of information for when infrastructure fails.
Work In Progress.
Pet peeves:
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instructional books which assume you can get any 'needed' items mentioned
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survival books that don't know what a period is.
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the myth of self-sufficiency.
This is mostly driven by spite, but also a healthy dose of anxiety. Given the fun modern world we live in and how vulnerable people are to infrastructure failures, just having a little of that "how we did it back in the ol' days" knowledge can be empowering and help provide a soft(er) place to land.
Another pet peeve about 'survival' books? They sure do assume you've prepared everything ahead of time, like large stores of food to last a few years while the planet I guess disintegrates outside your bunker.
This book assumes you are bare ass naked and can't even scavenge a plastic bottle to blow on. And it knows what a period is. While some things like seeds you will just literally need to figure out how to get, anything else relatively essential that can be made will be attempted to be explained.
This is not a 'self sufficiency' book. Lone wolves die of starvation. This is a compilation beginning at the assumption that all infrastructure has failed, and that one needs to start from scratch entirely.
Units of measurement are attempted but also use 'self-referential' measurements, such as measuring distance by steps or the space between knuckles, or mug filled up to 'drinking' level and a spoon to measure baking material. That these measurements are not exact to every person is fine; most of them are approximations to allow for:
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measuring materials out without access to accurate scales,
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making measurements understandable regardless of country, and
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making measurements visual so that even without exact knowledge of how long 1 inch/5 cm is, you can still plant a seed at the right depth.
For consistency across latitudes and in regards to global warming, time is measured in seasons rather than months. That said, some information will be northwest biased due to the availability of information. If a guidebook available in your local region says differently, do that instead. This is meant to be the most bare-bones basics of basics, and books tailored to specific regions will always be more acutely knowledgeable about them.
Donations will be used to purchase cat food, do small-scale tests of some of the science in the book, attempt to provide compensation to some professionals asked for advice, and hire consultation.
Until then, it's paycheck to paycheck for editing this baby.