The Knowledge summary

All right. You’ve got your shelter, you’re warm and you’ve stored water. Next up is food and here’s the good news: a single intact supermarket contains enough nutrition to sustain you for anywhere from 55 to 63 years! That is, if you’re not averse to eating pet food.

So, get to work scavenging as much food as you can. In the immediate aftermath of the catastrophe, you’re best bet would be to hit the supermarkets. But the real question is, how long before the food goes bad?

So, good soil is important, but it won’t automatically grow the food necessary for you to survive. In fact, growing healthy plants requires a lot of hard work.

How so?

What do baking bread, brewing beer, blowing glass and forging metal all have in common? Every one of these activities, each essential to our contemporary society, rely on one thing: thermal energy – that is, the energy of heat.

So, in a post-catastrophe scenario, charcoal production will be an essential means of rebuilding these industries. That’s because you won’t have access to more sophisticated methods of extracting heat energy, such as oil or coal.

Okay, at this point you’ve got most of your survival bases covered, but there’s one important element missing: health care. The good news is that there’s an easy way to prevent most infections from ever occurring, one which will become even more important in a world where doctors are hard to come by – simply keep clean!

In fact, simply washing your hands and drinking clean water effectively deters disease. That’s because clean hands help you steer clear of most gastrointestinal and respiratory infections as well as diseases caused by microorganisms passed from person to person.

So, keeping clean is key to staying healthy, but you and those around you will inevitably need some sort of medical treatment, and calling an ambulance won’t be an option. Thankfully, some common medical issues like infections of the intestines, also known as enteric infections, are easy to treat.

For instance, cholera is an enteric infection that, historically, has wreaked much havoc. Oddly enough, however, cholera itself isn’t deadly. The reason the infection can prove fatal is because of the rapid dehydration it causes, costing you up to five gallons of fluids a day!

Nowadays, if you lose your way you can pull up a map on your phone or call for help. After a catastrophe, such options won’t be available. So learning old methods for situating yourself and keeping time will be essential.

For instance, you can use shadows to measure the time of day. As the earth orbits the sun, shadows shift, allowing you to keep track of the hours.