
Ask HN: Do modern nations have contingency/recovery plans? - Red_Tarsius
I&#x27;m always at awe at the complexity of our civic structure. But it all seems very fragile. For example, very few people know how their sewers work and how to keep proper maintenance. Who&#x27;s guarding this knowledge? Who&#x27;s making sure that we don&#x27;t somehow forget how to do it? Or that we don&#x27;t stop replacing aging professionals? This is one of countless examples. Society always seems one bottleneck away from collapse. The same holds true for key human rights and privileges. We&#x27;re always one generation away from blowing it up. Such lack of clarity and foresight might explain why it&#x27;s so difficult to replicate civic models in 3rd world countries.<p>Do modern nations have contingency plans? Is there a special archive of practical knowledge and step-by-step procedures for building and running the power grid, water pipes, sewage system, general logistics, basic farming practices and seed samples? We have a pretty sweet thing going on, it would be silly not to back it up. Worst case scenario, we would leave the survivors with guidelines and instructions that could accelerate the recovery of modern society – decades instead of centuries.<p>On a side note, it&#x27;s all too common to disregard blue collar workers. We should be more respectful of those positions, otherwise young people might actively avoid the very jobs that make up the modern world. Unfortunately, media portrays them as the butt of the joke – everyone is familiar with the <i>simple-minded, blue collar redneck</i> trope.<p>I apologize for the grammar, English is not my first language.
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tristanj
For an archive of human knowledge, there's the _Third World Development Online
Library_ , compiled by Alex Weir, which is a 13GB archive of 900+ books on
Agriculture, Livestock, Food safety, Construction, Mathematics, Technology,
Metalworking, Finance, and many more. I don't think it's updated anymore but I
linked a copy below, as well as a wikpedia link about the archive.

I'm hoping one day someone will gather all this information together and
record it on giant stone blocks placed around the world, as insurance for
future generations.

[http://www.fastonline.org/CD3WD_40/CD3WD/INDEX.HTM](http://www.fastonline.org/CD3WD_40/CD3WD/INDEX.HTM)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD3WD](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD3WD)

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Red_Tarsius
I really appreciate you took time to comment on my post! I'm going to dive
into your links as soon as I get back home. Stone is an excellent idea. It is
the most resilient storage system we know of: everything digital doesn't last
longer than a few years.

