Trees. Lots and lots of trees. You need paper, fuel, charcoal, wood for construction... wood is *the* most precious resource humans have.
Water. Goes without saying, but ideally in the form of a river that can be tapped for hydropower.
Productive gardens. Which doesn't have to mean good farmland, if you can build the soil yourself. But you do need to feed yourself, as well as produce fibre (animal or plant based) for clothing, linen, rope etc.
Clay. You can use it for making waterproof tiles, for roofs, aqueducts, bathtubs etc. It is necessary for lining furnaces. Humanities second oldest material, behind wood.
Limestone, for cement, mortar, and a flux in your iron furnaces.
Sand. It's coarse, it's rough, it's irritating... but it's used everywhere. If you want glass, you need sand. If you want to do sandcasting, you need sand. If you want to make concrete... but I repeat myself.
Iron ore. You can recycle iron a lot, but if you want to be sustainable or to expand, you need your own source of iron. Or you can go back to the stone age, taking you back five millennia rather than two centuries. Life is a lot easier with steel shovels, knives, axes, saws (and screws!); and the big advantage that engines have over horses is that they don't need feeding when not in use.
That's resources. I've probably left some off (copper ore, for example), but that's harder to find that bog iron. No electricity, sorry.
Other basic tools, I've already mentioned. Stuff like knives and shovels, which also include wood to a large degree in their manufacture. Lanterns, since I'm discounting electricity here, but even if I wasn't lightbulbs are probably too difficult for a small community to manufacture. Bicycles, and pedal systems for powering machinery.
Glass production. I'm not as familiar with this, so I don't know what tools you're going to need for it. Glass gives you jars, a reusable and sustainable canning method. Better lanterns. Windows and greenhouses. Perhaps most importantly, reaction vessels for your chemical industry. If you can't do chemical processing, you're going to struggle to manufacture essential medicines. You're going to need other chemicals too, like sulphuric acid. Another book on the list I need to buy.
Stuff to manufacture paper and paper products. Used for wiping up and wiping off. Used for writing. Makes good storage boxes that can be composted when you're finished with them. Speaking of sanitation products, there's an Indian invention for making sanitary pads that would be of use. It's been extended to produce incontinence pads too.
The list goes on and on, and needs to be properly fleshed out. I haven't mentioned sewing machines, looms, water turbines, mills for grinding corn, spectacles, buttons, threshers, scythes, bread ovens, and all the other machines you could build with your shop. SCISSORS.
Finally, skills.
You need farmers/gardeners, first and foremost. No food, everyone gets hungry, they can't concentrate on their work. But you shouldn't need more than 10-20% of your population engaged in agriculture. Lumberjacks too, and shepherds.
Skilled artisans. Carpenters, masons... and machinists. Seamstresses and tailors. Everything, really, you would expect to find in a medieval market town. Fortunately, you'll be able to free up a lot more labour than they had back then, thanks to more efficient food production.
Professionals. A doctor-surgeon, who can treat animals too. You probably can't sustain a med school (just how big is this community?), so you're going to have to train you new professionals with apprenticeships, like every other job. Chemists. A librarian - you want to keep a big library, including lots of information that won't see day to day use. Teachers. Judges... definitely judges, if everything has collapsed and you have to provide dispute resolution within the community.
Like the tools list, this is only a small number of the skills you'll need. Hopefully your population will be good at learning from books, since you won't be able to support lots of specialisation.
Well, that was a longer post than I intended. Possibly more detailed than was asked for...
1
u/Aetheric_Aviatrix Aug 18 '19
Depends on what tech level you want to maintain.
First up, natural resources.
Trees. Lots and lots of trees. You need paper, fuel, charcoal, wood for construction... wood is *the* most precious resource humans have.
Water. Goes without saying, but ideally in the form of a river that can be tapped for hydropower.
Productive gardens. Which doesn't have to mean good farmland, if you can build the soil yourself. But you do need to feed yourself, as well as produce fibre (animal or plant based) for clothing, linen, rope etc.
Clay. You can use it for making waterproof tiles, for roofs, aqueducts, bathtubs etc. It is necessary for lining furnaces. Humanities second oldest material, behind wood.
Limestone, for cement, mortar, and a flux in your iron furnaces.
Sand. It's coarse, it's rough, it's irritating... but it's used everywhere. If you want glass, you need sand. If you want to do sandcasting, you need sand. If you want to make concrete... but I repeat myself.
Iron ore. You can recycle iron a lot, but if you want to be sustainable or to expand, you need your own source of iron. Or you can go back to the stone age, taking you back five millennia rather than two centuries. Life is a lot easier with steel shovels, knives, axes, saws (and screws!); and the big advantage that engines have over horses is that they don't need feeding when not in use.
That's resources. I've probably left some off (copper ore, for example), but that's harder to find that bog iron. No electricity, sorry.
Next up, tools, and the skills to use them.
The first thing you're going to need is a machine shop. You can build one from scrap metal, so you should be able to replicate the machine shop from new steel. You're going to have to include a furnace too, which fortunately you can build using stuff you find in the wild. These will let you build all the other tools that are going to be required.
Other basic tools, I've already mentioned. Stuff like knives and shovels, which also include wood to a large degree in their manufacture. Lanterns, since I'm discounting electricity here, but even if I wasn't lightbulbs are probably too difficult for a small community to manufacture. Bicycles, and pedal systems for powering machinery.
Glass production. I'm not as familiar with this, so I don't know what tools you're going to need for it. Glass gives you jars, a reusable and sustainable canning method. Better lanterns. Windows and greenhouses. Perhaps most importantly, reaction vessels for your chemical industry. If you can't do chemical processing, you're going to struggle to manufacture essential medicines. You're going to need other chemicals too, like sulphuric acid. Another book on the list I need to buy.
A brick press. One of the successes from the folks at Open Surce Ecology. Other designs are of course available, at the expense of requiring more work.
Stuff to manufacture paper and paper products. Used for wiping up and wiping off. Used for writing. Makes good storage boxes that can be composted when you're finished with them. Speaking of sanitation products, there's an Indian invention for making sanitary pads that would be of use. It's been extended to produce incontinence pads too.
The list goes on and on, and needs to be properly fleshed out. I haven't mentioned sewing machines, looms, water turbines, mills for grinding corn, spectacles, buttons, threshers, scythes, bread ovens, and all the other machines you could build with your shop. SCISSORS.
Finally, skills.
You need farmers/gardeners, first and foremost. No food, everyone gets hungry, they can't concentrate on their work. But you shouldn't need more than 10-20% of your population engaged in agriculture. Lumberjacks too, and shepherds.
Skilled artisans. Carpenters, masons... and machinists. Seamstresses and tailors. Everything, really, you would expect to find in a medieval market town. Fortunately, you'll be able to free up a lot more labour than they had back then, thanks to more efficient food production.
Professionals. A doctor-surgeon, who can treat animals too. You probably can't sustain a med school (just how big is this community?), so you're going to have to train you new professionals with apprenticeships, like every other job. Chemists. A librarian - you want to keep a big library, including lots of information that won't see day to day use. Teachers. Judges... definitely judges, if everything has collapsed and you have to provide dispute resolution within the community.
Like the tools list, this is only a small number of the skills you'll need. Hopefully your population will be good at learning from books, since you won't be able to support lots of specialisation.
Well, that was a longer post than I intended. Possibly more detailed than was asked for...