North Ryan. How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler

Riverhead Books, 2018. — 895 p. — ISBN 9780735220164, 0735220166."How to Invent Everything is such a cool book. It's essential reading for anyone who needs to duplicate an industrial civilization quickly." --Randall Munroe, xkcd creator and New York Times-bestselling author of What If?The only book you need if you're going back in time. What would you do if a time machine hurled you thousands of years into the past...and then broke? How would you survive? Could you improve on humanity's original timeline? And how hard would it be to domesticate a giant wombat?With this book as your guide, you'll survive--and thrive--in any period in Earth's history. Bestselling author and time-travel enthusiast Ryan North shows you how to invent all the modern conveniences we take for granted--from first principles. This illustrated manual contains all the science, engineering, art, philosophy, facts, and figures required for even the most clueless time traveler to build a civilization from the ground up. Deeply researched, irreverent, and significantly more fun than being eaten by a saber-toothed tiger, How to Invent Everything will make you smarter, more competent, and completely prepared to become the most important and influential person ever. You're about to make history...better.A Note for Readers.
Epigraph.
Introduction.
Frequently Asked Questions by New Time Travelers.
Repair Guide.
Oh.
How to Use This Guide.
How to Tell What Time Period You’re Stranded In: A Handy Flowchart.
A Special Note if You Are Stranded Between 200,000 Bce and 50,000 Bce.
and You Are Thinking, «the Humans Here Are Crazy and I Am Definitely Doomed Forever».
The Five Fundamental Technologies You Need for Your Civilization.
Spoken Language.
Written Language.
Non-Sucky Numbers.
Sidebar: Why Can’t You Divide by Zero?
The Scientific Method.
Calorie Surplus: The End of Hunting and Gathering, and the Beginning of Civilization.
Units of Measurement Are Arbitrary, but Here’s How You Can Reinvent the Standard Ones.
Used in This Book from Scratch.
Sidebar: Handy Measurement Templates.
Now We Are Become Farmers, the Devourers of Worlds.
Selective Breeding.
Crop Rotation.
What Will Other Humans Be Eating if I’m Stranded After They’ve Evolved but Before.
Agriculture and Selective Breeding Are a Thing, and How Can I Tell if It’s Poisonous, Because I Bet These Ancient Humans Are Eating Some Really Stupid Stuff?
Sidebar: The Universal Edibility Test.
Putting Down Roots: Useful Plants for the Stranded Time Traveler.
Apples.
Bamboo.
Barley.
Black Pepper.
Cacao Plant.
Chili Pepper.
Cinchona.
Coconut.
Coffee.
Corn.
Cotton.
Eucalyptus.
Grapes.
Oak Trees.
Opium Poppy.
Papyrus.
Potato.
Rice.
Rubber Plant.
Soybean.
Sugarcane.
Sweet Orange.
Tea.
Tobacco.
Wheat.
White Mulberry.
White Willow.
Wild Cabbage.
Yam.
Sidebar: It’s Time for Some Beer.
The Birds and the Bees: Useful Animals for the Stranded Time Traveler.
Bison (american Buffalo).
Camels.
Cats.
Chickens.
Cows.
Dogs (also: Wolves).
Goats.
Honeybees.
Horses.
Llamas/Alpacas.
Pigs.
Pigeons.
Rabbits.
Sheep.
Silkworms.
Turkeys.
Beavers.
Earthworms.
Leeches.
Lice.
Mosquitoes.
Basic Nutrition: What to Eat So You Won’t Die for at Least a While Longer.
Common Human Complaints That Can Be Solved by Technology.
«I’m Thirsty».
Charcoal.
Distillation.
«I’m Hungry».
Horseshoes.
Harnesses.
Plows.
Preserved Foods.
Bread (and also: Beer) (also: Alcohol).
Salt Production.
«I’m Sick».
Penicillin.
Stethoscopes.
«The Natural Resources I See Around Me Suck; I Want Better Ones».
Mining.
Kilns, Smelters, and Forges.
Glass.
«I’m Lazy; I Want a Machine to Do Work for Me».
Waterwheels and Windmills.
Pelton Turbines.
Flywheels.
Steam Engines.
«No, I Mean I’m So Lazy I Just Want to Flip a Switch and Have Machines Work as if by Magic».
Batteries.
Generators.
Transformers.
«it’s Late and I’m Cold, and I’d Like to Know How Late and How Cold It Is».
Clocks.
Thermometers and Barometers.
«I Want People to Think I’m Attractive».
Soap.
Buttons.
Tanning.
Spinning Wheels.
«I Would Like to Have Some Cool Sex».
Birth Control.
Birthing Forceps.
Incubators.
«I Want Things That Won’t Catch on Fire».
Cement and Concrete.
Steel.
Welding.
«there’s Nothing to Read».
Paper.
Printing Presses.
«it Sucks Here and I Want to Go Literally Anywhere Else».
Bikes.
Compasses.
Latitude and Longitude.
Sidebar: How Far Is It Between Lines of Latitude and Longitude Anyway?
Radio.
Boats.
Human Flight.
«I Want Everyone to Think I’m Smart».
Logic.
Chemistry: What Are Things, and How Do I Make Things?
What Are Things Made Of?
Where Do Things Come From?
What Can I Make Out of Things?
Major Schools of Philosophy Summed Up in a Few Quippy Sentences About High-fives.
The Basics of Visual Art, Including Some Styles You Can Steal.
Sidebar: Where Can You Get Pigments?
Heal Some Body: Medicine and How to Invent It.
The Germ Theory of Disease.
How to Evaluate Medical Treatments.
Sidebar: Normal Human Baselines.
Sidebar: Rehydration Drink.
Basic First (and in Your Case, Only) Aid.
Choking.
Breathing but Unconscious.
Not Breathing.
Sidebar: Cpr Songs.
Broken Bones.
Wounds.
Infection.
How to Invent Music, and Musical Instruments, and Music Theory, and Also We Included.
Some Really Great Songs for You to Plagiarize Too.
How to Invent Musical Instruments.
Basic Music Theory.
How to Produce a 440hz Sound Wave at Any Point in History Like It Isn’t Even a Big Deal.
Reading Music.
These Really Great Songs That We Put in This Book for You to Plagiarize.
Computers: How to Turn Mental Labor into Physical Labor, So Then You Don’t Have to Think.
So Hard but Can Instead Just Turn a Crank or Whatever.
What Kind of Numbers Your Computer Will Use, and What It Will Do with Them.
What Even Is Adding Though, and How Can We Talk About Adding When I Don’t Even Know.
How a Computer Works Yet?
Okay, So, Great I’ve Invented All These Gates, but None of Them Add Anything Yet, So What.
the Heck?
So Let’s Actually Build Some Logic Gates and Solve Computers.
Conclusion: Things Should Now Be Pretty Comfortable for You, and You’re Welcome.
Appendixes.
Technology Tree.
The Periodic Table.
Useful Chemicals, How to Make Them, and How They Can Definitely Kill You.
Logical Argument Forms.
Trigonometry Tables, Included Because You’LL Need Them When You Invent Sundials, but They’LL Also Be Useful if You Ever Decide to Invent Trigonometry.
Some Universal Constants That Took Humanity a While to Figure Out, and Which You Can Now Name After Yourself.
Frequencies for Various Notes, So You Can Play Those Cool Songs We Included.
A Bunch of Cool Gears and Other Fundamental Mechanisms.
Here’s Where Some Useful Human Parts Are and What They Do.
Afterword.
Bibliography.
Endnotes Written by Me, the Ryan from This Timeline.
Index.
About the Author.