How do I put together a "Press Kit" for my band?

Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Hypothetical Scenarios: How would you approach creating a Civilization Survival Kit?

• tl;dr: what should a book sufficient to bootstrap our civilization contain? When you are 33 there is some sort of catastrophic event (the zombie apocalypse if you will), derailing civilization as we know it. Several years of chaos and incredible hardship ensue. There's no government, no army or police, key infrastructure is destroyed. The world is a dangerous place, with hordes of blood thirsty cannibals roaming the country. Luckily, you manage to find some other people who share your values (such as not eating other people), and you band together for protection. Your newly created community turns out to be very successful in fending off the new barbarians, and after some time you and your tribe reach a stabilization. You are well armed, your village is fortified, and you have enough food to sustain yourselves. You are not at war with your neighbors. Life is becoming good again, so as a community you do the obvious thing: you have lots of babies. The children grow up, and they turn out to be fine young people. However, it's clear to you that you and other old-timers who remember the world from before the apocalypse are slowly dying. You don't want you descendants to live like savages for the next five hundred years: ou want them to put civilization back on track and pick up where the 21st century left in a few generations. You want them to have airplanes, computers, and refrigerators. That means that you and your buddies have to pass all you know about science and technology on them. However, it turns out your collective knowledge has some... gaps. Well, it's a damn shame your last real chemist died in an accident while preparing explosives for the last war, and his apprentices are only good for preparing ammo. If only somebody had written a book containing all the knowledge necessary to bootstrap civilization in a concise form and you had a copy... A Civilization Survival Kit. If only somebody thought about it before the catastrophe... How would you approach preparing such a Civilization Survival Kit? It is impossible to put all our knowledge in one book, so it would have to be highly selective. It has to be accessible to somebody who is very smart and has very strong incentives to learn, but who nevertheless lacks a scientific background. It has to contain the bare fundamentals that will allow the reader to figure out important details by herself. Whenever a topic gets too complicated, it should point the reader to ways of finding out more details ("if you find a library that still has books, look for stuff looking like x, y, and z, this should guide you to a deeper understanding). It should also make sure that the scientific method is clearly explained, so the readers can can carry on progress by themselves when they reach the books limitations. It should also contain summaries of more advanced topics ("this will not make sense to you now, but if you get to the point where you know how to x, you can use these equations to check your results"). What topics should the book cover in details, and which can be only glanced upon? I imagine that eg. Newtonian physics would need a very thorough treatment, while giving a very compressed overview of stuff like relativist physics ("these are the equations, get back to them when your civilization has airplanes"). Also, it definitely should have information about some specific engineering topics, like how to build an internal combustion engine, and what are the principles that allow airplanes to fly.

• Answer:

  I happen to have a book that was written with something like that in mind; not exactly an apocalyptical scenario, but pure fear that we may forget things that were really important not only ago and not be able to recreate it. I've bought The Forgotton Arts & Crafts (Skills from Bygone Days)*, by John Seymour**, during a trip to the US about 10 years ago. Found the book cover nice and the title curious (see below), perused a little bit, and bought one. Since then I happen to read it from time, random pages or chapters. It goes to some lenght explaining how to make some basic things: knife making, coopering (or making barrels), weaving, masonry, food conservation, and dozens other items, all using about the same technology that a pioneer from the 18th century would have available to him. It's not as comprehensive as a real manual for a nuclear disaster, and it misses many of the details, but it's good start at it. Edit: Now, after posting this answer, I decided to do some Google searching and found The John Seymour School for Self Sufficiency (http://www.self-sufficiency.net/). It's active, has classes running for 2012, and what is more funny, even the HTML is from the back to basics style! -- * http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Arts-Crafts-John-Seymour/dp/0789458470 ** According to the book summary, John Seymour was the author of other books on the subject, including The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency, which I didn't had the chance to read (yet).