Leveraging modern Medicine and Chemistry

Unpolished · Nov 20, 2018

My MC is taking what amounts to a bachelors, a four year degree, in primitive living.

The school is in another solar system and run by a technologically advanced civilization. The culture is paranoid in the sense that they have advanced tools, for example surgury bots but would expect a surgeon to be able to do the work with a scalpel, needle and thread and be able to do minor bot repairs. So they train a very few like my MC.

A few years from now he could be doing colony support or establishment, research and exporation vessel emergency backup, teacher for more reasonable survivalist types, new world on the ground exploration, ... or just running away to live near Grampa Gribley's farm the rest of his life.

At that time fire, knapping, hunting, fishing, trapping, gathering, pathfinding and tracking should be second nature. He should have a functional knowledge of pottery, carving, basketry, weaving, cord making, weaving, one or more needle/yarn arts, tanning, shelter building, celestial nav, cartography, ded reconning, boat building(paddle/row/sail), herding, gardening, riding, medicine....

The places I'm getting stuck are medicine and chemistry. Most referances seem to prefer modern processes and supplies or I can go back a thousand years and fight arcane terminology and wierd superstitions.

Our understanding of the universe has grown so much since then and it should give us and the MC new cognitive tools to apply to our world and whatever our current environment happens to be.

I need to know what he could potentially make or detect in the wild and how. Chemistry, I'm not asking about physical processes.

I need to know how to live away from civilization. Live in this case meaning healing broken bones and taking out the occasional arrow or appendix.

Specific information would be wonderful but I'm really asking for a better way or place to research.

I did my homework: The old chemistry manuals that appear to be the most useful are terrible in the sense that the names of the ingrediants, resultant compounds and processes have changed. The survival manuals tend to think if you can tan hide and treat hypothermia that's all you need to know. The internet has provided bits and snippits but...

Apologies for the length, I'm crossposting from scifi and am trying to head off a bunch of questions in advance.

Any assistance deeply appreciated.

Barfus · Nov 21, 2018

My first thought is about your MC is they wouldn't know how to do any significant form of chemistry or medicine. They may be able to tell acids from bases by the taste of the compound an probably know how to treat basic wounds like cuts and scrapes. But your MC has a degree in primitive living not science, do to any real chemistry would require the knowledge on how to create the sensitive tools for measuring compounds. The same could be said for surgery and setting bones, unless your MC was taught where the appendix is and how to repair it without slicing open an major artery, I wouldn't expect them to somehow figure it out in the wild.

Plus, your MC has a huge toolbox of skill for you to work with and having a lack in knowledge would give them more depth.

Unpolished · Nov 21, 2018

Barfus said:
My first thought is about your MC is they wouldn't know how to do any significant form of chemistry or medicine. They may be able to tell acids from bases by the taste of the compound an probably know how to treat basic wounds like cuts and scrapes. But your MC has a degree in primitive living not science, do to any real chemistry would require the knowledge on how to create the sensitive tools for measuring compounds. The same could be said for surgery and setting bones, unless your MC was taught where the appendix is and how to repair it without slicing open an major artery, I wouldn't expect them to somehow figure it out in the wild.

Plus, your MC has a huge toolbox of skill for you to work with and having a lack in knowledge would give them more depth.

The Greeks (or at least a few of the educated ones) could make concrete. The pioneers in the US could make lye and soap, I suspect it was thousand year old tech at the time. Shouldn't someone with another few thousand years of tech behind their education be able to be taught a little more? (and if not what will they be teaching after the first year or two?)

Hippocrates could treat a broken leg and Galen mastered most forms of gladitorial trauma. Shouldn't someone with another few thousand years of tech behind their education be able to be taught a little more? (and if not what will they be teaching after the first year or two?)

I do agree that flaws and shortcomings can make people/situations more interesting. But the tools to get yourself in a little deeper before it all falls apart can be even more interesting.

Barfus · Nov 21, 2018

Unpolished said:
The Greeks (or at least a few of the educated ones) could make concrete. The pioneers in the US could make lye and soap, I suspect it was thousand year old tech at the time. Shouldn't someone with another few thousand years of tech behind their education be able to be taught a little more? (and if not what will they be teaching after the first year or two?)

Hippocrates could treat a broken leg and Galen mastered most forms of gladitorial trauma. Shouldn't someone with another few thousand years of tech behind their education be able to be taught a little more? (and if not what will they be teaching after the first year or two?)

I do agree that flaws and shortcomings can make people/situations more interesting. But the tools to get yourself in a little deeper before it all falls apart can be even more interesting.

Yes the Romans had concrete, they had scholars who spend all their time developing chemistry. The Greeks had surgeons, who spent all their time studying the human body. Your MC may know how to make concrete or identify tumor in theory but the actual applied skill set still requires a significant amount of time to become proficient. For example, most of us know that microbes cause most infections and there are treatments to resolve these infections, however, most would not be able to differentiate between a bacteria, viral, or parasitic infection nor be able to administer the proper treatment. Your MC would be in the same situation, they would know all about these facts but unless their schooling specifically taught them how to do this in the wild, I don't think they could develop effectively on their own.

As I said before, you MC has a huge array of skills. That many skills would take years to become functionally adept at everyone and even longer to have second nature mastery in the particular ones you listed. I think most people can tell you that four years is barely enough time to mastery a handful of technical skills let alone all the ones you listed.

Unpolished · Nov 22, 2018

Barfus said:
Yes the Romans had concrete, they had scholars who spend all their time developing chemistry. The Greeks had surgeons, who spent all their time studying the human body. Your MC may know how to make concrete or identify tumor in theory but the actual applied skill set still requires a significant amount of time to become proficient. For example, most of us know that microbes cause most infections and there are treatments to resolve these infections, however, most would not be able to differentiate between a bacteria, viral, or parasitic infection nor be able to administer the proper treatment. Your MC would be in the same situation, they would know all about these facts but unless their schooling specifically taught them how to do this in the wild, I don't think they could develop effectively on their own.

As I said before, you MC has a huge array of skills. That many skills would take years to become functionally adept at everyone and even longer to have second nature mastery in the particular ones you listed. I think most people can tell you that four years is barely enough time to mastery a handful of technical skills let alone all the ones you listed.

I'll agree the learning schedule is brutal. But many of those skills are relatively pure skills in the sense that the hard part is the doing not the understanding. For example, crochet, it's valuable to know yarns and dyes and cotton and sheep but getting better to a point doesn't involve any higher brain function, it's practicing every day to learn the motion so you can go faster. You can only physically do that so many hours a day. I also suspect a limit as to how many consecutive hours of practice are useful education.

We have people in the group that will walk away and never see concrete again and others that will be taking groups on ten year trips with rescue by radio if they have one months away. Basic first aid is lovely but it assumes the patient will be in a fully stocked and staffed ER in an hour tops. These are places you are the ER. You can't do everything and even if you could be trained to do everything when you need it you won't be able to conjour up an MRI machine whe you need one if it's doable from scratch it would take three lifetimes.

But you are going to get or see cuts, even bad cuts(just knapping), broken bones, severe hypothermia ... If the student is being trained for living 100 miles from nowhere shouldn't the trainers make them semi-competant to take care of the maladys that it's almost 100% certain they will have or see? Yes the medications they can improvise are few and the diagnostic tools almost nonexistant. But there should be some low hanging fruit Galen wasn't familiar with. From the medication viewpoint I think on Earth(in the US) we can easily pull off soap, antiseptics, saline, ether, chloroform, bleach, pennicillin, and ephedrine. I'm not sure and I am sure I've missed something, need a chemist to tell me.

Non-chemical: bone setting, suturng, hypodermics? traction splints, mast gear? what else?

I'm not trying to make them neurosurgeons I'm just trying to give them and their charges some secondary care capability.

And the concrete I could make.

ajaye · Nov 22, 2018

Unpolished, I don't know how you can best go about your research apart from looking up specific details as you need them.

Is it worth looking into herbal anaesthetics?

Also, just for interest, I came across this about a Russian surgeon performing an appendectomy on himself in the 60s. O.O

Unpolished · Nov 22, 2018

ajaye said:
Unpolished, I don't know how you can best go about your research apart from looking up specific details as you need them.

Is it worth looking into herbal anaesthetics?

Also, just for interest, I came across this about a Russian surgeon performing an appendectomy on himself in the 60s. O.O

Both valuable suggestions, thank you.

The problem with looking up details as I need them is I don't know what they are, what is available. The much abused concrete example, it's easy to look up how to make concrete, it's hard to guess that is a (relatively) easy, availiable resource.

ajaye · Nov 22, 2018

How about looking into ideas/discussions on rebooting civilisation, like Lewis Dartnell's The Knowledge. This might come at the (heh) 'knowledge' from a different angle.

waylander · Nov 22, 2018

Aspirin can be extracted from willow bark using primitive technology. A very valuable thing is going to be anti-infectives. Wounds or cuts ,even well washed, can turn septic let alone any surgery; your MC will need some form of antibacterial.

Unpolished · Nov 22, 2018

ajaye said:
How about looking into ideas/discussions on rebooting civilisation, like Lewis Dartnell's The Knowledge. This might come at the (heh) 'knowledge' from a different angle.

Read several, that particular one I've been pointed to twice today, never heard of it before. I think I'll add it to my christmas list.

Above herbal medicine referance doesn't appear to be valuble in north america except as a reminder to research that field more. It refrances coca (south american), quinine (south american?), clove(asian?), valarian(asian?) and one other I've never heard of that I need to look up. I did learn quinine works as a local anesthetic and cloves get more respect that direction than I would have suspected. A fun read.

Unpolished · Nov 22, 2018

waylander said:
Aspirin can be extracted from willow bark using primitive technology. A very valuable thing is going to be anti-infectives. Wounds or cuts ,even well washed, can turn septic let alone any surgery; your MC will need some form of antibacterial.

I know the asprin is there, I wonder if one could make tea and dry it allowing leaving the wood behind.

Anti-infectives are priceless. A healthy, careful person can probably get lucky more than we'd guess but luck runs out. (So does health and sometimes careful)
I think the proper medical words would be antiseptics and antibiotics but same idea.

Thank you.

AW Admin · Nov 22, 2018

Research earlier uses of willow-bark tea, Fox glove (digitalis), mouldy bread (yes, really).

The Neolithic settlers of Britain could splint arm and leg bones (and their patients survived for us to see the results in urn burials), and perform treppanage.

Look for things like the Foxfire books.

BDSEmpire · Nov 22, 2018

Pick up a Boy Scout Handbook for some extra reference material on basic wilderness survival. It's not comprehensive but it should jump around to a bunch of useful topics - knots, plant identification, basic first aid, and firemaking.

I think I get what you're going for - what would a modern technologically advanced person need in their primitive survival toolkit as far as knowledge. On the medicine front the most fundamental difference in modern thinking from the past is our understanding of the microscopic world and the role of microorganisms in disease and sickness. Germs and genes (genetics) are two of the biggest differences between someone two hundred years ago and the modern day.

To leverage that into your story, your MC is going to look at how to keep themselves clean, how to sterilize water because they know that bugs and germs can live in it. They will tend to wash their hands before doing lots of tasks and will be trained to watch out for signs of disease. Field medic guides will describe ways to drain wounds, how to keep things from going septic in general and some emergency plants and preparations that may help to reduce inflammation or treat wounds. In the end, there's just no substitute for modern medicine.

The chemistry side should cover useful reactions you can perform in the field - mixing of acids and bases to generate heat, how to mix up Future Tech Sterilizing Drops (TM). This is a fun part where you can speculate that this future society will have an idea of how to prepare their colonists for the dangers of a new planet. It doesn't all have to be earth technology.

I'd say that chemistry "just happens" while you're performing these other tasks. Cooking down sap into a glue is a type of chemistry but you don't usually talk about what's going on - you just get it over the fire and wait till it looks right.

Unpolished · Nov 22, 2018

Research earlier uses of willow-bark tea, Fox glove (digitalis), mouldy bread (yes, really).
Mouldy bread easy to believe penicillin and LSD(ergot) and ... In a previous search I couldn't find how to identify and purify pennicillin(but I can't remember how serious that search was)

The Neolithic settlers of Britain could splint arm and leg bones (and their patients survived for us to see the results in urn burials),
Survived is important but I really need to know could they still play the piano and dance?

and perform treppanage.
This one has been done successfully by too many cultures to be hard. I'm not clear on if the removed bone lets go of the underlying meat (dura layer?) by itself or if you cut/pry...process is important because we apparently don't want to damage the dura(?).

Most(all) of those, "too many," cultures were trepanning to release, deamons, bad humors, excessive blood, pressure .... The only thing I know it's good for is a fracture where a piece of bone is held down by another so you trim the top one. Can we get a doctor in to speak to other value? Would it release pressure/blood in a concussion? Does it really work for bad humors and demons or is there a preferred treatment for those?

The school/training isn't Human/Earth centric. Medication is going to be harder off planet or for an alien patient. Even dogs and cats who are very close to us chemically can't be, "treated," with chocolate, asprin, tylenol... The physical methods I think are going to be more widely applicable and trained harder. Most races/species are going to have skin and benefit from sutures.

Look for things like the Foxfire books
Those are wonderful! Read them all (like 35 years ago) potentially a refresher is in order.
I remember being excited by the stills. I wonder if that is the same year I discovered peanut butter jars can't take enough thermal shock to make good stills? In my bedroom on an antique electric hotplate.

Thank You

Barfus · Nov 22, 2018

Unpolished said:
I'll agree the learning schedule is brutal. But many of those skills are relatively pure skills in the sense that the hard part is the doing not the understanding. For example, crochet, it's valuable to know yarns and dyes and cotton and sheep but getting better to a point doesn't involve any higher brain function, it's practicing every day to learn the motion so you can go faster. You can only physically do that so many hours a day. I also suspect a limit as to how many consecutive hours of practice are useful education.

We have people in the group that will walk away and never see concrete again and others that will be taking groups on ten year trips with rescue by radio if they have one months away. Basic first aid is lovely but it assumes the patient will be in a fully stocked and staffed ER in an hour tops. These are places you are the ER. You can't do everything and even if you could be trained to do everything when you need it you won't be able to conjour up an MRI machine whe you need one if it's doable from scratch it would take three lifetimes.

But you are going to get or see cuts, even bad cuts(just knapping), broken bones, severe hypothermia ... If the student is being trained for living 100 miles from nowhere shouldn't the trainers make them semi-competant to take care of the maladys that it's almost 100% certain they will have or see? Yes the medications they can improvise are few and the diagnostic tools almost nonexistant. But there should be some low hanging fruit Galen wasn't familiar with. From the medication viewpoint I think on Earth(in the US) we can easily pull off soap, antiseptics, saline, ether, chloroform, bleach, pennicillin, and ephedrine. I'm not sure and I am sure I've missed something, need a chemist to tell me.

Non-chemical: bone setting, suturng, hypodermics? traction splints, mast gear? what else?

I'm not trying to make them neurosurgeons I'm just trying to give them and their charges some secondary care capability.

And the concrete I could make.

I just want to make it clear, I'm not intending to sh*t on your parade. I don't want to come off as super negative towards your idea or your MC design. I just want to help you avoid making a superhero type character (unless that's what you're aiming for) who just knows how to do everything and nothing is a real challenge.

I would agree, that is reasonable for your MC to know herbal medicine like which plants help with pain and what not. It would be even better if they knew fermentation to create alcohol for extraction and vinegar for preservation. So for chemical compounds like chloroform, once again I don't know how it the wilds your MC could make that which some serious technology they either carried with them or spent quite a bit of time developing.

Staying with chloroform as an example, you can make it by mixing ethanol (probably purified ethanol with no contaminates like methanol, ethanal, or acetic acid) and Calcium hypochlorite (solid form of bleach). However, calcium hypochlorite does occur in nature so your MC would have to make that too. To make Calcium hypochlorite requires lime stone (Ca(OH)2) and Chlorine gas (Cl2). Now there's another step for them to accomplish before they can make the reagent, they have to purify off Cl2 gas, which is a whole other beast because Cl2 is super reactive and unstable.

I think BDSEmpire is on to something good, it's the future in your world's setting. Just give your MC a buddy bot or something. Why have them learn all this scientific knowledge with the chance that either one they could fail and kill themselves or two not have the proper reagents to make the items they need. If they had a basic AI companion that did the resource harvesting and purification for them you don't need to do all this extra research. It would boil down to, MC is making the basic survival tool they need and the buddy bot is programed to help search for and create useful compound.

Unpolished · Nov 22, 2018

Pick up a Boy Scout Handbook for some extra reference material on basic wilderness survival. It's not comprehensive but it should jump around to a bunch of useful topics - knots, plant identification, basic first aid, and firemaking.
Good advice. I was troop librarian, eagle scout. Anyone doing this read the older manuals.

I think I get what you're going for - what would a modern technologically advanced person need in their primitive survival toolkit as far as knowledge.
I've argued with enough people, NOT HERE OTHER PLACES, that this gave me a, "somebody gets it." moment. Felt good thank you.

<snipped for space modern man knows germs ... wash your hands

Field medic guides will describe ways to drain wounds, how to keep things from going septic in general and some emergency plants and preparations that may help to reduce inflammation or treat wounds. In the end, there's just no substitute for modern medicine.
The field medic guides and similar are all very focused on wrap and ship. Maybe I need to find older ones?

The chemistry side should cover useful reactions you can perform in the field - mixing of acids and bases to generate heat, how to mix up Future Tech Sterilizing Drops (TM). This is a fun part where you can speculate that this future society will have an idea of how to prepare their colonists for the dangers of a new planet. It doesn't all have to be earth technology.
There will be future tech, but the training assumes you had the convienient kind of spacecraft crash where you aren't hurt but all the clothes and supplies are vaporized. In the real world I expect new graduates of this program will be VERY thankful for every match and be able to tell you how many minutes and calories it saves you.

I'd say that chemistry "just happens" while you're performing these other tasks. Cooking down sap into a glue is a type of chemistry but you don't usually talk about what's going on - you just get it over the fire and wait till it looks right.
MC's home is Phoenix, Arizona. Birch glue dies at like 20F. Pine glue dies at about 90F and we'll have to travel to get it. I live in Phoenix, if your an outdoorsman not an air conditioned office worker under 90F is sweater weather. Obtaining glue or any supply is a potential adventure.
Those two glues often won't cut it. (the answer is probably lac as in shellac, we have the beetles and it was used prehistorically) It's important for him to know if he takes his arrows home from the moutains they will probably disentigrate when he needs them(or if he doesn't it's imporant for the evil writer to know)

Thank You

Unpolished · Nov 22, 2018

I just want to make it clear, I'm not intending to sh*t on your parade. I don't want to come off as super negative towards your idea or your MC design. I just want to help you avoid making a superhero type character (unless that's what you're aiming for) who just knows how to do everything and nothing is a real challenge.
I felt sh*t on, but I assumed it meant I hadn't communicated my needs well. No matter soft people won't make it on the internet or in writing.

Superhero is a major problem but:

We're training people to try and survive impossible places. Among other things these students are being trained to suddenly be the guy/girl/LGM in charge when Spock says, "This appears to be a type M planet, oh h3ll abandon ship."

Knowing how is a lesser advantage, everyone knows where the cracks of doom are and how to throw a ring or alternately the death star isn't well hidden. The adventure is in the journey.

This isn't back story, even if he's going to be Batman someday right now he's still lerarning to throw a punch.

I would agree, that is reasonable for your MC to know herbal medicine like which plants help with pain and what not. It would be even better if they knew fermentation to create alcohol for extraction and vinegar for preservation. So for chemical compounds like chloroform, once again I don't know how it the wilds your MC could make that which some serious technology they either carried with them or spent quite a bit of time developing.
His herbology will tend to always be weak compared to a trained local except maybe in the training area or central Arizona. Just too much to know to know the right plant, identify the right plant, part and season no matter how much training you have and doing it wrong can mean insidious things you're feeling good and gradually increasing the arsnic level in your system.

That's why I'm here. Less for chloroform which I can look up and more for all the things I don't know exist. Pottery stills(alembics) should be easy(assuming time, skills, good clay...)

Staying with chloroform as an example, you can make it by mixing ethanol (probably purified ethanol with no contaminates like methanol, ethanal, or acetic acid) and Calcium hypochlorite (solid form of bleach). However, calcium hypochlorite does occur in nature so your MC would have to make that too. To make Calcium hypochlorite requires lime stone (Ca(OH)2) and Chlorine gas (Cl2). Now there's another step for them to accomplish before they can make the reagent, they have to purify off Cl2 gas, which is a whole other beast because Cl2 is super reactive and unstable.
Sounds like several adventures and lots of work. Leaves how do we purify and how much purification is necessary? Can we generate enough chlorene with salt water and a potato battery?

I think BDSEmpire is on to something good, it's the future in your world's setting. Just give your MC a buddy bot or something. Why have them learn all this scientific knowledge with the chance that either one they could fail and kill themselves or two not have the proper reagents to make the items they need. If they had a basic AI companion that did the resource harvesting and purification for them you don't need to do all this extra research. It would boil down to, MC is making the basic survival tool they need and the buddy bot is programed to help search for and create useful compound.
Buddy bot, more a tricorder/smartphone really, is standard issue for students that didn't bring their own. The training assumes it didn't survive. It's also going to not be available on any recently joined world where that tech would be disruptive.

And the adventure is in the journey, quit trying to give Frodo an F15 and heat seeking missile to place the ring in it takes all the fun out of things.

Side thought, what insigna would Rivendale's air corp have on the wings?

Much good stuff, Thank You

frimble3 · Nov 22, 2018

That's why I'm here. Less for chloroform which I can look up and more for all the things I don't know exist. Pottery stills(alembics) should be easy(assuming time, skills, good clay...)

It's my opinion that making the tech to build the tech is the hard part. Human anatomy hasn't changed much, but so much of 'modern medicine' is increasing the knowledge available, and that assumes things like X-rays, CT scans, and even 'small' stuff like heart-monitors, and those little blood-oxygen finger-pinchers. Diabletic blood-sugar testers. (Waiting for people to exhibit actual symptoms being possible, but less then optimal.)
At a basic level, making pottery requires not just clay, and skills (which can be learned) but a kiln of some sort. Probably a simple pile of burning wood, covered in earth (like a charcoal-burning heap) but you need at least a couple of lessons, or good instructions.
A pill-roller is simple to make, a syringe, less so.
Also, if you're going to do blood transfusions, you need whatever you need for typing and matching blood. (We haven't been doing that successfully all that long, certainly the Greeks weren't doing it.) Making a saline solution might be simpler, if you have access to clean water, and pure salt. (Your guys will have been taught how to distill water, right? Probably a simple solar still?)

So many medical improvements have been in the tech end, we've known the basic body
parts for a long, long time.

Not wanting to be a downer, good luck with your story. (You might want to approach this from the other end - determine what medical/chemical things need to happen, then figure out how to do that.
If you're interested in glass, if you have the right kind of sand, 'all' you need is a lot of heat. Your guys will know how to make bellows, I assume.

BDSEmpire · Nov 23, 2018

We train our Air Force pilots on wilderness survival skills. The assumption is that they get shot down in some part of the world and will have to Survive, Evade, Resist, and Escape (SERE). They are shown how to make primitive gadgets like snares, fire, and water purification devices. They are sent out into the woods typically with a knife in practical tests to demonstrate and improve on these skills. It's rough going and dangerous but they have to be ready in case they are in dire circumstances.

Of course, when they go out on real missions they aren't sent out with a knife and their wits, they get survival kits to up their odds. Here are a couple examples from a favorite Youtuber that shows all the bits that are contained in these historical kits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zjv1u9GOs8 - 1967 Vietnam US Leg Holster Pilot Survival Kit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKUcFhJLm34 - 1944 USN M-592 Pilot Survival Kit

30 years of time between those two kits but the basics are the same - medicines for common problems, water, fire, signaling, and a book to remind you of all those things you may have forgotten since you took your initial training. Note that the medicine packets are for similar things - fighting infection, maintaining alertness - but the types of medicine they pack varies between the two. As we find better compounds for doing the same job, those get swapped into place.

Right now we have Gorilla Glass, tough thermoplastics, shock-resistant storage drives and contactless charging solutions. Put a tough case around a modern smartphone, set it to low-power mode and use a solar cell to top off its battery and now you've got a current technology device that can contain full motion video of any conceivable survival technique you could hope for, along with the written text of all of humanity regarding survival situations. Software can help identify plants automatically and give you a tremendous edge for surviving in a dangerous situation. Couple that with a good sensor package and you have a huge leg up over anyone living in the past. However, who wants to read about someone surviving because they followed instructions and everything worked out. There is still a lot of danger and uncertainty out in the real world that no book will be able to cover or mitigate. I mention this because I think you can still have a heck of a story even if your MC has something to aid them along. What if the device is giving false data because the sensor grid wasn't clean? What if it gets smashed and gets set to text-only mode? What if the charging system is busted up and repairs are going to take venturing into dangerous territory without the device in the hopes of finding some usable copper wire? Whatever your MC has been reading about or watching should be fresh in their mind but other stuff is probably mostly forgotten.

Circuits get smaller and more efficient, storage space gets denser, and the dream of some people to know everything is a strong motivator for research into wearable computing technology. Right now we have little dumb devices that can be implanted under the skin, but smarter versions are coming along and it's not hard to speculate that in ten or twenty years you will have computers that can be embedded into the body that are charged by your own electrical field and can feed information directly to your brain.

Carrying a clunky tricorder-like device? Ho ho ho, how primitive! Just use your Mind-Jack like any modern person and... uh oh, what's this? The crash was so severe that it somehow severed part of the mind-jack relay and now you have to rely on your own organic knowledge? Time to panic! Lots of possibilities with how you want your characters to know things.

One thing that builds on frimble3's comment is that medical technology and other industries all build on highly complex systems in order to function. The simple answer is you *can't* replicate what they do out in the field. Not until you rebuild the industry that supports them. Primitive stuff is really miserable compared to modern pills and remedies. Your MC may get by with mixing up some willow bark tea but they are going to probably gag at the taste initially and there are side effects not present in modern aspirin compounds. All of that is rich fodder for storytelling.

Unpolished · Nov 23, 2018

Please forgive the disorganized stream of semi-conciousness reply. I shoulda waited for the coffee to kick in.

It's my opinion that making the tech to build the tech is the hard part.

Always!
make fire, stone axe, shovel/bucket - 1/2 day at least
Kiln - 1/2 at least plus drying time
wood for charcoal - 1/2 day depends on environment, kiln size....
finding clay - ?
digging clay - 1/2 day
... all above times don't include transportation

Kiln isn't strictly required for terra cotta pottery historicly and on youtube they get by with big bonfires.

Basic blood typing(a,b,o..) is apparently easy, but there are apparently two other hurdles to pass to ensure real compatability.

I wonder if you could centrafuge plasma with a bottle and a string (swinging it around your head) and if you can how much effort is it and do we need an anticoagulent?

Somewhere I read said a transfusion requires and anticoagulant, is unintuative can someone who knows elaborate?

Can we make an anticoagulent?

For saline. Sterile water is easy(ish) distilled requires effort and probably more prep time than our patient has if we don't make it or at least the still in advance.

Solar still is a great idea, if we have glass or plastic.

xray, CT, monitor, O2 monitor, sugar tester not happening.

Generating xrays I can see(I didn't say easy or practical I said possible) photo paper and development I don't know about (I'll gress impossible or possible and highly impractical)
CT ummm no

O2/sugar no but is there a cheat to do it manually?
Microscopes we can do.

Yes anatomy hasn't changed and with rare misconceptions we've known forever.

Germs and chemestry have changed drastically the way we view a body and it's massive colony of associated organisms.

Diagnostic tools are king, and we're going to be making do and doing without.

I can't figure out a hollow needle without glass or metal, anyone have a trick or wild guess? (the syrenge, squeezy part is easy)

Not wanting to be a downer, good luck with your story. (You might want to approach this from the other end - determine what medical/chemical things need to happen, then figure out how to do that.
If you're interested in glass, if you have the right kind of sand, 'all' you need is a lot of heat. Your guys will know how to make bellows, I assume.

Approaching from the other end is dangerous in the sense that half the readers might recognize that the weeks of adventure/effort building a solution could have been avoided by something the MC should have known that was within easy reach from sitting at the patient's bedside.

Glass, big heat is easy brain, high effort. Good, usable, clearish glass(borosilicate?) is sand, flux, and a water proofing compound. The guys on youtube and historically when glassmaking moved from Egypt/Greece/Rome to Germany(I think the google would be "forest glass") the details of the impurities drove them crazy. Supply gathering could be rough. Youtube cheated with airliners and historical peoples cheated by picking places for factories that just happened to have all the supplies.

How do you remove iron compounds from sand? I assume something like the induction heating trick they use for sillicon would work but it's a little beyond our reach.

Thank You

frimble3 · Nov 23, 2018

Kiln isn't strictly required for terra cotta pottery historicly and on youtube they get by with big bonfires.

A big bonfire works if you can keep it going long enough at a steady (high) heat. A 'pit firing' is the opposite, instead of building a heap, you dig a hole. The idea is to use the mass of the heap or the ground to hold the heat in.

I can't figure out a hollow needle without glass or metal, anyone have a trick or wild guess? (the syringe, squeezy part is easy)

I don't know that with simple tech you could get enough precise heat to 'draw' even a premade metal tube to a fine enough diameter.
Have you ever seen the needle tips that they make for use with insulin pens? A short length of hollow needle, appropriately pointed, attached to a plastic screw-on base. Maybe 1" long by a little less wide (base included). Might be simpler to put a few in a survival kit?
http://www.ulticare.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/PenNeedleSizes_621_JUN2014_25.png

(link to image)

If you are looking on-line, you will get a lot of hits for heavier gauge needles, on much larger bottles - they're made with glues, etc, for precision applications of small amounts.

Unpolished · Nov 23, 2018

frimble3 said:
I don't know that with simple tech you could get enough precise heat to 'draw' even a premade metal tube to a fine enough diameter.
Have you ever seen the needle tips that they make for use with insulin pens? A short length of hollow needle, appropriately pointed, attached to a plastic screw-on base. Maybe 1" long by a little less wide (base included). Might be simpler to put a few in a survival kit?
http://www.ulticare.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/PenNeedleSizes_621_JUN2014_25.png

(link to image)

If you are looking on-line, you will get a lot of hits for heavier gauge needles, on much larger bottles - they're made with glues, etc, for precision applications of small amounts.

I know they worked glass and more recently(as in they are still alive) hard soldered with oil and wood alcohol lamps with attached blow tubes.

Will look into your short needles.

Unpolished · Nov 23, 2018

BDSEmpire said:
We train our Air Force pilots on wilderness survival skills. The assumption is that they get shot down in some part of the world and will have to Survive, Evade, Resist, and Escape (SERE). They are shown how to make primitive gadgets like snares, fire, and water purification devices. They are sent out into the woods typically with a knife in practical tests to demonstrate and improve on these skills. It's rough going and dangerous but they have to be ready in case they are in dire circumstances.

Of course, when they go out on real missions they aren't sent out with a knife and their wits, they get survival kits to up their odds. Here are a couple examples from a favorite Youtuber that shows all the bits that are contained in these historical kits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Zjv1u9GOs8 - 1967 Vietnam US Leg Holster Pilot Survival Kit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKUcFhJLm34 - 1944 USN M-592 Pilot Survival Kit

30 years of time between those two kits but the basics are the same - medicines for common problems, water, fire, signaling, and a book to remind you of all those things you may have forgotten since you took your initial training. Note that the medicine packets are for similar things - fighting infection, maintaining alertness - but the types of medicine they pack varies between the two. As we find better compounds for doing the same job, those get swapped into place.

Right now we have Gorilla Glass, tough thermoplastics, shock-resistant storage drives and contactless charging solutions. Put a tough case around a modern smartphone, set it to low-power mode and use a solar cell to top off its battery and now you've got a current technology device that can contain full motion video of any conceivable survival technique you could hope for, along with the written text of all of humanity regarding survival situations. Software can help identify plants automatically and give you a tremendous edge for surviving in a dangerous situation. Couple that with a good sensor package and you have a huge leg up over anyone living in the past. However, who wants to read about someone surviving because they followed instructions and everything worked out. There is still a lot of danger and uncertainty out in the real world that no book will be able to cover or mitigate. I mention this because I think you can still have a heck of a story even if your MC has something to aid them along. What if the device is giving false data because the sensor grid wasn't clean? What if it gets smashed and gets set to text-only mode? What if the charging system is busted up and repairs are going to take venturing into dangerous territory without the device in the hopes of finding some usable copper wire? Whatever your MC has been reading about or watching should be fresh in their mind but other stuff is probably mostly forgotten.

Circuits get smaller and more efficient, storage space gets denser, and the dream of some people to know everything is a strong motivator for research into wearable computing technology. Right now we have little dumb devices that can be implanted under the skin, but smarter versions are coming along and it's not hard to speculate that in ten or twenty years you will have computers that can be embedded into the body that are charged by your own electrical field and can feed information directly to your brain.

Carrying a clunky tricorder-like device? Ho ho ho, how primitive! Just use your Mind-Jack like any modern person and... uh oh, what's this? The crash was so severe that it somehow severed part of the mind-jack relay and now you have to rely on your own organic knowledge? Time to panic! Lots of possibilities with how you want your characters to know things.

One thing that builds on frimble3's comment is that medical technology and other industries all build on highly complex systems in order to function. The simple answer is you *can't* replicate what they do out in the field. Not until you rebuild the industry that supports them. Primitive stuff is really miserable compared to modern pills and remedies. Your MC may get by with mixing up some willow bark tea but they are going to probably gag at the taste initially and there are side effects not present in modern aspirin compounds. All of that is rich fodder for storytelling.

I can't say anything against SERE my impression is that the candidates are godlike before they go for that training. It's interesting that their approach is similar in that you don't get gear for training. They train for 20 days, my MC is training for four years.

The kits are lovely and provided some good hints. I did note they tended to boil down to cordage, cutting tools and medication. With flyers like radios, hooks and needles that don't fall into those catagories.

The major culture has a bias against embedded tech overall, mybe more so for students. Anyway all the MC has seen so far is whats effectively a BT headset and a bionic arm on TV. I think it's partially related to your list of disasters above. They have the capability to produce more solid technology and embed it but when a computer is a couple of bucks and restoring everything to a new one is maybe five minutes...

You and Frimble3 are pushing an important, if obvious, point. We will not be making an MRI machine or lots of other things. In the unlikely case that it's possible for one man to do it's still going to take two lifetimes. But there has to be a set of techniques between what I know and what is impossible and those are what I'm looking for.

frimble3 · Nov 23, 2018

I'd suggest you stick to basic first aid, and lots of chemistry then. Is your character allowed to have a device that measures the chemical components of stuff, if he can give it a sample? If he concentrates his interests on clean water, painkillers and antibiotics, he'd have the basics down. Some conditions, people will die from, just as they will now. But, easing the pain so the patient will rest, and antibiotics to kill infections will help a lot of conditions.

If your MC can do a little light sewing, and bone-setting, that would probably cover most situations. He's probably in no position to do major surgery. Also, have him re-read his manual at intervals, so he feels familiar with it.

frimble3 · Nov 24, 2018

Two points:
One: A lot of your MC's medical work will depend on what sort of mission he is sent on. A bunch of young, in-shape, skilled workers will be a lot easier to deal with: it'll be too big to handle (laser burns, chopped by some giant cutter) or very minor (bumps, bruises, hangovers). If he's doing full-on colony work, it'll be a wider range of ages, abilities and problems: childbirth, pediatrics, older people overextending themselves, from strains to heart attacks.

2: Time constraints

At that time fire, knapping, hunting, fishing, trapping, gathering, pathfinding and tracking should be second nature. He should have a functional knowledge of pottery, carving, basketry, weaving, cord making, weaving, one or more needle/yarn arts, tanning, shelter building, celestial nav, cartography, dead reckoning, boat building(paddle/row/sail), herding, gardening, riding, medicine....

This is quite a program to be packed into four years. That's pretty much a lifetime as a hunter-gatherer. Medicine could take that long, boat building in different styles the same, the whole 'hunting, fishing, gathering, trapping' section? He could spend four years learning all of that for one environment, and be stuck somewhere that requires a totally different environment.

Maybe, if he just got a sort of overview of most of the crafts, and had specialists for the detail stuff. Because in that busy schedule, he'd also have to make time to be taught 'people skills' - how to get what may be a fairly large group of people to do what's needed, what he wants. That's a heck of a job for one guy - especially if he's youngish. Unless your outfit is looking for older, skilled guys to start with.

Not meaning, as has been said, to rain on your parade, but, aside from his learning all these skills, I don't think there will be much room in a book to display them, unless it's all about him being stranded somewhere, a la Robinson Crusoe.
Unless you winnow it down to "He was a Colony Skills Officer, with all that implied." and maybe a short example. Take it as a given, that everyone in the book knows what he could do, and only use the bits you need.
Much as a modern story would say "He was a Marine" without listing everything he could do.

Leveraging modern Medicine and Chemistry

Unpolished

Barfus

Unpolished

Barfus

Unpolished

ajaye

partial to a gum tree

Unpolished

ajaye

partial to a gum tree

waylander

Who's going for a beer?

Unpolished

Unpolished

AW Admin

BDSEmpire

Kindly Bumpkin

Unpolished

Barfus

Unpolished

Unpolished

frimble3

Heckuva good sport

BDSEmpire

Kindly Bumpkin

Unpolished

frimble3

Heckuva good sport

Unpolished

Unpolished

frimble3

Heckuva good sport

frimble3

Heckuva good sport