Chemistry in the wild

Unpolished

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My MC is taking what amounts to a bachelors, a four year degree, in wilderness survival and his chemistry training is better or at least fresher than mine.

I need to know what (with modern knowledge) he could potentially make in the wild and how. Chemestry, I'm not asking about physical processes (carving, knapping, shelter building, cordage, weaving, fire making, normal tanning, .....)

To phrase it differently, I want him to look at a landscape and think, "Oak tree...wood, fuel, charcoal, acorns, tannins, ..." "Limestone... with oak I have plaster, concrete, flux for iron if I get real lucky and find ore,..."

Specific suggestions 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 that's all you need to know. The internet has provided bits and snippits but...

Any assistance deeply appreciated.
 

D. E. Wyatt

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You might want to ask this in the Research forum.
 

Brightdreamer

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Hmm... speaking as a nonchemist, this sounds a bit like some of the info I once read in Dougal Dixon's "survival guide" about building a civilization from scratch in the Jurassic Age (link); it talked about where one would find raw materials for concrete, etc.

I would wonder what this lone person is doing standing in the wilderness contemplating raw materials for plaster and concrete and other relatively advanced matters when one is more likely to be concerned with basic survival first (which is why most people start at the "carving, knapping, shelter building" etc. end of the scale.) In what context is this? Is he part of a group of settlers or colonists? Has he voluntarily gone far from civilization to make his own life apart from others?
 

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Dougal Dixon's "survival guide" {/QUOTE]

Sounds promising, thank you.

I would wonder what this lone person is doing standing in the wilderness contemplating raw materials for plaster and concrete and other relatively advanced matters when one is more likely to be concerned with basic survival first (which is why most people start at the "carving, knapping, shelter building" etc. end of the scale.) In what context is this? Is he part of a group of settlers or colonists? Has he voluntarily gone far from civilization to make his own life apart from others?

He's a student. In four plus years he could be doing any of the above. The assumption is anywhere comfortable things like fire and food are going to be second nature. Anywhere uncomfortable the extra knowledge and ability could be just the edge you need.
 

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Wyatt:

Does this need to move? I'm new, am I breaking the rules? (and if so is there a shortcut?)

I put it here because my student isn't on planet but you're correct the question itself isn't scifi specific.
 
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ajaye

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Hmm... speaking as a nonchemist, this sounds a bit like some of the info I once read in Dougal Dixon's "survival guide" about building a civilization from scratch in the Jurassic Age (link); it talked about where one would find raw materials for concrete, etc.
Apologies for going off track, but I was amused by one reviewer's lament that he wasn't allowed to take a rifle on this hypothetic time travel.
 

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Apologies for going off track, but I was amused by one reviewer's lament that he wasn't allowed to take a rifle on this hypothetic time travel.

The proper response is to tell him he's an advanced man of the early 2000's and if such primitives as Tarzan and Turok can manage a rex with a flint knife he isn't permitted to whine. ;)
 

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Dougal Dixon's "survival guide" {/QUOTE]

Sounds promising, thank you.



He's a student. In four plus years he could be doing any of the above. The assumption is anywhere comfortable things like fire and food are going to be second nature. Anywhere uncomfortable the extra knowledge and ability could be just the edge you need.

The edge you need to what?

What is his goal? Why is he here? What kind of world is he on, anyway? You're unlikely to get such specific analogues as oaks/acorns for tannins unless there's a darned good reason evolution on Planet X almost exactly parallels Earth.

In a true wilderness situation, fire and food aren't just "comfortable things." They are life and death. That is why they are always priority. Even a spaceship landing on a new world is going to get its basic survival equipment/camp up and running ASAP before it starts looking to build local permanent structures out of local concrete. So I take it your assumption is that he's not a Robinson Crusoe, but has some degree of civilized backup in the form of, say, a prefab dwelling with heat and lighting and rations or food replication.

If it's just him on his own... why would he need to go to the extra trouble of building concrete and extracting materials for soldering flux or whatever? Is the goal to build a colony on an alien world? He won't be doing it alone, and he'll probably have the help of fellow colonists and whatever tech you decide to send with him (including possibly robotic builders, maybe drones and satellites to scout raw material sources, 3D printers even...) - and a lot is going to depend on the purpose of the colony. A tourist town or seat of political power is going to start out a lot differently than a mining or farming operation, as a for-instance. And if competing forces are also trying to gain a foothold on this same planet... or locals are trying to defend themselves from the aliens...

(And don't forget - if it is a new wild world, biologically compatible enough to support human life, you're not just going to be standing around looking for acorns. There are going to be local animals evolved to eat those acorns... and animals and parasites evolved to prey on those acorn-eaters. And, since life tends to be opportunistic in order to endure changing circumstances, some of that animal and parasite life may decide to sample the new exotic menu, which could move fabricating concrete a little ways down the priority list...)
 

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The Youtube channel "How to Make Everything" might be relevant to you. The premise is that they try to reconstruct modern items making everything from scratch including a bunch of chemicals.
 

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The edge you need to what?
To live. As you point out below there are places and seasons on Earth living won't be easy. Alien planets, without supllies and support will often be impossible. Parts of Australia would be near impossible some of the staples require a 40 step process to go from poison to food.

What is his goal? Why is he here? What kind of world is he on, anyway? You're unlikely to get such specific analogues as oaks/acorns for tannins unless there's a darned good reason evolution on Planet X almost exactly parallels Earth.
Goal? He's a kid, his goal is to camp a little easier because he likes it. The educational institution's goal is to train a few elite survivors. Colony support, research and exporation vessel emergency backup, teachers for more reasonable survivalist types, new world on the ground exploration, ....

Currently he's on a relatively wild terraformed planet. Four schools surrounded by tiny civilized areas, roughly the population of Earth.

I'm not biochemist enough to know how likely tannins are on a new world. I think in Earth like biospheres seed like things will be relatively common, as will squirrels to eat them. Can you eat them? Unlikely. So how do you identify what you can eat? A huge lab and ten years or more :) If you don't have a choice there should be some heuristics and tests. Will something on planet provide useful dyes and acids like tannins? I'm almost 100% certain.


In a true wilderness situation, fire and food aren't just "comfortable things." They are life and death. That is why they are always priority. Even a spaceship landing on a new world is going to get its basic survival equipment/camp up and running ASAP before it starts looking to build local permanent structures out of local concrete. So I take it your assumption is that he's not a Robinson Crusoe, but has some degree of civilized backup in the form of, say, a prefab dwelling with heat and lighting and rations or food replication.
No, under normal circumstances with good training food and especially fire are just what is. 20 below with the wind going sideways or the middle of the Sahara, then fire, water and food are harder and any edge you can give yourself is absolutely necessary.

The training, as opposed to the practice, assumes all the backup rifle, planetary survey, prefab dwelling and transportation died in some sort of horrific accident. If any or all bits survived that is a luxury.


If it's just him on his own... why would he need to go to the extra trouble of building concrete and extracting materials for soldering flux or whatever? Is the goal to build a colony on an alien world? He won't be doing it alone, and he'll probably have the help of fellow colonists and whatever tech you decide to send with him (including possibly robotic builders, maybe drones and satellites to scout raw material sources, 3D printers even...) - and a lot is going to depend on the purpose of the colony. A tourist town or seat of political power is going to start out a lot differently than a mining or farming operation, as a for-instance. And if competing forces are also trying to gain a foothold on this same planet... or locals are trying to defend themselves from the aliens...

(And don't forget - if it is a new wild world, biologically compatible enough to support human life, you're not just going to be standing around looking for acorns. There are going to be local animals evolved to eat those acorns... and animals and parasites evolved to prey on those acorn-eaters. And, since life tends to be opportunistic in order to endure changing circumstances, some of that animal and parasite life may decide to sample the new exotic menu, which could move fabricating concrete a little ways down the priority list...)

From the not going to be on his own view, he often wouldn't be. He or another like him would be with a group as the final level of backup after all the other backups have suffered some form of horrible disaster. And he often would be on his own either by choice or because there are many places one man on the ground makes more sense than all the helicopters, drones and satalites.

Yes something eats the acorns and something eats that and somewhere above that is something that will want to try the new flavors and sometimes people have to sleep. Makes concrete sound like a really good idea.
 
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Polenth

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I'm a scientist who also likes the whole wilderness survival thing. I don't look at items and consider how I could make modern buildings from them or how to extract chemicals I don't need. Making a sword and a brick house is beyond what you need for wilderness survival, which is why such things don't get included in guides.

I've never thought that camping would be more comfortable if only I had concrete. The forest floor is softer and also avoids being washed out from runoff from the rain. One time I was in a natural shelter and others were in tents with groundsheets. The storm flooded them out, even with just the runoff from a tent. The natural shelter was fine. As a general rule, people who like survival aren't trying to lock the world out with bricks and steel. They're learning to work with it and are fine with being part of it.

A chemist might think of some things in slightly more technical terms. An example would be when considering a poisonous plant, they'd be more likely to know why it's poisonous. Foxgloves contain digitalis. Bracken has cyanide. A non-chemist might know that they soak or boil acorns before cooking to leach out the bitterness, but a chemist would know you're leaching out the tannins. Given that it's invented, you could use any chemical mix. And perhaps know some first aid based on how to neutralise certain chemicals.

But you're really going to have to go some to persuade me that camping in this environment requires concrete and iron smelting. Or that people taking wilderness survival courses would need to learn such things (now, a basic colony building course, I could see it).
 

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I mostly agree with you in that iron, concrete, digitalis and cyanide aren't things you'd need or want everyday or even every year. Iron is probably unlikely without massive effort or luck. Concrete is probably a bad example there would usually be an easier way to avoid the lions, tigers and bears. Might be an ok replacement for pottery. I named it because it's something relatively simple and unexpected that I understand. It's main common value would probably be in a plaster for wattle and daub or similar for getting through a rough winter.

Digitalis and cyanide you named because they are things many of us have heard of, beacuse they are important. If you don't have civilization poison to protect our winter supplies or digitalis for heart medicine might be important. But you can't give doses of foxglove, natural sources fluxuate too much (and it's hard to get in an IV) so if possible you want to extract it to measure directly.

This is four hard years. This goes beyond stay with the car, carry a flint and steel, a compass and a pocket knife. It's going to (I'm going to try to) touch everything you might need to never touch asphalt again. Medicine, food preservation, hunting, trapping, gathering, navigation and cartography, artic, desret and jungle survival. Light coverage of river craft and small ocean craft, riding, herding, basic farming, transporting groups and colony building.
 
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Helix

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I think that it might be easier to give some answers if you can describe the area he's in. What's the geology like? What about the climate? The dominant vegetation type?
 

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I think that it might be easier to give some answers if you can describe the area he's in. What's the geology like? What about the climate? The dominant vegetation type?

Currently tall trees, mountains and several feet of snow. So Oregon or Washingtion? Germany? Eventually swamp, jungle, artic, desert, coastal, ......

The world is relatively recently terraformed, so short on limestone? and marble?
 

Helix

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What do you mean by terraforming in this case? Was this a lifeless planet that has now been made habitable by some means? Has the biota has been brought from somewhere else, or has it evolved in situ? I'm just not getting a sense of the biological processes here. Apologies if I'm being obtuse.
 

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Your question doesn't make sense. Chemistry in the wild won't do you much good. First, whatever chemical processes were possible with the natural materials either already happened either will take a really long time to happen, so not useful either. Second, chemistry is useful when you have pure ingredients and you can't really find those in nature where everything is quite mixed with other stuff. You also won't have the controlled environment of a lab, so even if you attempt a chemical process it will get skewed and go wrong. Third, chemistry itself is not particularly useful skill. Knapping and chiselling and whatnot is much more efficient. You can boil acorns all you like and still get food poisoning because germs on your fingers and whatnot or get a terrible itch because you sat on poison ivy, which you, being a chemist and not a biologist, did not recognise.
 

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I mostly agree with you in that iron, concrete, digitalis and cyanide aren't things you'd need or want everyday or even every year. Iron is probably unlikely without massive effort or luck. Concrete is probably a bad example there would usually be an easier way to avoid the lions, tigers and bears. Might be an ok replacenment for pottery. I named it because it's something relatively simple and unexpected that I understand. It's main common value would probably be in a plaster for wattle and daub or similar for getting through a rough winter.

Digitalis and cyanide you named because they are things many of us have heard of, beacuse they are important. If you don't have civilization poison to protect our winter supplies or digitalis for heart medicine might be important. But you can't give doses of foxglove, natural sources fluxuate too much (and it's hard to get in an IV) so if possible you want to extract it to measure directly.

This is four hard years. This goes beyond stay with the car, carry a flint and steel, a compass and a pocket knife. It's going to (I'm going to try to) touch everything you might need to never touch asphalt again. Medicine, food preservation, hunting, trapping, gathering, navigation and cartography, artic, desret and jungle survival. Light coverage of river craft and small ocean craft, riding, herding, basic farming, transporting groups and colony building.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes lifeless made livable by artificial means. I can't remember the exact numbers but this world has only been habitable for a few thousand years. There has been little time for evolution locally. The trees, bears, guppies, spiders, flies... all from off planet. It appears different areas were seeded with biota from different worlds and each area appears to have things from more than one world.
 

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Your question doesn't make sense. Chemistry in the wild won't do you much good. First, whatever chemical processes were possible with the natural materials either already happened either will take a really long time to happen, so not useful either. Second, chemistry is useful when you have pure ingredients and you can't really find those in nature where everything is quite mixed with other stuff. You also won't have the controlled environment of a lab, so even if you attempt a chemical process it will get skewed and go wrong. Third, chemistry itself is not particularly useful skill. Knapping and chiselling and whatnot is much more efficient. You can boil acorns all you like and still get food poisoning because germs on your fingers and whatnot or get a terrible itch because you sat on poison ivy, which you, being a chemist and not a biologist, did not recognise.

The lab grade chemicals didn't magically appear they came from somewhere.

Of course knapping and chiseling, carving, pottery, basketry, cord making, hunting, tracking, basic navigation.

But knapping is better if you can back up your bindings with glue. Pottery, unless you trip over the perfect clay, requires chemistry to refine. Basket sealants. Fiber seperation for finer cordage. Even figuring out soaking the acorns will probably work without historical information is chemistry. Cooking, food preservation, fletching arrows...chemistry. Being able to recognize poison ivy is a comparitively useless skill as it applies to an insignificantly small portion of the Earth which is one tiny world.(It's within the MC's native portion and he will learn, but that isn't the point.)
 

Polenth

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This is four hard years. This goes beyond stay with the car, carry a flint and steel, a compass and a pocket knife. It's going to (I'm going to try to) touch everything you might need to never touch asphalt again. Medicine, food preservation, hunting, trapping, gathering, navigation and cartography, artic, desret and jungle survival. Light coverage of river craft and small ocean craft, riding, herding, basic farming, transporting groups and colony building.

You're not talking about wilderness survival. Using digitalis as an example, I used it in a wilderness survival way. That means if you know a plant contains it, you don't eat it. You're looking at it in a colony building way. If you need to start up a whole medical system, you're going to look for chemicals you might be able to turn into medicine.

The point I'm trying to make here is that you're not finding the information you want, and getting the answers you want, because you're looking in the wrong place. Your main character isn't doing a wilderness survival course. This is a colony building course. To find the information you want, you'll be researching things like people who make their own homes, not picking up a book on wilderness survival. You'll find all you need and more if you change the focus of your research.
 

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This is a colony building course. To find the information you want, you'll be researching things like people who make their own homes, not picking up a book on wilderness survival. You'll find all you need and more if you change the focus of your research.

I'd argue that long term doesn't imply colony, possibly tribe.
But that's just liking to argue I see your point.

I'm not sure where it leads me however. I've read firefox and lots of recreationist, DIY or historical stuff, lots of learning from the natives or chasing them and the local fauna around with muskets. I've learned loads of valuable things but it's mostly 300+ year old technology. 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'm not looking down on the old tech much of it applies nicely to everyday civilized life, more so to things a person or small group outside of civilization would need. I'm saying we should be able to apply to our and the MC's knapping the better understanding of how vitreous materials fracture when we approach something our fingers don't just do based on plractice. We/He should be able to apply germ theory to food preperation, preservation and medicine. Navigation should include an understanding of magnatism, spherical trig and orbital mechanics so the student can make it work from scratch or figure out why it isn't.

The place I feel like I'm missing huge things is chemistry. There are lots of easy processes once you create for yourself a few days where eating and not being eaten are under control but I don't know what to apply them to in what order. To put it differently, more practically, if I make charcoal the byproducts would often be methnol, formaldehide and a bunch of related compounds. Should we be capturing and purifying something or putting something we want to preserve in that stream? If yes what would be the cost/benefit?
 

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What do you mean by terraforming in this case? Was this a lifeless planet that has now been made habitable by some means? Has the biota has been brought from somewhere else, or has it evolved in situ? I'm just not getting a sense of the biological processes here. Apologies if I'm being obtuse.

Yes lifeless made livable by artificial means. I can't remember the exact numbers but this world has only been habitable for a few thousand years. There has been little time for evolution locally. The trees, bears, guppies, spiders, flies... all from off planet. It appears different areas were seeded with biota from different worlds and each area appears to have things from more than one world.
 

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Identifying oaks (there are many different species of oak on Earth too, so which species of oak) isn't really something a chemist would do, though a biologist might. Of course, there wouldn't be oaks on an alien planet, unless they'd somehow been seeded there from Earth (where oaks clearly evolved). Even if there was an alien photoautotroph that vaguely resembled an oak tree, it wouldn't really be an oak tree. I think you said the world was terraformed, though.

Some of the things you describe--recognizing types of rock, for instance--might be more up the alley of a geologist, though there is some chemistry involved in getting a geology degree. A background in ecology or wilderness biology might allow a person to analyze an alien ecosystem with an eye to determining the roles alien organisms play in it, how they interact, how energy flows through the ecosystem and so on.

Note that on a terraformed world, the geology would be rather different. I doubt you'd have limestone, for instance, because isn't that formed from the corpses of tiny shelled creatures that died many millions of years ago? Also, sedimentary and erosive processes would be very different on a planet that hasn't had liquid water or a dense atmosphere until recently, or one where water was recently re-introduced. Think about whether your formerly dead planet resembles a real one in our own solar system, then examine what the geology of that moon or planet is like.

I'd imagine chemistry might be useful for being able to analyze air and water and soil for chemical content for toxins. Chemistry is a part of almost every physical science degree, though. General chemistry and organic chemistry are required for all types of biologists, nutritionists, medical careers, toxicology, and probably geology and wilderness sciences too. Someone who is intended to survey alien planets and ecosystems might be required to have background in a number of life and physical sciences, though there may well be sub-specialities as well, just as there are in real-life earth sciences and life sciences.
 
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Yes, no real oaks and no limestone on planet. No Earth organisms besides humans and a few crop species. But that's just where the school happens to be. It's a school, when they teach physics constants they teach the same ones as are taught in NYC, LA, or Bejing. Where the school is only matters in the sense of being able to give the student hands on experiance with biota from many worlds, but not with limestone. It shouldn't change what is taught.

I'd imagine chemistry might be useful for being able to analyze air and water and soil for chemical content for toxins. Chemistry is a part of almost every physical science degree, though. General chemistry and organic chemistry are required for all types of biologists, nutritionists, medical careers, toxicology, and probably geology and wilderness sciences too. Someone who is intended to survey alien planets and ecosystems might be required to have background in a number of life and physical sciences, though there may well be sub-specialities as well, just as there are in real-life earth sciences and life sciences.

Exactly, all physical disciplines overlap and any teaching how to live should include big bits of biology, nutrition, medicine, toxicology and geology. Which means teaching chemestry. The problem is it has to be approached from the test-gather-refine rather than the go shopping view a city dweller can take. Some things will be nighmarish efforts to acheve and you would never try to do them but there must be simple or high value things I don't have the background to figure out on my own.
 

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I think in terms of your student sees some berries and establishes that they are sweet and not poisonous. If he can find a wild yeast he might be able to ferment the berries into an alcoholic drink. Furthermore, a bitter herb might work as a preservative like hops. My spouse spouse did some reesarch on how barrels were treated in the middle ages and a sulfer rich material was burned and used to smoke the insides of barrels. They wouldn't know this but it make the wood resistant to bacteria. If your student ever needs to store water this chemistry could be useful.
He'd probably look at how fallen leaves are decaying. Are there microbs breaking down plant material into component parts. (Around Chrnoble this process slowed because the radiation killed off so many microbs. The leaves just piled up.) Is there a good source of the various nutrients for future crops. Do the plants looks the right color? Some plant clusters can indicate what sort of minerals are underneath but that's outside my wheelhouse.
Iron oxides come in a lot of different colors and have been used as pigments for millennia, yellow, reds, browns and blacks. A friend who experiments with medieval pigment recipes was asking people on FB if they had interesting color soil near their home.

Unpolished, this premise sounds interesting. I loved survival stories such as The Island or Blue Dolphins or My Side of the Mountain. A whole planet as a survival school sounds fascinating.