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Then you should check out his book.
What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IYUYF4A/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_i9PkBbCNB10H1
The audiobook is even better.
Read How To Invent Everything!! It’s a hilarious well written book that talks about these exact circumstances! Highly recommend
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B2LNVBY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Every time traveler should have a copy of this book on their person at all times. It literally gives you a cheat sheet to recreate the modern world.
Highly recommend the book How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler
It goes through and humorously explains everything you'd need to bring the world back up to speed
Here are the Randall-provided examples:
M0: The Dallas Cowboys running full-tilt into the side of your neighbour's garage.
M-1: A single football player running into a tree in your yard.
M-2: A cat falling off a dresser.
M-3: A cat knocking your cell phone off your nightstand.
M-4: A penny falling off a dog.
M-5: A key press on an IBM model M keyboard.
M-6: A key press on a lightweight keyboard.
M-7: A single feather fluttering to the ground.
M-8: A grain of fine sand falling onto the pile at the bottom of a tiny hourglass.
M-15: A drifting mote of dust coming to rest on a table.
For the accompanying drawings and much more sciencey goodness, buy the book.
You might enjoy reading "What if" by Randall Monroe of XKCD
https://www.amazon.com/What-If-Scientific-Hypothetical-Questions-ebook/dp/B00IYUYF4A/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1536338961&sr=8-8&keywords=what+if
Have a read.
It’s a fun read that takes you from prehistoric times to more modern inventions, with all of the discoveries along the way. Granted, it is rather superficial as it needs to be given the amount of material it covers. I found it fun and fascinating!
The premise is that it’s a handbook for a stranded time traveler and tells you what you need to do to rebuild civilization.
A similar book but a little more directly matching OP's scenario is How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler. It's kind of a fluffy book that doesn't take itself seriously, but does attempt an outline of key inventions that allow advancing civilization more rapidly at each point in time.
But the information in that book is easy to absorb and more or less memorize. I'd want to condense it down to key facts, like recipes for simple chemical processes, etc., and then I'd be tempted to say I'd want some math tables, if I don't have a calculator, but I'm not quite sure how soon I'd need that.
A map of mineral deposits would be pretty useful.
I'm curious about it and will probably still end up getting it as well as another one that always comes up in the other recommended list. How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler I'm suspecting what I've got in mind is just too big.
The creator of xkcd wrote a book on 'Serious scientific answers to Absurd hypothetical questions', I really enjoyed it, it was quite entertaining:
Sample of what some of the stuff in the book looks like:
Book on amazon:
How do you feel about things that are less long-form writing? "What If?" and "Thing Explainer" are both books of short sciency non-fiction.
"What If?" is essays that examine very silly and extreme ideas (like pitching a baseball at 0.99c) by going into the physics behind what would happen. "Thing Explainer" is explanations of how various things work using only the 1000 most common words in the English language, and is an interesting exercise in circumlocution.
> How long would it take realistically for humanity to reach the industrial revolution if we knew everything we know now? I'm talking large scale.
Like if we landed on earth with all the knowledge but none of the stuff, with all of humanity (billions of people) able to help in the effort?
It's a supply chain problem then. You're not talking about how long would it take to get one email sent, you're talking about how long it would take to rebuild all the infrastructure necessary so that most of the world's population can send an email from their phone.
You might find this book interesting, btw. I haven't read it myself but did have it recommended once: How to Invent Everything
Randall Munroe from xkcd wrote a book like that: https://www.amazon.com/What-If-Scientific-Hypothetical-Questions/dp/0544272994/
I'm pretty sure his webcomic probably has some of that kind of thing?
Reviewers incorrectly use the "Generic Store or Restaurant" because it has the word "Generic" in it, not because it is a Store or Restaurant.
See the book "Eats, Shoots & Leaves".
https://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance-Punctuation/dp/1592402038/ref=sr_1_1
If it is okay with you, I will pass on awarding this question so that another may have a chance to get an award. Thank you.
How similar is the insect population to earth? It’s labour intensive and alcohol in needed, but some of the first insulation for electronics was Shellac. Plus the other uses.
Mathematician here, who also loves reading and a cup o' tea.
I really enjoyed reading the book by Randall Munroe (the creator of XKCD), about absurd hypothetical questions answered rigorously by science. I couldn't put it down!
You can find it here.
Hang on, I can overlook breaking our laws, but now they’re breaking the rules of punctuation. I’ve got half a mind to go down to their little club and dramatically drop a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves on the bar.
There are also two books which contain many of the answers on this website, plus several others. I highly recommend both of them.
> ...yeah, sure, but if you're lost in the forest, you likely know which hemisphere you're in, whether you're upside down, and whether there's an eclipse at that moment.
These are all excellent topics to contemplate. They might not answer your immediate question of "how to I find where South is". But they all help you gain a bigger understanding of reality and of the world around you.
I would encourage you to ask exactly these type of questions. Curiosity is awesome. And while hypotheticals aren't always practical, thought experiments do help us learn, no matter how bizarre the question: https://smile.amazon.com/What-If-Scientific-Hypothetical-Questions/dp/0544272994
I don't have such a blog, but it sounds like What-If done by Randall Monroe is exactly what you're looking for. There a fair number of entries there already but he hasn't updated that regularly since it seems he's been saving some of them for his book versions that I think have everything on the blog plus extra book only ones.
This might not be at all what you're looking for, but have you considered "What If?"? I haven't read it thinking about the perspective of a middle schooler, but if you don't already have it I highly recommend it just for yourself, so checking it out is well worth it.
It's not a connected narrative, it's a bunch of short essay style responses to questions like "what if we pointed every laser pointer at the moon?" and "what if you threw a ball at 90% of the speed of light?".
There are numerous nonfiction books along the lines of your sent back to time/the apocalypse happened. How do you rebuild society? They tend to cover The logical order of technological advances and key pieces of math and science.
Example: How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735220158/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_i_EJRCQTGEE4HZXB5TWM4Y
How to Invent Everything: A Survival Guide For The Stranded Time Traveler
It has an audio sample you can listen to.
Good news! There's a solution for you here: https://www.amazon.com/How-Invent-Everything-Survival-Stranded-ebook/dp/B07B2LNVBY/ref=sr_1_1
Obviously, this is a humor book, but it's also accurate, in terms of what could be invented when and in what order.
So read that, and you're all set for going into the past.
I assumed. I don’t identify as a panda. Was just kidding around. Lol. But some people do, I suppose.
Know a panda’s favorite grammar book? “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves” by Lynn Truss. 😉
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation https://www.amazon.com/dp/1592402038/ref=cm_sw_r_awdo_WPK261YB5HCSKC8FQSTW