#221 - Prof Lewis Dartnell - How To Rebuild Human Society After An Apocalypse

Lewis Dartnell is an astro-biologist, Professor of Science Communication at the University of Westminster and the author of The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch. His research is on whether microbial life could survive the radiation on Mars. His books are about something closer to home: how little any of us understand about the world we depend on.

Lewis and I run the thought experiment properly. If you woke up tomorrow and civilisation had gone, what kills you first, where do you go, how long does a supermarket actually keep you alive and how many people do you need before you can rebuild anything at all? The answer to one of those is 55 years and it is not the one you expect.

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 - The Big Red Reset Button

00:04:26 - Get Out Of The Cities

00:08:14 - A Supermarket Keeps You Alive 55 Years

00:09:48 - You Need 10,000 People

00:13:21 - We Outsourced All The Handiwork

00:17:45 - You Have To Preserve Everything

00:19:19 - Every Technology Is A Weapon

00:23:14 - The One Thing He Would Take