Civilization101Blueprint

Food & Agriculture

Calories first, then storage. Wild food returns what the land gives: nuts and fish repay the effort, greens at about 40 kcal per 100 g do not. So the sector moves quickly to seed stock, a planting calendar and staples. A harvest is not food until it is stored: grain below about 13% moisture, and nothing low-acid sealed airtight without pressure canning, because pH 4.6 is the botulism line. Irrigation, synthetic nitrogen and the cold chain are what let one farmer feed many.
18 steps + 3 cross-listed 23 field guides 12 builds 11 reference sheets 82 books and archives

Tracks

Each track is one line of development climbing the eight levels. A cell holds the step written at that level; cross-listed steps have their home in another sector and are shown here because this subject depends on them. Dashed cells are planned and not yet written; blank ones have nothing planned.

Wild food

What the land gives before anything is planted: fish, nuts and game, and the identification that keeps foraging from killing you.

L0 Triage
L1 Foothold
L2 Forge
L3 Mill
L4 Engine
L5 Current
L6 Logic
L7 Frontier
t0-food Forage, trap, fish Guide ×5Build ×2Sheet ×7 4 options by what you have →
Level 1: nothing planned
Level 2: nothing planned
Level 3: nothing planned
Level 4: nothing planned
Level 5: nothing planned
Level 6: nothing planned
Level 7: nothing planned
Open the track, level by level →

Crops and soil

Seed stock, the calendar, cleared ground and staples, then water control and fertiliser.

L0 Triage
L1 Foothold
L2 Forge
L3 Mill
L4 Engine
L5 Current
L6 Logic
L7 Frontier
t0-seed Secure seed and breeding stock Guide ×5
t1-calendar Read the year Guide ×4 t1-clear Open ground and hold fertility Guide ×5BuildSheet t1-staples Plant staples Guide ×3Build ×2Sheet
t2-irrigate Irrigation and water control Guide ×5Sheet ×2
t3-rotation The four-course rotation, field drains and the seed drill GuideSheet
Level 4: nothing planned
t5-drip Drip and sprinkler irrigation GuideBuildSheet t5-haber Synthetic nitrogen Guide Home: Materials
t6-greenrev High-yield varieties, and the Green Revolution's bill Guide ×2Sheet
t7-farming Sustainable intensification GuideSheet
Open the track, level by level →

Protected growing

Glass, film and stored heat that move the growing season: the cold frame and manure hotbed, the glasshouse on a sunny wall, then the plastic tunnel, the heated glasshouse and the passive solar greenhouse. A cover gains heat by day and loses it by night, so venting, heating and pest control decide the harvest as much as the structure does.

L0 Triage
L1 Foothold
L2 Forge
L3 Mill
L4 Engine
L5 Current
L6 Logic
L7 Frontier
Level 0: nothing planned
Level 1: nothing planned
Level 2: nothing planned
t3-glasshouse Cold frames, hotbeds and the glasshouse GuideBuild 2 options by what you have →
Level 4: nothing planned
t5-greenhouse The modern greenhouse: film, glass and climate control GuideBuild ×2 t5-hydroponics Soilless growing: hydroponics and substrates GuideBuild 3 options by what you have →
Level 6: nothing planned
t7-cea Vertical farms and controlled environments Guide
Open the track, level by level →

Livestock

Animals for traction, fibre, milk and meat, and the diseases that cross from them to people.

L0 Triage
L1 Foothold
L2 Forge
L3 Mill
L4 Engine
L5 Current
L6 Logic
L7 Frontier
Level 0: nothing planned
t1-animals Livestock Guide ×3Sheet ×2
Level 2: nothing planned
Level 3: nothing planned
Level 4: nothing planned
Level 5: nothing planned
Level 6: nothing planned
Level 7: nothing planned
Open the track, level by level →

Aquaculture

Fish grown in drainable earthen ponds, fed by plankton that the farm's own manure grows: a crop of tilapia or carp in about six months. Farmed fish are now more than half of the world's aquatic animal food.

L0 Triage
L1 Foothold
L2 Forge
L3 Mill
L4 Engine
L5 Current
L6 Logic
L7 Frontier
Level 0: nothing planned
Level 1: nothing planned
t2-fishpond Fish ponds: build, fertilise and harvest an earthen pond GuideBuild
Level 3: nothing planned
Level 4: nothing planned
Level 5: nothing planned
Level 6: nothing planned
Level 7: nothing planned
Open the track, level by level →

Storage and preservation

Drying, salting, smoking, fermenting, cellars and granaries, then refrigeration and the cold chain.

L0 Triage
L1 Foothold
L2 Forge
L3 Mill
L4 Engine
L5 Current
L6 Logic
L7 Frontier
Level 0: nothing planned
t1-preserve Preserve the harvest Guide ×4Build ×2Sheet ×4
t2-salt Salt Guide Home: Materials t2-brew Fermentation and distilling Guide ×4Build Home: Materials
Level 3: nothing planned
t4-cold Refrigeration and the cold chain Guide
Level 5: nothing planned
Level 6: nothing planned
Level 7: nothing planned
Open the track, level by level →

Everything in Food & Agriculture

Gathered from the steps above: the guides and builds that serve them, the reference sheets those carry, and every book the steps, guides and builds cite.

Field guides

Level 0
Fish and water foods

The highest calorie-return food source available to a group with nothing — and the one most often worked in the least productive way.

 Level 0
Foraging

Wild plants and fungi are mostly water, fibre and vitamins. A handful of them are food worth carrying home, a handful will kill you in a way no taste, smell or cooking can warn you about, and the difference is knowledge you hold before you pick.

 Level 0
Hunting and trapping

A trapline works all night while you sleep. A hunt works only while you are awake, usually returns nothing, and burns the calories it was supposed to find.

 Level 1
Food preservation

A glut eaten in the week it arrives is a feast. The same glut dried, salted, fermented or cellared is the difference between March and a famine.

 Level 1
Poisons

The poisonings a rebuilding community is most likely to meet: where each comes from, how it shows, and the first thing to do.

 Level 1
Seeds and the growing year

A seed is a living embryo with a shelf life. Kept dry and cold it waits for years; kept warm and damp it dies in a season — and the difference is two rules of thumb and a sealed jar.

 Level 1
Soils and plant nutrition

What a soil is made of, why its acidity matters, and how to read a nutrient shortage in the leaves before it costs a harvest.

 Level 1
Sustainable farming

Keep the soil covered, feed it, water the roots and fight pests without poisoning yourself: the modern practice that needs knowledge rather than machinery.

 Level 1
Livestock husbandry

Animals turn grass nobody can eat into milk, meat, wool, leather, manure and traction. They also turn raw milk, a birthing ewe and a dog fed on offal into diseases that kill people.

 Level 3
The sciences

Fourteen branches, each with the handful of results a civilization cannot rebuild without, and where to learn the rest.

 Level 3
Biology

Life from the cell up: the human body, microbes and immunity, inheritance and epidemics. Each result with what it lets you do and who first found it.

 Level 2
Navigation and the sky

North is written in the sky twice a day and all night. Latitude is one angle measured at noon. Everything else is counting paces and not lying to yourself about the count.

 Level 3
Astronomy

The sky as calendar, clock and compass, then orbits, distances and the universe: each result with what it lets you do and who first found it.

 Level 3
Micro-organisms

The two dozen that decide who lives where there is no doctor: what each does, how it spreads, what kills it and which step stops it.

 Level 0
Wild water and wells

Surface water is a treatment problem every single day. Groundwater, reached and sealed properly, is a treatment problem once.

 Level 3
Earth sciences

Water in and on the ground, the air and weather, rocks and time, earthquakes and tsunamis, and the climate: each result with what it lets you do and who first found it.

 Level 3
Engineering

Turning the sciences into things that work: machines, structures, water in pipes and channels, heat through walls, and feedback control. Each result with what it lets you do and who first found it.

 Level 3
Chemistry

What matter is made of and how it changes: amounts, gases, acids, the energy and speed of reactions, electrochemistry, and the reactions every industry on the ladder runs on.

 Level 3
Greenhouses

What a greenhouse is for, which kind to build, its parts and how to size them, and how to run its climate: from a cold frame over manure to a heated glasshouse and a solar greenhouse that needs no fuel.

 Level 1
Fibre to cloth

Cloth is a chain of slow jobs — growing, retting, spinning, weaving, finishing — and for all of history the slowest link was spinning. A weaver needed several spinners working full time to keep one loom supplied.

 Level 2
Fish farming in ponds

A drainable earthen pond, manured from the farm's animals, grows fish without bought feed: site, species, water, stocking, feeding, daily care and harvest.

 Level 3
Essential medicines

The basic set from the WHO list: what each treats, what it is made from, and the earliest tier that can make it. No doses, on purpose.

 Level 3
Physics

Force, energy, heat, light, electricity, relativity and the atom: the laws every engine, wire and lens obeys, each with what it lets you do and who first found it.

Builds

A woven funnel trap — passive gear that works while you sleep.
Level 0
Funnel basket fish trap

A woven basket that fishes all night while you sleep — the highest return-per-hour food gear in tier 0.
Fish held by the gills in the mesh — the whole principle of the net, and why mesh size selects the catch.
Level 1
Gill net

A wall of near-invisible mesh that fishes a whole channel while you do something else.
Chinese cabbage under drip irrigation (2023): a drip line runs along each row, wetting the soil at the plants and leaving the paths dry.
Level 5
Family drip kit, 500 m²

A covered tank 1–1.5 m up, a valve, a 120-mesh filter, a 25 mm main and 8 mm dripper lines: drip irrigation for a family plot by gravity, with no pump and no power.
Inside a sawdust latrine — seat, chute, and the bin of cover material that makes the system work.
Level 1
Twin-vault composting latrine

Break the faecal–oral route and return the nutrients — the highest lives-saved-per-effort structure a settlement can build.
Sundanese rice granaries on capped posts. Seed held back is next year's food.
Level 1
Raised granary

Keep a year of grain dry, cool and away from rodents — the single highest-return building on the site.
A turf-roofed stone root cellar built into a slope at Elliston, Newfoundland.
Level 1
Root cellar

Cold, damp and dark, without power — how a harvest survives to the following spring.
A cold frame against the sunny wall of a mountain hut in the Alps: a boarded box with a glazed light, propped open for the day.
Level 3
Cold frame and manure hotbed

A glazed box that starts seedlings weeks early, and the same box over a pit of rotting manure that warms the soil from below.
A high tunnel before its film goes on: steel bows set on ground posts and tied along their length by purlins.
Level 5
High tunnel (hoop house)

Steel bows on ground posts under one layer of greenhouse film, with sides that roll up: weeks added to both ends of the season, in the field's own soil.
A walipini (pit greenhouse), 6 × 12 m, in Utah: sunk into the ground, earth banked against its walls, and a steep glazed roof facing the winter sun.
Level 5
Passive solar greenhouse

A greenhouse that heats itself: a heavy, insulated wall on the side away from the sun, film on the sunny side, and a blanket over the film at night.
Hydroponic lettuce at Ecotone Farm, Fellsmere, Florida (2021): a Red Oak lettuce lifted to show the bare roots that grow in the solution.
Level 5
Nutrient-film bench for lettuce

Eight covered channels 6 m long on a bench falling 2 %, a pump in a covered tank, and a film of solution 1–2 mm deep: lettuce without soil in 30–50 days.
Harvesting a rearing pond at Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery, South Dakota: the pond is drained slowly and the fish gathered with a seine net.
Level 2
Drainable fish pond, 400 m²

A 20 × 20 m earthen pond with rammed dikes, a screened inlet and a wooden monk: filled and drained by gravity, manured from the farm, and harvested every six months.
A column showing the media profile — fine sand on top, graded gravel supporting it below.
Level 1
Slow sand filter

Clean drinking water with no chemicals, no power and no moving parts — the highest lives-saved-per-effort structure on this site.

Reference sheets

Drawn overview sheets, each with its corrections printed under it. They orient; they are never the thing you identify from.

Wild foods worth learning first, grouped by the part you eat — fruits, nuts, greens, roots, shoots, flowers and fungi — each with the preparation it needs before it is food.
Forage: edible plants, fungi and wild foods On: Forage, trap, fish · Foraging: Rank by calories returned, not by what looks like food
The other half of the foraging lesson — common plants, fungi, seeds, roots and bulbs that poison, the ones that poison only raw, and the look-alikes that account for most fatal mistakes.
Do not eat: dangerous, toxic or not recommended wild foods On: Forage, trap, fish · Foraging: The ones that kill
What a shoreline yields — bivalves, gastropods, crustaceans, echinoderms, seaweeds, intertidal animals and eggs — and where on the shore each of them is found.
Animal and shore foraging On: Forage, trap, fish · Fish and water foods: What is safe to eat — and what will kill you
Snares, deadfalls, cage and live traps alongside the fish traps, each shown in three build stages with its materials, its best quarry and where to set it.
Trapping: passive capture on land and in water On: Forage, trap, fish · Hunting and trapping: Snares
Common freshwater and coastal fish, the water each holds in, the methods and baits that take them, and the handful that are toxic or regulated.
Fish: species, habitats and fishing methods On: Fish and water foods: Read the water first
Ten passive water traps — basket, funnel, weir, V-weir, box, basket weir, lift net, baited cage, stone-and-log, and dammed pool — each with side and top view, bait, and the mechanism that stops an animal leaving.
Trapping: passive capture methods in water On: Fish and water foods: Methods, ranked by return per hour
Shore species to leave alone: toxic shellfish, venomous snails and fish, stinging and spined animals, protected species, and the contamination that makes an otherwise safe species unsafe.
Animal and shore foraging — what to avoid On: Fish and water foods: What is safe to eat — and what will kill you
One farm drawn as a system: soil testing, crop planning, water, nutrients, pest management, sensors and drones, biodiversity, protected cropping, harvest and storage, the return of residues and manure, and the measures that show whether it is working.
Sustainable farm: the whole system On: Sustainable farming: Cover the soil and disturb it less
A lever hand pump in section — pump head, rod, piston and its valve, rising main and foot valve — with the parts, the stroke cycle, installation, maintenance and design notes.
Hand pump On: The first public good · Wild water and wells: Lifting the water
Where cordage fibre comes from — tree bast, plant stalks and leaves, roots and vines, and animal sinew, hair and rawhide — with the cord each yields and the raw → fibre → cord sequence at the foot.
Natural materials for cordage On: Cordage · Rope, knots and lashings: Splicing: the strongest way to make a loop or a join · Fibre to cloth: The fibres, and what each is for
Harvesting fibre from bark, bast, grasses, vines and leaves; preparing it; a six-step twisting and plying sequence; the variations; finished cords and their uses; tips and common mistakes.
Cordage making: from plants to rope On: Cordage · Fibre to cloth: The fibres, and what each is for

Books and archives

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