Appendix D — Scenario-Dependent Capability Stack

There is no single “minimum stack for dominating a planet.” A settlement, regional workshop network, industrial state, and global civilisation need different capabilities at different scales. This appendix identifies load-bearing capabilities and the failure consequences of losing them, then groups them by plausible starting scenarios.

D.0 Capability Tiers

These are planning scenarios, not claims about “primitive” or “advanced” peoples. A small community can possess high knowledge; a large state can remain institutionally fragile.

D.1 Load-Bearing Capabilities

1. Heat and fire control — ignition, fuel, ventilation, containment, and safe high-temperature work. Failure blocks ceramics, metallurgy, chemistry, steam, and maintenance.
2. Tools, fibres, and material processing — cutting, cordage, ceramics, glass, paper, polymers, and advanced composites. Failure breaks every downstream process and repair system.
3. Food, water, and public health — agriculture, storage, sanitation, cold chains where needed, and trained health work. Failure raises mortality and interrupts every other capability.
4. Records, writing, and calculation — external memory, standards, contracts, archives, positional arithmetic, and error checking. Failure collapses scale and succession.
5. Extraction and primary materials — mining, timber, ores, salt, fuels, minerals, and managed renewable resources. Failure localises production and raises cost.
6. Primary metallurgy and manufacturing quality — repeatable iron, steel, cement, tools, and inspection. Failure limits loads, transport, energy, and repair.
7. Mechanical and thermal power — water, wind, steam, combustion, and their controls. Failure makes production depend on scarce human or animal labour.
8. Electric generation and distribution — generation, transformers, protection, meters, and maintenance. Failure prevents modern motors, lighting, computing, and electrochemistry at scale.
9. Information and measurement — printing, clocks, balances, optics, instruments, data formats, and standards. Failure prevents comparable experiments and cumulative correction.
10. Industrial chemistry and materials supply — acids, alkalis, fertilisers, polymers, ceramics, gases, and safe waste handling. Failure constrains medicine, agriculture, materials, and maintenance.
11. Transport, construction, and logistics — roads, water, rail, ports, standardised interfaces, warehousing, and recovery routes. Failure isolates production centres and prevents relief distribution.
12. Semiconductors, computing, and software — controlled fabrication, hardware, operating systems, data standards, backups, and cybersecurity. Failure forces lower-scale control and information systems.
13. Advanced energy — grids, storage, dispatchable supply, energy standards, and black-start/restoration. Failure creates cascading loss across industry and public services.
14. Biotechnology and automation — biological platforms and controlled machines can increase capability, but require qualified practitioners, safety, evaluation, and human oversight.
15. Orbital and global information infrastructure — launch, satellites, navigation, weather, communications, and ground segment. Failure removes planetary-scale coordination, not basic civilisation.
16. Institutional self-correction — finance, law, audit, education, maintenance funding, emergency planning, independent review, and truthful records. Failure can disable every physical capability regardless of hardware stock.

D.2 Scenario Matrix

Settlement-tier first aid, exposure care, childbirth care, and fire response are outlined in Ch 6 §6.8–6.9; the clinical services that extend them are in Ch 31 §31.9, and village-scale water and latrines in Ch 30 §30.9.

D.3 What the 80/20 Mistake Would Be

A single five-node “80/20” list erases the starting scenario. Every society needs heat, food, water, tools, knowledge, and institutions, but the required form changes with scale:

• Settlement first: fire, tools, fibres, food preservation, pottery, shelter, sanitation basics, records, and local governance.
• Regional industry first: mining, metallurgy, mechanics, water power, craft chemistry, printing, instruments, and transport.
• Industrial civilisation first: steel, steam, electricity, public health, chemistry, machine tools, computing, and high-capacity institutions.
• Global systems first: resilient energy, space infrastructure, networks, advanced materials, and international rules.

D.4 Visual Stack

D.5 Optional Defense Annex

Chapters 48–51 are not a required seventeenth node. They remain valuable for fortification, emergency organisation, weapons, naval logistics, and the study of military spillovers. Their dependence on core capabilities is real; the reverse dependence is not universal. A resilient civilian recovery plan should not make weapons production a prerequisite for food, health, energy, computing, or governance.

D.6 Inherited Assets: Salvage, Depletion, and What Not to Replay

A recovery after a collapse rarely starts from bare ground. Books, seeds, tools, machines, scrap metal, and trained people survive — and so does a resource base that the first industrial age has already depleted. Both change the sequence in this appendix, and the scenario record in Appendix E §E.2.1 should state both explicitly.

Salvage priorities (roughly in order of value per unit of effort and risk):

1. Knowledge first: technical books, manuals, maps, standards, and school texts, and the people who can use them. Copy and disperse them before anything else (Ch 11 §11.7; Ch 18).
2. Seeds and breeding stock: seed viability declines with age and poor storage, so germination-test salvaged seed and replant it early (Ch 7 §7.6); seed banks and breed registers cannot be rebuilt from scratch.
3. Tools, machine tools, and measuring instruments: a working lathe, gauge set, or calibrated balance saves decades of Ch 15 and Ch 20. Prefer mechanically simple, maintainable machines for which spares can be made.
4. Metals as above-ground ore: scrap steel, copper wire and pipe, aluminium, lead, and brass are richer than any ore body and take far less energy to remelt than to smelt (aluminium remelting needs about 5 % of the smelting energy — Ch 38 §38.8). Sort by alloy, because mixed scrap makes poor metal (Ch 10 §10.8).
5. Glass, polymers, and electrical parts: window glass for remelting (Ch 17); salvaged solar panels, batteries, motors, and electronic parts extend electrical capability while fabrication is rebuilt (Ch 43 §43.11). Treat them as consumables with a finite life, not as a substitute for the capability to make them.
6. Medicines: expired medicines lose potency at different rates, and a few degrade into harmful products. Use salvaged stock only under the judgment of trained clinicians following current guidance (Ch 31).

Salvage hazards: fire-damaged and partly collapsed structures; asbestos insulation, boards, and roofing (its fibres cause lung disease and cancer decades later — wet it, leave it in place, do not break it); PCB-filled transformers and capacitors in older electrical equipment; degraded, leaking, or unstable stored fuels and chemicals; pressurised gas cylinders; abandoned ammunition and unexploded ordnance (Ch 51 §51.12); and orphaned radioactive sources in medical, gauge, and well-logging equipment (Ch 37 §37.10). Mark, isolate, and record what was found where, and bring in qualified people before anything is moved.

Depletion: what not to replay. The first industrial age worked the shallowest, richest deposits first — outcropping coal seams, surface oil seeps and shallow fields, high-grade copper and tin ores, native metals. In many regions those are worked out, so a recovery cannot assume history's sequence of easy coal followed by easy oil. Plan instead around:

• above-ground metal stocks (item 4 above);
• energy that needs no mined fuel supply: water, wind, biomass, and solar (Ch 16, Ch 43);
• charcoal and managed coppice for metallurgy at modest scale (Ch 1 §1.8, Ch 14) and petroleum substitutes for engines (Ch 29 §29.8);
• deeper or lower-grade resources only once the industrial capability to reach them safely exists.

Planning marker: this is a caution, not a prediction — what remains accessible varies greatly by region. Survey it (Ch 13 §13.1) and record it in the scenario plan rather than assuming either historical abundance or total exhaustion.