Source and Confidence Policy

This policy applies to all claims, numbers, diagrams, and operational statements in Fire to Future.

1. Evidence classes

Class	Typical source	Permitted wording
A — standard/primary	law, code, standard, primary study, original dataset, official manual	“requires,” “is defined as,” or a direct measured result with scope
B — authoritative synthesis	systematic review, major monograph, institutional report	“evidence indicates,” “is associated with”
C — reconstructed or historical	archaeology, experimental archaeology, specialist history	“a plausible reconstruction,” “reported,” “approximately”
D — contested	credible sources disagree	present range, competing explanations, and uncertainty
E — editorial planning target	this book’s scenario model	“planning marker,” “scenario,” or “acceptance target”

A named practitioner or company claim is not independent evidence merely because the number is precise.

2. Required citation fields

Every load-bearing number should eventually carry:

source or stable bibliographic reference;
source class A–E;
date and edition for standards or volatile data;
units and uncertainty/range;
material, population, geography, and operating conditions;
whether the value is measured, derived, estimated, or normative;
reviewer and verification date for high-consequence claims.

Until those fields exist, Appendix G labels the value VERIFY, CONDITIONAL, PLANNING, or CONTESTED.

3. High-consequence domains

The following require qualified subject-matter review before publication and must never be treated as general-reader instructions:

explosives, blasting, firearms, and ammunition;
boilers, pressure vessels, mines, confined spaces, and demolition;
concentrated acids, caustics, industrial chemistry, gases, and hazardous waste;
electricity, batteries, grids, high voltage, and RF;
structural engineering, cement, dams, towers, and aircraft;
semiconductor fabrication, including HF, TMAH, process gases, and vacuum systems;
clinical diagnosis, prescribing, anaesthesia, infection control, ORS, and cold chains;
reactors, radioactive material, safeguards, and waste;
biological synthesis, genome editing, culture, and clinical translation.

Warnings do not convert a general manual into an operating procedure. Hazardous procedures require competence, qualified supervision, suitable facilities, written methods, test equipment, emergency planning, and applicable law.

4. Quantitative language

Use precise language only when the boundary is known:

constant/reference: physical definition, e.g. copper melting point 1,085 °C at standard pressure;
conditional: valid only under named conditions, e.g. a conversion efficiency at a specified load;
range: report the interval and source;
typical: representative but not universal;
minimum/design target: a chosen acceptance value, not a discovered constant;
historical estimate: tied to source quality and uncertainty;
scenario: explicitly belongs to Appendix E or a local plan.

Avoid “only,” “always,” “never,” “zero,” “exact,” “instant,” “free,” and “dominates” unless the scope and evidence make the claim defensible.

5. Historical causation

Separate:

chronology;
mechanism;
adoption;
measurable outcome;
counterfactual uncertainty;
distribution and human cost.

“War accelerated X” does not imply “war built modern society,” “civil society could not have done X,” or “X’s benefits cancel its costs.” The same discipline applies to commerce, religion, public health, law, and scientific institutions.

6. Volatile material

Prices, launch costs, battery chemistry, energy performance, regulation, AI capability, military systems, and space operations require a publication-date snapshot. Keep volatile data out of timeless causal claims and identify the date of the snapshot.

7. Diagrams and numerical artwork

A diagram counts as a quantitative claim when it draws a scale, ratio, timeline, map, process sequence, or labelled threshold. The caption, drawing, and body must agree. If the artwork is schematic, say so. If proportions are proportional, provide a machine or manual check.

8. Publication gate

A release candidate passes source governance only when:

all high-consequence chapters have qualified review recorded;
all Appendix G VERIFY entries are sourced, qualified, or removed;
volatile material has a dated snapshot;
dependency metadata matches dependency_manifest.json;
broken files, links, and fragments fail the build;
no unsupported number remains hidden in SVG text;
known uncertainty is visible to the reader, not only in an editor’s ledger.