"What if" meme results

The "what if" meme went as follows:

"What if you realize that a new Dark Ages is about to descend and all knowledge as we know it will be wiped out and forgotten. What set of key scientific ideas would you want to preserve, ready to be discovered at the end of the Dark Ages, to get science going again."

It's amazing to me how many people participated in offering suggestions. A big THANK YOU to all of you. I hope you had fun! What I realized is that taken together you all gave what was asked for: a SET OF KEY SCIENTIFIC IDEAS OR TECHNOLOGIES that you'd want to preserve, ready to be discovered at the end of the Dark Ages.

That to resume our lives after the Dark Ages we would need all of the suggestions made by you and then some:

Antibiotics, sanitation, personal hygiene, electricity, computers, ability to print and disseminate information, communications technology, a fair and open mind set, the Internet, birth control, ability to forge metal, indoor plumbing, cameras, methods of food production.

I was amazed by how many people mentioned antibiotics and hygiene.

I noticed nobody mentioned weapons, movies, TV, economics, ideas of law and justice, democratic principles, transportation (planes, trains and automobiles).

I've listed everybody's offering below:

PJ said... We must have movable type and the printing press in order to disseminate knowledge and ideas.
Laura said... Then I was thinking more about it and what really was important after the Dark Ages was health and just being clean.
SandyCarlson said... I'd want Internet technology back. All that blogging, all that good interaction between people. Best way to shake off the Dark!
david mcmahon said... My answer would have to be the exact (intuitive) science that enables human beings to gauge whom to trust entirely...
Ivanhoe said... Scientific? I want my anti-biotics!
Suzie said... Penicillin, Penicillin, Penicillin and personal hygiene!
On a limb with Claudia said... I 'spose if I have to choose, I'd choose antibiotics or regaining the knowledge of using bee propolis as antibiotic.
Bond said... movable type to spread the word of the other scientific facts such as hygiene
Sue said... The knowledge of how to produce electricity from steam, wind, and how to use sunlight for heating.
Queen-Size funny bone said... Birth control, plain and simple.
DrillerAA said... Photography so that we could capture that history as it happened.
Mo said... I'm voting for INDOOR PLUMBING.
kay said... My first thought was antibiotics. Oh, could we have satellites, too?
byrningbunny said... I thought about our knowledge of food production and the alternative energy methods, i.e., wind, sun, hydrogen. Communication and computers would be nice.
Richard said... Anthropology, Geology, Biology, Astronomy,mathematics. What if society developed using magnetic energy.
quintarantino said... then of course I would love to have the US Army survival bookguide. Gene Bach said... I would preserve the knowlege of how to forge metal. If I can do that I can make tools. Without tools nothing will ever be built.
Lew said... I would preserve the history of how suppression of thought and creative ideas leads to ignorance, greed and misery.
Raven said... I guess I'd opt for some of the new-age ideas about energy healing (which are really ancient). I'd like to have computers and electric and cameras...
Julia Smith said... My first thought was for communication technology - and it seems most bloggers think of reaching out to others first. ...and rejoining our far-flung planetary brothers and sisters would be important, I dare say.

So... everybody is a winner for adding to the set of ideas we would need to begin again. And we would be able to begin again because there is a sense of cooperation emanating from all the recommendations made here.

So if you like take this badge, make it smaller, and put it in your sidebar to remember what you all did here today.

I've enjoyed this my fellow bloggers. Thanks again. Big hugs and kisses to you all.

theteach