A good place to learn about some 'alternate' industry and energy devices is www.vita.org.  They are geared to providing sustainable solutions to the third world, but their solutions to many problems would be worthwhile to any post-cataclysmic world.  (Some of them are just plain cool too.) My brother, who was a scientist by training and a survivalist, swore by the Appropriate Technology Library developed with the help of Volunteers in Asia under the auspices of Stanford University. In amongst my brother's incredible library and the must save books stashed away a la /Lucifer's Hammer/, he had three microfiche copies of the ATL plus a fiche reader plus a handheld fiche reader in case the generator to run the power for the standard fiche reader wasn't working. The 1000+ _title_s in the ATL might give you a feel for the sorts of things one might need to know when TEOTWAWKI occurs: <http://villageearth.org/atnetwork/atsourcebook/index.htm Sal