Scientist Lewis Dartnell has collected mankind's biggest breakthroughs in a bid to safeguard millennia of development against an apocalypse.
From how to quickly start a fire to generating electricity with scrap, it offers humanity's last survivors their best bet of rebuilding civilisation.
It comes after North Korea threatened to burn New York in a sea of nuclear fire, sparking retaliation from Washington designed to cause economic meltdown.
“The concept is that it's a quick-start guide to rebuilding civilisation”Lewis Dartnell
And the threat of a lethal disease outbreak looms large, with experts warning Spanish Flu could return and kill millions.
Speaking ahead of his appearance at Birmingham's Big Bang Fair today, Dr Dartnell said the worst-case scenario was a Terminator-style nuclear war.
"Things would be so destroyed and there'd be so much radiation," he said. "Something like a pandemic would mean you would still be able to forage."
And he told Daily Star Online about some of the steps we could take to kickstart civilisation if armageddon did finally come.
Aside from scavenging lighters and matches, there are a number of ways to start a fire in our ravaged world, says Dr Dartnell.
Looting a camping store could provide a steel and striker, which send sparks flying when scraped together, while cotton wool makes perfect kindling.
The sun's rays can be focused using a curved water bottle, or reflected from the round bottom of a coke can polished to a high shine with a dab of toothpaste.
Even a fire alarm can be used, because its battery will short circuit when rubbed against wire wool and cause a fire.
And when the flames still won't catch, hairspray, vaseline and chapstick are super combustible.
ESCAPE TO THE COUNTRY
Rebuilding Britain means losing London – at least for a while – according to Dr Dartnell.
Whilst cities can be great places to salvage food and loot equipment, they won't work out long term.
"First priority would be getting food to eat, like scavenging food but then making food yourself," said Lewis.
"The first step is forming a community and settling down, trying to move away from cities so you have fertile ground and soil.
"Cities would be useless when civilisation collapses – you can't live off tarmac."
GROW YOUR OWN GRUB
Living off the land isn't easy, but feeding ourselves through farming is simpler with these tips.
"Use manure to keep the ground fertilised because the medieval farmers didn't know to do that," says the doc.
Cows fed off clover produce great manure, because clover absorbs nitrogen from the atmosphere to help crops grow.
But even human waste can be used, so long as its properly composted to kill off germs and reduce the risk of disease.
And if seeds are impossible to find, loads are kept safe at a vault in Svalbard designed to withstand an apocalyptic event.
KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON
Survivors can generate electricity by building a basic windmill, Lewis advises in his book.
He told Daily Star Online: "Making a windmill is really simple, they're like children's toys.
"Use wooden slats and you can use sheets of whatever you need for the sails".
The rotational energy can then be transferred through a bike chain and gears to a generator.
Each car has one of these in the form of an alternator, which has a shaft that can be spun to create electricity.
Glass is about more than just windows, said Dr Dartnell, because without it we can't do science "in any meaningful way".
"It's special because it has a unique combination of properties that makes it strong, transparent and unreactive," he said.
Thankfully glass is made from sand so – despite it only melting in intense heat – everything we need to make it can be had at the beach.
We can lower the melting point using soda ash, obtained my burning seaweed or glasswort, before obtaining lime from baking coal or chalk.
"Mix the three together, put them in a kiln and they melt into glass," said Lewis.
The information collected in Dr Dartnell's book, The Knowledge, summarises the key scientific advances over thousands of years.
And with it we could reboot the world – "like restarting a computer" – within a centuries of an apocalyptic event, or less.
"It's taken us about 10,000 years to get from the very earliest civilisations, cities and agriculture to get to the modern world," he said.
"But if we have the right knowledge we could cut that down to centuries or even just a couple of generations."
It also offers a beginner's guide to producing meds, extracting metals and even photographic technology.
"The concept is that it's a quick-start guide to rebuilding civilisation," he said.
"It's to make people in our modern world understand how things are made and done."