Part of Phase 5: Rebuilding Technology
Advanced Chemistry is the broadest, most mechanically varied domain in Phase 5, and three articles act as load-bearing prerequisites for the rest: Organic Chemistry feeds Advanced Materials, Industrial Chemistry, and Plastics Manufacturing; Internal Combustion feeds Aerodynamics and Flight and Refrigeration; and Telecommunications feeds Internet Infrastructure. Read those three first if a specific downstream topic is the goal — austenitic stainless steel at 18% chromium and 8% nickel, a first aircraft at 300-500 kg, or a 254-device subnet all sit on top of one of them.
Organic Chemistry itself draws on acids-and-alkalis and rubber-and-polymers from elsewhere in Phase 5, and from there it branches three ways. Industrial Chemistry covers the scale-up problem specifically — doubling a reactor’s diameter increases its volume eightfold but its surface area only fourfold, the rule behind most heat-control failures at industrial scale. Advanced Materials and Plastics Manufacturing then build on that same organic-chemistry base: Advanced Materials covers austenitic stainless steel, precipitation-hardened aluminum alloys past 500 MPa, and porcelain fired above 1,260°C, while Plastics Manufacturing turns resin into pipe, insulation, containers, or gaskets through extrusion and injection molding. Plastics from Scratch is a separate, more basic track — casein, celluloid, and Bakelite, the three plastics actually producible from nothing, with electrical insulation as the most urgent early use for all three.
Internal Combustion is the second load-bearing article, and it starts from alternatives to petroleum: wood gas delivers 50-60% of gasoline’s power from about 2-3 kg of dry wood per horsepower-hour. Engine Construction then covers the physical build — a first engine with 50-75 mm of bore and stroke gives 100-300 cc and 1-5 HP at 1,500-3,000 RPM, small enough to machine entirely by hand. Aerodynamics and Flight and Refrigeration both build on Internal Combustion: Aerodynamics pairs a 50-80 hp engine with a 9-11 meter wingspan toward a first aircraft at 300-500 kg, while Refrigeration’s ammonia-water absorption cycle needs no compressor or motor at all, relying on ammonia’s own strong smell for leak detection well under its toxic threshold.
Telecommunications, Internet Infrastructure, and Nuclear Safety round out the domain. Telecommunications gets a working telephone down to a carbon microphone, an earpiece, and a 3-9 volt battery, clear over 0-5 km. Internet Infrastructure builds on that same wiring: twisted-pair Ethernet runs up to 100 meters, terminated into RJ45, with a /24 subnet supporting 254 devices per settlement. Nuclear Safety stands apart from everything else here — doubling your distance from a radiation source cuts the dose to one quarter, and reaching 1% of the original dose takes seven half-value layers, or 42 cm of poured concrete.
Chemistry and Materials
Organic chemistry as the base, then the scale-up problem, the materials it produces, and two separate tracks for making plastic.
- Organic Chemistry
- Industrial Chemistry
- Advanced Materials
- Plastics Manufacturing
- Plastics from Scratch
Engines and Flight
Burning fuel without petroleum, building the engine that burns it, then two things that engine makes possible.
Communications and Safety
Getting a voice down a wire, networking the wires together, and the one topic here with nothing to do with either.
Where the detail now lives
The six carrier articles above kept their place here, but the articles beneath them did not. This folder had become a holding pen rather than a domain — materials science, engines, aerodynamics, refrigeration, nuclear safety, plastics and telecommunications are not chemistry — so each one’s detail now sits in a domain of its own. The carriers remain the way in; follow these for the substance.
| Carrier here | Its domain |
|---|---|
| Advanced Materials | Materials Science — crystal structure, phase diagrams, alloys, ceramics, composites, testing |
| Plastics Manufacturing and Plastics from Scratch | Polymers and Plastics — extrusion, moulding, recycling, the early plastics |
| Internal Combustion | Internal Combustion Engines — cycles, cylinder and crank, fuel and ignition, cooling and transmission |
| Refrigeration | Refrigeration — the cycle, working fluids, absorption systems, cold rooms and the cold chain |
| Aerodynamics and Flight | Aeronautics — lift, wings, airframe, propellers, instruments, flight testing |
| Nuclear Safety | Radiation Safety — dose and units, detection, contamination, shielding, shelter |
| Telecommunications | Telephony — instruments, exchanges, long-distance lines, teleprinters |
| Internet Infrastructure | Networking — cabling, addressing, routing, protocols, servers, security |
What is left in this folder is what belongs in it: organic and industrial chemistry — functional groups and the named reactions, extraction and distillation, dyes and inks, fuel chemistry, and the plant that runs a reaction at scale.