Quick Take: How to Build Toilets After the Zombie Apocalypse

Next time there's a mysterious pandemic, make sure to grab a copy of "The Ultimate Guide to Rebuilding Civilization."

I’ve always been a huge fan of zombie movies.

Like most such fans, I’m more interested on the effects of the societal collapse that comes with the Zombie Apocalypse than the actual zombie attacks, or whether zombies run or walk, or are stupid or have feelings or why are they zombies at all. To be honest, I don’t care about zombies. I care about humans, and how they react to zombies.

I’ve watched zombie movies made in many countries: not only the standard American and British fare, but Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean zombie movies. There’s a Cuban zombie movie, a somber Norwegian zombie movie and a Singaporean zombie comedy that only those who lived there for years can even being to understand. There are movies with zombies who are not fully zombies, super-zombies, zombies who fall in love. What you never have is people using books to rebuild society after the Apocalypse.

If you are planning to shoot or write a zombie movie, you should know there’s at least on such book. I’ve read it and it’s magnificent and just as useful as it should be (in fact, perhaps a bit too useful). It’s called “The Book. The Ultimate Guide to Rebuilding a Civilization,” and was apparently written by some sort of collective called “Hungry Minds.” Here’s the Amazon link¹.

This is a beautiful book to hold. Big too, a coffee-table sort of book with many well-crafted (and still useful) illustrations. It’s pricey, and will currently set you back over $100. If you know any prepper or have an iota of the prepping spirit in you, this book can still be priceless.

Let’s take the promise I made in the headline of this piece. Yes, the book teaches you how to build toilets. Here:

That’s just the beginning, however. It will also teach you how to build hydraulic presses:

And let you start with the basics of building all sorts of things, if you are so inclined:

Even more basic? Yes, they have that:

By the way, the Book includes a handy guide to staple crops and edible plants:

And:

People concerned about their dental cavities after the Zombie Apocalypse no longer need to be concerned:

What happens when Old World supplies of penicillin run out after the Zombie Apocalypse, I hear you ask. Who will supply the survivors’ camp so that survivors don’t die of infected scratches or pneumonia?

The Book has you covered:

If you really miss music boxes, here’s how to build one:

As a history nut, I really appreciated some particular sections that are not just useful as emergency prepping, but also to help you understand how things that one take for granted are actually built.

The Book uses Rome’s excellent road-making technology so teach you how to build roads. You can’t go wrong by using Rome’s engineering savvy! There are so many places in the world where roads are shit in 2025 that developing country governments or NGOs might actually consider buying and delivering copies of the Book to local authorities:

If you want to give your Roman-style road a modern sheen, you can do that too:

Compass and navigation…

… batteries…

… I think you are getting the gist. There’s a lot of useful information in the Book — like I said, at times it may even be too useful. What I mean is that Some people (not me) could say that there’s actually too much information on things like for example psychotherapy.

Would it be such a terrible disaster if we had to reinvent psychotherapy from scratch? That’s a question that probably goes beyond the scope of this review, but I think it probably a good one. And I do appreciate some aspects of psychotherapy, unlike some people I’ve met.

Noodles are useful, I think we can agree on that:

The bit about Molecular Gastronomy may be just too much. But, like I said, the Book is pretty thorough:

1. I’m not making any money if you click on the Amazon link, buy the book, etc. I just received a review copy, like other reviewers.