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With the popularity of post-apocalyptic narratives like “Fallout” and “The Last of Us” along with ongoing coverage around global climate turmoil, we are culturally primed to ponder our place in the world—and the skills we could bring to an apocalypse (zombie or otherwise.)��

At the ATLAS Institute, we approach challenges as engineers and designers, and one class in particular aims to impart practical skills on students with an eye toward becoming more capable in such times of crisis.

Assistant teaching professor and BTU Lab director Zack Weaver’s new course, Hacking the Apocalypse, teaches undergraduate and graduate students how to apply design thinking to address basic survival needs. This semester’s focus is water: students are tasked to research, design and build novel systems for collecting, storing, treating and distributing water using fabrication techniques and Arduino-based electronics.

Weaver elaborates on the origin of the idea: “I was looking at geopolitics, economics and the way I applied the technologies that we teach in the [Creative Technology and Design] program with a lot of pragmatism and practicality. In my own classes, when I'm assigning prompts, it's often whimsical—it's meant to spark play and creativity.”

Water is a surprisingly complex topic, touching on geology, chemistry and climatology as well as law, ethics and politics—before you even consider the engineering, technology and design challenges associated with harnessing and using it. In fact, the class has attracted students from several different majors.��

In developing the course curriculum, Weaver says he “found some really interesting reading on water policy and all kinds of design/build projects for collecting and storing water—things like rain barrels and even dew collection in the middle of the desert, which sounds impossible.“

Watershed moments

Students took a field trip west of campus to the��Mountain Research Station, hosted by Jen Morse (MRS climate, water, snow technician), to learn about Boulder’s watershed and the complex monitoring systems they have in place to measure snowpack, humidity, flow rate, water quality and other data.

Elizabeth Saunders, Creative Technology and Design master’s student (social impact track), shares her impressions: “The experience was eye-opening, especially learning about the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research Program and the Mountain Climate Program, which has been collecting climate data from the Colorado Front Range since 1952. One of the most fascinating facts I learned was that the air samples collected from the station serve as the global standard for air quality research. This underscores just how pristine and significant this environment is for understanding atmospheric changes on a worldwide scale.”

Students were surprised to discover the facility uses similar sensor technology to what they receive in the physical computing kits they buy for class. Weaver notes, “The Arduino platform makes things inexpensive and friendlier than a lot of commercial electronics,” though at the cost of reduced durability and accuracy.

The increasing accessibility of such technologies undergirds much of the popularity in DIY culture and maker spaces like the��BTU Lab, and is indicative of the can-do spirit that defines the ATLAS community.

photo credit: Graham Stewart

photo credit: Graham Stewart

Wave of innovation

Students also visited the�� (SVVSD). Weaver notes, “The Innovation Center might be one of the best technology STEM programs in a public school in the world.” They offer flight simulator training, a full aeronautics program, entrepreneurship, competitive robotics, and more.

The Innovation Center even works with Boulder County Parks and Recreation to survey watersheds and test water quality and�� in Colorado’s Front Range.��

SVVSD biosciences teacher,��, led ATLAS students in experiencing what water quality testing looks like at scale, demonstrating what they test for and how. The class then focused on replicating that work on the DIY level to develop open source alternatives to expensive commercial technologies.

A cascade of expert insight

The class recently hosted��, Professor and Vice Dean for Undergraduate Affairs in the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Giordano previously held multiple roles at the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute,��—the "Nobel Prize for Water." He ​​shared insights on water, emphasizing the importance of understanding its physical and social aspects to address global challenges.��

Giordano detailed how climate change has two main impacts on weather events: intensity and frequency. “We expect that when it rains in the future it will rain even more, and then there will be longer periods between when it rains again.”

Water scarcity is a growing concern that manifests in many ways. Contrary to common assumption, Giordano noted that as much as 90% of our water goes to agriculture, not drinking water or sanitation. We may also believe water scarcity is an issue exclusive to arid places, but we have seen in recent years how inadequately-maintained infrastructure in American cities like Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, can create clean water scarcity even in places with abundant supply.��

Water is a political issue, with implications around where it originates, where it flows and who claims ownership over it. Giordano elaborated, “You need clean water to live. You need it every day. It's not particularly expensive in most parts of the world to provide the minimal amount of water it takes to live a healthy life. Investment in basic water has really high returns, and yet over and over and over, we see it not being not being provided.”

A wellspring of water projects

Students are tasked with developing a water-related project over the course of the semester leveraging the tools and techniques they learn in class. They focus on one or more key areas: treatment, distribution, storage, power and collection.

ATLAS undergraduate student Rystan Qualls explains, “I’m working in the distribution group. We’re making a water distribution system that will allow a community in the apocalypse to send water to various sites like a garden or to the showers.”

Saunders details her project: “This semester, I am researching plant resilience and decay in extreme environments, with a particular interest in graywater and saltwater agriculture. My project seeks to answer the question: ‘How quickly can I kill plants so the future Utopian people don’t?’ While the phrasing is unconventional, the research focuses on identifying environmental stressors that lead to rapid plant degradation, with the broader goal of developing strategies for sustainable plant growth in challenging conditions.”

Other student projects range from a storm runoff irrigation system to a 3D-printed moisture evaporator to a smart rain barrel and even a 3D-printed steam engine prototype.

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Flow of information��

Weaver describes his ambition for Hacking the Apocalypse: “Each class is supposed to end in documentation of the projects to a degree that you can hand it off to lay people who don't have to be particularly highly trained to understand it. This is ‘Book One.’”��

The goal is to follow this semester with versions of the class focusing on other basic needs—food, clothing and shelter—before returning to water. “Then that water class will inherit everything the first class did, and their expectation will be a different set of design challenges where they have to incrementally improve or iterate on what people did before.”

As for takeaways from this semester, Saunders says, “My research in Hacking the Apocalypse builds upon my background in water policy and sustainability, as well as my ongoing work with�� [a legal organization dedicated to protecting the Great Lakes Basin.] My work in this class has given me hands-on experience in water purification, sustainable irrigation and the challenges of resource-limited environments.”

As the semester concludes, Weaver observes, “I'm rediscovering the whole world. I've engaged with it becauseI'm outdoors all the time. But I never understood the planet from a systems perspective, and this is just blowing my mind.”

ATLAS students can now add “apocalypse preparedness” to the engineering, design and creative skills they develop here. Though Weaver does clarify, “It's not an apocalypse class. It's about if you do certain things, you��avoid the apocalypse. I'm trying to tell the students it's a utopian class.”

photo credits (unless otherwise noted): Ashley Stafford