Initially, you just need to survive. I can imagine that next you’ll start building small communities and fulfilling their needs.

If you can’t get water purification running, the small village won’t grow to a town. If you can’t make your own tools and shelters, it’s going to stay in the tribal stage.

That made me think about what it would actually take to start rebuilding after a zombie apocalypse or some other disaster like that.

First of all, you would need to restart various bits of infrastructure, like water and electricity. On top of that, you would also need to restart the factories that manufacture the spare parts for all the machiens. Those factories also require raw materials, like metals, so initially metal recycling might be the easiest way to do it. No need to start mining new metals until you’ve already used up all the broken cars and sky scrapers littering the landscape.

So, basically you need to get all sorts of heavy industry up and running again. Those data hoarders can help out with the necessary engineering literature, but having some tools is also required.

How about a pool of mercury or tetrabromoethane? Who said it has to be non-toxic. Besides, mercury comes with extra bling.

Like, how do you even discover you have such a superpower? It’s not every day that you even think of trying something like that.