Saddled with out-of-date factories, over-reliance on the North American market and unfashionable trucks, a poor reputation for quality, a dearth of new models in the pipeline and insufficient resources to fund future power-train development, Chrysler is too weak and too small to survive on its own.

ECONOMIST: America's car industry

"We're in the disaster business--disasters of nature or broken homes, or trying to survive, " says Robert Rudd, community relations and development secretary for the Salvation Army in California.

FORBES: The Radical Philanthropist

It has to be done in a thoughtful way that preserves the key assets, protects the brand and allows for the development of next generation products that , in turn, allows the company to not only survive, but also gives the company a future.

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Hey, the question didn't ask for tools that allowed us to survive: it asked for tools that impacted civilization, the principles of logical reasoning, the development of laws and cultural mores.

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