Ask HN: How to keep tech running in the apocalypse?
Imagine a disaster causes widespread collapse, where resources are no longer easily available, power and internet access is erratic or non-existent, and then things calm down enough to where the necessities of life are available and society tries to resume functioning.
Now, suppose you'd like to make computers work. What sort of things would you need?Power, obviously, or a way to charge batteries. What else?
What if you wanted to have communication with other people, or perhaps data communication? Would you want packet radio? HAM gear?
What if you want to repair equipment? I don't know if the computers in cars "break", for example [not that I imagine fuel being available]. I wonder about what sort of needs there might be to repurpose gear.
What if you need to keep an application running? Maybe you have a mesh network and people want a web app for some purpose. But, without documentation, it'd be incredibly tedious.
I can't help but think I've seen a linux distro designed for this scenario, where you have binaries, and all the code, and all the toolchains, and all the documentation.
The right answer might be "don't bother", but I'm still curious.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 68.0 ms ] threadI’m guessing repair knowledge would be more important in the short to medium term.
Outside of that I think you need to work your way back up the tech chain starting with the wheel, leapfrogging as much as you can. But you don’t want to leapfrog over early tech like industrial machines, transportation, etc. and start working on web apps too early.
Securing fuel for the motor, let me down the dark side of thought which is either protection or "just take it". I bought guns and learned how to use them (safely!).
Of course, later I learned about gardening and self-sufficiency and being off grid. While I've never been off-grid, I started to do thought exercises and preparation. I was never a "prepper" per se, but I learned the basics because the early 2000s created a lot of global uncertainty.
Circling back to tech, I started to learn morse code so I could HAM.
Power + communication + protection and food are the basics (not necessarily in that order).
I have some survival books and Wikipedia downloaded on a disk in a faraday box, but I'm not sure how long I'd be able to access it - it largely depends on the type of event.
A significant power outage is all it would take to simulate technology life in a disaster scenario. My servers/homelab wouldn't be of much use in a disaster, but being able to read would be tremendously useful and valuable.
Use a diesel motor and grow vegetable oil. Or culture the right kind of algae.
Generating power with a lawn mower? Would never have thought of that.
Of course, since it is fuel limited you'd want watermills and windmills, along with other manual (human or animal) powered systems, for driving machinery most of the time. Now, if you can get a diesel system going then you have the possibility of using biodiesel which would alleviate some parts of the fuel problem, assuming you have a source to produce the biofuels from.
As a bonus, I completely forgot to mention my homebrew ethanol still[3]. I applied for a small fuel producers license from the ATF/TTB which required me to denature it so it could only be used for fuel purposes.
[1] https://chrisbergeron.com/2008/08/24/homebrew_generator/
[2] https://chrisbergeron.com/2008/01/21/metalcasting_furnace/
[3] https://chrisbergeron.com/2007/08/07/ethanol_still/
Since you mention computers in cars breaking, I am guessing your preferred flavor is nuclear winter.
Check out this study by the EMP Commission.[0]
Also I am having trouble imagining the average Joe in a post apocalyptic scenario wanting a web app for anything.
[0] http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.p...
You need to get the ebooks and food to people who need them.
To that end, with most everyone having a mobile device, a wifi hotspot where people can leave text messages and grab books is useful.
Presuming hardware's running and communications are just spotty; then having your own local archive of sources is a good idea. mirror gutenburg and the wikipedia dump and stuff like that as well as the full repositories of some of your favorite distributions (source packages too!)
Specifically why? Paint me a scenario.
Your bigger problem is the supply chain. After the apocalypse, I doubt you'll have an easy time sourcing cans, bulk product, spare parts, and sanitizer to run your factory. After all, each of those inputs to your process have their own complex supply chain too. And no, you're not really going to be able to scavenge these parts of manufacture them yourself, since they all have fairly fine tolerances.
In reality, I'd expect that an apocalypse will cause a reversion to a more subsistence-style lifestyle, where production and consumption are largely local and supply chains are very simple, if present at all. Computers will not help with this. I can't imagine keeping our current production processes running without all of the things required to support them.
say you do find a working factory with everything in it only waiting to be turned on it'll likely have manuals in some file cabinet and won't need an external computer
But yea, it's trivial to paint a scenario that makes a working computer useless, however it'll be difficult to keep one running. So, best of luck!
Access to internet-level knowledge in a pocket-sized device when the internet is gone is going to be a massive advantage.
Could go with a specialised solar-powered e-ink device for power concerns.
In the 1950s, such a thing was created by US Civil Defense. It was a microfiche library of how-to books with viewers that worked in sunlight, and major fallout shelters were stocked with it. If anyone knows the whereabouts of a copy, please post. Not pocket size, but liftable.
https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content
Someone should create a 'foundation' project, with mirrors of essential collections, eg wikipedia, scihub, digital art collections, gutenburg, etc.
I've just had it underscored to me recently that the world can change dramatically and permanently in minutes, and was wondering what I could do to be prepared for the worst (while hoping for the best).
Basically, the massive prevalence of USB over the past couple decades is your friend.
I would store local copies of the standard fare like Project Gutenberg, Wikipedia, instruction/repair manuals, and textbooks (especially math and science ones). For particularly important stuff, like survival guides, I'd even look at paper copies. Perhaps even laminate a few maps and navigational charts.
I'd also try to have several copies of complete Linux package repositories or at least all of the packages that I know I'll need. If/when backbone infrastructure starts crumbling, it'll cascade. Even downloading a text-based browser could prove an impossible task.
Even just having a hand radio could prove vital. Just be aware of how you might power it (and any audio equipment it might need).
Micro: ham radio
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Knowledge-Rebuild-World-After-Apoca...
In particular, I remember a bit about how to take an alternator from a car, use a river's current and a paddle-wheel to spin it, and tada: you've made a hydro-electric generator.
Each one provides a small but consistent amount of electricity, so if you need more power, find another alternator.
* http://the-knowledge.org/en-gb/buy-the-book/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Knowledge:_How_to_Rebuild_...
Of course reading isn't enough: if something should happen you must already have the skills. So you'd need to know something about gardening / farming instead of throwing some seeds in the ground and hoping for the best.
Remember when Maersk, the shipping line, shut down for over a week due to a cyber attack? The pipeline shutdown? Several hospital shutdowns. Expect that all at once.
Internet enabling power grid protection relays now looks like a big mistake.
Actually, the biggest technology you'd need--and one that's probably irreparably lost in the United States, is a community.
Given that, i would think the big factor in building anything post-apocalypse is communication. So i guess my answer would be paper and pens. Hard paper copies of as much information as possible and blank paper to write letters.
Computers are the end product in a long long tech tree. So the question just seems sort of non-sensical to me. Like if we get to the point where we rebuild society enough to even consider computers, we have already solved food, shelter, heating, manufacturing, mining etc. At that point its mostly a matter of information - just archiving as much info as possible on stuff like silicon manufacturing, linux source code, electronics etc. would be enough.
[1] https://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl.html?chapter_n...
Have any simple-ish tech stack, and have many copies of the SAME thing.
ie: Get N-ipads, N-rasperrys, etc.
Then N copies of whatever you need to power, connect, protect, etc (cables, routers, ups, batteries, etc).
Then N copies of the data in N storages
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This is probably the best course: REPAIR anything will be near impossible.
Let's say you only want one of the device operational at a time, then you want:
This is under the assumption that you will never get any more spares for the duration of the apocalypse. So if your iPad breaks once a year on average, and you expect civilization to have reached basic recovery levels to give you an alternative or replacement for your iPad in 10 years, you want 10 spares (well, I guess 9 in this case, stupid off-by-ones).If you have N gas generators operating (or that you cycle through to extend their useful lifetimes), you will want:
An iPad battery, even used and recharged daily, should last you several years. Let's say 3 for the sake of the calculations and you only need one iPad. Then you want: You may obtain those spares by getting spare iPads. Of course, you also have to consider spoilage. A battery sitting on the shelf for 3 or 6 or 9 years will have some chance of becoming a useless battery. This would force you into a rotation of the devices, charging them less frequently and finding a way to synchronize data between them.https://100r.co/site/working_offgrid_efficiently.html
Also, sneaker net has been surprisingly effective in Cuba.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal
They were projects like decentralized WiFi networks, mostly on cities (I remember one in my city), maybe people need to remember them