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look, the village had just enough gas to keep the signal light flashing for another month, to arc weld the trailer back together or for me to fall deep down the rabbit hole of the history and social context for my favorite shoujo manga. you can kill me, you have a right to do that, but you have no right to judge me
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May 8, 2022 19:59
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withak posted:This is a good read, but it is not at all a how-to manual. The part about the scavenging options I thought might be more useful in a collapsed but not completely from zero situation.
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May 8, 2022 20:02
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Wikipedia should offer a compressed download without the anime and cartoons entries. Instead of 14GB it could be 6GB.
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May 8, 2022 20:24
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You can download more than just wikipedia with Kiwix. You can also download more in-depth sites using it to self-host. Of course, this still relies on you having power and a working server and networking in your home, which may or may not be the case. Here's how you can setup a server in docker: https://thehomelab.wiki/books/docker/page/setup-and-install-kiwix-serve-on-debian-systems For the .zims, they've already prepared them here: https://download.kiwix.org/zim/ Nitrousoxide fucked around with this message at 20:34 on May 8, 2022 |
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May 8, 2022 20:32
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Infrastructure in general is unsustainable without a society. Human development is less about light bulb ideas that could be replicated by individuals if society collapses, and more about the underlying systems that can scale to produce high quality materials, educated people, organization to manage these systems, and so on. Of course, the idea isn't to horde info offline to use in your libertarian freedom mansion, it's to have this stuff available because you may have been the only one in your local community to have done so. Wikipedia obviously isn't the most useful in terms of practical stuff, but in general thats what Im interested in hearing. What would you save offline to be available for info? People keep saying physical books which is great but (1) Aren't free (at least useful ones aren't), (2) Take up a ton of space, (3) Isn't easily searchable and (4) Can't easily be shared around. I mean, that Open Source Ecology thing has some pretty interesting builds, and you may have skilled individuals around you who could take on these projects but they aren't skilled enough to just whip it out of their head. Most people aren't.
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May 8, 2022 21:48
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Oysters Autobio posted:People keep saying physical books which is great but (4) Can't easily be shared around. ummm... do you know what a book is? like if you're talking about a future where an offline copy of wikipedia is reference, you're not going to be able to have everyone radio/satellite ftp in and d/l whatever pdfs are hosted on your mud server. books are, outside of having knowledgeable people, the only way info is going to get shared around
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May 8, 2022 21:52
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Oysters Autobio posted:Of course, the idea isn't to horde info offline to use in your libertarian freedom mansion, it's to have this stuff available because you may have been the only one in your local community to have done so. I'm suggesting that the best way to get to that data (to the extent it's even relevant, since Wikipedia is very limited on documenting the technical implementation of things) is to restore power and bring ISPs or data centers that have the content cached or backed up back online. Maybe I'm overlooking something, but what is the scenario where it's impossible to restore the internet (or even localized chunks of the internet) but Wikipedia is useful? The physical books are in libraries, you just won't have a friendly librarian to point you to the right rack in an emergency situation.
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May 8, 2022 22:00
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The Voice of Labor posted:ummm... do you know what a book is? like if you're talking about a future where an offline copy of wikipedia is reference, you're not going to be able to have everyone radio/satellite ftp in and d/l whatever pdfs are hosted on your mud server. Pretty much everyone will have phones and you can share .epubs, website backups, and other things over bluetooth or wifi hotspots (even without internet access) to create a LAN. All you really need are the files, a local operational server to host this stuff, and power.
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May 8, 2022 22:23
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The Voice of Labor posted:ummm... do you know what a book is? like if you're talking about a future where an offline copy of wikipedia is reference, you're not going to be able to have everyone radio/satellite ftp in and d/l whatever pdfs are hosted on your mud server. I'm not talking about re-booting human knowledge across the world dude, I'm talking about having reference material on USB sticks I can share within like my immediate area. I don't know where you got this idea that I'd be trying to have radio/satellite FTP in to download poo poo  . Even if you have "knowledgeable people" around: engineers, electricians and others would still need reference material to do stuff. Books are fine but again, are you going to create a giant library in your house? With offline storage you could have some pretty significant amount of reference material. Also I don't know why you're being such a dick about this?
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May 8, 2022 22:36
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Oysters Autobio posted:Also I don't know why you're being such a dick about this? Seriously. Please be less argumentative.
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May 8, 2022 22:41
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:I'm suggesting that the best way to get to that data (to the extent it's even relevant, since Wikipedia is very limited on documenting the technical implementation of things) is to restore power and bring ISPs or data centers that have the content cached or backed up back online. Maybe I'm overlooking something, but what is the scenario where it's impossible to restore the internet (or even localized chunks of the internet) but Wikipedia is useful? Wikipedia was just an illustrative example, in fact I don't think wikipedia is even that useful of an offline resource. So forget I said wikipedia in this scenario, it was just to illustrate the type of resource I was hoping for people to share here (an easily collated information repository that people can clone and regularly download as it gets updated). I'm talking about resources like medical books, mechanical repair, maybe even more long term stuff like gardening, irrigation and planting etc. that you may need readily available to troubleshoot or fix immediate problems. Yes, you're going to have knowledgeable people around but those people need reference material, and there very well could be a scenario where local power is available but the internet is not. Oysters Autobio fucked around with this message at 22:45 on May 8, 2022 |
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May 8, 2022 22:42
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Nitrousoxide posted:Pretty much everyone will have phones and you can share .epubs, website backups, and other things over bluetooth or wifi hotspots (even without internet access) to create a LAN. books continue to work without any of that stuff
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May 8, 2022 22:45
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I’m not sure what type of apocalypse you all are prepping for. But if it’s so bad that you personally need to provide reference material for basic science/engineering and society, then expecting cell phones and wifi and internet or even kindles to be available in ANY capacity seems like it would be a short-lived affair. Electronics break. Batteries die. Networks are not admin-effort free. Get some books.
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May 8, 2022 23:30
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The only durable low-tech repository of knowledge is fired clay tablets 
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May 9, 2022 00:03
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I just thought it would be cool to look at plans that tell me how to make gears out of wood, or turn common chemicals into something useful, or how to make tools to shape stone. All those things that we used to know how to do, but have forgotten due to automation in manufacturing or what not. Like what do I need to know to get grain to flour to bread with supporting infrastructure. My mental exercises encounter questions like that.
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May 9, 2022 00:14
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ASAPI posted:I just thought it would be cool to look at plans that tell me how to make gears out of wood, or turn common chemicals into something useful, or how to make tools to shape stone.
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May 9, 2022 00:31
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I think having a local intranet mirror of Wikipedia and a whole host of other ebooks or reference materials is an excellent idea. A great and way less costly supplement to a physical collection of books. I really don’t see why there’s so much aggression to the concept of it? You aren’t gonna rebuild the world with it, but it’s another nice to have that can basically fit in the palm of your hand for a fraction of the cost of building out said library of books.
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May 9, 2022 01:14
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It's fine. And in some short-lived emergency/crisis it could be more useful. But you mention it as a "supplement", and that's how it should be viewed. Not as a substitute for books in a longer-term emergency (how I viewed the discussion).
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May 9, 2022 01:27
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warsow posted:I think having a local intranet mirror of Wikipedia and a whole host of other ebooks or reference materials is an excellent idea. Because it assumes that you a source of electricity to keep the things powered, they still work, the free time to devote to setting it up, and the know how to configure it in the given environment. The equipment necessary to run it is usually highly inefficient use of limited electricity, relatively fragile, and over a long enough timeline you’re likely to run into a situation where the battery has failed and you’re unable to find / make a replacement battery that works with what you have. Compared to a book which just needs a person who can read and a light source of some kind. Edit: pmchem posted:It's fine. And in some short-lived emergency/crisis it could be more useful. But you mention it as a "supplement", and that's how it should be viewed. Not as a substitute for books in a longer-term emergency (how I viewed the discussion). This. I think people would prepare for different kinds of emergencies. Like in FL after a hurricane you’re looking at being without power for a week or so tops. Very different from say a nuclear exchange which has a recovery timeline on the scale of years / never. Nystral fucked around with this message at 01:33 on May 9, 2022 |
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May 9, 2022 01:30
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What if there were large public buildings that already made a point of keeping a variety of books?  And I don't think this map includes schools and universities, most of which have at least one library.
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May 9, 2022 01:47
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If there’s one thing I’ve learned from video games, it’s that in an apocalypse those libraries are either looted or occupied by hostiles. But yes, I love libraries and we use them regularly!
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May 9, 2022 02:07
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Nystral posted:Because it assumes that you a source of electricity to keep the things powered, they still work, the free time to devote to setting it up, and the know how to configure it in the given environment. The equipment necessary to run it is usually highly inefficient use of limited electricity, relatively fragile, and over a long enough timeline you’re likely to run into a situation where the battery has failed and you’re unable to find / make a replacement battery that works with what you have. Friendo, you can host a local copy of wikipedia on a raspberry pi. It doesn't need to be a power-hungry beast. Also, no one is saying that you build up a local hosted copy of a bunch of internet sites and that is your only source of information in the event of an emergency. it's a low cost, low effort way to DRASTICALLY increase the information available to you.
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May 9, 2022 02:11
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Also some people solar panels and solar batteries that will provide charges for whatever phone or tablet they have the books or Wikipedia on. Even the sub $200 portable solar chargers will charge a phone in a day or less.
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May 9, 2022 02:16
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Bored As gently caress posted:Also some people solar panels and solar batteries that will provide charges for whatever phone or tablet they have the books or Wikipedia on. Even the sub $200 portable solar chargers will charge a phone in a day or less. Yeah, and considering that Kiwix has Android and iOS apps where you can download wikipedia and a bunch of other free and open source info for literally ZERO MONEY, I don't see the harm in chucking a few gigs of additional info on your phone and leaving it there.
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May 9, 2022 02:32
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This isn't the thread for it but I'd love a discussion of what ideas have been so transformative and influential that they act as technological ratchet points, the ones that were bottlenecks for so many follow-on discoveries that as long as one person still knows them it's impossible for a society to regress back from them. I would nominate the concept of temperature as a quantifiable value, we've barely had thermometers for 300 years but they were the missing piece that held chemistry back for millennia
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May 9, 2022 03:04
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warsow posted:I really don’t see why there’s so much aggression to the concept of it? tech never works when you need it to, books generally have a display larger than 4''x3'' and books are excellent for thermal and kinetic insulation. the real big thing is that if you have a physical book, you had to exert effort and possibly money to obtain it and you will, at least, probably have skimmed through it. you will have a basic sense of whether it's an adequate source of information. you will have curated your library. if you d/l 4 gigs of survival manuals, who knows, it might be one scan of a field manual and 3.99 gigs of cake farting porn. there's a cluster of problems; thinking you have information that you don't, having unvetted/unexamined/bad information and having information and not knowing you have it or being unable to find it. infodumps cause/exacerbate all of those. there's certainly no harm in keeping a mirror of wikipedia going, but it should be viewed as primarily for entertainment, if practical knowledge shakes out, it's a bonus
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May 9, 2022 03:04
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If you happen to find 3.99 GB of cake farting porn in your download then DM me.
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May 9, 2022 03:08
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The Voice of Labor posted:books continue to work without any of that stuff Yeah sure, but we're talking about the ability to store practically every piece of written reference material you could obtain on to fairly resilient storage, that could be accessed on very low-power devices (like others mentioned, there are dinky solar panels that can power a smartphone or tablet let alone if you have generators and the like running). Sure, there's lots of libraries, but the effort to search through them, collate what you need, then bring them back and store them is definitely a lot more difficult than having accessible directly from your devices. Hell, I'm just talking about purely written material. If you got your offline storage up into the terabytes and you scraped a bunch of DIY, survival and other reference videos would also be invaluable when that know-how in today's society is not always readily accessible. The Voice of Labor posted:tech never works when you need it to, books generally have a display larger than 4''x3'' and books are excellent for thermal and kinetic insulation. quote:Because it assumes that you a source of electricity to keep the things powered, they still work, the free time to devote to setting it up, and the know how to configure it in the given environment. The equipment necessary to run it is usually highly inefficient use of limited electricity, relatively fragile, and over a long enough timeline you’re likely to run into a situation where the battery has failed and you’re unable to find / make a replacement battery that works with what you have. The sheer ubiquity of tech means that you don't even need it to work. Even in some society collapse scenario, there will be plenty of smartphone, tablets and electronics to scrounge up and use. Short term, you'll probably make plenty of use out of what you have on hand for electronics and long term once that type of looting dies down you'll be able to find plenty I'm sure if you're stable enough in whatever survival/living situation you have. When all you would need to literally have 100 libraries of reference material in your house is a computer that can use a USB stick, then you could pull the oldest shittiest desktop from an elementary school or something and it'd be fine to read digital text files. Unless we're talking multi-generations or decades of society collapse where humanity has fully consumed all of the leftovers of civilization and now that knowledge is lost in time or something then sure, eventually we wont be able to create more silicon chips and will be hosed, so I don't really understand what timelines people are operating under here. I also think people are under estimating how much of this poo poo humanity has produced in excess (consider how many perfectly fine electronics are replaced constantly for new software requirements but for our use just needs the ability to display text). In terms of limited electricity, they are also quite low-powered compared to what you would be prioritizing with what limited electricity you have. Most of our electronics "break" from software updates and other poo poo which won't be an issue in these scenarios. Learning how to hack and work with all this poo poo would be incredibly valuable unless we're talking EMP blasts taking out every piece of electronics. Also, if you baby your electronics these devices won't just blow up or short-out one day, I really don't understand this "electronics are fragile" thing unless you would be running around with them dropping smartphones and tablets everywhere you go or a PC tower. Running a PC, raspberry Pi or android smartphone would fail in like, what 5-10 years of regular intensive use? Hell it'd be an interesting topic to discuss here, if you were to setup a low-powered computer to just store information how would you set it up to be as resilient and simple as possible, what would you want to use in terms of software, hardware etc. And again, when we're talking that the entirety of Wikipedia fits on 19GB compressed, the sheer amount of just written material you could download with enough time in advance/effort means that finding some of it isnt useful won't even matter because you'll probably have duplicate info elsewhere. Oysters Autobio fucked around with this message at 04:48 on May 9, 2022 |
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May 9, 2022 04:27
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ASAPI posted:I looked into the first, found out that it is more about society building and more of an overview (something like that) so opted out. A lot of that stuff will be dependent on what enviroment/climate you live in. For building and maintening things that would be a lot easier as there is tons of prepper stuff out there for energy production, food storage, weapons, ect. https://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/ This is a good podcast on all things prepping. The guy puts out a lot of content and kind of goes down some tangents as all serious preppers seem to do. But just look up and listen to some episodes that may seem to interest you. In regards to rebuilding society and becoming the great wizard with your hoard of secret knowledge, if that is your thing go for it. I remember my Grandparents (depression era) always constantly referencing a several books. Grandma had these big medical and garden books and Granpda had the mechnical and carpentry books. It is not a bad idea to have these and maybe a few more sitting on ones shelf. Dick Ripple fucked around with this message at 06:08 on May 9, 2022 |
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May 9, 2022 06:03
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Dick Ripple posted:A lot of that stuff will be dependent on what enviroment/climate you live in. For building and maintening things that would be a lot easier as there is tons of prepper stuff out there for energy production, food storage, weapons, ect. It isn't a wizard with all the tech thing. Take a simple task and really think about it. Let's use baking bread. From start to finish. Grow grain (when do I plant it?), grind into flour (I can use stones, but that takes forever, how do I build a mill?), bake the bread (I might not need to build an oven at first...). How do I set up a windmill/water wheel? In theory, I know the basics. I don't know how to fashion gears out of wood, let alone if I should use a specific wood. Maybe I need to make some kind of cement or mortar. Maybe I need to make bleach or another chemical. I can "make" a still, but it will suck and I don't know how to tell the good runs from the bad. I'm really surprised that there isn't a "manual" of sorts out there that contains a general "how to" of everything. The FM on explosives is actually a good example of what I am looking for, they really break down the "how to" on extracting and collecting some chemicals. I want that, but for mundane poo poo like... crop irrigation, plant identification, how to actually make a cashew edible, make useful things like vinegar or baking soda, all that crap that we "knew" how to do, but no longer can. Plus it would really neat to try to build random poo poo with instructions in the backyard. The wife will be angry if I don't have adult supervision and follow instructions from a source that isn't a 12 yr old on youtube...
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May 9, 2022 13:00
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ASAPI posted:I'm really surprised that there isn't a "manual" of sorts out there that contains a general "how to" of everything. The FM on explosives is actually a good example of what I am looking for, they really break down the "how to" on extracting and collecting some chemicals. I want that, but for mundane poo poo like... crop irrigation, plant identification, how to actually make a cashew edible, make useful things like vinegar or baking soda, all that crap that we "knew" how to do, but no longer can. I think this underestimates how much underlying infrastructure is required for even relatively basic things. Like take the steam engine, probably the biggest driver of the industrial revolution and conceptually simple enough. People wrote about the concept behind steam power something like 2000 years ago. The reason it took most of two millennia after that to make them practical wasn't because there weren't step by step instructions, but because of all of the things that have to scale before that's an option. -The pressure created by steam requires relatively advanced metallurgy for adequate materials. So now steel forging is on the list of underlying requirements, which itself requires mining at scale and a foundry. Steel making is thousands of years old, but the scale and quality required is only a few hundred years old because of the challenges involved. Again, it's not that people from previous generations were stupid, they just lacked all of the prerequisites to create enough good steel to start using it on steam engines. -Anything with moving parts requires machining within a certain level of tolerance. Simple enough concept, but in practice that kind of tooling is very complex to design, build, and maintain. -Alright, you've managed to put together your steam engine. Now you need to run it - which means fuel. You're definitely not extracting and refining oil or gas in a preindustrial society, so this means chopping up trees or digging up coal in relatively large quantities, then processing it and transporting it to your engine. -All of the above requires organizing groups of people, which is only possible with decent transportation and communication links. So now you're dedicating people in your fledgling society to building and maintaining roads and setting up at least a postal service if not maintaining telecommunications infrastructure. Most practical technology is not some independent spark of innovation that stands on its own, it's usually an incremental development that's only possible once all of the steps before it are done. e: Nails may be an even better example here. Critical to a large variety of construction methods and dead simple, but not easy to produce at scale without some sort of industrial organization. AreWeDrunkYet fucked around with this message at 13:55 on May 9, 2022 |
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May 9, 2022 13:26
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:I think this underestimates how much underlying infrastructure is required for even relatively basic things. Like take the steam engine, probably the biggest driver of the industrial revolution and conceptually simple enough. People wrote about the concept behind steam power something like 2000 years ago. The reason it took most of two millennia after that to make them practical wasn't because there weren't step by step instructions, but because of all of the things that have to scale before that's an option. This is exactly what I am getting at. Everything we do and use requires this massively developed infrastructure to function. No one ever thinks about it though. Your steam engine example is a great one. There is no book out there that tells us how to find the correct metals, identify them, process them, shape them into our steam engine. Joe down the street likely doesn't know how to calculate if his welds will hold at whatever pressure, hell, I just know that it needs to be calculated and accounted for, don't know how though. Nails are another great example. In theory, I can make a nail. But I would need hundreds/thousands of nails. I have no clue how to produce nails in any meaningful amount. I'm sure there were ways back in the day, but I would need to follow some kind of instructions to get that done.
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May 9, 2022 14:47
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Sees like the best thing to do is become part of a large group of people with diverse skillsets and community-minded attitudes.
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May 9, 2022 15:09
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withak posted:Sees like the best thing to do is become part of a large group of people with diverse skillsets and community-minded attitudes. https://library.kiwix.org/khan-acad...an_academy.html
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May 9, 2022 15:31
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I've heard preppers say just buy an entire 55 gallon barrel full of nails. Here's a website for bulk screws: https://www.fastenersuperstore.com/category/deck-screws?pid=5969 Lots of 8,000 to 10,000. Shipping would probably be expensive as gently caress though. https://www.fastenersplus.com/products/2-1-2-x-10-gauge-annular-ring-shank-common-nail-316-stainless-steel-1-lb-pkg Some nails too. Bored As Fuck fucked around with this message at 15:55 on May 9, 2022 |
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May 9, 2022 15:48
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Bored As gently caress posted:I've heard preppers say just buy an entire 55 gallon barrel full of nails. I guess once I build my compound a warehouse of durable goods will be needed as well... Wouldn't rust be a problem with that many nails?
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May 9, 2022 16:18
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In Europes Middle Ages nails were valuable enough they were constantly reused. It’s also very unlikely all of the worlds technology gets wiped to that level just more like it becomes some sort of like sears catalog and expensive to get shipped over from the functioning place
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May 9, 2022 16:32
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CopperHound posted:Great news, you can download a .zim file to locally save a video to teach you about these things!
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May 10, 2022 00:04
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Like take the steam engine, probably the biggest driver of the industrial revolution and conceptually simple enough. Why am I building steam engines from scratch when I just need an instruction booklet to tell me how to join these solarpanels or windmills to this giant stack of golf cart batteries? We're not going to be literally thrown back to the stone age. This shits just laying around for anyone who wants to put it together.
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May 10, 2022 00:33
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I really think people here are underestimating how much technology would still be around even in some sort of complete societal collapse scenario. I don't think the point (at least not for our generation of post-collapse people) would be to try and learn how to invent the steam engine, but rather how to service and run existing technology and maybe even troubleshoot it to some extent. I get the point people are making about steam engines and technological development that its more complex than just a Dummies Guide to Tech but in any scenario other than some sort of aliens zapping all technology, all of this stuff will still be around even if the people who used to run or maintain them aren't. I think we all underestimate just the sheer amount of human created stuff we've produced which is why I've always thought that watching something like Primitive Technology is fun but next to useless because why would you ever bother making a roof from custom made clay tiles when there's scrap metal, scrap tarpauline, plastic and all sorts of stuff that could be put together. Looking at shantytowns in massive developing countries or Sarajevo during the Balkan war siege is a more realistic vision, not loving making a solo viking cabin in the woods and LARPing through to the bronze age. The advantage of being around people with diverse skills and collaboration and living/access to some sort of infrastructure will still be probably a better off scenario other than the most experienced outdoors/woodsman. I mean a great example I love is that YouTube video of the French/Itaalian guy who goes to live on an island for a year by himself somewhere in Polynesia. Watching this video it seems like he's actually a pretty knowledgeable guy and must have practiced and done his research before going off on this thing, but still guess what cuts his trip short? He randomly cuts his hand and it gets infected so he has to go get antibiotics from a nearby island. Thats why I love these guys who think they're going to be the Unabomber lone wolf operator with just his dog in the woods. Yeah you'll be super self-sufficient in your hermit house up until the point you trip and sheer open your hand and now can't do anything without help. edit: Here's an example. Sanitation was becoming a problem in a slum so people got together to build an irrigation sewer. Could you make one with maybe a knowledgeable engineer, sure, but its going to be a lot harder of a job without some sort of reference material. In fact after watching this video its pretty privileged to sit here and pontificate on a scenario that's already a lived experience for a substantial portion of the world. Any sort of collapse will move more towards existing collapse/breakdown that's happening elsewhere but it will just be more widespread. I mean, other than just completely changing my life from being a computer-toucher to like a mechanical engineer, I'm thinking that I'll need to somehow start building these skills. But the only resources seem to be full-on bushcraft making fire from a stick or just handyman stuff like fixing your hardwood floors. Curious if anyone here has some interesting guides/resources. Oysters Autobio fucked around with this message at 13:21 on May 10, 2022 |
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May 10, 2022 00:37
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