[jnurmine]

If such a major SHTF happens that it warrants rebuilding the society and figuring out how to survive, then Github will be down, internet will be a rare occurence and your computer isn't likely to work for very long either.

Electronic distribution and consumption of media isn't very resilient if one expects a large-scale SHTF event. For such a scenario, it'd be better to pump out tons of copies as cheap paperback books.

Of course, this depends on the definition and scale of the SHTF. Personally I don't think it's much of an SHTF if one still can consult e-books in any form.

[throwaway4aday]

An even better plan would be to learn the skills that you would put in that book. The amount of information you can put in a book is only enough for a rough starting point (and that's if the book only has one subject). The practical experience necessary to do these things correctly and efficiently is only really gained by doing them repeatedly.

A further improvement would be to build a small community that practices these skills and tries to be as independent as possible from the current grid. These are all orders of magnitude more complex and difficult than the last but just imagine how much more difficult it would be to bootstrap society in a real SHTF scenario.

[jnurmine]

I completely agree with you. Any book would be at best a memory aid or a reference.

One step above the "small community of off-the-grid preppers" would be to come up with ways to make today's societies more resilient to systemic hick-ups, small and large, using either the means available already today or those which are very close in the technology tree.

Doing so would require a lot of decentralization, e.g. by localizing production of electricity and other consumables and making these smaller units more autonomous. Think not big cities with a power plant each, but rather groups of houses sharing solar panels and a wind mill.

Then again, this would probably be a kind of a pipe dream, as decentralization is by definition not completely under centralized control. This creates all kinds of friction. For example, if everyone produced their own electricity locally, what would the power companies do? And what would the state do with the lost tax money? There are plenty of problems like this, and I doubt one can find a win-win situation where the nowadays centralized things would not lose in some way.

[skummetmaelk]

Imagine that scene from Planet of the Apes where Gary Oldman powers up an old broken iPad. But instead of looking at pictures of his family he opens up a digital copy of "how to rebuild society after the end of the world".

[daenz]

I have a waterproof kindle and a portable solar panel for charging. That's more what I had in mind with an ebook version. It can store more content, easier/lighter for travelling, read at night, and waterproof.

[m463]

But although github is centralized, git is distributed.

and tcp/ip was literally built for nuclear war.

This would be like tech prepper paradise.

We could sync our tech trees and rebuild!

[jnurmine]

Just because TCP/IP was made to be robust enough to survive holes in the network topology caused by nuclear bomb devastation, it doesn't really mean that TCP/IP networks would magically keep on working after a large-scale nuclear war.

I mean, during a nuclear war, the networks would only need to stay working until a counterattack could be coordinated and launched.

After that point, the devastation would be so large planetwide that I think any potential TCP/IP users roaming the irradiated wastelands looking for food while coughing up blood would have other things on their mind than network access in any case.

For smaller scale events, sure, but while the networking design might be robustness-focused, there is still a huge amount of auxiliary stuff required, these need power and cooling, maintenance and administration, repairs, and so on.

Some parts of the internet system might be robust and resilient, but the whole system certainly isn't.

[TheOtherHobbes]

I think we can just assume that in a nuclear war or major EMP event the Internet will be one of the first things to go.

But this is one of the best uses of a Raspberry Pi. A Pi with an external USB drive and a small display will run off solar battery power, but still have enough storage for a complete Manual for Rebuilding Everything.

Add some EMP protection [1] and update the Manual from GitHub once a month or so, and you're set.

[1] And food.

[jnurmine]

Indeed, a Raspberry Pi that could presumably work fine for the short term.

However, I don't think it'd work for the long term given a suitably large catastrophy. This may sound like a No True Scotsman argument so let's just for the sake of argument define "suitably large" as "permanently disrupts the current industry base for things like chip fabrication facilities".

Once the tiny computer and/or its peripherals fail for whatever reason, such as simple wear and tear, that's it -- no new parts will be available for the more advanced components. Spare parts could be scavenged, but even that is a limited resource, and will just push forward the moment when the reference library goes away. At that point it had better be either useless or fully memorized.

So I think books are better for the longer term. Of course, books are brittle too in different ways, but they don't need to be paper books... A book could be printed on Tyvek like some hiking maps are; Tyvek doesn't mind water and can be folded and doesn't rip so easily.

Please note I might be biased since I really love books :)

[bryondowd]

I'd argue that the digitized versions would likely last several years. After a catastrophe stuck, one of the instructions after securing immediate survival would be to transcribe the contents to whatever media is available for longevity. Likely entire libraries of books. Otherwise you'd need to store and maintain those entire libraries everywhere prior to the event, which would be harder to accomplish and keep safe.

[m463]

it would be interesting to find out just how much would survive.

ok, maybe not "find out" but... speculate?

Cellular networks have been resilient because they're possibly distributed mesh networks. I'm pretty sure the carriers have some gurus who officially or unofficially have figured out what happens.

DSL/cable type networks might be different.

I'm pretty sure dns and similar systems are widely distributed.

I wonder if a proper analogy might be the roadways. Even though one road or freeway might be blocked, people will be able to drive around and (maybe) get through. Who knows, maybe there are some "blocked mountain crossing" equivalents with the internet.

On a personal level, a laptop, a cloned git repository and a solar panel. :)