[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.