Survivor Library: How to Survive and Prosper Without Modern Technology | Hacker News Reader

Survivor Library: How to Survive and Prosper Without Modern Technology

survivorlibrary.com

48 pointslisper24 comments

Besides the irony of digital files, there's the fact that these just seem to be scans of old books. That sounds nice in theory (wasn't technology in olden times simpler and therefore easier to get going after the collapse of civilization?) but the problem is that the materials described might not be that easy to find in the modern world (even without an apocalypse). I once tried to build some devices described in a 1920s electronics book but was stymied by the complete unavailability of many components.

Just for the record, I posted this because I heard about it on NPR and it sounded kinda cool. But I was very disappointed when I actually dug into the details. It doesn't seem to be well curated (do we really need twenty books about double-entry bookkeeping?) and it also has some serious gaps (no books on metallurgy, for example). But it's still a cool idea. Someone ought to do it right.

FYI, the answer they gave on the radio about the irony of having this sort of thing on-line was that people were making copies on laptops that they were keeping in faraday cages and could charge with solar panels. That would allow the information to survive the EMP apocalypse.

The carrying capacity (of hunter gatherer humans) of the Earth is 100 million at peak biodiversity (which it is not). The human population is 7.3 billion. That means that any notion of "surviving without modern technology" is absolutely 100% predicated on you having the privilege to do it while the rest of the population continues to live in cities. It is a self deception much comparable to Marie Antoinette's "rustic" retreat at Versailles.

Umm, can you cite something supporting your assertation that Earth's carrying capacity is 100 million humans?

Take the population today, and remove modern agriculture. Take the food supply down to what it would be per-acre without fertilizer. Then lower it again for lack of irrigation in many areas. That's a start.

I think the point is that "100 million" is an extremely suspicious round number, and smacks of pulling a number out. It could be an "Everest" number (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00031305.1982.104...), but that seems highly unlikely.

Well according to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_human_population), world population in 1800 was estimated at one billion. It was estimated at 400m in 1000 AD.

So yeah, not sure where that 100 million comes from.

You'll have to remove more than "modern" agriculture, considering that the world population passed 100 million over 2500 years ago [1].

[1] https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/worldpo...

Why are you assuming that "survival without modern technology" means living as hunter gatherers?

What the site means by surviving without modern technology is surviving and rebuilding a civilization with the level of technology available in the early 19th century. The Earth's carrying capacity at that level of technology is easily over a billion.

I can highly recommend the book The Knowledge by Lewis Dartnel. It has a similar goal: how to rebuild a society after some sort of apocalypse. It's more of a discussion and less of a how-to but there is a little of both

Laptops seem to last less than 10 years and PCs less than 20 years. If we assume that the catastrophe takes out chip manufacturing plants so that no new laptops are forthcoming, what can the survivalist do? Perhaps buy many laptops, but I'm not sure what the unused shelf-life of them is. At the very least they should remove the CMOS batteries from them for long term storage..

A related question is how to preserve library machines long enough for civilization to restart.

I'm assuming the poster is pointing out the irony

I thought the "Buy Survivor Library on Disc" [1] link was a bit funny ... if you don't have electricity, you better make sure your laptop is charged when the end comes (unless of course it's EMP'd by the sun).

Where's the link to buy "Survivor Library" on paper? How do I get a subscription to receive new and updated pages once a quarter? Does anyone remember getting manual updates from Microsoft, etc for their products where you had to manually go through the whole manual and insert and/or replace pages?

[1] http://www.survivorlibrary.com/?page_id=2909

There's a page that talks about why it's not available on paper [1] (why it's not on the same domain, I have no idea.)

They don't mention thermal printing which I think about every time I want to print an eBook but then get too lazy to look into it. Is thermal printing on standard size paper a viable thing these days?

[1] http://www.eastcarolinapreppers.com/?page_id=2601

Some fax machines used rolls of full width thermal paper, I'm not sure how that would compare. My guess is for printing text, paper cost is going to outweigh toner cost by a significant margin, and thermal paper is more expensive than plain paper.

Thermal paper also requires more attention to environmental conditions of storage, if it's stored in a hot place, good luck reading it. Otoh, storing it on a roll might be somewhat useful.

You'll also need to emp proof your laptop ^_^

> I thought the "Buy Survivor Library on Disc" [1] link was a bit funny ... if you don't have electricity, you better make sure your laptop is charged when the end comes (unless of course it's EMP'd by the sun).

Perhaps the expectation is that the kind of people that are interested in planning ahead for situations where it is necessary to survive a long time with or rebuild civilization using older technology will learn and become proficient with that technology before they have to actually put it to use in a survival or civilization rebuilding situation.

So the most modern take on "Ethics" in the library is from 1916. And there are no books on law, something that may be handy if you want to organize people in this new and heavily armed society. I thought this might be due to copyright issues, but they do have scanned copies of firearms manuals from 2002.

No copy of the US constitution?

I'll wait for the print version.

I just memorized it.

Haha Ron Burgundy came to life and made a website!!

EDIT: oops yes I meant Ron Swanson :)

Maybe you mean Dwight Schrute, or Red Green?

Ron Swanson?

Oops, yes corrected

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