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Comment by tablespoon | Hacker News Reader

> After the nukes fly, who knows... maybe those physical books will be the only copies which survive a temporary global disruption of digital technology and industry.

The problem with that idea is that there would be very few copies, concentrated in the urban areas that are likely to get nuked. A book like one of those is also likely to be extremely specialized, so it would be unlikely to be used if that specialty ceases to be of practical values for a generation or more. Even physical books need care to be preserved for long periods, and wouldn't survive in an abandoned library with a leaky roof and flooded basement.

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University libraries may be clustered around urban centers, but a lot of those are in places that might plausibly not be subjected to bombardment, such as South America. Also, university libraries are far more numerous and disperse than the factories which manufacture computer hardware. I also assume that preservation of books will be a priority for at least some people even in near-apocalyptic circumstances, and that material conditions would improve markedly after only a few years. Even the continuation of many governments seems likely to me. Also you can't eat books and they have little value to looters, so that should help.

> I also assume that preservation of books will be a priority for at least some people even in near-apocalyptic circumstances, and that material conditions would improve markedly after only a few years.

I agree, but "in in near-apocalyptic circumstances" they'll only preserve the stuff they value or find useful. I don't think redundant, low-print volume academic specialist works will fall into those categories. Unless there's enough surplus that the university continues to function as such, those books (along with dissertations, most academic papers and archives) will rot on the shelves.

In the aftermath of a full-on nuclear war, I'd expect the English-speaking word would experience huge, unrecoverable losses in areas beyond the undergrad level. Advanced work that's famous and highly-cited enough to be in a South American or African university probably would be an exception, though.

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