
Survivor Library: How to Survive and Prosper Without Modern Technology - lisper
http://www.survivorlibrary.com/
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jhbadger
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.

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lisper
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.

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JulianMorrison
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.

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

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sandworm101
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.

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schismsubv
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...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00031305.1982.10482782)),
but that seems highly unlikely.

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jonathanleane
Well according to Wikipedia
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_human_population](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.

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ketralnis
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

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jhallenworld
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.

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reflex0l0gue
I'm assuming the poster is pointing out the irony

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smoyer
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](http://www.survivorlibrary.com/?page_id=2909)

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jasonkostempski
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](http://www.eastcarolinapreppers.com/?page_id=2601)

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toast0
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.

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sandworm101
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?

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stretchwithme
I'll wait for the print version.

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CPLX
I just memorized it.

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

EDIT: oops yes I meant Ron Swanson :)

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vageli
Ron Swanson?

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dools
Oops, yes corrected

