I would organize a group bandits to raid small local communities.
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I would immediately try to set up mutual aid and start building small local communities. If there ever is a chance for true anarchism to take root, it's during a period where people will value mutual aid more than anything. This doesn't just include necessities like food and water but also entertainment.
I'll go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for it all to blow over.
It's a pub, it's safe !
Pack a towel.
What's your contingency plan for the apocalypse?

I will be one of the first to die. thought about moving, but honestly I would rather die than ~~survive~~ exist on this shithole after a nuclear war.
Kill a relative or two as a final favour. Check if the wife still wants to live, check if I can be bothered to carry on. If so I’d either head into the mountains or down to the coast (get a boat) and try and get away from population centres for a year.
Edit: Sorry, just seen “selfhosted”. I’ve got about a terabyte of stuff on sd cards - super packable. Those, a handset, a wind-up radio and solar phone charger.

More seriously though I have Meshtastic. I can just ask the public channel for anything I need
Fair. Its the only realistic option.
If power is down for good, then getting water is the main priority. If the pumpa don't run the water tower is losing pressure fast. I have 40 litres jugged up in the basement at all times for the first few days.
When that dries out my neighbour has a well that we've hooked up to five properties. Mostly for gardening, but it is potable. The pump needs power, though, so I'd pull an extension cord over to my caravan.
My caravan has 400W of solar, 300Ah LiFePO4 and a 1.5kW inverter. Also a meshtastic node with an antenna on the roof. That'll keep the food cold, and laptops charged. It can run a microwave or hotplate, too. I've got 20kg of propane if I need to conserve power.
If the pumpa don't run the water tower is losing pressure fast
Yeah, hadn't really considered water supply. Thankfully it falls from the sky in abundance here (Scotland) 😅
a meshtastic node
Surprised I haven't seen meshtastic mentioned more. Pretty cool for comms if theres no power.
Nice plan with the caravan too. If you need to head out in a hurry you've got everything you need on wheels.
Did you mean to say 4000w? 400w isn't enough for all that equipment.
I don't power all of it at once, and not direcly off of solar. I could maybe fit another 200W worth of panel on that roof, but for 4000W I'd need seven caravan roofs. That battery is the buffer and it's a beast. At 300Ah I have 4kWh to pull at 1C.
The fridge sips a nice 30W. Panels put in ~2kWh on a sunny day. So thats a 1.7kWh surplus for running heavy loads - enough to max out that inverter for an hour a day. That's plenty for microwaving or pumping water.
Sounds like a nice setup. I'm jealous :D
But shouldn't that only be a 1.3kWh surplus with the fridge drawing 30W*24h=720Wh?
Kinda just planning on dying in a ditch...
It's always good to have a plan...
Dude, my computer operating is literally the least of my worries.
I'll probably die like everyone else, and if it's not immediate, will shortly follow as a post-apocalyptic world is certainly not one I want to be alive in.
Think you missed the 'just for lols' part
Ha, you may be underestimating your survival instinct. Look at historical events like sieges. Resource shortage, dangerous environment, social collapse - all that can be expected in post-apocalyptic world. And people did survive. Eating whatever they can find or catch, leaving in cold, and filth, getting sick, witnessing death and other horrors... People survived.
Unless you get killed, or shoot yourself, you would wish you came prepared for that kind of times...
I'm in the US, so getting shot is a pretty high probability in the apocalypse.
At first I was going to say, the 3 2 1 Backup rule won't stop the planet from being destroyed by a meteor. But then I remembered the data on Voyager1.
Man we need another one filled with Wikipedia, and project Gutenberg dumps, and a few other things.
And cat pics. Lots of cat pics.
I have a drawer full of old cables.
Scsi, printers, scart, modem, I'm set!
CGA? RS233?
I can sell them to you for some petrol for my generator...
"Today, the Apocalypse happened. All that we love and hold dear came to an end. Blood in the streets worldwide, panic, hunger, devastation reigns supreme."
"What about my database server? Is it still up?"
Die
I'll figure out where the nuke is going to hit and stand right there.
As someone who lives within the nuclear blast radius of a military complex, I just hope it will be quick.
Abut 35+ years ago, I stuck a finger up and didn't like the way the wind was blowing. I decided to do something about it. While I am a prepper, I do not prep for EOTW scenarios. If we start dropping nukes, point me towards the blast cloud and let this universe recycle the energy it takes to keep this meat bag alive, into something else.
I do, however, prep for inclement weather, shortages, civil unrest, pandemics, etc. I have solar and whole house generators. I grow my own food, raise my own livestock, can and freeze my vegetables, meats, and such. During the pandemic, I rarely ventured off the compound as there was no real need to. I've long since turned my dining room into a pantry and it is well stocked and rotated. I stock medicinal supplies, things that would be needed in a disaster scenario, not gadetry. I have taught myself the skill of making very good alcohol, which can be used medicinally, and for barter. I stock a lot of staples, things that can be turned into multiple meals; flours, sugar, corn meal, etc.
I would say that my servers would be a minor issue or concern in a disaster scenario. I would most likely depend on Ham radio and CB communications, vs the internet. We would be back to living like say mine, or your, grandparents did. Very lean and close to the bone, relying on what we could scratch together to survive, such as Victory Gardens, etc.
We live in a world of convenience, and while that's great and all, we get used to the notion that we will always be able to go to the grocery to pick up food supplies, and that is a false comfort. For anyone interested, I'd start with extending your pantry. Make wise purchases. Don't fall for all the gizmos and gadgetry surrounding prepping. They'll sell you a sack full of crap you'll probably never use, or be useless when the time comes.
Some good skills worth learning there. Always fancied growing my own food but never got round to it.
I have taught myself the skill of making very good alcohol
Nice! Im a techie but I barber as a side hustle. Between us we could have a nice wee apocolypse 😅
Have you heard of reticulum? You might be into it. Seen mention of using things like ham and lora as carriers.
Have you heard of reticulum?
Never, but I will spool up on it.
Always fancied growing my own food
Even in a small yard, one can grow enough food to offset buying at the local grocery. Container gardening. Maybe using some areas of your landscaping for a small grow. I'll tell you that there is nothing like home grown food. It tastes much different than what you find in most groceries. For instance, I look forward in much anticipation to tomato season. I grow all kinds of varieties. Store bought tomatoes are usually picked green, flooded with Ethylene, and shipped. That will never compare to a sliced tomato, ripe off the vine with some mayo, salt and pepper, between two slices of bread.
If WW3 breaks out I am going to the nearest pharmacy and finding ways to get all the narcotics and going peacefully asleep, even though I do not live in the middle of Bum fuck nowhere I can see it from here. I wont get the pleasantries of a painless death of having a nuke dropped anywhere near me but I will suffer from the massive amount of radiation poisoning, all my data would be gone as is from the electromagnetic shock so yeah no worries from me.
I actually wrote a blog about this a few months back. It was after a 12 day war (Israel+USA attacking Iran) and 40 day internet blackout, and then we got into another war (Israel+USA attacking Iran) and a 90-100 day(lost track) internet blackout.
It isn't exactly "how to survive the apocalypse" guide but it was a really helpful guide for myself and my friends and helped me keep working in those blackout days.
It's isn't focused on hardware, just software, since I'm a software engineer.
Asides from my kiwix clone of Wikipedia, in the apocalypse there’s not much value to most of the things I self host.
I self host backups, code forge, some AI tools (all my AI chat and completion are local now).
But realistically, in an apocalypse situation I’m going to leave my suburban home and migrate somewhere safer and more directly connected to food+shelter, and probably spend my days dealing with trying to survive.
My self hosting is primarily designed around avoiding US based tools and systems, so that I have more control over privacy and don’t find policy I disagree with.
At some point, you gotta just accept that things are gone and start hunting for the next radroach to eat. I guess the corpo speak for this is acceptable losses and/or risk management.
In the most extreme cases, the final backup of my most important files are on my phone. With all the compromises we're forced to make there, I still refuse to buy one without an SD card slot, so I have swappable 1TB with me at all times. Importantly, it's also not the Source of Truth, so if it's lost I'm still recoverable, but if it's the last piece of electronics above sea level at least I still have that.
But for power management, I just have some UPSes that sustain a graceful shutdown and that's about it. If I'm on the lam, I would rather the 20TB of manga and anarchist zines be destroyed (read: crypto keys lost) than try to figure out how to carry it with me. Maybe the offsite backup strategy will finally get tested once I've established an alternate identity.
