How do you store the tons of info available on the various aspects of survival? Aside from the books that I have I know I have found tons of great info on the web that could be invaluable in a SHTF situation but lets face it, if it hits the fan the Internet connections and electricity are probably gonna be the first things to go. The basics are not to hard to remember but if you needed to build a windmill from a couple barrels and an axle, or a generator from car parts and a lawn mower, a still from whats around, make your own soap from wood and fat, or you needed to can food and dry meats or butcher critters on your own or what ever, would you remember how without anything to refer to? I know everything could be printed out to hard copies and put in binders but I was just wondering how many of you do this and if there's any other method's that any of you use to be sure you would have access to the information from the web if you needed it and didn't have access to the Internet.
Very good post mm. If I printed out all the crap I have collected, it would be a stack of paper 7 feet high. First, I buy lot's of 'survival' manual/guides... Most of the topics are redundant but there is usually one good gem that is new. I save most of the 'online' info in text files/word files/ or pdfs. I save them on a laptop, which is what I run this site off of. That's why i have so many TYpos... small keyboard. anywaymy laptop is battery operated and I have the capability to recharge it with solar. So, if I needed that info, I could get it. You can find bare bones old laptops for under $200. You could use them for storage of all that info. Forget all the extra crap and get a few GB HD Otherwise, you could always print it all out.
For the sake of completeness and portability, nothing beats a portable hard drive that will run off a USB port on any computer. Meaning that the chances are that there will be more than one laptop in any given tribe at the gathering place, thus one or two portable HDDs can be used to store the entire knowlege base needed by the tribe. With a bit of discipline on computer usage among the members, batteries will last a long time. That said, printouts will be invaluable, even tho' pretty heavy to haul out in a SHTF situation. Might be a hell of a lot easier for a designated printer or two and a few reams of paper showing up at the gathering place, and running the prints off one of the vehicles first thing at the site.
I have a few folders with some of the stuff in them like recipees for soap all the way from what woods to burn to how to get the lye from the ash and so on to finishing the soap, and on butchering and tanning skins. Something I have thought of is when I can find out what printer is the easiest to refill cartridges for (cheapest to print reams of stuff on) and print off all the stuff then print say a dozen or more coppies of a lot of the stuff like soap makeing, butchering, tanning and so on. The thought behind that being that I figure information on how to do the basic things needed for day to day life would be worth thier weight in gold as barter items to most people if/when TSHTF. I know microfilm used to be popular around and pre Y2K but I dont know if you could load things to disk and have it printed on microfilm reasonably or not, if so that may be worth considering. I would be afraid of haveing everything dependent on computers just in case the S that HTF was something along the lines of an EMP of some kind that fried the computers, if the tribe didnt have at least one hard copy or some format that could be acessed by low or lower tech means and there was a big EMP that would REALLY SUCK!
USB drives with 1GB and more of storage have come way down.... What's an Ipod going for these days... What's that 40GB? We can store a whole lot on very portable things. ANd with laptops and 'car chargers'/solar chargers, I think we can be set for awhile.
60 GB now days 399.00 30 GB is 299.00 Ipod nano: 4 GB 249.00 2GB 199.00 iPd shuffle 1GB 129.00 512MB 99.00
