Say ww3 kicks off and power goes off - how are you keeping your servers up? Solar panels and batteries?
What if there’s a biblical flood and you dont have the means to build an arc? All your servers are destroyed beyond repair?
What if you heard the Feds are coming to cart you and your servers away cos they suspect you of bad mouthing Emperor Tromp? (you’re on the run or subject to months of torture and yeah, you’re never getting your kit back)
What if theres a war and Luxembourg (you know, the enemy) let’s of an EMP pulse that kills your servers and all the infrastructure (power, internet…). How do you access all those cherished pics on Immich?
I’m not suggesting any of this will/can happen, its all just for lols, but have you made any contingency plans? Big binders full of printouts, bug-out bags, those flower-type solar things that track the sun, Faraday cages…
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“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?”
More seriously though I have Meshtastic. I can just ask the public channel for anything I need
Fair. Its the only realistic option.
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.
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 !
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.
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.
Think you missed the ‘just for lols’ part
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.
Great share, thank you!
<3
@somegeek @jobbies This is a good read. I was rather amused by your “TODO: How to use Git offline? Offline merge requests?” section, though. Git was written by people who literally email each other patches. It’s offline-first, with online stuff tacked on there. You can copy a cloned git repo to a usb stick and give it to someone, and now they have the entire history. Of course merge requests and bug tracking are separate (I understand what you meant w/ the TODO), but git itself is already there.
Thank you! I actually got that figured out during the second war but didn’t got the time to update the post. I put what I learnt in my knowledge base linked below. I will uodate the post. Thank you for pointing that out!
I tried to push it at work but most of my team members didn’t felt like learning this whole new workflow (they’re “normies” you could say. Using windows, outlook, etc.)
Servers are going to be the last thing I think about. I’ll be busy trying to survive and help my loved ones. I suggest reevaluating your priorities immediately.
I have a UPS that allows the server to survive an apocalypse of 15 minutes or less.
Step 1, Raid Bestbuy
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.
I have taught myself the skill of making very good alcohol, which can be used medicinally, and for barter.
It occurs to me that coffee/caffeine will also be highly valuable for barter in any scenario involving disruption of supply chains. I should put some with my emergency kit.
…maybe a kilo of your favorite strain too.
work with my community to build a better world from the ashes
Kinda just planning on dying in a ditch…
It’s always good to have a plan…
Screw electronics. I’ll finally get time to play my 100 board games, pen and paper roleplay games and all the stuff I currently don’t do, because I’m doomscrolling all day. And I might have to ask the neighbour to bring their accordion and sing some Lady Gaga for me until Spotify comes back online. I think I’d be fine.
Just a word of caution, It’ll be dark in the supermarket at that time. The electronic cash terminals cease to work and half the food is going to spoil within a few hours. So get some cash, rice, noodles, oil, ketchup and canned food. And you’ll need some sort of water supply.
In that level of extreme disaster, honestly not going to be caring. But I do have a layered approach to less extreme more
realisticlikely scenarios.Neighbors and Community
The most important thing in a real emergency. We know our neighbors, chat with them on the street and in line for the weekly ice cream truck. We have several close friends within an easy walk or bike ride and are part of a local social club that we go to every week. We’ve had the emergency chat with many of them.
Power
15 minute UPS on my NAS will get me through small power bumps. I also have a large backup battery meant for camping with solar panels that lets my partner and I go indefinitely without city power for our medical devices, with enough to spare most days to keep our phones topped off. I’m currently using it a a oversized UPS for my desktop, but in a real emergency I’ll shut that down and move it to the bedroom.
Longer term, we’re planning on getting solar+house scale battery. I had one before and it got us though multiple days without power as long as we were careful.
Food, water and general supplies
55 gallon food safe drum of drinking water with the tablets that keep it safe for years. I have a todo item that reminds me to rotate it out every three years. We have two emergency bins, one with a hand crank/solar/usb powered radio and flashlight and assorted emergency supplies. The other has freeze dried hiking meals. They were the cheapest per meal per year of shelf life last time I did the math.
Medications
A real gap. I can’t get more than a one month supply of my meds, similar for my partner. While neither of us have immediate life threatening problems without them, we’d both be in rough shape in different ways. Don’t know what to do about this.
Backups
My desktop, my partners laptop, the NAS, and my VPS all have offsite backups to another country halfway around the world. I test recovery annually, and use healthchecks.io to notify me if they stop doing their daily backup. I need to finish getting my laptop backup running, but it’s been low priority as I mostly use it as a thin client for my desktop and keep a few files synced with Syncthing.
VPS
A few critical services run on it instead of my at-home NAS in case our home internet connection fails. It’s physically located several hundred miles away. Again, backed up elsewhere so I can relatively quickly recover it if needed.
NAS
Hot-swappable 4-disk raid with a spare sitting in the closet. That should get me through most issues, with the offsite backups for things that don’t. It also pings healthchecks with a few daily self diagnostics.
RaspPi
Really just running PiHole, so the only data to back up is the split dns config which lives in my notes on my desktop. Seems like a weak point, but could be replaced by the NAS, router, or my laptop pretty quickly.
Mobile devices
Backed up to their corresponding corporate overlords, except for photos and videos which go to immich on the NAS. I wish I had a better solution here.
Me
I have a notes directory describing the setup with configuration, docker files and playbooks for the various services in a local git repo on my desktop. I have printouts of the assorted recovery codes and a letter explaining all this in my filing cabinet alongside my will and advanced directives. We have enough technical friends that my partner can ask one to help, or just point an LLM at the note files and have it walk them through most things. I’ve audited the notes and git history for credentials and it’s clean. Just IPs and machine names, lists of services on each, clean docker files and basic maintenance instructions.
I think my biggest gap is what to do in a dual-failure case where I lose my home internet connection, and my desktop ssd fails. My data would be safe in the offsite, but I wouldn’t be able to reinstall Debian. My laptop would let me take care of most things for a while, but maybe I need to set up a mirror…
in line for the weekly ice cream truck
Where do you live? 1957?
I’ve been ordering medications a couple of days early each month - not for prepping but cos I hate running low. Basically I’m reordering earlier and earlier every month and no-one has noticed. Useless if you have anything that lives in a fridge though
lol, I kinda do. It’s this weirdly and wonderfully idyllic town that feels like what a small town should be, while still being very progressive and queer friendly.
As for the meds, I’m trying to stock up, but mine are pretty restricted so at most I’m getting one or two spares per month. My partners are more reasonable, so they have a larger cushion.
Eventual goal - solar with battery backup for the house with isolation ability from the grid. Here in Aus you can have (1) solar tied to grid, (2) solar with batteries tied to grid, and (3) solar with batteries with a grid isolation switch. Only (3) allows you to power your house when the grid goes down.
If my place gets flooded then, due to the terrain, it’s going to be a much bigger problem than data loss (even if it is all my family photos and videos). I think that will be the least of my concerns at that point. That said, I do have off-site backups and I’m also locally archiving to m-discs, so both the flood and EMP problem are not insurmountable in that respect.
Probably the one thing I do need to do is print out a lot of the more recent photos so I have hard copies of ones I want to keep.
archiving to m-discs
Minidiscs?
M-Discs are a specialised form of DVD and Bluray (DVDs require a burner with M-disc capability) that have a longer life than the usual consumer grade discs. Odds are that they will last longer than the technology required to read them.
Cool, never heard of them. Sounds good for archiving stuff that doesnt need to be stored on HDD’s
I miss minidiscs though they were awesome.
Yeah, I like to have important data (such as family photos and videos) backed up on two different formats and M-disc BDs provide an acceptable option. There are various blog posts testing them online versus regular discs and they handle a lot more wear and tear (not that mine get subjected to that!), so I’m pretty confident that mine will outlast me.
Entertainment content I’m willing to risk on regular recordable discs/HDD backups if it’s important enough to put in the effort (I usually buy the physical disc anyway, so I have the pressed CD, DVD or BD to start with).
Haven’t seen a minidisc in ages! I remember some of the cheap IT hardware used to come with those for drivers in the late 2000s.
They sound absolutely indestructible! Id end up with hundreds of them at 24GB each though 🤣 I’d need one of those CD flip books everyone had in their cars in the 90s!
I dont think minidisks ever got used for tech stuff but I think later on you could store/read mp3s with them. Ahh the nostalgia.
Ah, my mistake, I’m getting mixed up between minidiscs and the 8cm mini CDs.
You can get multi-layer M-disc BD-Rs, though, up to the triple layer 100GB BDXL (although you need one of the BDXL burners to write those; the 50GB BD-R DLs can be written by most burners). They cost a pretty penny, though!
The biggest problem now is the disappearance of Bluray burners/writers. Here in Aus there are no internal drives available on the market any more. I’ve had to stock up with a few second-hand spares before they get too pricey.
Mini CDs are news to me too. I do remember folks burning their CVs onto business card sized/shaped CDs at one point. Maybe a close cousin.
I’ve had to stock up with a few second-hand spares before they get too pricey.
Might be a worth a bit in a few years!
Mark 'em up, sell 'em on, profit 😅
