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Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology

collapseos.org

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Re: Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology

#61

Post by ForHackernews »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #48
nradov wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will need to calculate ballistics tables for our trebuchets in order to lay siege to neighboring towns.

Are there any works of fiction like this? A broadly competent medieval society that has scarce supplies of recovered present day technology. There is no end to post apocalyptic fiction but usually it's set fairly soon after the collapse, or the technology uncovered is mysterious and futuristic. Good chance I'm outing myself as an infrequent reader of science fiction asking this!

It's not quite a medieval society, but The Windup Girl https://www.goodreads.com/cs/book/show/6597651-the-windup-gi... feature a post-climate change world where most energy comes from beasts of burden, but there are still a few rare computers and staggeringly expensive carbon-fuelled vehicles.

Re: Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology

#62

Post by TeMPOraL »

skissane wrote: post #3

On https://collapseos.org/why.html he says: > I expect our global supply chain to collapse before we reach 2030 What's he going to say if we get to 2030 and his predicted collapse hasn't happened yet? "I was wrong" or "It's just taking a little longer than I expected"?

Probably the latter. Doesn't mean he will be wrong, though.

I really don't get people's optimism here. This is not some doomsday prophecy divined from religious texts. It's a trend in the data - if nothing significantly changes, we're headed for a crash in the coming decades.

It's like watching a program with a memory leak - you see it ticking up in its memory usage, knowing that when it approaches 100%, it will crash. Oh, it didn't, because Haber-Bosch^W^Wthere was a swap drive? Well, the swap space isn't infinite either.

Sure, maybe skyrocketing oil prices won't crash the economy (though people seem to forget that oil isn't just fuel and energy, but also anything made from plastics - i.e. just about everything). But something else will give (likely the habitability of this planet). We need to step off the exponent, or ride it to space. But we can't fit it on Earth much longer.

Re: Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology

#63

Post by bosco_tm »

wallacoloo wrote: post #19

Love this sort of thing, though less for the post-collapse aspect and more for the dependency-free nature, which provides a certain amount of freedom. I don’t like that seemingly all accessible bootstrapped projects still rely on non-bootstrappable silicon (like the 8086 here). Does anyone know of an effort to bootstrap the actual computational substrate (i.e. the silicon, or something which serves the same purpose b…

Could you explain why the 8086 is "non-bootstrappable silicon" please? Or what you mean by "bootstrap the actual computational substrate"? Thanks.

Re: Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology

#64

Post by jayjader »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #48
nradov wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will need to calculate ballistics tables for our trebuchets in order to lay siege to neighboring towns.

Are there any works of fiction like this? A broadly competent medieval society that has scarce supplies of recovered present day technology. There is no end to post apocalyptic fiction but usually it's set fairly soon after the collapse, or the technology uncovered is mysterious and futuristic. Good chance I'm outing myself as an infrequent reader of science fiction asking this!

I found Souls in the Great Machine by Sean McMullen to be an interesting take on this.

Re: Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology

#65

Post by pjc50 »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #48
nradov wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will need to calculate ballistics tables for our trebuchets in order to lay siege to neighboring towns.

Are there any works of fiction like this? A broadly competent medieval society that has scarce supplies of recovered present day technology. There is no end to post apocalyptic fiction but usually it's set fairly soon after the collapse, or the technology uncovered is mysterious and futuristic. Good chance I'm outing myself as an infrequent reader of science fiction asking this!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Connecticut_Yankee_in_King_A... isn't quite that but is a fun take on the time traveller, by Mark Twain.

Re: Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology

#66

Post by pjc50 »

crocodiletears wrote: post #51
stolenmerch wrote: post #5

Genuine question: if we're in a collapse scenario that is so devastating to the global supply chain that we're scavenging microcontrollers, how do we generate electricity to power them? Solar panels and batteries don't last forever and would presumably require the same or similar supply chain as the microcontrollers. This is a cool project regardless, but in such a catastrophic scenario it seems easier to just give u…

In most reasonable collapse scenarios I could imagine, energy isn't so much a technological concern as it might be a political concern. Slightly scarcer perhaps, but there's a ubiquity of old alternators, plenty of shit to burn, and I guarantee the extractive industries will be among the first to come online, if they ever went out in the first place, and can be coaxed to function in a degraded state without globalize…

> energy isn't so much a technological concern as it might be a political concern

This is what irks me about these kinds of "collapse fantasy". Somebody described the apocalypse novels of John Wyndham (Day of the Triffids etc) as "cosy catastrophe", and that very much applies here. The laser focus on technological detail-hoarding while having blinders on to any consideration of the politics of the situation, or what might be called "material conditions".

Historically few societies collapsed without external pressure. Societies do not collapse, they are collapsed. And the force that's doing the collapsing is the thing you need to worry about.

It also can take a very long time to wane; while Rome may have split from the Roman Empire in 395, the eastern successor Holy Roman Empire lasted until 1806. And the microstates provide even weirder examples, like the Maltese feudal knights with a WW2 air force!

Re: Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology

#67

Post by Guthur »

pjc50 wrote: post #66
crocodiletears wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most reasonable collapse scenarios I could imagine, energy isn't so much a technological concern as it might be a political concern. Slightly scarcer perhaps, but there's a ubiquity of old alternators, plenty of shit to burn, and I guarantee the extractive industries will be among the first to come online, if they ever went out in the first place, and can be coaxed to function in a degraded state without globalize…

> energy isn't so much a technological concern as it might be a political concern This is what irks me about these kinds of "collapse fantasy". Somebody described the apocalypse novels of John Wyndham (Day of the Triffids etc) as "cosy catastrophe", and that very much applies here. The laser focus on technological detail-hoarding while having blinders on to any consideration of the politics of the situation, or what…

Yeah, the brief thinking I've ever done about the collapse in these scenarios is to potentially band together with some like minded friends and try to setup some subsistence group with hunting, light farming and security.

Firearms are highly regulated where I am from which makes the first and last a little more difficult than they potentially could be.

I really never gave it that much thought to be perfectly frank. Though the point is I feel semi conductors are pretty far down the order of priorities.

Re: Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology

#68

Post by londons_explore »

crocodiletears wrote: post #51
stolenmerch wrote: post #5

Genuine question: if we're in a collapse scenario that is so devastating to the global supply chain that we're scavenging microcontrollers, how do we generate electricity to power them? Solar panels and batteries don't last forever and would presumably require the same or similar supply chain as the microcontrollers. This is a cool project regardless, but in such a catastrophic scenario it seems easier to just give u…

In most reasonable collapse scenarios I could imagine, energy isn't so much a technological concern as it might be a political concern. Slightly scarcer perhaps, but there's a ubiquity of old alternators, plenty of shit to burn, and I guarantee the extractive industries will be among the first to come online, if they ever went out in the first place, and can be coaxed to function in a degraded state without globalize…

> Computers are much more difficult to bring back

In all post apocalyptic scenarios I can imagine, there will still be billions of already existing computers.

Rebuilding humanity will fulfill its computing needs by mining for a MacBook. Some will survive whatever natural disasters hit. As the supply of working ones dwindles, repairers will thrive. The skills and equipment necessary to repair waterlogged or crushed computers is still orders of magnitude less than that required to build a new one.

"Mining and repairing macbooks" as a strategy could last for 1000 years or so if necessary. Of the billions out there, at least a few will be working in 1000 years, if there are humans around with the desire to repair them.

As the repairs get harder and the supply dwindles, there will be more and more incentive to reinvent processes to make new ones. It wont be anywhere near as hard 2nd time round, because I'm sure across all of those billions of buried macbooks there are designs of all the machines necessary.

Re: Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology

#69

Post by nakeru »

I don't fully get the reason for this project. Does it consider that you (or your community) will build a computer from scratch? In that case OK, I don't know enough but I guess an 8 bit simple computer makes sense, as long as it's something you can build using cables, LEDs and a breadboard.

If the idea is that you gather already manufactured parts, wouldn't it be better to just use some cheap SOC computers like the Raspberry Pi? They're low on power consumption, so powering them wouldn't be much of an issue, and it has greater, easier to use, software. It would also allow you to have things like a copy of useful Wikipedia articles, videos, photos, etc.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the project goal though.

Re: Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology

#70

Post by kreeben »

I imagine that if an apocalypse occurs during our era, the internet era, our first main technological endeavor would be to build an internet out of scraps of hardware we would find sprinkled almost homogeneously all over earth (phones, old C64's etc) so that we could once again start organizing ourselves and reach out to our fellow human beings and in this reoccurring daydream of mine I always end up thinking long and hard about the choices I've made in my career that would essentially render me as useless as my mom when it comes to rebuilding the internet, since the only programming language I know really well is C#. Because we would have limited resources a post-apocalyptic internet would almost certainly not be built on something like dotnet.

My plan is to read the news very carefully and quickly throw myself at a C tutorial as soon as I feel an apocalypse coming on.

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