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I like the idea. But I ask (not being annoying), do we really need it? Seems like having all of that more distributed in the hands of users would be a better protection against unavailability.
Usually the idea behind a doomsday vault is that you're keeping everything securely in one place in case there is widespread disaster that sufficiently wipes out the distributed knowledge. They're not mutually exclusive.
https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/
The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization
Why does the author think the global supply chain will collapse in the next ten years? What scenario do they envision? Climate change? Will cost trillions of dollars and billions of lives, but will likely be played out over course of several decades. We will be stressing out about it but its not going to be electronics-ending apocalyptic Nuclear war? Please. The countries that have the capability are also level-heade…
Also, "middle ages" are going to take a good century at least. Think instead of the collapse of Soviet Union (with some places playing the part of the Balkans / Caucasus), but worse...
Btw, rare earths are not so rare - it's just that the US got rid of this industry.
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It's extremely common, even today, though probably not the processor I would pick (I think 68000 family, perhaps?), but it's probably a reasonable choice. You're going to be able to find it embedded in literally millions of devices and it's simple enough for one person to build a computer around it. I suspect the argument against modern Intel chips is just their complexity. They need an incredibly complicated and som…
> I suspect the argument against modern Intel chips is just their complexity. Well that, and the fact that we already have plenty of OSes to run on x86(-64). Looking at arch/ in linux's source: alpha avr32 frv Kconfig microblaze openrisc score um arc blackfin h8300 m32r mips parisc sh unicore32 arm c6x hexagon m68k mn10300 powerpc sparc x86 arm64 cris ia64 metag nios2 s390 tile xtensa I'm surprised that it doesn't ha…
I'm somewhat surprised there's no Z80 support for GCC, I recall running a gcc for Motorola's 68HC11 which is a similar processor. That said, most general purpose C compilers are a bad fit for 8-bit processors; you really want to write assembly for these small systems to ensure your code is compact and fast; it's much too easy to write code in C that will be significantly slower than if well written in assembly because of limited memory indexing modes or lack of registers. It's probably possible to carefully constrain your C usage to encourage reasonable assembly output, but then you're not going to be able to use existing C code. You won't have that much code that fits in your roms anyway, so you may as well dig in and write assembly.
Is there a rad-hardened version of z80?
So, let me see if I understand this correctly: this is supposed to run on z80-based computers after an armageddon comes and all the other "modern" computers are out of business, so people start building them by scavenging parts. Ok. So, first of all, how are you supposed to download this thing onto your homebrew computer, given that internet will most likely be down? "But if the collapse magnitude is right, then this…
In the event of a sufficiently large collapse, people will be so far down on Maslow's hierarchy of needs that an OS will be about the last thing on their minds.
The problem is that modern society - and the current size of the world's population - is dependent on a lot of programmable devices. For example: agriculture, where tractors and other farm machines nowadays have ECUs/ECMs (let alone even more programmable bits and pieces). Same for the vehicles used to actually transport food from farms to the rest of the world. There are plenty of other examples, too, like medical d…
Not to mention the energy supply chain. If the supply chain required to make electronics collapses, that probably also means the energy supply chain has collapsed, or has at least been severely disrupted. That seems far more likely to be damaging and far more quickly that a lack of ability to keep a microcontroller running. If I don't have gas for my car, it doesn't really matter if I can fix it when it breaks down. (And I run out of gas in a few hundred miles, but repairs are required on the order of tens of thousands of miles.)
This is really what I was trying to get it with my first comment. The problems presented by a lack of ability to make new technology are the sorts of problems that take months or years to become critical, but in a true collapse setting, the issues that matter most would unfold in days or weeks.
(I feel like I should point out that I don't think any of this is particularly likely.)
So, let me see if I understand this correctly: this is supposed to run on z80-based computers after an armageddon comes and all the other "modern" computers are out of business, so people start building them by scavenging parts. Ok. So, first of all, how are you supposed to download this thing onto your homebrew computer, given that internet will most likely be down? "But if the collapse magnitude is right, then this…
You're supposed to download it now and keep around. Just like preppers do with MREs and ammunition.
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"It's ok guy, if that 401k doesn't exist, then neither will you". There are a number of ways that can not be true without a large scale societal collapse. Fraud involving pension funds has happened many times in the past (Bernie Madoff, Robert Maxwell being two high profile examples). The last financial crisis brought a bit more attention to the topic of counterparty risk - the idea that your "safe" investment is onl…
401(k) plans have individual named customer accounts and strict auditing standards. A Bernie Madoff type scam isn't really possible. Even if Vanguard or Fidelity goes bankrupt the customer accounts will still exist. There's no counterparty risk (except for cash actively being transferred in or out).
These concerns are all likely fairly low probability but there's certainly a whole range of possible scenarios between "my retirement funds are completely secure" and "I'm dead in a global thermonuclear apocalypse".
I've been sort of half-assed working on a novel about a post-tech future (100+ years after apocalypse), where a handful of people retained some technology by virtue of having stored information about it in a manner that survived and a tradition of scavenging and trading and a sort of religion based on maintaining it in a working state. So, this is a fun read and thought experiment, even if an 8-bit computer is probab…
This reminds me a bit of A Canticle for Liebowitz, which in turn reminds me to re-read it. Thank you.