Author of the great book Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire, Adam Greenfield, posted this today on Mastodon:
And it links to this brief but good 404Media article: “Sales of Hard Drives for the End of the World Boom Under Trump“
And now I feel the need to hammer out this quick post.
YOU CAN BUILD THIS YOURSELF or
YOU KNOW SOMEONE WHO CAN BUILD THIS FOR YOU.
As someone who has spent the last decade on the sales side of the prepping community, and as a guy who like computers and tech, I’ve been getting ads for these things for a couple years now.
And they’ve always really, really hacked me off, too.
Each of these products that I’ve seen; SurvivalNet, PrepperDisk, GridbasePocket to name a few; are filled almost entirely with free, publicly available software and information.
Each runs the Kiwix software and related ZIM files, sometimes with the branding scrubbed off. They all run off of some version of a Raspberry Pi single board computer. Some of them may run more advanced software from the educational nonprofit Internet-In-A-Box to host things like maps (again with the branding replaced with TacticoolPrepperWords).
All the info is free, and the hardware to run it is very cheap.
But to make matters worse, these “Off-Grid Computer” companies didn’t even come up with an original idea: Kiwix already sells a “Prepper” Raspberry Pi Hotspot image you can buy ($25, with proceeds going back to the Kiwix non-profit), alongside ones for Wikidpeida and Medical info. You can also pay a bit more (and support the non-profit that built the software) for a whole pre-built Raspberry Pi kit.
Build one yourself with an old phone
Kiwix can run off of pretty much any old phone! Yes, even that two year old iphone 11 in your junk drawer.
You can get the Kiwix app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, and all the featured “prepper info” items, from offline Wikipedia to every English-language book on Project Gutenberg to “Military Manuals” and “Survival Guides” are available to download, for free, to your phone’s storage (if you have the space).
Special Android features
Due to some limitations found in iPhones and iPads, Kiwix has some special features found only on Android.
Storage settings
After you download and install the Kiwix app go to the app settings and switch the Storage to External so it uses the microSD card. This keeps the Kiwix files, which can be very large, off your main internal storage and on your swappable microSD card.
Wifi Hotspot
To make what you’ve downloaded available to others, just open the sidebar in Kiwix and click “create hotspot”. Follow the prompts and once it’s running there will be a URL at the top of the Kiwix screen starting with http://192.168… This is the URL other devices will use to access the Kiwix hotspot.
Don’t Give These Folks Your Money
These types of products may be helpful in the future. The ability to look up how to filter water, how to prepare food for lots of people, and how to build makeshift shelters is (sadly) valuable. The ability to share that information with people is maybe even more valuable.
I saw this by talking to friends in Western NC after Hurricane Helene; potable water was hard to come by, and folks gathered together to eat.
But what’s helpful right now is the money in your pocket. There’s no need to give these people $300 if all you need to do is dig out an old android phone and spend $20 on a 256gb microSD card. You can much more cheaply DIY this setup for yourself, your friends and your family, probably with stuff you already own.
And once you get it set up Show Your Friends. Call them up and talk to them about what’s going on, and see if they need anything.