by J.M., Survival Blog:
(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.)
Reference Material
Another useful function that computers do really well is store, manage, and interact with information. No one can remember everything, and there are a lot of sources of free or low-cost eBooks, articles, documents, manuals, etc. on the Internet that can be extremely useful for a post-disaster world. I created a folder on the 1TB microSD card on my disaster laptop named ‘Reference Material’, and here are some of the things I’ve collected and stored there:
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
SurvivalBlog Archive – ($33) An obvious choice for SurvivalBlog readers. [JWR Adds: It also includes dozens of bonus medical reference books, how-to books, cookbooks, and military manuals.]
User Manuals – (Free) I have downloaded digital copies of the user and maintenance manuals and other documentation for every device and software product that I own or use, including vehicles, firearms, electronics, tools, etc.
Backwoods Home Magazine USB Anthology – ($45) Provides 28 years worth of articles.
Mother Earth News Archive – ($50) Includes all editions from 1970-2024.
Make Magazine – ($50) A 1-year digital subscription gives you access to all back issues.
TACDA Magazine – (Free) Create a free membership to get access to all back issues. They also have a Resources’ page with links to a lot of other great sources of information.
Survivalist Boards Download Library – (Free) Requires a free membership to get access.
Military Manuals – (Free) There are places you can download free military manuals that are chock full of useful survival information. Here are a couple:
- Older – https://guides.loc.gov/us-army-technical-manuals
- https://armynavyoutdoors.com/free-digital-manuals/?sort=featured&limit=100&mode=3
- https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usarmyfieldmanuals/
Medical references – (Free/$$) There are a lot of places on the web where you can download medical information, but at a minimum I recommend you get digital as well as hardcopies copies of ‘Where There Is No Doctor’ and ‘Where There Is No Dentist’.
Repair Guides – (Free) IfixIt provides great guides on how to repair almost anything; I have downloaded every guide they offer for every device that I own. They even provide a ‘Download as a PDF’ options for most of their guides.
Homeschooling Material – (Free/$$) If you have children you should consider downloading material to continue their education. Places like Easy Peasy and NC Homeschool Info provide content and links to various material. Please note that I don’t have any school-age kids, so I can’t vouch for the quality of any of this content. If you want the kids to each have their own laptop I’d recommend getting an inexpensive Chromebook for each of them; you can download the required content to each one using a network or USB drive.
eBooks – (Free/$$) There are dozens of sources of free and low-cost eBooks that can assist you in becoming self-sufficient in post-disaster scenarios and provide you with opportunities to relax and grow. These include the Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg and a listing of free prepper ebooks. I use a utility called Epubor to convert any Kindle eBooks I download or purchase to the industry-standard .epub format, and Calibre to upload eBooks to my Kobo eReader for reading. Note that there are potential legal considerations to converting ebooks to different formats, so make sure you aren’t breaking the law. Also, be aware that when dealing with Amazon Kindle ebooks you don’t actually own the content, and Amazon can take it away from you any time they want, which is why I convert them to epub format and store them offline.
Videos – ($$) Sometimes watching a video of how to do something is better than reading about it, and there are a lot of video services like YouTube and Vimeo that provides tons of useful content. The first problem is how to download those videos to your local computer; YouTube provides an expensive Premium service that allows you to download videos to your computer for offline viewing, and there are tools like Streamfab that allow you to download videos from various sites. Note that there may be legal issues associated with downloading videos – please be familiar with your local laws before attempting this. The second problem is that videos can take up a lot of storage space – I have several hundred videos that I’ve downloaded that take up over 2TB of storage, so I use an external 4TB USB disk drive to store them so they don’t fill up my computer.
Foraging Information – (Free) The website Falling Fruit provides a lot of details on where you can forage publicly available foods; you can create a free account, select an area you’re interested in on the map and download a .csv file with the GPS coordinates for all identified sources in that area.
Radio Frequency Databases – (Free) – RadioReference.com provides very complete listings of local, national and international radio frequencies. You can download PDF or CSV listings of the frequencies that are appropriate for you.
Maps – (Free) While the Cartograph application I mentioned earlier is great for viewing and annotating street maps, you may also want to have copies of topographic and satellite maps available. The US government provides free downloads of USGS Topo maps as well as satellite imagery. I also discussed a lot of other free maps with information for things like hazards in a previous article on SurvivalBlog.com. (Follow the Yellow Brick Road).
My current reference material library contains over 200GB in more than 150,000 files, which can make locating the information I need a time-consuming task. I use a tool called DocFetcher Pro ($40) that scans the content for pretty any type of file that can contain text and builds an index; this allows you to quickly perform powerful searches. Note that the initial indexing process can take a long time (hours), but subsequent updates when you add new content go pretty quickly.
There are several other things I store on my laptop, including:
- Copies of the software installation kits and licenses for all of the software mentioned above. That way if I ever need to re-install an application I have the kit available. I typically store two copies of each kit – the current version and the previous one. That way if an application installation fails or doesn’t work I can re-install the previous version.
- Android APKs for critical applications. APKs are installation kits that you can copy onto an Android device and install without having to access the Google Play store. There are tools like App APK Extractor & Analyzer that run on your Android device that can extract an APK from any installed application. You may also need to copy any local data the app uses to fully restore it. This allows me to restore a crashed Android device of bring a new one up to speed for what I need.
Other Useful Stuff
There are a lot of other potentially useful things that you can do with a computer besides just running applications and storing information that could be very useful in a long-term grid-down scenario. Here are some ideas:
