Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 07-21-2019, 05:05 AM   #191
WingedKagouti
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2 View Post
Books about practical skills and subjects can be useful, but they tend to assume a lot, too. Furthermore, more practical technical skills hinge on the availability of a support network.
Studying purely from books is only relevant if no one with the skills in question survive in the local area.
WingedKagouti is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-21-2019, 11:05 AM   #192
Bengt
 
Bengt's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Ronneby, Sweden
Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

Quote:
Originally Posted by giant.robot View Post
Paper books will definitely survive. There's thousands of public libraries, book stores, and university libraries...basically everywhere. Not to mention people's personal collections.
How well will those books survive once the buildings are damaged and water gets in?
Bengt is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-21-2019, 11:32 AM   #193
Tigrah2k
 
Join Date: Jul 2017
Location: Michigan
Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

There are food goods that are specifically designed for long shelf life. MRE type food stuffs have a lengthy reasonable shelf life of easily 10 years. I'm not aware of anything, at least food stuffs, that have a longer shelf life. However, that doesn't mean there aren't products out there with exceptionally long lifespans.
Tigrah2k is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-21-2019, 12:23 PM   #194
Flyndaran
Untagged
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

Those are "best by" dates, not when they become inedible.
I've certainly safely eaten more than my share of canned foods years past their marked dates.
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check.
Flyndaran is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-21-2019, 01:00 PM   #195
Anthony
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bengt View Post
How well will those books survive once the buildings are damaged and water gets in?
Depends a lot on the books (archival quality paper is not the same as mass market) and the details of the soaking. Some things would almost certainly be wrecked, but over a period mere decades an awful lot would survive.
__________________
My GURPS site and Blog.
Anthony is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 07-21-2019, 01:15 PM   #196
khorboth
 
khorboth's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Denver, CO
Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

On another end of the media spectrum is flash drives. Those suckers are remarkably resilient. Water, mud, trees, etc. prove no problem. Age doesn't bother them much at all; being solid state, they don't particularly degrade over time. There are many stories of them working after being zapped with electricity or having nails pounded through them.

The problems are compatibility and usefulness. So... is it USB 1? 2? 3? A little sun fading and it's impossible to tell. Is it mac formatted? Linux? Unknown! Even then, you need something that can read it. There was stuff upstream about computers. It would take some work, but cobbling something together could be done. And then... what do you have? A survivalist's downloaded how-to? somebody's term paper? 4 pics from a family vacation and lots of empty space? pirated episodes of GOT? a weird Linux install? You'd probably have to go through hundreds to get anything of use. And then it's still dubious. How many are in your house? I think I have 6 or 7. And none of them would be of any use. But there's no way to tell without plugging them in.
khorboth is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-21-2019, 02:13 PM   #197
RyanW
 
RyanW's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

Quote:
Originally Posted by khorboth View Post
On another end of the media spectrum is flash drives. Those suckers are remarkably resilient. Water, mud, trees, etc. prove no problem. Age doesn't bother them much at all; being solid state, they don't particularly degrade over time. There are many stories of them working after being zapped with electricity or having nails pounded through them.
I had one that sat out in a parking lot over a weekend, getting run over at least once (or possibly stepped on, but with enough force to crush the housing) and it worked.
__________________
RyanW
- Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats.
RyanW is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-21-2019, 03:08 PM   #198
Anthony
 
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

Quote:
Originally Posted by khorboth View Post
On another end of the media spectrum is flash drives. Those suckers are remarkably resilient. Water, mud, trees, etc. prove no problem. Age doesn't bother them much at all; being solid state, they don't particularly degrade over time.
Lots of solid state things gradually decay over time (for things like this, mostly due to thermal motion of the magnetic material), though I haven't been able to find solid numbers for flash memory. I would tend to bet on no more than decades (archival grade optical disks are good for a millennium or more).
__________________
My GURPS site and Blog.
Anthony is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 07-21-2019, 05:21 PM   #199
WingedKagouti
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
(archival grade optical disks are good for a millennium or more).
While consumer versions can go bad in as little as a month (for those that manage to verify during the write process), or they could last a couple of decades in a moderately controlled environment (ie. stored at room temperature in a sleeve/case).

I wouldn't give much of a chance of the media being worth checking after a couple of years if it wasn't stored in a way that would prevent accidential scratching the surface.

But with the current real world archival sites, I'd expect many of the locations dedicated to storing knowledge world would survive. From my recollection there are at least a couple of Swiss archives that will basically survive anything but "Did you manage to turn Switzerland into a crater?" The US has at least one such archive as well. I expect both Russia and China have similar sites, but I can't remember any actual information on it.
WingedKagouti is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-21-2019, 10:32 PM   #200
Christopher R. Rice
 
Christopher R. Rice's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
Default Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?

Quote:
Originally Posted by khorboth View Post
On another end of the media spectrum is flash drives. Those suckers are remarkably resilient. Water, mud, trees, etc. prove no problem. Age doesn't bother them much at all; being solid state, they don't particularly degrade over time. There are many stories of them working after being zapped with electricity or having nails pounded through them.

The problems are compatibility and usefulness. So... is it USB 1? 2? 3? A little sun fading and it's impossible to tell. Is it mac formatted? Linux? Unknown! Even then, you need something that can read it. There was stuff upstream about computers. It would take some work, but cobbling something together could be done. And then... what do you have? A survivalist's downloaded how-to? somebody's term paper? 4 pics from a family vacation and lots of empty space? pirated episodes of GOT? a weird Linux install? You'd probably have to go through hundreds to get anything of use. And then it's still dubious. How many are in your house? I think I have 6 or 7. And none of them would be of any use. But there's no way to tell without plugging them in.
This is a really cool idea. But how would it be accessed if computers tend to be kaput by being so old. Or are there? I know at least one poster had an anecdote about firing up machines that had been in a shed for a couple decades.
__________________
My Twitter
My w23 Stuff
My Blog

Latest GURPS Book: Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves
Latest TFT Book: The Sunken Library

Become a Patron!
Christopher R. Rice is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
ate

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 12:12 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.