07-21-2019, 05:05 AM | #191 |
Join Date: Oct 2007
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Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?
Studying purely from books is only relevant if no one with the skills in question survive in the local area.
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07-21-2019, 11:05 AM | #192 |
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Ronneby, Sweden
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Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?
How well will those books survive once the buildings are damaged and water gets in?
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07-21-2019, 11:32 AM | #193 |
Join Date: Jul 2017
Location: Michigan
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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.
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07-21-2019, 12:23 PM | #194 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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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.
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07-21-2019, 01:00 PM | #195 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?
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.
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07-21-2019, 01:15 PM | #196 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Denver, CO
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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. |
07-21-2019, 02:13 PM | #197 | |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?
Quote:
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07-21-2019, 03:08 PM | #198 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?
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).
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07-21-2019, 05:21 PM | #199 | |
Join Date: Oct 2007
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Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?
Quote:
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. |
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07-21-2019, 10:32 PM | #200 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
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Re: So What IS ruined after an Apocalypse?
Quote:
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