7 ms·

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 vi

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 probably not my highest priority when thinking of "when the shit hits the fan, as seems more likely today than it did five years ago, what do I want to have in my survival kit?" One of the questions I keep coming back to for such a scenario, and still haven't come up with a great answer for, is how does someone living in a world without the ability to manufacture a computer still have computers that work 100+ years after the last one was made? Even manufacturing transistors without modern methods is non-trivial. Will a Z80 last 100+ years? I mean, maybe, if it's kept dry and not exposed to anything corrosive. I've got a Commodore 64 that's ~40 years old and still works...so, 100 years seems reachable, but there have to be extenuating circumstances to get to that "post-tech" world (though I guess in a post apocalyptic world, the value of computers would be seen as minimal for a few years while survival is the only concern, so just forgetting could be enough).

tiborsaas 7y ago
Computers could give you better chances of survival. In a shelter / bunker let's say you can have a control center where you can monitor sensors and manage databases. These tasks doesn't require a computer, but saves you massive time to do something else.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Could a Z80 do these things effectively? Honest question.
  - tiborsaas 7y ago
    Yes, sensor monitoring (movement, heat, wind) is just simple IO handling and I'm sure managing a SQLite database would be in it's capabilities. If a C64 is capable of all if this then it can be done. Even chat is possible for example between two buildings where radio might not penetrate the walls. But sure, at that point if you can lay down cables, then it's simpler to just build a telephone.
    - monocasa 7y ago
      SQLite assumes quite a bit more resources than a Z80 has.
      - bluGill 7y ago
        There were databases that ran on 8 bit computers. They were not as powerful as SQLite, but they could do the job.
- SwellJoe 7y ago
  The core premise of the story is that the people who have tech have access to a copy of WikiPedia, or some portion of it, which is like a super power in a post-tech world. Even if it is only used periodically (to prevent wear and tear on the computer), it would still be incredibly valuable to have an oracle that can answer questions like "how to nixtamilize corn?" or "how to preserve food without refrigeration" in a world without grocery stores. This, of course, presumes libraries are also mostly gone, since you don't need WikiPedia if you have a library.
  - eurg 7y ago
    Well, honestly, I think for that type of knowledge, Wikipedia is actually a very bad starting point. It could have become something like that, but ... I blame Deletionism, and more importantly, the general aversity to "know how" pages. Yes, you could relearn math from Wikipedia, but I'm not sure there's enough stuff in there that somebody who didn't already know how would be able to recreate half-way modern antibiotics, or an old CRT TV tube, let alone an SEM etc.
    - SwellJoe 7y ago
      While I agree that WikiPedia is unnecessarily restrictive in their coverage (particularly with regard to how to do things), I think there's a lot of value there, too...especially in a world that has lost access to anything more in-depth. I mean, I can go to WikiPedia and figure out how ancient peoples cooled and heated their homes, handled irrigation, preserved foods without refrigeration, what plants are edible, what plants grow in what regions (though this would be thrown off by a climate catastrophe), how to render fat for storage, how to make rubber, how to smelt iron, how to build a boat from naturally available supplies, how to make cloth water resistant, natural remedies, etc. While it's not a "how to" guide for any of these things, if you can read, look at the diagrams, and follow the references within WikiPedia, you can figure it out with some trial and error. The premise isn't that the folks with WikiPedia can rebuild modern society. It's that they literally can't (even if they had better knowledge resources), but would still have a survival advantage from having a little bit of the old knowledge. The fact is that if we lose our modern society, we'll never be able to build it up again. We've dug up all of the easily accessible resources, already. Scavenging from the good old days is the best any post-apocalyptic society can hope for, as bleak as that sounds.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  Or you manage to repair a advanced drone .. that can do scavenging in dangerous radiated areas for example (or just common drone, can scout for you). Solar panels will be valuable... But wind is easily to bild and generate as well. In general, the scenario is, that the whole world is broken down, but full of tech. So many machines to get back to working. Machines beat muscle on a scale
  - dharmab 7y ago
    > that can do scavenging in dangerous radiated areas for example Most robotics don't work in areas of heavy radiation, because radiation damages electronics.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
      You wouldn't want to scavenge something from an area which is so irradiated that it fries electronics.
PeterisP 7y ago
IMHO you could be using the same chips for a surprisingly long time - you're likely to need some electronics maintained e.g. replacing capacitors, but if you really need to get some computing power for a 2100 post-apocalyptic scenario where there's just a few million people, then scavenging working chips from random gadgets has a lot of potential. E.g. a hard drive controller or a kids toy may be running on something that was good enough for a CPU twenty years ago.
- SwellJoe 7y ago
  Yeah, part of keeping old computers (and synthesizers, another interest of mine) running is re-capping. Modern caps last longer than the stuff from the 70s and early 80s, but still maybe needs consideration. I don't actually know much about the longevity of modern caps...worth some research.
- AtlasBarfed 7y ago
  Raspberry Pi is 4 gigahertz. Madness! You're in a postapocalyptic world and you find someone's drawer of raspberry pi sideprojects: a solar panel, a low power screen... ... you find a controller ... you find their emulation raspberry pi. ... all of a sudden, the world isn't as desolate.
  - justinclift 7y ago
    ... only to find it won't boot, as the OS was on some kind of SSD storage that died after ~2-3 years without being powered on. :(
dmix 7y ago
So basically Waterworld but for computers instead of water? I like it.
rwmj 7y ago
My novel idea (feel free to use it!) is about someone taking a 1980s computer back to the Second World War. It's used by the Allies to decrypt Ultra intelligence and is treated like a kind of holy relic - only a tiny set of "high priests" are allowed near it, fewer still can touch it, and because of its importance they go to extraordinary lengths to ensure it can never be damaged by anything from bombs to power glitches. Think a Commodore 64 in a ridiculous white room. But the book would be more about the consequences of this - do they eventually take the thing apart and jump-start a silicon chip revolution in the 1950s, or (more likely I think) does the government destroy the machine as the UK government did to the Bletchley machines after WWII, and because there's no ground-up computer theory does it set back computing for decades?
- GhettoMaestro 7y ago
  I would read this book. Fictional [alternative] history is always fun to read for me.
- fernly 7y ago
  Yeah, no. I've handled parts of Whirlwind[1], a vacuum tube machine from just post-WWII, and the gap from that to a C-64 or any other circa-1980 machine is just too great. They were using discrete wiring, resistors and wires soldered to the bases of the vacuum tubes. The Whirlwind was the first machine to use core memory, and the 4K core memory unit is a box about the size of a phone booth. I don't know if PCBs existed before 1950 but if they did, they were certainly single-sided. So now ask somebody really smart in that technology, like say Jay Forrester[2] who had just finished inventing core memory, to analyze this magic beige plastic box. He could probably recognize that the PCB provided connectivity between parts, but what are the parts, these little flat plastic tiles? I don't think it would be possible to work out from first principles what the functional contents of a DRAM chip is, let alone the CPU. Even if they x-rayed it, supposing they had x-ray tech with enough resolution to resolve a chip, how could they figure out that those little blobs are transistors? Transistors hadn't been invented! I think they'd have to concede this is "sufficiently advanced" tech, in Arthur Clarke's phrase, to be indistinguishable from magic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlwind_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlwind_I [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Wright_Forrester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Wright_Forrester
gnopgnip 7y ago
You can look at the proliferation of antiques for examples of this. Arguably many antiques are more fragile than a computer, and exist over a hundred years later in excellent condition either through careful planning or neglect and luck.
philsnow 7y ago
This reminds me a bit of A Canticle for Liebowitz, which in turn reminds me to re-read it. Thank you.
- SwellJoe 7y ago
  Yes, definitely. It's just another spin on the same idea 60 years later...a few things have changed since then, so I think there's room for another take. (And, I'm not the first to mine the territory since then.)
omn1 7y ago
Please continue working on this novel; I would read it. You could even start publishing today with services like leanpub and get some early backers and feedback.
hos234 7y ago
Jacquard Looms. No electronics required.
tootie 7y ago
Ben Eater's YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS0N5baNlQWJCUrhCEo8WlA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS0N5baNlQWJCUrhCEo8WlA) shows the step-by-step process of building an 8-bit computer, running a display and sending data over a network from fundamental components. He does use some manufactured stuff like breadboards, timing crystals and ICs, but it's still pretty cool stuff. Building computers from raw minerals would be pretty tough.
- bschne 7y ago
  For people interested in this sort of thing, I can recommend the Nand2Tetris Courses[1] (also on Coursera). They basically walk you through assembling and programming a full CPU from nothing but NAND-gates in a hardware description language, and in the second part even adding a compiler and higher-level language to the stack. 1. https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/
steveklabnik 7y ago
You might enjoy some of the Warhammer 40k lore; enough time has passed that technology is often literally indistinguishable from magic. A cult of "tech priests" are the only people who know how to speak to the souls that are inside the machines. It's heavily implied that they're not actually souls, of course, but that's how it's described to most people, as its easier to understand.
magicalhippo 7y ago
Since the transistors are used as switches, one can use electromechanical one, aka relays. There's a nice project page of one here[1], including an in-depth video about it here[2]. There's a collection of other relay computers here[3]. [1]: http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/ http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/ [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsp2JntuZ3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsp2JntuZ3c [3]: https://github.com/Dovgalyuk/Relay/wiki https://github.com/Dovgalyuk/Relay/wiki
buzzert 7y ago
Similar to this scenario is Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. Without giving too much of the story away, it's a great sci-fi novel that covers some post-apocalyptic topics, one of which includes a huge regression in PC performance/transistor count due to the major disruption of this fragile supply chain.

tiborsaas 7y ago

Computers could give you better chances of survival. In a shelter / bunker let's say you can have a control center where you can monitor sensors and manage databases. These tasks doesn't require a computer, but saves you massive time to do something else.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Could a Z80 do these things effectively? Honest question.
- tiborsaas 7y ago
  Yes, sensor monitoring (movement, heat, wind) is just simple IO handling and I'm sure managing a SQLite database would be in it's capabilities. If a C64 is capable of all if this then it can be done. Even chat is possible for example between two buildings where radio might not penetrate the walls. But sure, at that point if you can lay down cables, then it's simpler to just build a telephone.
  - monocasa 7y ago
    SQLite assumes quite a bit more resources than a Z80 has.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      There were databases that ran on 8 bit computers. They were not as powerful as SQLite, but they could do the job.
SwellJoe 7y ago
The core premise of the story is that the people who have tech have access to a copy of WikiPedia, or some portion of it, which is like a super power in a post-tech world. Even if it is only used periodically (to prevent wear and tear on the computer), it would still be incredibly valuable to have an oracle that can answer questions like "how to nixtamilize corn?" or "how to preserve food without refrigeration" in a world without grocery stores. This, of course, presumes libraries are also mostly gone, since you don't need WikiPedia if you have a library.
- eurg 7y ago
  Well, honestly, I think for that type of knowledge, Wikipedia is actually a very bad starting point. It could have become something like that, but ... I blame Deletionism, and more importantly, the general aversity to "know how" pages. Yes, you could relearn math from Wikipedia, but I'm not sure there's enough stuff in there that somebody who didn't already know how would be able to recreate half-way modern antibiotics, or an old CRT TV tube, let alone an SEM etc.
  - SwellJoe 7y ago
    While I agree that WikiPedia is unnecessarily restrictive in their coverage (particularly with regard to how to do things), I think there's a lot of value there, too...especially in a world that has lost access to anything more in-depth. I mean, I can go to WikiPedia and figure out how ancient peoples cooled and heated their homes, handled irrigation, preserved foods without refrigeration, what plants are edible, what plants grow in what regions (though this would be thrown off by a climate catastrophe), how to render fat for storage, how to make rubber, how to smelt iron, how to build a boat from naturally available supplies, how to make cloth water resistant, natural remedies, etc. While it's not a "how to" guide for any of these things, if you can read, look at the diagrams, and follow the references within WikiPedia, you can figure it out with some trial and error. The premise isn't that the folks with WikiPedia can rebuild modern society. It's that they literally can't (even if they had better knowledge resources), but would still have a survival advantage from having a little bit of the old knowledge. The fact is that if we lose our modern society, we'll never be able to build it up again. We've dug up all of the easily accessible resources, already. Scavenging from the good old days is the best any post-apocalyptic society can hope for, as bleak as that sounds.
hutzlibu 7y ago
Or you manage to repair a advanced drone .. that can do scavenging in dangerous radiated areas for example (or just common drone, can scout for you). Solar panels will be valuable... But wind is easily to bild and generate as well. In general, the scenario is, that the whole world is broken down, but full of tech. So many machines to get back to working. Machines beat muscle on a scale
- dharmab 7y ago
  > that can do scavenging in dangerous radiated areas for example Most robotics don't work in areas of heavy radiation, because radiation damages electronics.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 7y ago
    You wouldn't want to scavenge something from an area which is so irradiated that it fries electronics.

PeterisP 7y ago

IMHO you could be using the same chips for a surprisingly long time - you're likely to need some electronics maintained e.g. replacing capacitors, but if you really need to get some computing power for a 2100 post-apocalyptic scenario where there's just a few million people, then scavenging working chips from random gadgets has a lot of potential. E.g. a hard drive controller or a kids toy may be running on something that was good enough for a CPU twenty years ago.

SwellJoe 7y ago
Yeah, part of keeping old computers (and synthesizers, another interest of mine) running is re-capping. Modern caps last longer than the stuff from the 70s and early 80s, but still maybe needs consideration. I don't actually know much about the longevity of modern caps...worth some research.
AtlasBarfed 7y ago
Raspberry Pi is 4 gigahertz. Madness! You're in a postapocalyptic world and you find someone's drawer of raspberry pi sideprojects: a solar panel, a low power screen... ... you find a controller ... you find their emulation raspberry pi. ... all of a sudden, the world isn't as desolate.
- justinclift 7y ago
  ... only to find it won't boot, as the OS was on some kind of SSD storage that died after ~2-3 years without being powered on. :(

dmix 7y ago

So basically Waterworld but for computers instead of water? I like it.

rwmj 7y ago

My novel idea (feel free to use it!) is about someone taking a 1980s computer back to the Second World War. It's used by the Allies to decrypt Ultra intelligence and is treated like a kind of holy relic - only a tiny set of "high priests" are allowed near it, fewer still can touch it, and because of its importance they go to extraordinary lengths to ensure it can never be damaged by anything from bombs to power glitches. Think a Commodore 64 in a ridiculous white room. But the book would be more about the consequences of this - do they eventually take the thing apart and jump-start a silicon chip revolution in the 1950s, or (more likely I think) does the government destroy the machine as the UK government did to the Bletchley machines after WWII, and because there's no ground-up computer theory does it set back computing for decades?

GhettoMaestro 7y ago
I would read this book. Fictional [alternative] history is always fun to read for me.
fernly 7y ago
Yeah, no. I've handled parts of Whirlwind[1], a vacuum tube machine from just post-WWII, and the gap from that to a C-64 or any other circa-1980 machine is just too great. They were using discrete wiring, resistors and wires soldered to the bases of the vacuum tubes. The Whirlwind was the first machine to use core memory, and the 4K core memory unit is a box about the size of a phone booth. I don't know if PCBs existed before 1950 but if they did, they were certainly single-sided. So now ask somebody really smart in that technology, like say Jay Forrester[2] who had just finished inventing core memory, to analyze this magic beige plastic box. He could probably recognize that the PCB provided connectivity between parts, but what are the parts, these little flat plastic tiles? I don't think it would be possible to work out from first principles what the functional contents of a DRAM chip is, let alone the CPU. Even if they x-rayed it, supposing they had x-ray tech with enough resolution to resolve a chip, how could they figure out that those little blobs are transistors? Transistors hadn't been invented! I think they'd have to concede this is "sufficiently advanced" tech, in Arthur Clarke's phrase, to be indistinguishable from magic. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlwind_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlwind_I [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Wright_Forrester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Wright_Forrester

gnopgnip 7y ago

You can look at the proliferation of antiques for examples of this. Arguably many antiques are more fragile than a computer, and exist over a hundred years later in excellent condition either through careful planning or neglect and luck.

philsnow 7y ago

This reminds me a bit of A Canticle for Liebowitz, which in turn reminds me to re-read it. Thank you.

SwellJoe 7y ago
Yes, definitely. It's just another spin on the same idea 60 years later...a few things have changed since then, so I think there's room for another take. (And, I'm not the first to mine the territory since then.)

omn1 7y ago

Please continue working on this novel; I would read it. You could even start publishing today with services like leanpub and get some early backers and feedback.

hos234 7y ago

Jacquard Looms. No electronics required.

tootie 7y ago

Ben Eater's YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS0N5baNlQWJCUrhCEo8WlA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS0N5baNlQWJCUrhCEo8WlA) shows the step-by-step process of building an 8-bit computer, running a display and sending data over a network from fundamental components. He does use some manufactured stuff like breadboards, timing crystals and ICs, but it's still pretty cool stuff. Building computers from raw minerals would be pretty tough.

bschne 7y ago
For people interested in this sort of thing, I can recommend the Nand2Tetris Courses[1] (also on Coursera). They basically walk you through assembling and programming a full CPU from nothing but NAND-gates in a hardware description language, and in the second part even adding a compiler and higher-level language to the stack. 1. https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/

steveklabnik 7y ago

You might enjoy some of the Warhammer 40k lore; enough time has passed that technology is often literally indistinguishable from magic. A cult of "tech priests" are the only people who know how to speak to the souls that are inside the machines. It's heavily implied that they're not actually souls, of course, but that's how it's described to most people, as its easier to understand.

magicalhippo 7y ago

Since the transistors are used as switches, one can use electromechanical one, aka relays. There's a nice project page of one here[1], including an in-depth video about it here[2]. There's a collection of other relay computers here[3]. [1]: http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/ http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~harry/Relay/ [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsp2JntuZ3c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsp2JntuZ3c [3]: https://github.com/Dovgalyuk/Relay/wiki https://github.com/Dovgalyuk/Relay/wiki

buzzert 7y ago

Similar to this scenario is Neal Stephenson's Seveneves. Without giving too much of the story away, it's a great sci-fi novel that covers some post-apocalyptic topics, one of which includes a huge regression in PC performance/transistor count due to the major disruption of this fragile supply chain.