this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
688 points (97.5% liked)

Technology

73902 readers
5973 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@hackingne.ws
688
Sales of Hard Drives for the End of the World Boom Under Trump (www.404media.co)
submitted 3 months ago by j4p@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world
182 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Title is a little sensational but this is a cool project for non-technical folks who may need a mini-internet or data archive for a wide variety of reasons:

"PrepperDisk is a mini internet box that comes preloaded with offline backups of Wikipedia, street maps, survivalist information, 90,000 WikiHow guides, iFixit repair guides, government website backups (including FEMA guides and National Institutes of Health backups), TED Talks about farming and survivalism, 60,000 ebooks and various other content. It’s part external hard drive, part local hotspot antenna—the box runs on a Raspberry Pi that allows up to 20 devices to connect to it over wifi or wired connections, and can store and run additional content that users store on it. It doesn't store a lot of content (either 256GB or 512GB), but what makes it different from buying any external hard drive is that it comes preloaded with content for the apocalypse."

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] foremanguy92_@lemmy.ml 8 points 3 months ago

Good idea for normal people that are not really knowing how and what to put on such a device

[–] kn0wmad1c@programming.dev 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Yeah, but won't you need enough electricity to power a monitor, keyboard, and mouse for this to work?

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago (17 children)

That doesn't take much power, a solar panel or two should be more than sufficient, or you can rig something up w/ a defunct ebike (just run the motor backwards to generate electricity).

load more comments (17 replies)
[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 3 points 3 months ago

A single rooftop solar panel can do that, and charge a battery for a little after dark use while you're at it.

A true prepper will get an eInk monitor and resist the urge to scroll until they read all the way to the bottom of the page, but even a normal monitor uses a small fraction of a solar panel. Keyboard? Near zero. Mouse? Near zero x10 but still near zero when compared with 200W. RasPi? less than a normal monitor.

[–] 5too@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

It sounds like you can connect with your phone, which reduces the energy footprint quite a bit.

[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 7 points 3 months ago

I was hoping it would be one of those drives built to last hundreds of years. Oh well.

[–] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Looks super cool wish there was a version with more storage. 256/512gb is on the low side for end of the world

[–] Obsidieon@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

It seems that they are working on a premium version of the PrepperDisk with up to 1TB of storage space. They will also be bundling that with an AI LLM implementation trained with the data present on the PrepperDisk.

[–] FryHyde@lemmy.zip 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Okay it's conceivable that there'd be enough power to read through and search a drive, but LLMs might be the worst and least efficient use of electricity Icould possibly imagine in a doomsday scenario.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 7 points 3 months ago (3 children)

What kind of storage do they use? Because SSDs left unpowered will lose data.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Etterra@discuss.online 5 points 3 months ago

My doomsday kit is just a bottle of SoCo and a camping chair.

[–] Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I have HDDs that have been with me for almost 10 years. I need to replace one with one that I can use as a backup for all of them AND have some to spare.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›