Would people continue to use personal computers in the post-apocalyptic future? If so, what kinds of computers are people more likely to use?
https://youtu.be/0wDtxYeJdzg
>>47760396
Whatever happened to survive and you can get power for.
I imagine Raspberry Pis and Ardunos would be worth their weight in gold in some instances.
>>47760396
Sturdy African-shithole-ready laptops.
Now, say you have a Mad Max: Fury Road sort of future.
What do you imagine people would use computers for?
Anti-lock brakes on their motorcycles, of course.
Maybe a primitive internet with small networks.
What else?
>>47760396
There would be no real internet, the infrastructure to support it is gone.
They'd basically be useful for storing written files and thus saving on paper that you'd otherwise need to make and use. And for entertainment of course.
>>47762488
Depending on how far the education has degenerated they could also be useful for simple computing.
But in general, embedded systems would be more useful than personal computers.
Depends very much on the setting. In a strict Mad Max style world, I would say they didn't really fit the feel for anything except the first film.
Other apocalypses are more generous. In some cases there might be a lot of high-tech stuff still functioning, although it might be cobbled together, unsafe and considered incomprehensible by a lot of people. In many cases there will be a distinctly 'retro' style to the interfaces, but the actual capabilities could be quite advanced.
The main uses for computers are likely to be:
- access to pre-collapse technology, like opening computer-controlled security doors, activating old power stations, controlling combat drones and so on.
- pre-collapse knowledge. Basically using them as a library.
- secure communications and secret information. Computers offer excellent encryption.
- Anything requiring significant math, which could be anything from trying to understand weather patterns to modelling the population growth of rad-rats to launching a ballistic missile at the hostile settlement 50 miles away.
Most of these need a fairly significant society in post-apocalyptic terms and are only likely to be used by the relatively civilised and powerful groups. Typical wilderness-dwellers might occasionally run into a piece of old-time technology which needs a computer to function or some old coot who keeps the location of his weapons cache on an encrypted hard drive, but most of them would have only a vague idea of what a computer is at best, let alone how to use one.
>>47762488
Isn't the 'core' of the internet pretty much designed to survive a nuclear war and decades-long social collapse? Seems plausible that there might be something running quite some time after everything has gone to hell. Obviously nowhere near as good as it is today, but something.
>>47762649
The internet needs a lot of electricity in a lot of places to work. And that means having several large electric generators.
Which, among other things, requires a large society that can afford to keep them running.
The infrastructure might be intact, but it wouldn't be usable.
>>47762649
It was initially but nowadays not at all, unless it's a series of small localized nuclear strikes.
You can destroy the global internet by hitting only 11 main DNS nodes.
>>47763621
Plus electricity, of course.
>>47760396
Impersonal Computers.
Depends on how far down the post-apocalypse line.
Fallout's a good example. By the time of New Vegas, computers, cars, and other electronic devices are being used by nation-states. Even small business and organizations use them, for managing and storing info.
Tech literacy goes down the less of a society there is.
The thing that always bothers me about post-apocolypse settings is that apparently everything and I mean everything is so fucked that there is no one that remembers or knows how to do things as if at the start of the scenario all the doctors and engineers and scientist and academics suddenly all died at once and all books and forms of written knowledge seemingly vanished into thin air.
I mean, from a narrative stand-point this is convient for a more medieval feel but compeletly ignores the fact that humanity wouldn't just collectively forget how to do everything all at once.
>>47763689
Post-Computers.
>>47763744
It's not that the scientists and engineers disappear (though most assuredly 80% of them would die just like the rest of us in a global nuke war), but that our societies are so specialized and distributed that even knowing exactly what you need to do to say, build an engine block, doesn't mean you'll be able to get the parts, machine tools, precision dies, etc. that are found all over the country and now across global supply chains. Even the US military sources most of its electronics from China *today*.
Then there's the secondary problem of knowledge transfer and institutional collapse, which is unlikely to last beyond the first survivor generation.
This is all quite brilliantly shown in the classic post-apoc novel Earth Abides by George Stewart:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Abides
>>47763744
Well, those people are fairly rare and not much more likely to survive the apocalypse than anyone else. The remaining ones aren't able to operate at full efficiency thanks to the collapse of infrastructure, so plenty of them will need to spend a lot of their time hunting, scavenging, farming or whatever they need to do to survive rather than actually using their skills.
Then you have the fact that most post-apocalyptic communities tend to be pretty small; a couple of doctors can serve a town with a few thousand people, but when the population is mostly in communities of a few hundred, then the majority of them won't include a doctor. To add to that issue, people with valuable skills are likely to end up in the larger communities and be jealously guarded by their leaders. You don't let your only source of healthcare risk being murdered by raiders just so they can do outpatient visits to the kids living in a crashed airliner.
So you can justify it, but I would agree that it would generally be better if the issue was at least addressed a bit. That kind of detail is a rich source of drama which gives you something more interesting than psycho raiders vs. slightly-less-psycho dirt farmers.
Word processors, cad or design programs would still be useful. Microsoft excel or some other spreadsheets would probably be invaluable for record keeping if there is any existing business or bureaucracy. Digital copies of references or of books/manuals would be valuable too. First thing that comes to mind are those laptops that law enforcement use. Some of them are protected against EMP blasts and they're generally drop proof as well.
We did have computers for decades before the internet existed lads
They're quite useful
>>47763744
The apocalypse can very easily be combined with a year zero scenario.
>>47765222
>cad or design programs
Vital if 3-D printing manages to survive as well.
>>47765961
3-D printing isn't very useful, even with bountiful resources.
CADD is very useful, even with limited resources.
>>47762113
>Mad max: fury road sort of future
well obviously you need computers to propagate feminism on tumblr :^)
>>47760396
There was an aside in the original metro game where at the main station, the guy doing immigration clerk type stuff had a 2000 ish computer he was typing on, there was also an armed guard.
It should be sorta like th a time, rare, used for the resurgence of societies and the bureaucracies that come withith, and if you to have it without permission you eat buckshot.
>>47765378
Yes!
I'll second the call for ms excel. Id go so far as to say that excel is more important than a PDF reader and certainly more important than network apps.
In a community survival situation, the margin for error is razor thin. How many calories do you eat, and how many will you plant? What's the margin of error if there's a drought? What's the shopping list when we send out a scavenging party?
We've got a party of five at the gate. What load are they going to put on us this winter vs the extra labor they provide? Where do I stock those extra man-hours of labor to maximize our benefits?
How deep a well do we dig to lower our chance of running out in the dry season to <1%?
How many sheep can we support? How many do we cull in the fall? How many can we keep for milk? How much can we give away in trade?
Yeah you can do this by hand. But it'll take weeks, not be as accurate, and not include those crucial what if scenarios. Don't underestimate the power of good administration - just look at how easily something can be totally fucked by bad admin and planning.
>>47771715
Excel isn't going to replace knowledge of animal husbandry or nutrition, Anon.
>>47771798
No but it multiplies the effectiveness of the knowledge you do have. It ensures that your resources are used optimally. and that limited resources are apportioned optimally between disciplines.
If you have X gallons of gas, excel can help you figure out how to divide that between farm equipment, generator power for the machine shop, and gas for the pickup truck you use for scavenging.
>>47764188
Actually I'd argue that you'd see traveling doctors within localized areas of several small communities as most likely those nearby settlements are all working in tandem to support each other. SAy one place has a rich supply of scrap metal while another has good water and another yet can grow reliable decent harvests or has someone who can cob together gunpowder. These all would work together most likely as its mutually beneficial to each other.
>>47771971
so can basic arithmetic and a little common sense. More likely any computer will be used to keep records of things like what's in that store house or when the last trader passed through. They'd be little more than glorified ledgers for the most part. barring some highly specliazed uses like for drone control.
>>47772032
That's right up there with "how hard can farming be? Just some seeds, some water, and some common sense." Do you practically have an MD because you binge-watched Scrubs?
Project planning in a community survival situation is far more complex than you realize. Just because you aren't aware of the issues doesnt mean they can't kill you.
Some of the best farmers I know are obsessive planners and excel users for precisely this reason.
>>47760396
Computers are Chronicler property. Be about your business, clanner.
>>47768749
I wouldn't even think of it as a "feministic propaganda" if it wasn't for faggots like you. Eat a dick, you suffer from severe lack of dicks in your organism.
