this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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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."

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[–] Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day 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 1 day ago (4 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.

[–] markovs_gun@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Reminds me of the Talos Principle more than anything.

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[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 48 points 2 days ago (14 children)

Ooh. As a hobbyist "mostly for funzies" prepper I was mildly interested. But then I clicked around their site a bit and I found preorders for a version of the prepper disk with an LLM chatbot "companion.". Assuming the LLM is using RAG on the library of source documents and isn't just relying on its training, that's really neat. I know people will exclaim "hallucination!", but in a situation where you literally have no idea what to do, no way to get help, and the alternative is lying down and dying, I could see this being really handy. Often the hardest part of having a giant archive of information is how to find what you need out of it and interpret what it's telling you.

I'd rather use an "open" version of this, though. Prepper Disk's website sounds like they're trying to keep their data at least partially locked down, and while I can understand that they want to recoup the cost of the effort they put into setting this up it kind of goes against the grain of prepping to rely on something that you can't repair or modify yourself.

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 7 points 1 day ago (3 children)

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

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[–] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 47 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Has room for a porn folder too right?

Seems like an amateur apocalyptic preparation oversight that it wasn't included already.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 25 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Just check under homework.

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[–] kandoh@reddthat.com 20 points 2 days ago (11 children)

Maybe I should just use these and cancel my internet

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[–] suburban_hillbilly@lemmy.ml 32 points 2 days ago (1 children)

WikiHow

One of these things is not like the others

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[–] Etterra@discuss.online 5 points 1 day ago

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

[–] RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

This is stupid.

[–] Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day 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.

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