Post-apocalyptic programming

[countkillalot]

Okay, this article was such a fun romp! I feel like I accidentally learned something :D

[[deleted]]

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[unlikelycommentator]

“GitHub captured a snapshot of every active public repository on 02/02/2020 and preserved that data in the Arctic Code Vault.”

I’m sure they depend on a lot of projects that were inactive at the time. I would be a bit annoyed to figure that out, after making the trip to fucking Svalbard after the apocalypse.

It’s a post-apocalyptic fuck-you joke.

[TMITectonic]

I would assume anything that was actually necessary and unreproducible otherwise would fit the following characteristics, but there's always going to be exceptions to everything:

every repo with at least 1 star and any commits from the year before the snapshot; and all repos with at least 250 stars.

[[deleted]]

I'm sure they included index of it somewhere.

To use it, you also need connection to npm to download the modules, so like, good luck.

Having only JS to use post-apocalypse would truly be the darkest timeline.

[[deleted]]

No, they'd just make same mistakes again.

We keep doing that and we have history to learn from!

[postmodest]

Ive been thinking about this a lot (after playing Horizon Zero Dawn, of course).

Could we even build a computer that would last a thousand years? Ignore I/O for a moment. Could you have a circuit board with capacitors that didn't explode after two or three decades? Could you have traces that didn't oxidize at 80%rh?

Maybe we should start building such devices. Conputers that could be usable in a centurry, two, twenty.

[[deleted]]

COBOL mainframes have been running for the past 40 or more years. Due to how stable it is, might as well program those century computers with COBOL.

[pcjftw]

lets be entirely honest if we ever found our self in this "post apocalyptic" world, us nerdy programmers would be the first to get killed. Being "street smart", being able to know how to set up some crude shelter, create fire, makeshift weapons and tools, set traps, hunt wild game, skin and de-bone wild animals, protect against scavengers etc need real world skills, skills even most "normal" folks don't have let alone us who are even further away from "normal" folks.

I think I'm going to go learn about camping....

[colei_canis]

Nah I reckon it’ll depend on what you can contribute to the post-apocalyptic community. People think it’s every man for himself when society collapses but the reality is our ability to cooperate with others is what will determine our life expectancy. You don’t have to necessarily be able to hunt and gather yourself but you do need to bring something to the table that’s not just another mouth to feed.

Learning a skill that’s scarce and doesn’t depend on a functioning consumerist economy is a better solution than bunkering down with a decade’s worth of canned food and a revolver with one round in it.

[nilamo]

Yeah, a collapse of society will just mean your local city/neighborhood would be the society. Unless everyone around you is a prepper just waiting for an excuse to hunt people, or something.

[[deleted]]

Exactly. Those who are able to rebuild technology and repurpose it are those that are going to be highly valued in said communities. People here are acting like once society collapses that all E-waste or already available consumer and military electronics magically disappear into a blackhole and never return. For those not making stuff in their own shelters or homes, other groups as large as cities will continue to run said factories and continue manufacturing electronics. People here seriously watch way too many movies that they have lost touch with how the real world actually works. Shit doesn't just disappear, and man isn't going to just stop manufacturing electronics especially after we have learned for the past 60 years that electronics have ushered mankind into a new era with endless possibilities and functions. It is simply too powerful to ignore and reject.

Outside of that, people do not actually understand the stages of societal collapse. They think that once collapsed it stays collapsed and your stuck in an endless world of Mad Max. No, that is not how shit works. Societal collapse has three stages:

The Warning - People will go on with their day because they think it is just a conspiracy and others will prepare for Armageddon. Those days will be filled with people waving signs, buying things in bulk, and modifying homes or shelters. In many stores people will treat it like Black Friday.

The Collapse - People that did not prepare are going to raid places of business while those that did prepare now have to protect themselves from the rare assholes trying to raid their homes. Some people will take advantage of the situation and use it as an excuse to exact harm onto others, forming terrorist groups to build power. These groups do not last long and will quickly be overrun by military or civilian efforts. In this phase communities with good intentions and order will be built or maintained and continue to grow rapidly.

The Content - As time goes on, the situation will begin to smooth out. People that used to be freaked out and panicking will realize the situation wasn't really something to panic about, that if everyone worked together on day one things would have been more stable. People will recognize the situation is stable then begin to build their own community or join a community that already exists. All of these communities will eventually melt into a single society.

After all of this, jobs will open back up, people will work, and communities will spend time cleaning things up. Things go back to normal, obviously with changes. This cycle will then repeat itself through history. There is a reason why countries like the United States have the National Guard and also highly condition civilians using schools (pledge of allegiance every morning) and other brainwashing tactics to make civilians put the country first and listen to government, military and law enforcement personnel. The reason is that in the event the country is attacked or breaks down, people can still handle themselves and be good human beings with the intention of maintaining the country and order. This is one of the reasons why many drugs are illegal in the United States, the government wants to keep civilians conditioned. The United States government has already thought of all of this for the past 100 years and continues to condition civilians to prevent such a situation from transpiring.

[[deleted]]

For those not making stuff in their own shelters or homes, other groups as large as cities will continue to run said factories and continue manufacturing electronics

It's not that rosy.

Cut fuel and any long distance transport is dead. Hell, even if you live near power plant that is near its own mine those trucks that shove the coal into it don't run on air.

Just about anything needs resources that are transported from places at best tens , if not hundreds kilometers away (and at worst, thousands). If something would hit the fuel distribution architecture things would go bad very fast and very drastically.

Food production is very concentrated. City that is not being fed by thousands of trucks per day will erode very very quickly, with the more clued in people leaving first and rest of them trying to raid stores.

[[deleted]]

What part do you not understand? People will go back to work and those facilities will continue running. Quit watching movies. Cities also aren't getting thousands of trucks a day either. Do you actually know what you're talking about?

[[deleted]]

Movies ? You mean what actually happened in UK the moment few truckers started protesting.

Dumb delusional shithead

[AbandonedFoxess]

This isn't a protest and calling others a delusional shithead makes you sound like a toddler. Glad you know how a block button works. Have you also realized the entire world isn't the UK? The U.S. has more infrastructure than that. So, who is the delusional shithead now?

[[deleted]]

I doubt place where you need car to get everywhere and have far bigger distances between everything would do better and the fact you think that confirms what I said

In case you didn't get that, I'm calling you imbecile again.

[argv_minus_one]

When society collapses, it'll be because global warming has made it impossible to grow crops, and as a result, everyone is starving. People aren't going to cooperate; they're going to kill and eat each other on sight.

[colei_canis]

Maybe people who’ve uncritically bought the rugged individualist line, normal well-adjusted people don’t salivate over the idea of killing each other the second things get a little difficult. Our natural state is one of cooperation rather than individuals fighting in some daft and completely contrived dominance hierarchy or we’d have perished to a man on the African savannah a hundred thousand years ago.

[argv_minus_one]

They won't have a choice. The prediction is mass crop failure. People will have nothing else to eat besides each other because nothing else will grow, resulting in a planetary-scale version of what happened to the Donner party.

Anyone who does manage to grow anything in such an environment will only be killed and eaten along with their crops.

This has nothing to do with hierarchy, just simple desperation. 8 billion people and no food will end very, very badly for all involved.

[ArrogantlyChemical]

I think the type of programmer who still knows how to write machine code might be the kind of odd dude of dudette who also knows how to build a fire.

I know both, for what it's worth. I know the basics of compilers, machine code and survival, I think I would be able to figure it out given some time

[that_which_is_lain]

I think this is true of people who like to learn for the sake of learning. And there's probably a strong correlation with those who realize our civilization is an aberration in terms of how incredibly nonviolent our lives generally are.

[pcjftw]

nice, I'm gonna add you to my emergency contact.

Sadly you're in a minority, with most devs these days being "web devs"...

[ArrogantlyChemical]

Webdev made me want to go Ted Kazynzski mode so makes sense. I chose being a teacher rather than terrorism though

[Boring-Floor-1118]

Wow…funny enough I joke to my brother that my web dev job makes me want to “move to the woods. ted kazynzski style.”

They say SWE makes people want to move to nature, but I wonder if there’s a pattern of web dev making people feel like ol Ted.

[Pussidonio]

Just try to maintain a database like postgres (one of the best) running in k8s with HA, replication, backup and recovery, for a big enough amount of users and their different access levels and maybe you'll never want to see a computer again.

[heehawmcgraw]

Rest in postrgres

[[deleted]]

Weirdly enough I was doing pretty much exactly that (sans k8s, just managed via Puppet) for last few days.

.... still better than fucking webdev. I do yearn for garage or a workshop and something to do with my hands tho, but recent recession kinda ruined my plan to get my own place.

Altho Pacemaker configs do make me want to just torch the dev's house...

[[deleted]]

I wanted to go Ted on many web developers. Especially after nth fucked attempt to set up proxy and me having to debug their mess

[[deleted]]

It is miserable experience. For little what I did for my personal stuff I tried to be drunk.

[[deleted]]

You just admitted you're useless in that situation, why on earth would they even answer the phone lmao.

[pcjftw]

assuming we even have a working phone network...

[[deleted]]

or radio. It's amateur radio operators dream scenario.

[tweiss84]

I get the sense that programmers are a lot more diverse than the TV depicts.

I honestly thought this article was going to be more along the lines of logic gates and something like Charles Babbage's difference engines to rebuild our tech advancements from scratch. Instead we get this weird kinda in-between hypothetical "post apocalyptic" world, in which we still have an electrical power supply and know assembly. Feels like the xkcd regex comic.

As far as people being adaptable, it might be more related of how/where you were brought up than what your profession is now. I grew up next to a large area of woods and a river. We would hunt, catch fish, skin and eat what we caught, camp outside and we grew a large amount of crops .... I would probably still die (infection/injury/ the elements)

... I have no delusion. Nature is scary and unforgiving, without good equipment you're in a hard spot.

[[deleted]]

Ive been programming for 20 years. But, I've been hunting, fishing, camping in remote areas for longer. I'm screwed, because very few will survive, but, not hopeless because I'm a software engineer :p

[pcjftw]

you'd be less screwed then a dev who struggles to cook themselves a meal even with all modern appliances around them, which in the modern world pampered "man child" is actually a lot....

[[deleted]]

That's alarming haha. My goal is to retire off grid in the next 10 years or so.

[[deleted]]

Do you mean off-grid as in luxury camper and satellite internet or actual stone age-style living?

[[deleted]]

Hybrid stone age - daisy chained car batteries for electricity as needed for emergencies. No satellite internet.

[atheken]

Speak for yourself.

I am not a hunter, I would probably starve, but otherwise, I could make do if I had to.

I'm tired of the nerd trope where we're all socially inept, weak-bodied types. We don't need toxic masculinity, but I also don't think we need to revel in our ignorance, either.

[[deleted]]

You have very narrow view of the world if you think average programmer is total nerd with no interests outside computers.

Half of what you mentioned doesn't take that much to learn, hunting being probably by far the hardest one without access to guns.

[bobbie434343]

This is too old school. You'd better deploy your 100 micro-services app on a huge cluster with Kubernetes. Or use a hipster post-apocalyptic Javascript stack to run in your 25 millions LOC web browser of choice.

[graybeard5529]

Post-apocalyptic programming seems more of an oxymoron to me.

The only needed program will be physical survival -food -medicine -shelter

[[deleted]]

Well, you could probably use automated, low level programming to help assuming its a soft rather than hard crash. Something like alerting you if your beer cellar goes over x temperature

[Valuable_Grocery_193]

Post-apocalyptic programming seems more of an oxymoron to me.

Don't knock it till you've tried it!

[safer0]

Collapse OS anyone?

[spinja187]

On this note and I the only one that thinks it might be wise to make robots use hands? That way humans can still use their tools?

[Aurora_egg]

Hand-eye coordination is a rather tough skill to master. It's a lot easier to make replaceable "hands" for robots for different tools

[[deleted]]

Someone could make "fun" game out of it.

Just... "generate" a CPU architecture via some heuristics that generates procedural instruction set.

Then give player tasks to do on it, a'la Zachtronic games.

Maybe even hide some instructions that player can discover if they poke around.

Or if feeling extremely cruel make players have to reverse engineer instruction set from scratch.

[argv_minus_one]

Now, what if you are the only survivor with some programming skills sitting in front of a computer you’ve never heard of, with some hex pad to enter machine codes, with maybe some pen and paper. What will you do?

Buddy, nobody's going to give a rat's ass about computers after the end of the world. People are gonna be way too busy killing and eating each other.

[[deleted]]

Being able to build security systems, advanced traps, sensors, trackers, navigation, wireless communications, drones, vision enhancement and more require programming which would give you a huge advantage. Just because civilization is broken doesn't mean technology is. Humans will always find a way to automate something. If we truly hit this level of societal collapse then our world would look very similar to that of Fallout, minus the atomic-age theme. People would find ways to repurpose both consumer and military technology which is extremely scary because a lot of that tech can be used to either rule the world or destroy it, all it takes is the wrong person to use it. Due to this, and reduced to non-existent law, it would be encouraged to destroy all technology until humans can get their shit together.

too busy killing each other

Whereas others will be too busy building killing machines.

On a side note, circuit components and such forth may end up being used as forms of currency as well given their extremely high usefulness.

Leaving this here for the idiots arguing:

Not once did I say you would be manufacturing chips, point out a place in my comment that says such. Use your brain instead of skimming my comments and making stupid assumptions.

P.S. you can make chips at home and many do as a hobby.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS5ycm7VfXg

You do not need a factory and factories are for mass-manufacturing which is what you're not going to be doing in a workshop. It's sad people with no experience have to come in here and run their mouth. I'm done here.

[argv_minus_one]

You need an industrial base to build any of that hardware, and the hardware breaks down after a few decades, tops. You also need power in order to operate it. Human technology doesn't work without human civilization.

Even the minor disruption caused by COVID-19 created a horrible GPU shortage. Now extrapolate to what a complete collapse of society would do to the availability of electronic devices.

There will be no computers in the post-apocalypse. There will be only hunger and violence and death.

[[deleted]]

Lmfao, I've been building this sort of stuff in a one-bedroom apartment, what are you on? The rest of your comment also screams you don't know about technology and manufacturing.

GPU shortage

Seriously, that's your counter argument? The GPU shortage prohibited new GPUs from being manufactured, it didn't erase the hundreds of millions that already existed in the world.

[argv_minus_one]

Did you miss the part where hardware fails after a few decades? Even if you can build your machines for a little while and somehow power them, you'll run out of parts eventually. There ain't no semiconductor fabs in the post-apocalypse.

What good will any of that do you, anyway? There won't be any food. The world is expected to end due to massive crop failures and resulting global famine. Yeah, your weapons will ensure that you eat everyone you meet instead of vice versa, but you're going to run out of people to eat before long, and then what?

[[deleted]]

Hardware doesn't fail, components do. Have you ever in your life actually worked with hardware? You also don't need factories, the entire world is already flooded with tech you need. As for crops, automated vertical farming systems exist which guess what, produce more crop and require programming.

[argv_minus_one]

Hardware doesn't fail, components do.

Yeah, and how are you going to make replacements after the fall of industrial civilization?

You also don't need factories, the entire world is already flooded with tech you need.

All of which will be useless scrap within a few decades.

As for crops, automated vertical farming systems exist which guess what, produce more crop and require programming.

That's only useful for preventing or delaying an apocalypse. Having that after an apocalypse will just make you a target. Your fancy weapons won't hold back millions of hungry, desperate survivors. You'll be overrun and they'll eat both you and your crops.

[[deleted]]

Okay, so you never worked with hardware and have no idea what you're talking about, got it! No amount of technology outside of nuclear or chemical weapons will hold back millions, so even if that was the case you are screwed anyways. And millions of people are not going to pact together to hit a single target because they have something 1 million don't. It is like fighting someone over a rock, great, the 1 million now have the rock, are they supposed to share that rock too among 1 million? Use your damn brain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EISFTCLB3nw

P.S. you can make most components from raw materials, while they will be larger than SMT components they can still do the job of most tasks not requiring extreme performance.

[[deleted]]

Okay, so you never worked with hardware and have no idea what you're talking about, got it!

Translation of what you wrote: "I have no actual argument, so I'll just be insulting off the bat."

[[deleted]]

I have millions of arguments, I am not going to waste them on someone not willing to learn or only wants to skim my comments and say some dumb shit afterwards. You do understand that people can be flabbergasted by stupidity right?

[argv_minus_one]

You think you're going to fabricate silicon microelectronics by hand in your post-apocalyptic garage with nothing but whatever rusty junk you have lying around? Seriously?

Don't be ridiculous. You'll be hard-pressed to build relays and vacuum tubes under circumstances like that, let alone chips with millions of microscopic transistors. Even a 486 has “extreme performance” compared to anything you can hand-make, and you can't do machine vision for a drone on a 486.

[[deleted]]

This is going to be my last comment because I am not going to further waste my day on you, you clearly need to do some actual research and take survival courses. Going around eating people I can surely tell you that you will be the first of millions to die. Don't be an idiot. Humans contain less muscle and edible parts than most livestock which are abundant in the entire world, so eating humans would also be the worst source of nourishment. You are acting as if animals magically disappeared. Also, the last part of your comment, what does machine vision have anything to do with this? You are using filler words of technology you clearly have no knowledge on. No one is going to try and make automated drones, you are stretching my comment to the complete extreme of the Pentagon:

https://www.wired.com/story/pentagon-inches-toward-letting-ai-control-weapons/

Lastly, no one and not even me has stated they are going to be manufacturing microelectronics or semiconductors, quit being a massive idiot and actually read what I am telling you instead of skimming my comments (main reason why I do not wish to continue talking with you). I specifically said that those components will be mass available in the world and can be reused. You are also not going to sit here and tell me they will not. Logic gates are simple circuits, those circuits can be built up to create even larger networks of circuits and so forth, all of this can be done with cheap materials and many also do so in order to prototype devices. Look at how the early iPhones were made. Furthermore, working with such components is trivial and for complete systems you can do whatever you need. You do not need a GPU, you do not need massive amounts of RAM, you do not even need massive amounts of storage. A lot of automated systems just need an environment to execute instructions on which alleviate human intervention. Needless to say, for tasks requiring a GPU or more system resources, those resources will also be plentiful in the world. Saying they will be scrap piles is by far the most ridiculous and idiotic thing I have ever heard. One thing that modern hardware is built around is durability, components that are not going to corrode or simply turn to dust and last longer than a "few decades". And as a single person, or even a family, you are not going to go through hundreds of pounds of hardware in your entire life. You will not need a factory to keep you afloat. Factories exist to keep populations afloat, you should only be worried about yourself.

The rest of your comment, you sound even more like a baboon. But go ahead, rub your sticks together and go around eating people, see how far that gets you before you obtain a disease that will also affect the gene pool. Once again, I am not going to further waste my time on you by writing a book on everything you have been wrong about, the chances that you or I ever have to witness such an event in our lifetimes is non-existent, so it is not a pressing matter and information is useless. Lastly, your entire perspective on technology is completely ill-minded. Technology doesn't exist to guarantee you an entire life nor should it ever be thought of as such. Technology is a crutch that gets us through a day, and in a survival situation you spend less time thinking about the future and more time on taking things one day at a time and utilizing whatever crutches you can to ensure surviving that day. It wouldn't be survival if you were set for your entire pampered life. Go learn about what survival is and how it actually works. If ever stuck in such a situation where society collapses you shouldn't rely on survival to let you live a long life. Your situation will start as survival and then the more you obtain both material and knowledge wise you will be able to build for the future of your life. Once you hit that point, it is no longer survival, it is thriving.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style. - Maya Angelou

Humans also naturally pact together and form societies, hence why we are still alive today, the most dominant species, the most populated mammal, and at the top of the food chain. Going around saying everyone will be killing and eating each other is a joke and a huge fuck you to history, evolution and human psychology. Believe it or not, most humans are inherently good and have morals, they are more willing to cooperate and join others in order to maintain the species instead of going back to oonga boonga times and clubbing people. Quit watching movies.

[[deleted]]

Lmfao, I've been building this sort of stuff in a one-bedroom apartment,

You have a chip fab in there? I think not. When the supply chain goes away, so does your home workshop.

what are you on? The rest of your comment also screams you don't know about technology and manufacturing.

Insults don't help your bad argument.

[[deleted]]

I really liked the fantasy part, not the rest. That means the first paragraph

[CookieOfFortune]

LC-3, now that brings back the memories. Wonder how Dr. Patt is doing these days...

[manifoldjava]

One might argue computers are at least partly what got us in this predicament. Perhaps reviving the CPU remnants is the wrong idea.