Some EMP Links for Background:
What was the Carrington Event?
The Congressional EMP Committee Report
Why a Survivor Library?
What is it and why should anyone care?
There are many websites, books, videos and classes that teach “Survival Skills”. How to make water safe to drink. How to build a weather proof shelter from available materials. How to build a fire. How to operate in a tactical combat environment to neutralize raiders seeking your food supplies.
All of them deal primarily with the immediate effects of a disaster and how to survive them. All of these are excellent skills to have. A year’s worth of food is an excellent way to help safeguard yourself and your family in the event of an emergency or a large scale disaster.
Unfortunately many large scale disasters such as Solar or Nuclear EMP events, Pandemic disease or Cyber warfare could result in a collapse of what has become an increasingly fragile technological and industrial infrastructure. The collapse of that infrastructure means the likely death of the majority of the people affected. Some scenarios have expected death rates of as high as 90% within a few months.
The Survival Skills most often taught and disseminated will get you through the immediate danger.
Few if any of these resources focus on what happens afterwards beyond speaking of “planting a garden”.
What happens AFTER the Solar Flare that destroys the electrical grid and all electronics? AFTER the other 90% of the population has died from starvation, dehydration and disease. AFTER the roving gangs and raiders are eliminated and local communities form to provide security and relative peace.
What Then?
The factories are gone. The transportation system has stopped. Now it’s time to start planning for the long term, for your children and grandchildren.
The infrastructure that crashed can’t be “turned back on”. The local power plant can’t be restarted when the coal it uses comes from several states away which was transported by trains which depended on diesel fuel refined in other states and delivered by pipelines which no longer function. The infrastructure is too complex to simply be switched back on.
Tools and equipment and supplies can be salvaged for a while but will inevitably run out. There is only so much fertilizer stored in stores and warehouses. There are only so many batteries and flashlight bulbs in inventory. It will all run out in time and no one will be making replacements.
Which means you will have to build a new infrastructure which can eventually replace what was lost.
But how? No one has those skills or knowledge any longer. The cell phones don’t work and we can’t build digital radios any longer and we don’t know how to build a telegraph system.
The Library contains many books on telegraph systems. It has numerous books on how to build simple radios. It has books on how to build a wire based telephone system from the simplest pieces of equipment up through how to build a telephone exchange and lay wires.
Once the fuel runs out the cars and trucks stop do you know how to build a carriage to put behind a horse? Do you know how to make the tackle with which to attach the carriage TO the horse? There are books on that. There are books on building sailing vessels and steamships. Books on how to build steam engines to put in steamships.
The library contains thousands of books on technologies that can be produced by most reasonably skilled craftsman using tools not as sophisticated as what can be found in many modern home workshops.
The FAQS page has a more in depth discussion of some of these issues:
The Library is broken in many different categories. Some are very broad. Some are more specialized.
All of the books are scanned copies of the original book stored in PDF format. That makes it possible to both read the book and, if desired, to print it.
As the library has grown over time we’ve tried to cover both the simplest, more basic self sufficiency skills such as growing food and raising livestock through the most advanced and sophisticated technology of the time such as aeroplanes and communications systems like telephone and telegraph.
Where there books on Industrial processes, methods, formulas, techniques we included those as well. Even the more advanced technologies of the periods are within the reach of people starting from scratch. Steam engines may seem primitive to most modern people but they powered the industrial revolution in much of the world well into the 1900s.
Basic knowledge of chemical formulas and processes are recorded in books from these periods ranging from the most basic industrial chemical needs through household materials in common use.
The Library in it’s entirety is a compendium of the Technological and Industrial Knowledge of the 1800 through early 1900s with a few books from even earlier periods.
It is the knowledge needed to rebuild a technological and industrial infrastructure from scratch when the modern infrastructure ceases to function.
The Librarian