AI Disclosure:
I will use local AI to assist in the kinda steep learning curves I will encounter while putting software things together (mostly to explain concepts to me, problem solve, test or provide examples), the end result may itself be capable of running limited local AI if things go well.
Does the End of The World As You Know It™ worry you? Does the Artificial Intelligence Singularity keep you up at night? Does the fact that the average age of an empire is historically 250 years, and that America is now 250 years old occupy your waking thoughts? Are you perturbed by the adversarial back doors built into critical infrastructure such as those found in power generation or distribution control equipment? Or just the vulnerability of all hard wired devices and the grid itself to a natural Carrington Event or an un-natural HANE resulting in an EMP?
Worry not, because when the collapse happens my little corner of the apocalypse will have a portable mini “homelab” with the ability to serve a large number of users with a self hosted Wikipedia, mini repository of select hilights of human creation & history, and hopefully a miniature forum where survivors of the apocalypse can converse, post photos, and share info. With the ability to expand as needed.
The build plan:
-Using a rolly Apache 5800 case from Harbor Freight (the black box) with about 21 Liter capacity as a base for everything, using what will be a hand modeled 3d printed frame to hold the various parts in place.
-A little Unifi Cloud Gateway Max as the core device (it’s just sitting around after I upgraded to a Dream Machine Pro Max before the “memory surcharge”).
-A Unifi POE switch to run 1 Unifi access point and to be able to run several POE security cameras, and network any hardwired devices as needed.
-A mini-pc or spare parts ITX build with several 2.5” SSDs or HDDs to keep it compact and low-ish power (plus I have some around that are unused). To run a little self hosted website(s) and hold all the data.
-Custom modeled 3d printed keystone jack holder to have hard mounted ethernet ports to quickly and easily connect or disconnect from. A hard wired custom PDU with a single C14 female panel mount power in port to take standard C13 power cables.
-A cellphone or compact laptop that lives in the case, setup to access & manage everything.
The idea is to be able to leave it in place plugged in running the mini pc and the access point as part of my fleet of devices. Then “should the balloon go up” I pull 1 power cable, 1 ethernet cable, close the case and roll it away ready to be powered up with the Cloud Gateway Max connected and running wherever it is needed, setup a few security cameras and plug it into a portable solar battery power station (plan is to test operation and estimated run time on a Schneider unit I have). Even just having a few decent security cameras to keep an eye on things would be a huge advantage in an apocalypse, a force multiplier like a team that is awake 24/7 and equipped with night vision goggles (turn off IR camera illuminators for passive only IR if a maximum low profile is needed)
I worked in Rocket Cake a year ago to create a little local website project and learned a decent bit, I will attempt to create a website accessible on the self contained network to any connected device, so users can access the self hosted Wikipedia, other data or the mini forum. I will probably attempt to use a template of some sort and not literally hand code the site from scratch. May have one raspberry pi or similar device hosting a minimal website like “lowtechmagazine” that is run off a tiny little solar powered single board device. Will attempt to code it to display well on a mobile phone because those will be one of the few things a person can realistically power, use & carry around in an apocalypse (sorry, probably no way to keep a 9lb 18” Sager laptop powered should the grid go dark)
There will be a fun hardware portion to this project, and a not so fun software portion to the build. In part I’m doing this because I was running a never finished NVME NAS on an ATX board in a similar hard case that I swapped over to a traditional case this year, so I want to finish a somewhat similar portable build, and in part Wendell mentioned in a few videos over the years the idea of building a portable modern “acropolis of human knowledge” (unsure if that ever happened or not).
I do not seriously plan for any particular threat or SHTF scenario, however I STRONGLY believe that if you are able you should absolutely setup your life to “continue normalcy” for as long as possible without going too far off the deep end, because life will throw a lot of curve balls at you (even just a basic 3-2-1 backup strategy follows this principle, because drives & hardware fail). Our grandparents generation and essentially everyone before them would have a decent pile of food stored up and other necessities on hand because unexpected things happened, and if you didn’t plan ahead you probably didn’t make it through the harsh winter or whatever else that might have happened. This project is aligned with the general goal of continuing normalcy should some major societal disruption happen, while being useful in the present day.