I've started collecting movies and books that the left will go after just in case things go south. I went with a lot of Mell Brooks and Monty Python classics for DVD's. For books, Orwell and Bradbury.
Any other selections to pay attention to?
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You should probably be doing this for anything you like anyways. Eventually discs you buy once will go out of print and movies/shows will only be available on streaming services you have to subscribe to over and over again.
Then make backups of the discs so that when they wear out you can still watch what was on it.
I’ve been buying books a lot and started getting DVDs. I recently got Blazing Saddles
That was a bitch to buy for me personally, had to go to eBay to find it. No stores carry it.
Luckily I am a fan of yard sales and found someone selling it for a dollar
I have been buying Blurays, DVDs, CDs for like 10 years and then ripping them to my media server. It is mainly because streaming companies provide dog shit service or its not available. Just a warning about optical media: discs can be brand new and not work and discs can do bad after time. This is less of an issue with main stream things and more of one with things like Discovery specials or Anime. Once you buy them, rip them immediately or make a back up copy.
I'd like to buy more physical media of classic movies and books, but my money and space are tight and they're about to get tighter thanks to the efforts of our 100% duly-elected, not-corrupt, mentally-sound president and his affiliated party.
I'd rather spend my money on non-perishable foods and water, arms and ammunition, and vehicle maintenance materials and fuel.
You can stick the entirety of classic literature, textbooks, manuals, etc, on a single flash or hard drive in .txt form.
And then the EMP comes, And then to log into the Internet you have to download Pelosi Scan that removes all harmful content from your PC the minute you insert a USB drive connected or not, And then your old PC you set up to use for digital to bypass Pelosi Scan dies and the replacement parts are not allowed to be sold.
Having books is a damn good idea in a SHTF to keep your brain from going crazy.
Just get a couple of cheap old laptops and stick them in a faraday cage man.
It's really not that difficult for short term preservation.
Long term if things aren't fixed the books will rot outside of a controlled environment unless you've specifically prepared high quality paper and printed them yourself.
I was able to call my phone while it was placed in the microwave, so don't expect this to work perfectly. Better to build one to the proper specs.
Electronics decay just sitting out. The batteries that maintains the motherboards die in 5 years. At best, 10 years for a laptop in storage will still work, but you are looking at replacing motherboard batteries at the minimum. I'd rather do that on a desktop personally.
I've never had an issue running a motherboard with the CMOS battery dead, it just won't keep accurate time if it doesn't have power.
I have a 10+ year old laptop within arm's reach right now. It's a cheap piece of shit Acer that cost like 400 dollars new. It's painfully slow and the battery will hold about a minute's charge, but it runs just fine when plugged in. It's never been in any kind of storage, my mother used it for a few years and now I keep it around in case I really need Windows for something. I keep it in a cupboard.
Just put them in the foil.
It doesn't work too well. Confoundingly.
It turns out the tin foil hat really was crazy, and pissing in the wind.
Learn about the m-disc.
However, like you said - when the emp comes, none of it will matter. You'll be better off with analog - like vinyl records! Zoetropes! Microfiche! Stereoscopes!
You sound like you may be ready. Watch solaris (the original) and try your best to understand it! It's not trivial, and it will take some work on your part (you may have to try multiple times).
I highly recommend wkuk and mitchell & webb if you are a fan of sketch comedy.
I've thought about putting a piano in my extra room so I could remind myself how to play it and actually get good at it. Realistically, space and practicality would point me to something small and electrical. Maybe in the spirit of analog I need to go with the full grand piano. If the shit really were to hit the fan that hard, acoustic instruments might be the main music.
I don't know about where you live, but I have never struggled to find free pianos on Craigslist. This includes the occasional free baby grand.
Most people with pianos don't want to destroy them, and can't find anyone who is willing to take them. My parents spent twenty years trying to get rid of the piano they had for the nine months my sister was interested in learning to play.
Piano's have had a really rough go of it. People are philistines :(
It would be wonderful if you would adopt and restore to glory one of the many orphans and "furniture" pieces on their way to the dump :(
They are extremely heavy, and it is a challenge, but most are free.
As for size and shape, it depends on what sound you want and how much space you want to devote to it. Many uprights are solid, baby grands too.
Of course, if you are going to restore one to its former glory - you should do your homework and get someone knowledgeable to help you pick one (or make sure the one you've picked is a good bet).
Good luck!
Yeah in the shorter term would be something small. I'd want to get myself into trying to play again. I haven't touched one in 25 years but it's nothing I couldn't pick up again. Not that I was any good before but it's all practice. If I got enough dedication I could certainly make more space for something nice. Pianos are kinda sad because one of my favorite instruments and have become so much not a thing. I'm not sure anyone learns to play them anymore.
Naw, I'm stuck living to near a Major city in a Pink state in a Blue county. Its why I want to go deep Red gun rights you can shoot them if they step on your property line state.
I've always gardened and preserved my own food, but living in the suburbs not happening. I just want to be out around 2023 if I can keep things together at work with the upcoming economic collapse Biden is Building Back Broke for all of us.
🎶If I can just get off of that LA freeway without gettin killed or caught🎶
I got ~20tb of movies and tv shows, most of them from before 2016 when the world went mad.
But I got more space recently so I'll probably start collecting "classics".
Cheap and simple alternative I use is a Blu-Ray burner. Those M-DISC are supposed to be archival quality and last 1000 years. It's not an LTO drive, but it's not even in the price range either. I can put a TV series on a couple 100GB discs if I want, although I ripped most of them anyway so I just keep the NAS version and the source. I mainly use for raw photo files.
Anything M-Disc rated from a reputable brand. The 100GB ones can run up to $15 each. I know I have a couple Verbatim ones. I'm pretty sure M-Disc is a standardized trademark for the archival quality.
I've used some cheapo blu-rays too and they worked fine. Even some old double layer DVDs that have been in my desk forever. Sometimes do that for game installers and images of old discs that I don't necessarily care to outlive the disc, but have found it to be very nice to be able to yank out a backup of a game I bought in 1997 and play.
I use redfox.bz software and Taiyo Yuden dvds (CMC Pro) at about 35c each. I go to public libraries and check out as many as they will let me for free and copy those. You can also rip as an image or digital.
This has the added benefit of not sending any of your money to people who hate you and since the disc + your time adds up to $1 if it's a bad movie you can skip it or sell to someone else for more.
There's one of those in my neighborhood, I forgot about it. It's in a weird place you can only get to by foot or bike and I don't go that way much. I'll have to go check it out, see if the lefties have stuffed them full of white fragility books.
I'm still upset to this day that my VHS of Songs of the South was lost in a hurricane. That's an ancient casualty of censorship, and I don't even know how it came into my possession as a child, but it really was a classic.
Though highly suspect a lot of works are going to get the "quiet" shelving in the future instead of the hugely controversial ones like the big names. John Fowles' The Collector, for example, was so beloved by numerous serial killers that he had to go to literal court over it and its accused "misogyny" is legendary. It won't be long before it just quietly stops production.
So, I'd keep your eye out for smaller things like that. The big names will have bootlegs overnight if they ban it, but the rest less so.
I'm buying books and DVDs and filling hard drives from the high seas so I can ditch the internet when the kids are old enough for it to threaten them.
I do that. Albeit I don't have thousands or even close. With movies and TV not as much lately because there's nothing new I want. I've gotten where I generally only buy classics I'll want to watch again, so for example purchases last year ranged from Lawrence of Arabia to the Dark Knight trilogy. Not a ton of TV outside of recorded old sitcoms from OTA on my Plex, probably 1TB of that stuff. I may expand TV a bit this year, but there's so few series I care about.
Books on the other hand, I've always wanted paper books. I didn't hang on to much from when I was a kid, but since I really got back into reading 5-ish years ago I've probably got 100 books or so. Little bit of everything, general fiction, biographies, learning books, fiction stuff, even some Japanese manga I picked up for nothing at a Goodwill because it was cool. I can't even read it, and I really just tried out English manga this year (still digitally). I tried Kindle for a while. Didn't care for it. Right now if I'm going somewhere and don't want to take the space for a big book, I see if the public library app will let me borrow it to read. I did that just last week with Out Of The Silent Planet. I was traveling by backpack and the book is a huge 800-page trilogy thing. Quick free app borrow and I could read while I was gone.
Even Lord of the Rings is being deranged into shit, look at Amazon. I need to buy that book in a high quality paperback. Only thing stopping me is I need to move to leave the exurbs and go full rural before 2024 personally.
I think Lord of the Rings is one of the few books I have on the Kindle app. I haven't gone on there in ages to see. I wonder if they made changes to that version.
Outside of most stuff I buy to read, it's fun to pick up curiosities like the aforementioned manga books or about any old book that I see. I've got some old books that were my great-great-grandfathers mostly from the 1900-decade. He was kinda a knowledge nerd too it seems, collected a bunch of books on history and things like that. Pretty interesting to read things from an 120 year old perspective.
I bought a DVD player a few years ago for this purpose.