Petros

There are two priorities I keep in mind, when thinking about collapse-time technologies.

• Maintenance complexity, especially in long-run context.
• Shortening the supply chain.

When it comes to electric power generation and various types of generators, I am very reluctant to accept generators based on rare-earth magnets. First, they are "bloody metals" indeed, mined and refined with extreme hurt to the planet and people. Second, their delivery chain is long and quite centralised which makes them possibly unavailable in case of disruption of the logistic system. While we wait for the US-sponsored program to develop alternative materials, still we can explore two avenues of research:

• magnets recycling
• generator constructions that does not need such magnets.

The recycling topic deserves separate consideration, in respect to a hypothesis of the "scavengers civilisation" as the next stage of human history. Meanwhile, we can have a closer look at constructions, using much more sustainable ceramic (aka ferrite) magnets, or no magnets at all.

If we can develop a "DIY" technology to make ceramic magnets, we can combine it with designs from 19th and early 20th Century and create alter-futurist line of more collapse-friendly electricity generators.

Anyone into pattern language, to be applied to increase community resilience and preparedness?

There is a multitude of sources, providing technical knowledge and solutions to various needs in the spirit of low-tech, appropriate technology and resilience. Appropedia is surely the most renowned of them, accumulating information from many valuable collections.

However, typically for a wiki, the structure of this vault is more suitable for studying, than for direct implementation.

Let us assume the following scenario:

We plan to build technical infrastructure for a small settlement, located on a particular patch of land. We are moderately tech-capable. We can read and understand a documentation; we can implement it, with some adjustments. But we have no knowledge nor experience broad enough to deep-dive into a wiki and find solutions suitable for our specific situation.

We need a tool to help us somehow connect our context with searching criteria, and to select matching solutions, or at least to shortlist them.

First step toward this goal is to build a structure - a pattern language - starting from various needs to fulfill, and showing logical combinations of technical solutions to be applied.

Based upon such structure, we can try to build guidelines helping to make the whole process of selection semi-automated, with enough space for human consideration and variety of contexts. Using such a guide would lower the threshold both for selection and decision-taking process, and for education, allowing users to grow their knowledge and competences.

Do you know any such initiative being in progress? Or abandoned, that could be revived? Or maybe you would like to co-develop it?

In my dayjob, there are four such nice blue sticks, gathering dust on my shelf. I have a possibility to put them online via Raspberry Pi.

So, if there is someone who may have an interesting idea how to put them to work for the good cause, talk to me.

I posted some content in lemmy.ml. Now, When I try to post it again here, I show it under "These post may be related".

I am more than happy to use cross-posting, but I see no way to do it in either direction. Should I go ahead and post it from scratch or is there any way to crosspost, and I just could'n see it?