Survival / SHTF USB stick

nuub

When in work today we were making waterproof USB wrist bands. Very simila rwrist bands but with a USB inside them similar to this

http://www.aderra.net/blog/uploaded_images/deadmau5WB2-731130.jpg

So ask I did and receive I did as I have always been reading about storing valuable documents on USB's Such as passport , birth certs Etc.

But after compiling this it has left me with tons of space on the USB and I would like to fill it with useful information and would love to hear some recommendations.

I know there is a lot of sites that will let you download compiled books hundreds at a time and i have sifted through them and very few bar fire making and the like are useful or pertinent to the Irish environment or me.

So if any one could recommend some good downloadable books or material I would love to hear or post links below and who knows maybe someone else would find them useful to

Khannie

How much space have you?

You can download Wikipedia for example (or a compressed version of their backup file). You'd also need the wikimedia installer for that.

I would add a bootable linux live cd to it.

Books of course. They're relatively tiny.

nuub

Wikipedia would be a beast. But I am only working with a gig.

Grudaire

This was something I was considering starting a thread on this forum about actually.

In most scenarios you could expect some access to electricity (even via solar panals), so it is quite likely that there will be *some* access to a computer. The internet has a wealth of information, but it is quite likely that the internet will be unavailable. So my thinking is that you should have a backup of all websites that you use (or may need to use) for reference.


Using Linux (and I know Khannie also does) you can use the command "wget [website name]" in the terminal to copy the full website to your hard drive. There's no zipping so they can easily be opened with any browser..

What would you decide to download?
> wikipedia (light reading!)
> car manuals (in case you can't find your local mechanic)
> repair/DIY guides?
> The many websites listed on this forum?

nuub

Great idea with a mechanics 101 ! I was hoping someone could point me in the direction of edible irish plants etc. As in my B.O.B bag I have a power pot (charges everything) and solar charger and a small tablet. So I was hoping to carry the knowledge with me

spynappels

I'd also get either a cheap Android phone (if your eyes are good), or a cheap Android tablet which can be rooted to give USB host functionality, so you have something to plug the USB stick into and read the docs on.

A phone would be easier to charge using solar chargers, but a tablet would have a bigger screen. In either case it would be dedicated to the task of document reader which could be used off grid if required.

nuub

Thanks for the tips spynappels. That problem annoyed me as I thought in this day and age there would be a way other than solar chargers (which get expensive for the decent ones) to charge portable electric devices. I got one of these for my birthday awhile back and I have to say it is amazing. It uses thermo energy to generate erlectricity and comes with as multitude of adaptors even for my ****ty tablet.

They are pricey but its one of the best things in my kit. Plus you get a nice cup of tea at the end .

http://packpaddle.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/powerpot.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QnVp8kwKB2I/UjhzYzNAmqI/AAAAAAAACMo/bNCkUeEPpT0/s1600/The-PowerPot-Is-The-First-Thermoelectric-USB-Charger-600x474.png

The Glass Key

Waterproof USB sticks whatever next

In all honesty I would have expected water to have a very adverse effect on the electronics on a USB key but after having several go through the wash and still work perfectly well (one has been through 3 times) I've taken a different view. Now I'd be more worried about the chips being damaged by being dropped because I have seen a few hanging off the circuit board.

I know a washing machine isn't the same as salt water but still if damaged by salt water I'd open the stick up give it a wash in isopropyl alcohol (IPA) and give it a try.

Edit: Don't forget the obvious on any USB key you carry around and use to store private data - security in the form of encryption, you don't want to loose it and find someone else using your ID.

Khannie

nuub wrote: »

Wikipedia would be a beast. But I am only working with a gig.

Ah bummer. It's 9.5G compressed (from here).

colonel-yum-yum

A bit of an aside from information, but if you have multiple doc types and no viewer on the end machine you would be out of luck.

You can get portable versions of a lot of software here for free, install on the USB, and then run direct from the drive.
http://portableapps.com/apps

Deise Musashi

I remember reading a blog by a guy who survived the Atlanta flooding.
It was all about how he managed, and what he would do differently.

His main thing was to have a go bag in case of emergency, filled with all the data you will need. Copies of long form birth certs, drivers licence and insurance documents, house insurance, bank account stuff, education certs in case you need to get a job wherever you end up, kids vaccination book, health insurance details, contact list for friends and relations so you can check on them/have them put you up, ownership deails for vehicles, firearms licences etc.

Now all that stuff can be in hard copy, scanned and saved to a usb stick or several, and also stored in Dropbox/Skydrive/email account as attachments. Even if you end up bailing out of a house fire and are left with nothing, you can in pretty short order print up your insurance details and bank details to tide you over.

I have a folder of "survival" stuff including plant guides, Ray Mears books, various US govt. and prepper guides, canadian scouts book, Bell Fallout Shelter etc., on my PC.

It's 1.5GB and I'll send you a copy if you PM me an address. In my experience most usb sticks fail because they are cold soldered and the chip/board connection goes. You can sometimes grab the data by freezing the chip and shrinking the connection, or if you are much handier than me you could maybe reflow the connections?

For an emergency back up USB I would be inclined to fill it then encase the whole thing (wrapped in cling film) inside a blob of silicone mastic, peel it out if ever it's needed.
Shock and waterproof hopefully!

tc556guy

Memory is getting so cheap that you may soon find even this item to be too small a capacity....

Corsair Flash Survivor Stealth 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive (CMFSS3-256GB)


I ordered one of these earlier when my collection of info exceeded lesser capacity thumbdrives. I still use the older thumbdrives to pass around my collection of info to others, but this thing was about the right size for my personal needs, plus its fairly rugged and waterproof

This forum wont let me post a direct link because I am new, but you can google the item to get the link

Sh1tbag OToole

Deise Musashi wrote: »

In my experience most usb sticks fail because they are cold soldered and the chip/board connection goes. You can sometimes grab the data by freezing the chip and shrinking the connection, or if you are much handier than me you could maybe reflow the connections?

The actual memory chip coming off the board? What I usually see causing the death of usb sticks is the actual usb connector itself coming off but if you get one of the really thin ones it won't have that problem.

My first 16MB USB stick from 2002 is still going, used it the other day
Most floppies and self-burned CD's from that year would be fecked by now

chopper6

Deise Musashi wrote: »

Now all that stuff can be in hard copy, scanned and saved to a usb stick or several, and also stored in Dropbox/Skydrive/email account as attachments. Even if you end up bailing out of a house fire and are left with nothing, you can in pretty short order print up your insurance details and bank details to tide you over.

I have a folder of "survival" stuff including plant guides, Ray Mears books, various US govt. and prepper guides, canadian scouts book, Bell Fallout Shelter etc., on my PC.

It's 1.5GB and I'll send you a copy if you PM me an address. In my experience most usb sticks fail because they are cold soldered and the chip/board connection goes. You can sometimes grab the data by freezing the chip and shrinking the connection, or if you are much handier than me you could maybe reflow the connections?

For an emergency back up USB I would be inclined to fill it then encase the whole thing (wrapped in cling film) inside a blob of silicone mastic, peel it out if ever it's needed.
Shock and waterproof hopefully!

So then you go looking for an internet cafe at the end of your trek through a disaster-striken landscape so you can pop your stick in and read how best to survive?

wexie

.......nobody mentioned medical information? Field medicine, herbal medicine etc. etc. You can screw around trying to fix your car and if you get it wrong the worst that'll happen is you're not going anywhere. What about that mysterious rash you got after eating those berries though.....

Copy of your passport is going to do little good when your leg is half falling off

chopper6

wexie wrote: »

.......nobody mentioned medical information? Field medicine, herbal medicine etc. etc. You can screw around trying to fix your car and if you get it wrong the worst that'll happen is you're not going anywhere. What about that mysterious rash you got after eating those berries though.....

Copy of your passport is going to do little good when your leg is half falling off

Or when you havnt slept or eaten properly in days and the water is gone?

What if it's -15 outside and you've no windows in your house?

What if a family member is severly ill and you've no medicines to treat them?

No amount of information on a USB stick is going to be half the use that a good knife will be...or some knowledge carried in the head.

tc556guy

chopper6 wrote: »

So then you go looking for an internet cafe at the end of your trek through a disaster-striken landscape so you can pop your stick in and read how best to survive?

Backup copies of personal documents are an important prep
There are many types of disasters that don't involve the complete loss of civilization but are more local in nature

tc556guy

chopper6 wrote: »

So then you go looking for an internet cafe at the end of your trek through a disaster-striken landscape so you can pop your stick in and read how best to survive?

Backup copies of personal documents are an important prep
There are many types of disasters that don't involve the complete loss of civilization but are more local in nature

Deise Musashi wrote: »

I have a folder of "survival" stuff including plant guides, Ray Mears books, various US govt. and prepper guides, canadian scouts book, Bell Fallout Shelter etc., on my PC.

It's 1.5GB and I'll send you a copy if you PM me an address.

I'll swap file collections with you if you'd like

lostboy75

Most of what is discussed in this forum may never hopefully have to be used, preparing for the short to medium, and long term is just good sense, as is arming yourself with knowledge that you can access. As was mentioned previously having 1.5 gigs of data and a way to use it (was mentioned hacked phone tablet, solar charger) in my head makes great sense and is quite easy to do. Saying it's useless and a knife and some knowledge is better is strange, in the end we are talking about prepping. Would rather have everything, and not have to use it. Than know well I have my knife, let's go.
it's prepping, the more info and the better prepaired you are the better. Yes as you say first items are first item. But longer term planning is needed.
If the worst comes to the worst, the best prepared person in the world, might still trip and kill themselves on day two, life is pot luck.
let's just hope in real life we never need to use any of this outside of the enjoyment.

lostboy75

Oh, and I do have access to quite a bit of data as well, though do not have access to it currently without power. Will pull up a listing of it. Sharing that, a listing of files we have might be something to look into? Rather than a few of us sharing files ending up with duplicate files, not copying all files etc. If you are offering to create a master index of the docs I would gladly help. Know a librarian that that could advise on how to file, create a searchable or sortable index etc.

Sh1tbag OToole

chopper6 wrote: »

Or when you havnt slept or eaten properly in days and the water is gone?

What if it's -15 outside and you've no windows in your house?

What if a family member is severly ill and you've no medicines to treat them?

No amount of information on a USB stick is going to be half the use that a good knife will be...or some knowledge carried in the head.

Sure you can get knives now with USB sticks built in. The USB can store a map that shows where the water is and even a cracked version of windows

tc556guy

lostboy75 wrote: »

Oh, and I do have access to quite a bit of data as well, though do not have access to it currently without power. Will pull up a listing of it. Sharing that, a listing of files we have might be something to look into? Rather than a few of us sharing files ending up with duplicate files, not copying all files etc. If you are offering to create a master index of the docs I would gladly help. Know a librarian that that could advise on how to file, create a searchable or sortable index etc.

Problem with putting stuff in the cloud or on-line for others to download is that in some cases you run into copyright issues, or there are people out there whose internet connections even today are not the best that would allow for massive downloads. Nor is the Cloud secure, as the recent celebrity photo hacks demonstrated.

I've also noticed that in the past few years some of the prep sites that used to host documents have been disappearing. Don't know if the site owners couldn't afford the bandwidth costs , they ran into copyright issues, etc. One of the major sharing sights , Steves Pages, had to shut down temporarily because the owner is a solitary guy trying to do a good deed by hosting information and the mass downloaders were causing him to go broke.

The biggest issue with sharing a USB is the virus issues, but if you take a few precautions that tends to lessen the potential problems.

my3cents

I know there are lots of others but I've used 4shared.com for years with no problems up to 15GB of storage and easy to share stuff. Only thing you have to do is remember to log in every 6 months.

Tabnabs

http://www.survivalistboards.com/downloads.php has a load of worthwhile reading material for download, you may need to sign up to access it.

endacl

E.M.P.

wexie

Tabnabs wrote: »

http://www.survivalistboards.com/downloads.php has a load of worthwhile reading material for download, you may need to sign up to access it.

There is also tonnes of information and ebooks and such available if you search for things like : prepper, survival etc. etc. etc. on the right site (YARRRR!!!)

(admittedly there's a good bit of (sometimes highly entertaining) redneck waffle to go through)

lostboy75

yes, most of my docs came with a free eye patch as well

Sh1tbag OToole

endacl wrote: »

E.M.P.

If you're worried about that maybe get some essential stuff put on Microfische and get a reader, they are only a couple of quid now on feebay

tc556guy

endacl wrote: »

E.M.P.

No one can agree on what the effects of EMP would be

my3cents

Given continued price drops in memory I thought I'd revive this thread on the subject of USB sticks and storing data for survival. By no means the cheapest or best but just an example even Easons have 32 GB Sandisk USB sticks for €20

I can't resist grabbing anything I can find online that might be remotely useful so the folder I have on several different drives now amounts to 45 GB and its got to the stage where I'm having problems managing duplicates, even finding useful information is difficult. Yet another issue to finding duplicates is that many of the file names in rar and zip files are too long to extract to anything other than a root folder (C:\,D:\,E:\,etc), if you move the files into any file structure you have to rename them using less characters.

The main folder is on a desktop PC which is backed up to another PC and a 500 GB USB HDD. Now I'm thinking is it worth keeping the whole lot on a USB stick or just what might be the more useful information on a smaller USB stick?

At this stage I need to do some organising and first thoughts are that I could divide the files up very generally into two main categories Human Knowledge and Survival. All the encyclopedia type stuff in the Human Knowledge folder leaving a lot less to go into the Survival folder.

Bottom line for me is that data storage has got so cheap that I might as well store anything that might even be remotely useful.

As for reading it I've got a netbook that doesn't use much power and runs off the car battery if necessary and a long term project is solar power for our static caravan (wonder if an aluminum clad caravan makes a good Faraday cage???). The intention is to get enough panels and battery storage to run all the caravans lighting (will use LED's) and small electrical equipment including a couple of computers. Sticking to 12V and no inverter, I'm not trying to run anything that uses much power heating and cooking is all gas anyway. - That however is for another thread.

Back to storing data on USB sticks, one thing I've just though of which is so obvious it must have been mentioned before is that SHTF it might be handy to have pictures of friends and family for identification purposes. I know getting a print out from a USB stick isn't going to be easy but having the jpegs handy has to be better than not having them.

ShadowFox

The corsair survivor is the toughest flash drive I've come across so far it's expensive but worth the extra money waterproof dustproof shock proof think they come up to 128gb check eBay for them. I've a 4gb on my keys for 5 years now never an issue with it

my3cents

I've an ancient 512 MB stick (cost more than 128 GB does now) with all the OSi maps for Ireland on it, at this stage its over 10 years old. Apart from being very unlucky I think you have to be just plain brutal and very careless with gear to damage a USB key. Then my thinking is if you can't keep a usb key safe then what chance have you got with the computer you use it with?

If I get around to sorting out a subset of useful survival books + personal info I'm thinking of sticking it on a Micro SD Card and storing that somewhere safe, Zippo lighter? - name that film

Another thing I must sort out is some software. I was thinking of using something like Puppy Linux to make a key bootable so it can be read on almost any old computer.

ShadowFox

I've broken several flash drives while working 1 was water damaged due to rain 2 were crushed due to incidents beyond my control. That is why I use the corsair survivor one now don't have to worry about it at all.

For hiding a micro sd have a look at spy coins on eBay they work great

tc556guy

ShadowFox wrote: »

The corsair survivor is the toughest flash drive I've come across so far it's expensive but worth the extra money waterproof dustproof shock proof think they come up to 128gb check eBay for them. I've a 4gb on my keys for 5 years now never an issue with it

I'm on my third one as my carry-with-me collection of my documents.
Only problem so far has been that the first one wore out the threads that screw the actual stick and its canister together.
Other than that it still works fine and I've bought two more, one for the BOB and the daily carry replacement.

Tactical

Deise Musashi wrote: »

For an emergency back up USB I would be inclined to fill it then encase the whole thing (wrapped in cling film) inside a blob of silicone mastic, peel it out if ever it's needed.
Shock and waterproof hopefully!

A word of caution.

Most common brands of silicone sealant aka mastic liberate acetic acid when curing. This is corrosive and can have an adverse affect on solder joints, component leads, pcb tracks etc...

Non-corrosive silicone sealant can be bought, as can various other "electronic friendly" compounds.

Also consider epoxy potting compound.

You won't buy the electronic friendly silicone sealant in the local builders merchant but you're sure to find it on-line. Anyone who is stuck I can PM details of commercial suppliers but these generally have a minimum order value.

I'm referring to ruggidising a USB stick so it can be used at any time as opposed to storing for use later.

tc556guy

I can't imagine having to ruggedize the Survivor any more than it is.
if its existing casing was deemed inadequate I'd probably get one of those plastic cases to throw the thing into to give it some more protection, but it does seem rather redundant.

Tactical

I wasn't referring to ruggedising the Survivor. More about up cycling an existing stick where someone may not want to buy a new one.

A Survivor would be the ultimate for the task at hand.

my3cents

Dragging this thread up again rather than start a new one.

With the short daylight hours I've been spending sometime on optimising a "Survival / SHTF USB stick". What I am looking for atm are some readers for pdf's, epub and all those documents that are normally read on a specific "e" reader. I'm really looking for simple readers that just open a document. I don't really want ones that have to go through the process of importing a document and adding it to a library.

I have a 32GB stick with a bootable version of puppy (6.3) which covers a lot of bases but to allow for some redundancy I'm looking for document readers for both linux and windows I can store along with the data.

my3cents

I'll answer my own question here, so far for Windows the best reader program I have found this afternoon (for free) is Sumatra

Sumatra PDF is a free PDF, eBook (ePub, Mobi), XPS, DjVu, CHM, Comic Book (CBZ and CBR) reader for Windows.

Now I need something similar for Linux and any for Windows if anyone has a better suggestion.

tc556guy

my3cents wrote: »

I'll answer my own question here, so far for Windows the best reader program I have found this afternoon (for free) is

Now I need something similar for Linux and any for Windows if anyone has a better suggestion.

Thanks. I added that one to my Survivor stick.
can't recall if I offered to put you in the loop for the thumbdrive of prep document stuff that's going around. Might save you from reinventing the wheel if you want to borrow the way I have mine set up

lostboy75

tc556guy wrote: »

Thanks. I added that one to my Survivor stick.
can't recall if I offered to put you in the loop for the thumbdrive of prep document stuff that's going around. Might save you from reinventing the wheel if you want to borrow the way I have mine set up

To save the cost of posting from the US, I can give access to tc556guys information, if you want.

tc556guy

lostboy75 wrote: »

To save the cost of posting from the US, I can give access to tc556guys information, if you want.

That would be an option, if he's only looking for a basic cross section of essential documents.
The overall collection is constantly expanding. For instance, I just acquired about a TB of data in a collection exchange with the owner of the Librarian prep document website. It'll take me weeks to weed through it all and get it catalogued and checked against duplicates in my collection. Thankfully it is winter.

Amalgam

Data is useless without assured access, don't neglect, 'converters' for any USB drives you may have. To access yourself, or to share.

Some of them are tiny, so, shouldn't hinder you, from the point of view of weight/space.

I picked up the two USB male to micro USB female this week, below, to the left and right of the two euro coin. Thinner than the coin too. They fit inside the male USB plug to convert it to male micro USB. About two euro, P&P inclusive, from an eBay seller based in China.

The north of the coin, bog standard, full size, male or female usb, to micro USB. The likes of DX sell them in pairs, two dollars something, P&P included, from China.

The two other drives are Micro SD readers, one flush, one that sticks out, again, one of many choices from the likes of DX.com...

Don't overlook eBooks like the Barnes and Noble first generation Nook, they can run a full size Android install, after a fair amount of fiddling. They tend to be cheap too!

my3cents

One obvious thing to be aware of if you are using SD cards, like I do, not all computers will read the 64GB ones or even natively but will if put into a suitable SD USB card reader