Personal computing discussed
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DreamlandDenizen wrote:Much thanks to anyone who takes the time out to humor this.
BTW: If you feel this is just a bad idea, you can let me know. I can take it.
just brew it! wrote:Make sure your hero has managed to pull down a full mirror of a major Linux distro's repository before the 'net goes dark, so that he (or she!) plausibly has access to all of the software tools and source code that might be required to re-purpose hardware to run the backbone. (Hey, can't do it with Windows if Microsoft's activation servers are inaccessible or destroyed by zombies! )
Back on topic: How long has your zombie apocalypse been going on for? I think it would take a few years for the internet to "go down"... though this is me purely expecting nodes to have half decent ups systems... but I haven't seen one myself.
mnecaise wrote:And that includes the power plants themselves. The coal-fired plants rely on trainloads of coal arriving on a regular basis; if that is disrupted, then the plant shuts down and there goes your house of cards. Diesel and gas likewise. And if something happens to the folks manning the nuclear plants -- whether they're taken out directly or simply leave to take care of their families and don't come back -- then it's Fukushima but worse, one after another (unless they had a chance to put the plant into orderly shutdown). At least the glow will help you see the zombies coming. Even hydro plants need watching to keep water levels within acceptable limits and to make sure everything continues to run. We've seen large parts of the modern grid can go down with just a single point disruption; in a widespread "apocalypse" it is going away and not coming back. With that goes all your long-distance communication. You'll be able to scrounge batteries for walkie-talkies for a while, and the ham operators can do point-to-point digital communication if there are at least two of them still alive with power and functioning equipment (and, if there are more than two, maybe store-and-forward). But the "net" is gone and it won't be back until civilization is -- it's a result, not a precursor.I've never seen anyone outside a military installation that had more than a few days worth of fuel on hand.
thegleek wrote:This sounds so so close to that of season 3 of The Walking Dead... (TV series) or in the Walking Dead comic book world (#93 forward).
If you're writing a story for-profit, I would check into how similar your story is to theirs and compare notes. The only real difference you have to far is "the internet" and that's just another means of communication.
mnecaise wrote:It would last days. Week or two tops. Power and infrastructure (in general) are the issues. While automation is pretty good, systems would not stay up without human intervention.
just brew it! wrote:Make sure your hero has managed to pull down a full mirror of a major Linux distro's repository before the 'net goes dark, so that he (or she!) plausibly has access to all of the software tools and source code that might be required to re-purpose hardware to run the backbone. (Hey, can't do it with Windows if Microsoft's activation servers are inaccessible or destroyed by zombies! )
dragmor wrote:Think WW2 communications not 2010 facebook.
That aside protected cities don't really work, you can't have good enough defence and provide food and equipment for the people. One slip, a sewer tunnel, an infected scavenger and it all comes undone. Do your zombies have a time out? Also why is this always USA focused? What about China, Russia or somewhere else with the balls to shutdown access i.e. level ports and airports with conventional weapons and nuke them selves a 200km dead zone border around the country.
DreamlandDenizen wrote:I don't think I'm quite well traveled enough to write a convincing story in another culture. Besides, maybe America is the perfect setting for what I have in mind. Since they don't have the balls to nuke a deadzone maybe walled cities would actually be the next viable option? They are a big part of my story. Obviously security won't be 100% reliable, there'll be a breach every now and then, but walled cities have existed before on a smaller scale so I think with modern day resources they could definitely exist again. Maybe the cities would have had to preempt the apocalypse a bit to get the walls up in time, but i figure with modern technology and full resources devoted to it, a city could be walled pretty quickly especially if it borders a natural barrier like an ocean.
DreamlandDenizen wrote:ISo anyway assuming only a small portion of the internet's backbone can be powered, the main character would need to change the routing information at the nodes right? To make sure the routers don't send data to a dead portion of the internet?
Jason181 wrote:Even though it goes against the original design of the internet, I would imagine at first you'd set up one city as the datacenter where all packets were processed, rather than having a bunch of nodes.
DreamlandDenizen wrote:The people in these walled cities are trying to get back the quality of life they had before the apocalypse at all costs, so I am thinking they're aiming at least for 2010 facebook.
just brew it! wrote:I disagree. The infrastructure to connect other cities to the datacenter probably wouldn't exist yet.
I think the network would rebuild starting with local pockets, which eventually reconnect and merge with each other as the backbone servers and links are restored/replaced.
DreamlandDenizen wrote:The real story is him re-uniting with his estranged wife. It's a small world now and she happens to be employed at the outpost too. The two of them are at odds over the fact that he killed their son (who had been turned into a zombie). I hope nothing like that is on the Walking Dead? At any rate plenty stories sound exactly the same when you boil them down to the bare basics, it's the execution that makes all the difference.
Season 1 (2010) wrote:Season one follows sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes as he attempts to find his family and lead them to safety. The series begins with Rick waking up from a coma. He awakes to a post-apocalyptic world overrun with the walking dead ("walkers"). Leaving the hospital Rick discovers his wife and son are missing. Acting on a rumour from a fellow survivor he arms himself and begins a perilous journey to Atlanta, Georgia, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is said to have set up a quarantined "safe-zone" in the city, reasoning that his family may be there. During his journey, Rick sees the devastation to both society and infrastructure left by the disaster. Upon reaching Atlanta, he soon discovers that the city is overrun by the undead and is no longer a safe zone.
A few miles outside the city Rick's wife Lori and son Carl have been hiding from the walkers with Shane Walsh, Rick's former colleague and best friend. They have established a camp with a small group of survivors. After being rescued from Atlanta by the group and reunited with Lori and Carl, Rick assumes command of the group with Shane. Part of the group goes back into Atlanta to recover weapons, where they come into conflict with other survivors but Rick soon eases the tensions. On their return to their camp, they find it has been nearly overrun by walkers. Hoping to find medical treatment for an injured member, the remainder of the group decide to return to Atlanta and seek aid from the CDC.
BloodSoul wrote:I am in a bit of a rush so I can't go to in-depth, but you might want to look into this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Wi-Fi
Basically it is wifi that uses lower frequencies and can consequently travel farther and penetrate walls etc better.
JustAnEngineer wrote:On the plus side, you could feed the bandwidth-hogging pirates, spammers and Netflix creators to the zombie hordes to keep the backbone traffic to a manageable level.
dragmor wrote:1. If Russia or China surived, there would be no other countries left. They would destroy every thing not in their safe zones, probably several times over for several years. Have you seen 42 days later? Scary fast zombies (actually a scary movie). The rest of the world would not let it get to 42 days later. It would take 5 days before all countries agree to cut out the cancer i.e. destroy everything that is infected with large margins of error for saftey. All world trade would stop, countries would have to be self sufficient, etc (Maybe there is more of a story in that).
2. Why do people think water is safe with zombies. Sure they probably can't swim, but they don't need to breath. They just walk on the ocean floor, creating zombie fish and zombie sharks.
spitfire650 wrote:Wouldn't things like taking back the rest of the country trump getting Facebook back? It's hard to imagine a small number of walled, cut off cities being well off enough to try to get that level of functionality back before far more basic needs, like farmland. Cities only survive because of the goods that ship in from the rest of the country. Granted I don't know the whole story, but that's my impression of it.
just brew it! wrote:Solar powered UAVs hovering between cities could be used as repeaters, at least during the daytime...
Seems like everyone is in agreement that they would use wifi or radio instead of the fiberoptic cables. Thats actually good because I think I can understand and research wifi better.
Left_SHifted wrote:As long as you're sold on the radio links, why not try Wimax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX it's got a longer range, hence fewer towers to maintain the link.
Its used pretty extensively between remote locations where the cost of extending a fiber link is too high, just my 2 cents.
UberGerbil wrote:And if something happens to the folks manning the nuclear plants -- whether they're taken out directly or simply leave to take care of their families and don't come back -- then it's Fukushima but worse, one after another (unless they had a chance to put the plant into orderly shutdown). At least the glow will help you see the zombies coming.
It's quite possible to envisage an apocalypse without requiring the zombies. I realize it's less fun because the ravenous hordes you'll be blowing away with your hoarded firearms will belong to hungry real people not fantastical undead, but that just makes it more important to think about (if only to encourage whatever steps necessary to avoid it).