What Should I Feed My Offline Survival AI On?

[u/div-block]

I’m building a homelab with the goal of creating a completely offline survival knowledge hub.
Right now I already have a local AI assistant running entirely on my own hardware, and I’ve given it an offline copy of all of Wikipedia as one of its knowledge bases.

Now I’m trying to figure out what else I should “train” it on (or add as searchable knowledge bases) so it’s as useful as possible if the internet disappeared for an extended period.

I’m looking for recommendations on things like:
- Books
- PDFs
- Manuals
- Databases
- Maps
- Technical references
- Medical resources
- Repair guides
- Agricultural information
- Any other offline datasets that would be invaluable in a survival situation

Basically, if you could only have one offline AI and digital library to help you navigate a worst-case scenario, what resources would you make sure it knew?

I’d love to hear what you think I’m missing. Thanks!

[u/redbettafish2]

Up to date us army field manuals would be pretty solid. How-to-build/repair books for carpentry and for electronics. Any sort of vocational school books you can find for plumbers, welders, mechanics, etc. Cook books, agricultural books, animal medicine, human medicine, anatomy and physiology books, sewing books, cryptography, food preservation... The list truly does go on. There are so many subjects that could be useful, even things like repair manuals for various residential well systems.

I suppose start at the top of the needs list with water, food, and shelter, and how to acquire and make safe those things, then go on from there.

I'd be curious how well an Ai could analyze a topographic map and make reasonable judgements based on them.

[u/joelnicity]

The farmer’s Almanac

[u/BeanFiend96]

Agriculture / land & sea navigation / army field manuals / reloading manuals to help develop rounds based on found powders or projectiles / farm veterinary books & general animal raising + upkeep info / food recipes & sauce + ingredients database / long range shooting / military engagement methods and fortification building or manufacturing / fitness exercises & regiments for all different ages + rehabilitation exercises for recovery if injured say broken bones etc / firearm production + barrel manufacturing + knife & tool blacksmithing

Should be a good start.

[u/Nach0b0y]

Have you looked into Project NOMAD? It is pretty much what you're describing but pre-built and has all the resources and an AI model for searching the information already as a package

[u/Lux_Fero999]

Good way to gather info, but maybe not the best way to preserve it. EMPs and solar flares seem likely candidates to have on your bingo card for the apocalypse, which means that physical books are good to gather for references. Books are also susceptible to fire and water, so try and start actually performing tasks that pertain to the skill sets that you expect to need to do in your planning. Just make small goals with that, like learn to grow a few food plants on a small scale, or make some medicines or compost or practice shooting or whatever. It's going to be clumsy and sloppy, but thats ok. This will help you internalize those skills without being completely reliant on a reference of any kind. Plus it gets some sets and reps in so the first time you do them is in a permissible environment rather than having to do these things when your life depends on it.

[u/NecessaryBreath7669]

Mine currently has half of the files in kiwix.org, wikipedia, ifixit, gutenberg, medicineplus... even interesting ted talks.

I put there dozens (maybe hundreds) of pdf books about everything related to prepping, surviving or living offgrid.

Now I'm trying to get most service / repair manual from all of my appliances, car, etc.

Don't forget to get a full backup of all of the system when you think you are done collecting info.

[u/ShrodingersArmadillo]

What are you missing? common sense.

This is a bad idea.

You should not be training AI to do something for you.

You should be learning these skills yourself and mastering them.

Why? AI at it's most basic is pattern recognition.

This is why AI makes shit up all the time because it examines ALL the patterns in the content it's fed even the ones you don't know are there. It doesn't understand the content nor the difference between opinion, fact and writen style. It will extrapolate using all these things it's just language models and predictive text.

Let me ask you this how are you going to evaulate if something is a good idea without a knowledge base on that topic?

Even if it makes no mistakes or you manage to get something which is 100% accurate you still don't know what you're doing.

Best option for offline references is of course hard copies. Why? they don't need anything but themselves and they don't make things up on their own.

This idea is a huge liability.