The Survival Machine Farm

pacopico writes "There's a 30-acre plot of land in Maysville, MO where about two dozen people have gathered to build a Civilization Starter Kit. As Businessweek reports, they're working on open-source versions of bulldozers, bread ovens, saws and other tools right on up to robots and chip fabs. The project has been dubbed the Factor e Farm, and it's run by a former nuclear physicist and a bunch of volunteers. The end goal is to have people modify the tool designs until they're good enough to compete with commercial equipment."

Comments

Ah... Yeah...

[Frosty Piss]

wskiâ(TM)s hut anchors a 30-acre compound near Maysville, Mo., full of wooden shacks, yurts, work sheds, flapping laundry, clucking chickens, and a collection of black and strange-looking machinery. A dozen or so people in their twenties, none of whom appears to have bathed in a while, wander around or fiddle with the machines."

I'm not sure these people are queued for success...

Re:Ah... Yeah...

[ColdWetDog]

Really. While these folks are struggling re inventing technology, I'm gonna grab the D4 sitting in the rental store yard, trundle over to a diesel tank, steal that and drag the whole thing down the road to my house. All the while taking potshots at people who are similarly inclined with my semi automatic rifle and the 10,000 rounds of ammo I found in the neighbor's house.

Then I'm gonna head down to these guys and steal their chickens.

Come on. If the apocalypse happens there is going to be so much techno crap strewn over the landscape that you will want to bury it at some point. Once you have stabilized your situation with appropriate amounts of defensive gear, food, water and communications you will have a treasure trove of stuff to pick from once the buzzards pick the bodies clean.

In the mean while, I'm going to sleep on a nice bed and take regular showers. Easier to get laid that way.

Re:Ah... Yeah...

[RMingin]

Go play Fallout 1. Been done. We called it a GECK there.

Already done in a better way?

[pr0t0]

Didn't these guys do this last year with the Global Village Construction Set on Kickstarter?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/622508883/global-village-construction-set

Misguided...

[sinij]

Civilization starts with an ability to feed and shelter its members. Not with tractors, open source and agile development techniques.

If you are serious at building civilization survival kit, obsess less with open source (in the event of apocalypse there won't be anyone enforcing patents), but with a designing robust, reliable and highly redundant system to meet basic needs.

Re:Open Source Bulldozer?

[MozeeToby]

There are probably more people in the world who can benefit from a robust, easy to build, easy to repair, fully documented bulldozer than there are people who can benefit from open source software. Now, whether they have actually produced a design that is any of those things is another question that I'm not equipped to try to answer.

Re:Open Source Bulldozer?

[Anonymous Coward]

The open source bulldozer is fully documented here.

Reinventing the Amish [Re:Ah... Yeah...]

[Geoffrey.landis]

Basically, these people need to learn from the Amish, who are already skilled in knowing how to survive without the complicated infrastructure of a high-tech society.

--if there really is going to be a civilization-destroying apocalypse, the Amish are going to be the ones who rebuild civilization, 'cause the rest of us all starved to death by about the fifth winter.

(Yes, the Amish don't live completely independently of the rest of society. But they are a darn sight closer than any of the rest of us.)