I'm only half kidding. I'm a bit of a prepper and I have lots of powerbanks and devices that charge from USB but besides idling my truck I really had no other way to charge any of them in case of a long-term power outage which seemed a bit of an oversight on my part.
Not like this solves the issue. 30 watts (under ideal conditions) isn't much but it's a start.
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In a situation where you don't have constant access to abundant electricity, you would naturally reduce your use of electronics quite a bit. An e-reader battery lasts a long time, so load it up with a bunch of good and useful books and that panel will be able to power it indefinitely. Winter is tricky, still it would probably be enough to keep it going with sparse use. Or you could rig up a bike-alternator-car battery set up. But you need to think about how much power you can reasonably generate and base your planned consumption off of that. This makes me sound like a big prepper, I'm not, but I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Wonder why...
I mean… after society collapses, you can just raid a library for good old-fashioned paper books. Provided the idiots haven’t burned them for warmth.
Have you ever carried a backpack full of books? They're heavy af. Probably easier to just take over the library and move everything else there.
Solid plan… until I drop my eyeglasses 😉
Well, my eyesight isn't really that bad...
Paper books require neither and are almost equally waterproof. But i suppose if you already own both anyway that's a solid tip.
A standard E-Book can store the entire Wikipedia, OSM DB, Wikisource and Wikibook contents on a single $4 128 GB (~1 million books) SD card, also having a good IPX8 waterproof class.
Paper books are fucking HEAVY and bulky. They're only practical if you don't ever need to take more than one or two anywhere. If you gotta be on the move, the extra equipment to manage the battery is much lighter than the books you would need to carry otherwise.
Another advantage to an e-reader is that I can remove the battery and it's completely waterproof, as long I completely dry it before the battery goes back in, it can get as wet as I need it to, no problem. Books don't have that option.
So in your head (or your internal plans) you see yourself running to the hills with your powerbank and e-reader, lol..that's silly and not in the least practical.
Folks with actual plans, like me, have a library, a home that's defensible and productive with food, water and resources. We have community and a long-term prep scenario.
If I'm falling back and fleeing my home I'm taking 2 or 3 books to help BUT that's not a prep strategy, it's video game zombie show fantasy.
Books are far superior.
I didn't say that at all. I said an e-reader is a better choice for people on the move, and books are a better choice for people who intend to stay put.
I didn't say anything about whether moving or staying is a better choice because that would be an ignorant statement. Without knowing the exact scenario that will occur, it's impossible to say whether leaving or staying would give the greater chance of survival.
I didn't say anything about whether books or an e-reader is "superior" overall because that would be an ignorant statement. Like everything else in this world, each choice has pros, cons, and tradeoffs that make one better in certain circumstances, and the other better in different circumstances.
But if making shit up about what people say is what it takes for you to "win" arguments on the internet, more power to you; that reflects a lot more about you than it does me.
My point being that running to the hills to escape the zombies and jackboots is a far less practical scenario than supply chain disruption, infrastructure breaking down and societal services collapsing, which is already happening and has occurred recently.
Having back up resources and information electronically is hardly a primary use case, in my experience.
You complaining that books are too heavy is feeding into fantasy scenarios whereas functional systems that have been in place for millennia is far more practical and resilient.
I like e-reader for a camping setup since it is lightweight. You can also do a little cyber deck build and load up all of wikipedia.