tech question on modern pcs and a doomed day situation

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mjnurney

mjnurney

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I'm planning on writing a story or game about an end of the world situation where there is no web , no LAN no telecommunication at all. phones everything gone but I would like to heavily use old tech in the story so maybe 8 bit or 16bit survive and are used to start the internet again...

so here goes..

Under what circumstances would all modern computer tech be wiped but vintage would still work ok? I'm thinking a web based power spike or similar ? i.e anything connected.

EMP would kill everything or would it ?

does the x86 have an intrinsic weakness that 68k or 6502 ,z80 does not?

just a thought.

Stephen King did a novel some years ago about a mobile phone infection which triggered madness or paranoia i forget which ...

(Cell is an apocalyptic horror novel published by American author Stephen King in 2006) wiki



Ive got it a kill code....
 
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Idea: What if a couple of meteors from a meteor shower get through the earth's atmosphere carrying an as yet unknown element which has a disastrous reaction to silicon and other elements that chips are made from (not potatoes)? So only analogue electronics remain functional.

If the WWW went down or was shut down...

Ways to transmit/receive data:
- Satellite dishes.
- CB Radio.
- Electricity grid.
- Laser beacons.
- Fire beacons.
- Flags.
- Pigeons.



- "does the x86 have an intrinsic weakness that 68k or 6502 ,z80 does not?" Er, DOS and Windows :D
 
i like it :-)

im not doing a windows virus...thats been done before i think :-)
 
Windows becomes self aware as of windows 15. stays dormant unntill moder systems are all updated to windows 15 or greater then takes over all the osx/open source systems. forcing the world to destroy all modern computers to survive!

or MS finaly take over as the only OS provider buy winning a law suit that states anything using x86 is copyrighted due to some long forgotten patent they had with ibm back in the dos days. and start charging $100,000 for a os, and 10x that for a buisiness. so every one gives up and telecomunications cant continue because they were dependant on it.
 
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ha ha i like it :-)

so Skynet is based on Windows code then?

long forgotten Seattle Computers code is found in every computers operating system, bringing down Apple. Linux, Android and blackberry ...
 
Jay Miner - the visionary, struggles with the fact that his revolutionary chipset will change the computing world forever. Long term, could the resulting advances in computing power ultimately bring mankind to his knees?

Working in secrecy with Fred Fish, Jay attempts to proliferate coded messages in the guise of public domain software.... Potential solutions to possible outcomes...

But can Amigans uncover Jay's hidden legacy, and save the planet from an abrupt technological breakdown?
 
How about something simple like a time related bug? Think back to the approach of the millennium and the number of companies panicking over the Year 2000 bug in hardware and code. What if a similar bug existed in all modern hardware/software, but wasn't considered or even thought of. Maybe when the clocks straight midnight at the turn of 2020 and all modern hardware develops this issue and stops working.. or maybe just stops connecting to and forming the Internet.
 
This kind of reminds me of the hoax that was on the web about a decade ago about a time traveller that came back in time to try and find an IBM 5100 that he needed to take back into the future for some reason. John Titor was the name of the "time traveller". It was proved later on that it was a hoax and just someone sitting in front of a computer with a lot of time on his hands and a vivid imagination, but perhaps there's some sort of story / plot in there?
 
It can be pretty simple. The malicious use of internet (malware, ddos attacks, spamming) gets out of hand an renders the internet to unusable, hazardous "wasteland", which instantly and permanently infects any device connected to it.
 
protek said:
It can be pretty simple. The malicious use of internet (malware, ddos attacks, spamming) gets out of hand an renders the internet to unusable, hazardous "wasteland", which instantly and permanently infects any device connected to it.
Click to expand...

attach your computer directly to your cable/dsl modem and turn on file&print sharing (ie: expose some drives) and see what happens :)
 
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The Chinese and NSA etc backdoors that they force manufacturers to put in all modern internet of things devices is discovered by a black hat hacker who then leverages this information to send a corruption message to all internet enabled devices, the message is also pumped out on the broadcast address of all IPV4 and IPV6 devices to all others, thus rendering them all useless. 8-16bit devices survive as they were built pre-IOT?
 
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Maybe a nanobot mist/grey goo situation. Tiny gizmos designed to crawl about silicon wafers to repair flaws and increase yields go haywire and gradually destroy all microchips. Only chips manufactured with a nice chunky feature size are immune.
 
I think we've been duped, this thread appears abandoned by Mike - I suspect he's busy trying to bring down the interweb using our suggestions :unsure:
 
ha ha no I'm lurking in the shadows :-)

if its spy ware / malicious it wouldn't really kill the hardware would it - just the OS. if all the Windows , linux, mac systems crashed out & needed reinstallation / restore it would presumably only take a day or two for most systems to be back up and running.

what if its a silicone defect that manifests itself ... after say 1000 days of usage ? perhaps the silicon fractures ? maybe systems start to fail one after another ...

how about a solar event on night , meteor shower, meteor strike on the grid causing a huge voltage spike ...everything on standby is toast ?
 
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It has sort of already been done though with the series Revolution.

If you haven't seen it the series was one of my favourites before it was cancelled at the end of the second series.

The story follows the sudden loss of all electricity worldwide. Everyone is instantly plunged into the dark ages and nothing electrical will work. The series takes place about 20 years after the event and brings together the scientists whom caused it to happen in the first place. Creating nanotech for the US government that was activated and caused the electrical blackout. The Nanobots fill the air draining all electricity and preventing it from working, but also form a sentient conciousness and learn to control individuals to manipulate their will.

Not quite the same as your idea because it would also disable retro hardware.

An idea I just had. With USB3.1 developers can now utilise a single cable connection for a device because the available current has been increased. Also look at the latest Apple laptops. They only have a single port to carry both charge and video to drive a monitor. Imagine if something was activated, like a virus, which could make all such connected devices draw in too much power and overload them. Then only devices older without such connections would survive.
 
Anything that kills modern PCs (ie: Silicon breakdown from radiation) would kill 8-bit computers too. A voltage spike on the internet isn't realistic. Every device has over-voltage protection, so a moderate spike wouldn't leave the building and a massive spike would be self-extiguishing (fry the wires before it got any further).

@Ed.D : I'm afraid analogue electronics also uses silicon unless you actually meant Valve based electronics.

Which brings me to my idea...

A radioactive solar flare wipes out all silicon based coputers (ie: everything). Your brave hero sets off for eastern europe with the schematics of a ZX81 / Acorn Atom (something without custom ICs) in the hopes of re-building one using old Russian valves?

Bryce.
 
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zx81 with valves ...love it :-)

if only Alan turing had had the zx81...with ram pack wobble
 
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While looking for an answer, I came across this explaining how radiation can damage silicon:
http://techdigest.jhuapl.edu/TD/td2801/Maurer.pdf

I think a viable direction is the 'radiation killed all silicon' so people need to build new computers using valves as suggested. I think a ZX-81 in valves might even be unrealistically big. :)
 
I was thinking about similar scenario in the past too ;)

How about combine the use of old computers as the power of resistance?
Think about "Red Dawn" and America taken by Russia/Korea.

Microsoft attacked by some inside job, windows updates infected, major antivirus shops in same way.
Linux - some trojan/root kit comming from ati/nvidia driver blob? :)

Attackers took control of every device conneted to network. Every single attempt to "desinfect" such device and put it online failed. Than somebody put online Amiga :)

Dial-up over phone lines, modems used again....
Underground wifi networks across the states ;)
 
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