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Open source team creates apocalypse survival kit

DIY handbook for 50 top civilization-saving tools

By Iain Thomson in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Environment, 17th November 2011 20:03 GMT

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A team of open source enthusiasts is putting together instructions for how to build 50 tools essential to establishing – or reestablishing – a civilization.

The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is being developed by the Open Source Ecology (OSE) group, and includes such basic tools as a well drill, steam engine, and brick making machine, along with more complicated devices such as a bulldozer, 3D printer, and 50kW wind turbine. These can be built from scrap or recycled materials at a fraction of the cost of commercial machinery.

"The basic principle is open hardware – building the machines to cover your basic needs," OSE spokesman Nikolay Georgiev told The Register. "Basically, it's about creating a civilization similar to what we have now, but on a smaller scale and all using open hardware."

OSE bricking it

This isn't some kind of idea spawned out of the end-of-civilization-in-2012 angst that is gripping some impressionable minds these days. Rather, it's an attempt to make basic tools available in areas of the developing world that lack basic amenities, or for folks looking for a more sustainable lifestyle – or, for that matter, to simply to stash tool-building knowledge into the libraries of those who worry about what the future may hold.

The OSE was set up in 2003 by Princeton professor of fusion energy Marcin Jakubowski, who decided to go back to the land and start a farm in Missouri after an insight that he had no actual practical skills.

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/17/50_open_source_tools_civilization/