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Perlas Foundation

Save Points from Stick to AI: A Civilization Rebuild Ladder

Video games have save points: when something goes wrong, you restart from the last one instead of from zero. Civilization needs the same thing.

Here is a thought experiment we use at the Perlas Foundation: if commerce, jobs and the internet stopped for a long time, what would we rebuild first, from what, and how would we make sure we never fall all the way back to zero?

A collapse is mostly a logistics and knowledge problem

Machines don’t vanish in a crisis. What runs out is spares, fuel, skills and coordination. Real events show how fast the links break:

  • In March 1989 a geomagnetic storm collapsed Hydro-Québec’s grid in under 90 seconds; about 6 million people lost power for 9+ hours (Australian Bureau of Meteorology summary) [FACT].
  • California requires 72 hours of backup power for cell sites only in high-fire-threat districts (CPUC D.20-07-011, 2020) [FACT].
  • FEMA advises storing 1 gallon of water per person per day, two weeks’ worth if possible. For a family of four, that is 56 gallons [FACT].

So the bottlenecks are water, food, spares and skills, not ideas. The fastest rebuild is salvage first, make second: one working alternator from a scrapyard beats a year of smelting copper.

What counts as a save point

A save point is five things together:

  1. a working artifact,
  2. a manual on paper and in digital form,
  3. two people who can rebuild it,
  4. spare parts for about five years [EST],
  5. copies kept in three formats and three places (for example: print, offline drive, cloud).

Every save point gets a restore drill: can someone who didn’t build it rebuild it from the manual? Our success metric is rebuilding in under twice the original build time.

The ladder

The order is: water → food and seed → shelter and heat → records → power → radio → computing → network → archive → AI.

StageWhat you buildCost (seen or EST)
S0 Water and shelterTwo-week water store, filter, boiling kit, tarpContainers EST $10 to $25 per 5 to 7 gallons
S1 Fire, heat and lightBow drill, ferro rod, solar lantern, hay-box cookerBow-drill kit $19; solar lantern EST $15 to $30
S2 Food and seedIntensive beds, compost, open-pollinated seed bankSeeds EST $3 to $5 a packet (Seed Savers Exchange)
S3 Tools and salvageHand tools; sorting copper, steel, aluminumEST $100 to $300
S4 RecordsLedger, maps, skills census, daily paper bulletinAcid-free paper EST $10 to $20 a ream
S5 Time and navigationSundial, pendulum clock, compass$0 to $20 DIY
S6 Mechanical powerMicro-hydro, wind rotor, bicycle generatorSalvage EST $0 to $50
S7 Electric powerSolar panel, charge controller, batteriesRenogy 100 W panel $81.16 to $124.99
S8 Radio (listen)Crystal radio, NOAA weather radioElenco crystal radio $9.97
S9 Radio (talk) and meshLicensed ham radio; Meshtastic LoRa text meshFCC license fee $35; Heltec LoRa node $17.90 to $19.90
S10 LogicRelay logic; a “Tesla Bench” of coils and fieldsRelays EST $1 to $3 each
S11 First computerSalvaged microcontroller running Collapse OSCollapse OS free; RC2014 kit about $92 to $108
S12 Memory and storageCore-memory demo; archival M-DISC; microfilmCore64 kit $199; 25 M-DISC BD-R $76.98
S13 Network and archiveOffline library server on a local networkPi Zero 2 W $15; Pi 5 1GB $45
S14 AIA perceptron, then a small offline language modelPi 5 8GB $175, or a salvaged laptop

Without a save point, the upper rungs (power through AI) can take years or become impossible. No one can make chips locally: a leading-edge chip factory costs about $20 billion.

The first post-crisis computer isn’t what you think

It isn’t a relay machine. It’s a salvaged microcontroller running Collapse OS, a free, Forth-based operating system by Virgil Dupras designed to run on scavenged Z80, 6502, 8086 and similar chips. Relay computers and Ben Eater’s breadboard CPU are for teaching, so the skill survives. The practical move: stockpile cheap microcontrollers (an ESP32-C3 is about $8) and keep Collapse OS on paper and disc.

Networks without cell towers

  • Listen: crystal, AM, shortwave and NOAA weather radios. No license is needed to receive.
  • Talk locally: ham radio handhelds. A license is required to transmit, and ham rules bar encryption (47 CFR 97.113).
  • Text mesh: Meshtastic on LoRa boards in the US 915 MHz band. License-free, low-power, typically 1 to 10+ km per hop [EST].
  • Wired: a $15 switch and Ethernet cable.
  • Sneakernet: USB drives and discs carried by people.

A starter kit of two LoRa nodes, one handheld radio and a Technician license comes to about $87 to $106.

What lasts: storage you can trust

  • Acid-free paper (ISO 9706): centuries, readable with zero technology.
  • Polyester silver-gelatin microfilm: about 500 years predicted in proper storage (ISO 18901), readable with a magnifier.
  • M-DISC BD-R: Verbatim markets “several hundred years,” but you also need a working drive in the future.
  • SD cards and SSDs: years; refresh copies every 2 to 3 years [EST].
  • An offline “Ark”: a Raspberry Pi running Kiwix with Wikipedia (about 115 GB with images, Feb 2026) plus repair and medical guides, about $90 to $150 [EST].

People are the real medium. Every save point needs two trained people and an apprentice, and a yearly public “Day of Making” where skills are shown.

Energy honesty

Water, sun, wind and fuel are real. Perpetual motion, “Schumann resonance power” and “free Earth energy” are MYTHS. The Schumann resonance is real, but its fields are tiny (about 1 picotesla). A GravityLight’s 12 kg bag stores about 212 joules, or about 0.18 watts for 20 minutes. Real numbers: micro-hydro gives roughly head (feet) × flow (gallons per minute) ÷ 10 = watts (DOE rule of thumb), so 50 ft × 20 gpm is about 100 W, 24 hours a day.

Start your own first save point

You don’t need a bunker. Start with a two-week water and food kit, a $9.97 crystal radio, and a printed list of your neighbors’ skills. Add one save point a month.

Join the research

We’re building restore drills and a public “Day of Making.” Want to help test a rung, run a radio mesh, or build the offline Ark with us? Join the Perlas Foundation research circle at perlasfoundation.org or book a 15-minute call at calendar.app.google/YipFae7DNyHKSMUH9. Support the work at perlasfoundation.org/donate. (No charitable status is claimed.)

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