Bitcoin Forum

What will happen to the blockchain in case of some global catastrophe that knocked off the power grid? Or even just a lot of the miners internet access?

Does anyone think there would be any interest in printed copies, so we can continue to use bitcoin after such an event? I have begun experimenting with this on my home printer. The optimum result seems to be using hexadecimal in size 6 font to save space.... I'm out of ink now, so can't continue optimising till tomorrow, but I believe if it was printed professionally the whole thing could fit on a few modest sized volumes. When you have a physical copy, you can keep it in a safe in case something does happen.

If you would be interested in purchasing a copy please message me... If we get enough people together we should be able to involve a publisher for cheap.

Homebrew power and mesh networks seem to be a more likely solution. Printed copies can be... er... copied, which kinda ruins the point of a cryptocurrency.

qr-codes
Clients running on a graphic calculator
solar powered fpga miners
community networks
magneto optical storage
mobile datacenters
biofuel generators
carrier-less modulated light network technology

pick a few  ;)
if any technology would survive such a disaster it's gonna be bitcoin.

All this technology... none of it is proven to last as well as a physical book does. Think about the earliest computers from the 1930s... Even though that was only 60 years ago there are now hardly any working ones, and even fewer people who know how to use them. Compare that to books: Libraries and museums have books that are literally centuries old, and everyone on the planet would know how to use them without special training.

As for security, to prevent copying you would obviously need a secure or secret location to stash them. I am thinking of a set of volumes, like encyclopaedia brittanica but with the blockchain as the content. Maybe you could also encrypt the text so its not obvious what it is. Anyway the advantage of seperate volumes is that way for most days you would only need to use the last volume and the rest could stay safe at home.

Encode it in wood or stone or long term storage :D  Transfer blockchain on usb drive via p2p carrier pigeon network. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers)

http://www.beaqons.com/images/stories/blog/frees2.jpg

http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/mfl/lowres/mfln771l.jpg

Compare apples to apples.  The earliest books probably weren't permanent either.

Well, yes bitcoin depends on computers and there is nothing we can do about it.
But it depends on how severe you scale a hypothetical SHTF scenario. My proposal (i think) would even work in a madmax style thing. If you go even further (goosebumps) you reach a point where you would ask yourself if man would even survive it. And even most dystopic stories do not go this far... at least I can't come up with something.

If there would be no chance of producing working electronics at any date bitcoin would die out. But this depends on the level of sophistication technology would recover to. Blockchains can be saved with various techniques and can be recovered by electron microscopy from almost any data carrier. Vacuum chambers are relatively easy to construct and can be used to bootstrap almost any hightech industry.

Saving blockchains in a low density format wouldn't be feasible imo.    

We'll lets play this scenario...

If at least 2 blockchains have a clean shutdown then everything is good to go as soon as power is restored.

I suspect this post is in jest... but... if not... why not save some trees and look into this:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/92286-m-disc-is-a-dvd-made-out-of-stone-that-lasts-1000-years

If you don't want to shell out the cash... you could just pop it on a DVD-R ... they should last a good 5 years under proper conditions.

was that routed by hand? that is awesome!

Um... The block chain is already public and thousands of copies exist, if not hundreds of thousands... it's intended to be repeatedly copied in normal use.

The biggest problem with a global catastrophe will be insuring the block chain doesn't get broken into five or six diverging chains. A hardcopy is all well and good, but it would exacerbate the problem of divergence. Hey, I found a new block! Now I have to print it out and mail it to everyone that is mining...

Yes?

But no I won't attempt to set up a rig in the Sahara desert to prove it.  :D