Zombie Apocalypse Communications Tools

[max-mapper]

I have submitted a proposal for the CCC Camp in Germany in August. Let's discuss it here:

Proposal description:

Thanks to folks like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg or Slack CEO Stuart Butterfield our communications systems are moving from older decentralized systems like e-mail or IRC into privately centralized systems like Facebook or Slack.

When the zombies attack, will our data be readily exportable from these cloud services? How would you share a file with the person sitting next to you if you didn't have an internet connection? Let's not wait and find out!

The goal of this workshop is to brainstorm and prototype tools that help enable data to flow even when all users aren't connected to a cell phone tower or have a direct internet connection.

A list of suggested technologies (but please don't limit yourself to only these):

• Bluetooth/Bluetooth Low Energy
• Multicast DNS/Ad-Hoc WiFi
• Offline replication friendly data tools like CouchDB/PouchDB/Dat
• Mesh networking wifi hardware
• WebRTC
• Packet radio

Here are some use cases to give you an idea:

• implement p2p ad-hoc file sharing over bluetooth/wifi (think open source BitTorrent Sync that works over any transport)
• try to share your internet connection with someone sitting next to you over bluetooth
• try and build a solar powered "data-sink" server that sits in a fixed location and automatically syncs with devices as they pass nearby
• automatic discovery + replication of physically nearby peer data in a mesh using bluetooth
• distributed, offline friendly group chat
• how to encrypt and/or verify identity or data provenance in a mesh network?

We hope to find new ways to make p2p communications more user friendly, or to explore what hardware limitations prevent us from building resilient offline capable communications systems.

[tetsuo]

there is some serious research and creativity over here http://wndw.net/ (Wireless Networking in the Developing World) http://wndw.net/book.html#readBook

[feross]

This is an excellent premise!

[mandric]

Any updates here?

[hackergrrl]

Wow! I hadn't seen this before. I am so in for this!