There's tons of stuff that would be useful in an apocalypse. Things like:
1.) Communications. Being able to send over plans for a useful tool, or instructions for repair, or a meeting place for the defense of a village becomes critical.
2.) Entertainment/education. Threads shows the post-apocalyptic children watching a VHS video of animals & grammar. If you can preserve even just the PBS Kids catalog on local disk and have a working computer, you'll be in huge demand as the town's babysitter, and it's far easier to do this at scale with video than individually keep dozens of kids occupied.
3.) Local records. It's critical to catch freeriders for any communal endeavors, because if you don't, community breaks down and everybody just worries about their own family. Same goes for financial records: if you can restore some semblance of banking & credit you can operate much more efficient trade than if everything is spot barter.
4.) Knowledge repository. The community where everybody knows how to garden is going to be way better off than the one where two people know how to garden and everybody steals their food. Same with a variety of other skills - repairs, local resources, weapon manufacture, etc.
5.) Industrial control. If communities can get an electricity source back online, it opens up a wide variety of options for local manufacturing and automation. Labor is likely to be in very short supply after an apocalypse, so anything you can do to automate control will be a big help.
1.) Communications. Being able to send over plans for a useful tool, or instructions for repair, or a meeting place for the defense of a village becomes critical.
2.) Entertainment/education. Threads shows the post-apocalyptic children watching a VHS video of animals & grammar. If you can preserve even just the PBS Kids catalog on local disk and have a working computer, you'll be in huge demand as the town's babysitter, and it's far easier to do this at scale with video than individually keep dozens of kids occupied.
3.) Local records. It's critical to catch freeriders for any communal endeavors, because if you don't, community breaks down and everybody just worries about their own family. Same goes for financial records: if you can restore some semblance of banking & credit you can operate much more efficient trade than if everything is spot barter.
4.) Knowledge repository. The community where everybody knows how to garden is going to be way better off than the one where two people know how to garden and everybody steals their food. Same with a variety of other skills - repairs, local resources, weapon manufacture, etc.
5.) Industrial control. If communities can get an electricity source back online, it opens up a wide variety of options for local manufacturing and automation. Labor is likely to be in very short supply after an apocalypse, so anything you can do to automate control will be a big help.