What must never be lost

Core science & mathematics

• OpenStax~10–30 GB Hard — Free open textbooks: biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, astronomy, statistics, economics and more.
• Open Textbook Library~50–150 GB Moderate — 1,800+ open textbooks across science, engineering, agriculture, business and humanities.
• LibreTexts~100–500+ GB Hard — Extremely large collection covering chemistry, biology, physics, engineering, mathematics and other disciplines.
• MIT OpenCourseWare~50–200+ GB Moderate — University-level courses, lecture notes, assignments and other educational material.
• Wikibooks~5–20 GB Easy — Open textbooks and manuals.
• Wikibooks (full ZIM)~5–20 GB Easy — Direct bulk file for offline use. ZIM file.

Scientific literature

• arXiv~5+ TB full corpus Easy — Scientific preprints in physics, mathematics, computer science and more.
• PubMed Central Open Access100 GB–TBs Easy — Open-access biomedical literature.
• DOAJ — Directory of Open Access Journals~10–100+ GB Moderate — Peer-reviewed open-access journals. Full metadata dumps exist (JSON, generated weekly) but access is request-gated via email, not a self-serve public link. A metadata layer over PMC/arXiv, not a standalone text source.

Don't try to download the entire arXiv or PMC at once. Curate by category and prioritize high-value material.

Agriculture & food

• FAO Knowledge Repository~10–100+ GB Hard — Agriculture, soils, livestock, fisheries, forestry, food systems and rural development.
• USDA National Agricultural Library~10–100+ GB Hard — Enormous agricultural knowledge collection.
• ATTRA Sustainable Agriculture<10 GB Moderate — Practical sustainable-agriculture resources.
• SARE — Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education<10 GB Moderate — Farmer-oriented research and practical guides.
• BCcampus OpenEd~10–30 GB Moderate — Particularly useful Canadian open educational resources.
• Permaculture Association<10 GB Hard — Permaculture resources and educational material.

Water & sanitation

• WHO — Water, sanitation and hygiene10–100+ GB Hard — Global WASH guidance and resources.
• WHO Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality10–100+ GB Hard — The international reference for safe drinking water.
• US EPA Water Research~10–50 GB Hard — Water quality, treatment and infrastructure research.
• USGS Water Resources~10–100+ GB Hard — Hydrological data, groundwater and surface water science.
• Engineering for Change<10 GB Hard — Appropriate technology and infrastructure resources.

Seeds & genetics

• Seed Savers Exchange<10 GB Hard — Seed-saving technique guides and variety data. No bulk archive, browse/scrape per page.
• USDA GRIN-Global~10–100+ GB Moderate — Crop germplasm and variety database. Structured data downloads per taxon/collection via the portal, no single full-database zip.

Energy

Collect material on: solar → batteries → electrical systems → generators → heat → biomass → microgrids → grid restoration.

• U.S. Department of Energy — Energy.gov~10–100+ GB Hard — Energy systems, policy and technology resources.
• NREL Publications10–100+ GB Hard — Renewable energy research and technical resources.
• IRENA Publications~10–50 GB Hard — Renewable-energy technology and deployment.
• Open Energy Information~10–100 GB Moderate — Open energy data and resources.
• Canadian Energy Regulator~10–50 GB Hard — Canadian energy infrastructure and energy-system information.

Construction & shelter

Archive building physics, structural principles, passive heating/cooling, timber construction, masonry, insulation, roofing, foundations and basic surveying.

• Open Building Institute<10 GB Moderate — Open-source building systems and construction knowledge.
• Whole Building Design Guide<10–50 GB Hard — Building engineering and design guidance.
• Building Science Corporation<10 GB Hard — Building physics, moisture, insulation and durability.
• NRC Canada — National Building Code~10–50 GB Hard — Canadian building codes and standards.
• Canadian Wood Council<10 GB Hard — Timber construction and wood engineering resources.

Communications & computing

Include radio fundamentals, digital communications, networking, mesh networks, GPS/GNSS and offline computing.

• GNU Project<10 GB Moderate — Free and open-source software foundation.
• Linux kernel documentation<10 GB Moderate — The Linux kernel and system documentation.
• Python documentation<1 GB Easy — The Python programming language reference.
• Arduino<1 GB Easy — Open-source electronics platform.
• Raspberry Pi Documentation<1 GB Easy — Single-board computing documentation.
• KiCad<1 GB Easy — Open-source electronics design.
• Internet Engineering Task Force~10–50 GB Moderate — Internet standards.

Mechanical & manufacturing knowledge

One of the most important categories for rebuilding civilization. Preserve old machinist handbooks, welding manuals, agricultural machinery manuals, blacksmithing, woodworking, foundry, ceramics, glass and basic metalworking texts.

• Internet Archive100 GB–TBs Moderate — Huge collection of historical technical manuals and books; filter carefully for public-domain/openly reusable material.
• Project Gutenberg~5–30 GB Easy — 70,000+ public-domain ebooks.
• Open Source Ecology<10 GB Moderate — Open-source industrial machinery and fabrication concepts.
• OpenSCAD<1 GB Easy — Open-source parametric CAD.
• FreeCAD<1 GB Easy — Open-source CAD platform.
• Wikimedia Commons100 GB–TBs Moderate — Technical diagrams, illustrations and historical material.

Chemistry & materials

• LibreTexts Chemistry~50–200 GB Hard — Open chemistry textbooks and reference material.
• NIST Chemistry WebBook<10 GB Hard — Chemical and physical property data. No bulk archive; covered instead by the PubChem FTP archive below.
• PubChem~10–100+ GB Easy — Chemical structures, properties and biological activities. Full Compound/Substance/BioAssay databases (SDF/XML/JSON) available via official NIH FTP bulk archive.
• NIST Materials Data<10 GB–tens GB Moderate — Materials science data and standards.
• MatWeb<10 GB Hard — Materials-property information.

Preserve knowledge of metals, ceramics, glass, polymers, fertilizers, industrial chemicals, corrosion, electrochemistry and material properties.

Industrial knowledge

The section to expand substantially if the objective really is civilizational reboot. Include: mining, metallurgy, cement, glass, ceramics, fertilizer, chemical engineering, petroleum processing, machine tools, welding, electrical engineering, power generation, refrigeration, pumps, engines, motors and industrial automation.

• Engineering LibreTexts~50–200 GB Hard — Open engineering textbooks and references.
• OpenStax Engineering resources~10–30 GB Hard — Open science and engineering textbooks.
• MIT OpenCourseWare Engineering~50–200+ GB Moderate — University-level engineering courses.
• NPTEL Open Courses~50–200+ GB Moderate — Indian open engineering and science courses.

Low-tech & appropriate technology

• Low-Tech Magazine<10 GB Hard — Practical archive of pre-industrial and appropriate technologies. No official bulk zip; use wget --mirror against the site, or pull the existing crawl snapshot at archive.org (note: snapshot is dated, re-crawl for current content).
• Appropedia<10 GB Hard — Appropriate-technology wiki. MediaWiki site, no packaged dump found; would need a MediaWiki XML export or scrape.

Textiles & fiber crafts

• Wikibooks — Arts & Crafts bookshelf<1 GB Easy — Spinning, weaving, dyeing and tanning basics. Covered by the Wikibooks ZIM (no separate download needed).

Biology & medicine

For the reboot concept, emphasize fundamental health knowledge, sanitation, epidemiology, anatomy, nutrition, microbiology and public-health infrastructure — not a medical-treatment system.

• NCBI Bookshelf~10–100+ GB Moderate — Free biomedical textbooks and reference works.
• PubMed Central100 GB–TBs Easy — Open-access biomedical literature.
• Merck Manual<10 GB Hard — Medical reference material.
• WHO Publications10–100+ GB Hard — Global health guidance and reference works.
• CDC Public Health Resources~10–100+ GB Hard — Public health, disease prevention and epidemiology.
• National Library of Medicine~10–100+ GB Hard — The world's largest biomedical library.

Ecology & natural systems

• GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information FacilityTB-scale globally Moderate — Global biodiversity occurrence data.
• iNaturalist~10–100+ GB Hard — Species observations and identification.
• USGS Ecosystems~10–100+ GB Hard — Ecosystem science and monitoring.
• Environment and Climate Change Canada10–100+ GB Hard — Canadian environmental science and data.
• Canadian Forest Service~10–50 GB Hard — Forest ecology, management and research.

Especially useful when combined with local species databases, soil maps and climate records.

Geography & Earth systems

For a Canadian/Alberta focus, NRCan + provincial geological surveys are particularly valuable.

• Natural Resources Canada — Maps and Earth Sciences10–100+ GB Hard — Canadian mapping and geoscience.
• Alberta Geological Survey~10–100+ GB Hard — Alberta geology, minerals and subsurface data.
• USGS~10–100+ GB Hard — Earth science, mapping and natural hazard data.
• NASA EarthdataPB-scale globally Hard — Earth observation and environmental data.
• OpenStreetMap~100+ GB Easy — Free, editable global geographic data.
• Natural Earth<1 GB Easy — Global base map data.

Alberta

• Alberta Geological Survey~10–100+ GB Hard — Alberta geology, minerals and subsurface data.
• Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation~10–50 GB Hard — Provincial agriculture and irrigation resources.
• Alberta Wildfire<10 GB Hard — Wildfire status and prevention information.
• Alberta Water Information~10–50 GB Hard — Provincial water data and management.
• Alberta Energy Regulator~10–100+ GB Hard — Energy regulation and resource data.

Canada

• Natural Resources Canada10–100+ GB Hard — Canadian natural resources, energy and geoscience.
• Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada10–100+ GB Hard — Canadian agricultural research and programs.
• Environment and Climate Change Canada10–100+ GB Hard — Canadian environmental science and data.
• Canadian Forest Service~10–50 GB Hard — Forest ecology, management and research.
• Geological Survey of Canada~10–100+ GB Hard — National geoscience and mapping.

History & civilization

Civilizational resilience isn't only technical. It includes understanding how institutions, agriculture, trade, cities and technologies have evolved.

• Project Gutenberg~5–30 GB Easy — 70,000+ public-domain ebooks.
• Standard Ebooks~1–5 GB Easy — Curated, well-formatted public-domain literature. Built for automated syncing via its OPDS catalog feed.
• Internet Archive100 GB–TBs Moderate — Digital library of historical texts, media and software.
• Library of Congress Digital Collections100 GB–TBs Hard — American historical collections.
• Canadian Digital Collections~10–100+ GB Hard — Library and Archives Canada digital holdings.
• Europeana~10–100+ GB Hard — European cultural heritage collections.
• Our World in Data — GitHub dataset repo~1–20 GB Moderate — Bulk-clonable version of their entire dataset library. git clone (large, needs periodic re-sync).

Governance, law & economics

• CanLII10–100+ GB Hard — Canadian legal information. API access under specific terms, no plain archive for case law; statutes are covered instead by the Justice Laws bulk XML below.
• Justice Laws Website~10–50 GB Easy — Federal Canadian legislation. Official government bulk XML of all consolidated federal Acts & regulations, mirrored on GitHub for a plain git clone: justicecanada/laws-lois-xml, or the raw dataset via Open Government's bulk XML listing.
• Statistics Canada10–100+ GB Moderate — Canadian statistical data.
• World Bank Open Data~1–20 GB Moderate — Global economic and development data. Bulk CSV catalog available at the Data Catalog bulk download page.
• OECD Data~1–20 GB Hard — International economic and social statistics.
• Our World in Data~1–20 GB Moderate — Global datasets on development, health and environment.

Military field manuals

• US Army/Navy Technical & Field Manuals~10–100+ GB Moderate — Public-domain practical and procedural knowledge. Internet Archive collection can be bulk-pulled with the ia CLI tool or torrents once you've picked the specific collection identifier(s); no single official "all manuals" package. Also available via Wikimedia Commons.

• Rosetta Project / PanLex~10–100+ GB Moderate — Linguistic archive of thousands of human languages; PanLex publishes bulk-downloadable translation datasets. Assembling the full Rosetta corpus needs some scripting.
• World Possible — RACHEL content packages~10–100+ GB Easy — Curated offline education bundles (Khan Academy, medical reference, teacher training), built for exactly this use case. Direct content-pack downloads.
• Kolibri (Learning Equality)~10–100+ GB Moderate — Offline learning platform with structured curriculum "channels" (many overlapping with Core Science and Medicine sections); official export/import tool for content channels. No single "everything" download.