Obsidian for preps and plan management: IYKYK

Posted by HVACDemon@reddit | preppers | View on Reddit | 36 comments

I'm curious what you guys use to manage your preps and contigency planning along with SOPs and intel?

I've used many tools but started using Obsidian a while back and boy has it helped identify flaws and weak points as well as strong points in my planning.

Definitely recommend looking into it.

Even found a way to have a full offline version of my vault that can be mobile-accessed which means a solar charger and phone would be enough to access literal TBs of data given the right setup.

My favourite thing about it is it's the only tool that cleary shows a visual map of links between different community members or bits of intel, or even interdependencies between plans or skills and resources.

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InsaneNorseman@reddit

Me, scrolling through my Reddit feed: Oh, wow, is this guy talking about learning stoneknapping? Makes sense, if you know how to make a serviceable blade or arrowhead out of a glass bottle or stone, you'll always be able to have a cutting instrument when you need it!

Me, clicking on the post: WTF? An app that's a glorified version of Samsung Notes? Well, that's kinda lame... I'd rather know how to make a knife out of obsidian!

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Top-Spinach6013@reddit

I had the same thought and actually know how to flint knap! This post simultaneously reminded me that I have a bucket of raw obsidian blanks in my basement that I collected years ago and should pull out again and that I need to figure out a way to save my notes and plans offline. I’m deep into Notion and haven’t looked closely at Obsidian since it first came out so maybe I’ll revisit that too.

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HVACDemon@reddit (OP)

There's 100s of videos on that though. It's also a lot more in depth than samsung notes from my experience with both. Which is what led me to this post.

I've used many tools, as simple or complex as you want, but very few that could highlight in a single snapshot the major strengths and weaknesses of a prep plan

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Artistic-Jello3986@reddit

How is Obsidian any better than just shared markdown files on a nas box?

Or pen and paper lists?

I love Obsidian and use it heavily personally and professionally, but its main perk imo is the centralized service that it provides and I’m not taking that with me if SHTF.

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HVACDemon@reddit (OP)

You can offset the centralization by porting it offline

You can also build a matrix that helps you identify within seconds any weaknesses or strengths in your planning

Its not just about making lists, but building interdependent connections for contingency planning and creating a linked network of information

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Artistic-Jello3986@reddit

To port it offline is the interesting part of prepping with tech… I have a good setup already with nas+routers+cables+devices+charging options to create my own intranet. That’s why I’m asking what obsidian is doing here for you with regards to prepping. Glad it works for you, but I don’t see how this is any better than +

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HVACDemon@reddit (OP)

Its really about the ease of mapping interdependencies and planning contingencies that relate to each other seamlessly, then viewing them in a graph view that gives you an immediate sense of what strengths and weaknesses your plans have (assuming proper coding ofc)

But yes any tool would do the job, as you said assuming having your own intranet obvs

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Federal_Refrigerator@reddit

Sure, you could do whatever it was you said cause I didn’t read all that copium. Just get nextcloud and self host. Boom. Also: get a physical notebook. Can’t look up shit without power unless it’s real not digital.

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Rick-burp-Sanchez@reddit

Yeah this is exactly what my brain did, too.

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pajudd@reddit

I find it interesting that individuals who don’t realize that in a major power grid down situation, the power that runs the servers for cloud based storage will also be down, as well as the towers/systems to reach them. Information not kept locally will probably not be available.

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Strong_as_an_axe@reddit

One of the main points of obsidian is that it is not cloud based and you can horcrux it across multiple devices. I have done the exact same thing as this guy for the exact same reasons.

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HVACDemon@reddit (OP)

Swear some people dont bother to research what they see online 😂 glad to hear im not the only one who sees the depth the tool has

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Strong_as_an_axe@reddit

I was even thinking about buying a home server and running Deepseek R1 locally. It would be energy intense but might be a really useful tool. I think locally deployable software tooling is something with huge potential

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HVACDemon@reddit (OP)

Oooooo if you do go forward please update me

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Strong_as_an_axe@reddit

I will do pal :)

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shikkonin@reddit

Information not kept locally will probably not be available.

You really need to read the post, man.

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Federal_Refrigerator@reddit

I think you should read the issues of this lol. Just get a pen and a notebook.

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shikkonin@reddit

What part of "fully offline" do you not understand?

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Federal_Refrigerator@reddit

What part do you not understand?

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shikkonin@reddit

Alright mate, what is your problem with this:

Even found a way to have a full offline version of my vault that can be mobile-accessed which means a solar charger and phone would be enough to access literal TBs of data given the right setup.

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HVACDemon@reddit (OP)

Best way to avoid it is to avoid cloud based storage and have cold storage be the only option from the get go in my opinion

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Federal_Refrigerator@reddit

Yeah you have the whole world’s actuary tables on that hard drive??? Too bad nobody here wrote down the instructions to fix this generator, though…

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Federal_Refrigerator@reddit

Information kept locally may also not be available because of power

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TheRedBaron11@reddit

Obsidian is a life-changing app for me. Glad to see you're finding cool uses for it.

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doggenwalker@reddit

Obsidian is a free note taking program that saves to your drive and has a pretty neat organizational interface that allows linking of files so you can easily create your own wiki of whatever you want. It's most notable because many other programs either do not allow this kind of organization or demand a subscription price while forcing you to save to their cloud service.

I used the program for plotting and planning out D&D campaigns in the past, and find it's a lot easier to get information I need on the fly with it than flipping through a physical notebook or scrolling through a file folder on my laptop. The graph function shows all the files as a dot and a name with lines showing anything that has been linked together. I don't know why but it's just faster for me to find what I might need with it when I have a lot of things to look through. So, yes, I can see why it'd be useful for prepping, though it does mean you have to go in with an organizational plan in mind to lay out the groundwork for that.

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grahampositive@reddit

Ok so it's basically a digital version of this?

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HVACDemon@reddit (OP)

Literally this ahahahaha 😂

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doggenwalker@reddit

Pretty much exactly that. There's some power users that can make it a lot more intuitive/pretty but I'm a basic person so I just go with the program as it is out of the box. My chaos makes sense to me in the end.

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HVACDemon@reddit (OP)

Yeah that's where i started using it too

It is a lot of work to build an org structure but once its fleshed out its way more powerful than other tools imo

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craydow@reddit

Yo, next time you light up, invite a brother.

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Federal_Refrigerator@reddit

Realest comment here tbh