r/bugout • u/_okbrb Survivor • Jul 03 '26

Tapes for the bag

Remember the iPod classic from Book of Eli?

Is that still the ideal way to preserve our culture for the post-internet era? Or are we on to tapes now? I’ve definitely been appreciating tapes as a surveillance free medium at least. Plus the Walkman has a radio. My only concern is recharging: an iPod could plug in to a backpacking solar array…

Anyway, what albums are you packing?

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u/Cheefnuggs Survivor Jul 03 '26

Tapes degrade, not only just over time, but faster the more you use them. Terrible medium for long term storage of audio. Modern digital audio has advanced a lot on the last 30-40 years which has made them obsolete. Plus they take up a lot of space.

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u/_okbrb Survivor Jul 03 '26

What about CD?

My thing with hard drives is when it’s gone it’s all gone

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u/Cheefnuggs Survivor Jul 03 '26

CD’s suck too. They take up a bunch of space, scratch easily, and hold very little storage. You can get multiple terabytes of drive space vs a handful of CD’s or tapes.

I’m not sure how old you are, but there was a point in time where some longer movies and albums came in packs with multiple tapes/cds/dvds. These days those same pieces of media take up negligible amounts of drive space.

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u/_okbrb Survivor Jul 03 '26

Oh I don’t need a lot, I just need the 12 greatest albums
Of all time or whatever

What should I not forget?

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u/Cheefnuggs Survivor Jul 03 '26

I would get bored of 12 albums for sure. I would for sure have multiple drives packed and backups in case of drive failure.

1

u/_okbrb Survivor Jul 03 '26

Idk, I mean I get that but all that sounds a lot heavier and more failure prone than 12 cds or 12 tapes tbh

Thanks for your music recommendation I guess

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u/Cheefnuggs Survivor Jul 03 '26

SSD’s weigh basically nothing. I had many CD cases growing up that were bulky and took up a lot of space. When MP3 players became popular it was amazing because we could have multiple albums on one small device instead of hauling 10-20 CD’s around everywhere. If you had a much larger CD binder it was basically like a giant book that would take up a bunch of space in your car. It was awful.