Would people continue to use personal computers in the post-apocalyptic future? If so...

Impersonal Computers.

Depends on how far down the post-apocalypse line.
Fallout's a good example. By the time of New Vegas, computers, cars, and other electronic devices are being used by nation-states. Even small business and organizations use them, for managing and storing info.

Tech literacy goes down the less of a society there is.

The thing that always bothers me about post-apocolypse settings is that apparently everything and I mean everything is so fucked that there is no one that remembers or knows how to do things as if at the start of the scenario all the doctors and engineers and scientist and academics suddenly all died at once and all books and forms of written knowledge seemingly vanished into thin air.

I mean, from a narrative stand-point this is convient for a more medieval feel but compeletly ignores the fact that humanity wouldn't just collectively forget how to do everything all at once.

Post-Computers.

It's not that the scientists and engineers disappear (though most assuredly 80% of them would die just like the rest of us in a global nuke war), but that our societies are so specialized and distributed that even knowing exactly what you need to do to say, build an engine block, doesn't mean you'll be able to get the parts, machine tools, precision dies, etc. that are found all over the country and now across global supply chains. Even the US military sources most of its electronics from China *today*.

Then there's the secondary problem of knowledge transfer and institutional collapse, which is unlikely to last beyond the first survivor generation.

This is all quite brilliantly shown in the classic post-apoc novel Earth Abides by George Stewart:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Abides

Well, those people are fairly rare and not much more likely to survive the apocalypse than anyone else. The remaining ones aren't able to operate at full efficiency thanks to the collapse of infrastructure, so plenty of them will need to spend a lot of their time hunting, scavenging, farming or whatever they need to do to survive rather than actually using their skills.

Then you have the fact that most post-apocalyptic communities tend to be pretty small; a couple of doctors can serve a town with a few thousand people, but when the population is mostly in communities of a few hundred, then the majority of them won't include a doctor. To add to that issue, people with valuable skills are likely to end up in the larger communities and be jealously guarded by their leaders. You don't let your only source of healthcare risk being murdered by raiders just so they can do outpatient visits to the kids living in a crashed airliner.

So you can justify it, but I would agree that it would generally be better if the issue was at least addressed a bit. That kind of detail is a rich source of drama which gives you something more interesting than psycho raiders vs. slightly-less-psycho dirt farmers.

Word processors, cad or design programs would still be useful. Microsoft excel or some other spreadsheets would probably be invaluable for record keeping if there is any existing business or bureaucracy. Digital copies of references or of books/manuals would be valuable too. First thing that comes to mind are those laptops that law enforcement use. Some of them are protected against EMP blasts and they're generally drop proof as well.

We did have computers for decades before the internet existed lads
They're quite useful

The apocalypse can very easily be combined with a year zero scenario.

>cad or design programs
Vital if 3-D printing manages to survive as well.

3-D printing isn't very useful, even with bountiful resources.
CADD is very useful, even with limited resources.

>Mad max: fury road sort of future
well obviously you need computers to propagate feminism on tumblr :^)

There was an aside in the original metro game where at the main station, the guy doing immigration clerk type stuff had a 2000 ish computer he was typing on, there was also an armed guard.

It should be sorta like th a time, rare, used for the resurgence of societies and the bureaucracies that come withith, and if you to have it without permission you eat buckshot.

...

Yes!

I'll second the call for ms excel. Id go so far as to say that excel is more important than a PDF reader and certainly more important than network apps.

In a community survival situation, the margin for error is razor thin. How many calories do you eat, and how many will you plant? What's the margin of error if there's a drought? What's the shopping list when we send out a scavenging party?

We've got a party of five at the gate. What load are they going to put on us this winter vs the extra labor they provide? Where do I stock those extra man-hours of labor to maximize our benefits?

How deep a well do we dig to lower our chance of running out in the dry season to

Excel isn't going to replace knowledge of animal husbandry or nutrition, user.

No but it multiplies the effectiveness of the knowledge you do have. It ensures that your resources are used optimally. and that limited resources are apportioned optimally between disciplines.

If you have X gallons of gas, excel can help you figure out how to divide that between farm equipment, generator power for the machine shop, and gas for the pickup truck you use for scavenging.

Actually I'd argue that you'd see traveling doctors within localized areas of several small communities as most likely those nearby settlements are all working in tandem to support each other. SAy one place has a rich supply of scrap metal while another has good water and another yet can grow reliable decent harvests or has someone who can cob together gunpowder. These all would work together most likely as its mutually beneficial to each other.

so can basic arithmetic and a little common sense. More likely any computer will be used to keep records of things like what's in that store house or when the last trader passed through. They'd be little more than glorified ledgers for the most part. barring some highly specliazed uses like for drone control.

That's right up there with "how hard can farming be? Just some seeds, some water, and some common sense." Do you practically have an MD because you binge-watched Scrubs?

Project planning in a community survival situation is far more complex than you realize. Just because you aren't aware of the issues doesnt mean they can't kill you.

Some of the best farmers I know are obsessive planners and excel users for precisely this reason.

Computers are Chronicler property. Be about your business, clanner.

I wouldn't even think of it as a "feministic propaganda" if it wasn't for faggots like you. Eat a dick, you suffer from severe lack of dicks in your organism.