Most of us don't think about how much we rely on the internet until it stops working. With the recent seasonal storms, I've noticed it more than I would like. When the power gets knocked out, I can't easily find answers to questions like, "How long will food stay fresh in the fridge without power?" or even "What's the phone number for the power company?"

So when I stumbled on a free chatbot called Survival LLM that doesn't require the internet to work, I was very curious to try it. Unlike ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, which typically rely on cloud-based servers, this chatbot is designed to work entirely on your computer, even when you're completely offline.

Users just need to download the AI and its reference library ahead of time to have access to information about everything from food safety and first aid to home repairs and emergency preparedness without needing an internet connection.

And while there's a catch when it comes to accuracy, I can see why having something like this available before an emergency could be useful.

Survival LLM is a free, open-source AI assistant available for Windows PCs and Macs. Once you've installed it and downloaded the necessary files, you can disconnect from the internet and continue asking questions.

Instead of sending requests to a remote server, it runs an AI model directly on your computer. It also searches a library of reference material stored locally, including information from Wikipedia, MedlinePlus, FEMA, the CDC and iFixit.

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