Expansion Library — All of Human Knowledge, Offline

This guide is the portable core — under 600 MB, fits any pen drive. When you have internet, you can pull down the rest of recorded knowledge to read forever offline: the whole of Wikipedia, all of Project Gutenberg, medical encyclopedias, repair manuals, dictionaries and more — using free, open ZIM files and the Kiwix reader.

The idea: keep the small, hand-curated survival guide on your drive always. Then, while the grid is up, download the giant reference archives below. Once they're on your drive, they work with no internet, forever — exactly like this guide. A 256 GB drive or a cheap external SSD can hold all of Wikipedia with images and all of Project Gutenberg combined.

How it works — 3 steps

Install Kiwix — the free offline reader for ZIM files. kiwix.org/download — Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, or Kiwix-Serve to share over a local network. Install it now, while you have internet.

Download the ZIM files you want from the cards below (each is one self-contained file). Save them to your drive alongside this guide.

Open them in Kiwix — point Kiwix at the .zim files and browse, search, and read offline. No account, no internet, no expiry.

Build a Survival Drive — what fits

Drive	What you can carry
This guide only	~0.6 GB — the curated survival core (any USB stick ever made)
32 GB stick	Guide + Medical Wikipedia + Simple Wikipedia + Wikivoyage + iFixit + a Gutenberg subset
128 GB stick	Add full Project Gutenberg (every public-domain book) + Wikipedia "nopic"
256 GB+ / SSD	Add full Wikipedia with images — essentially the whole library of humanity in your pocket

Pen-Drive Essentials small & high-value

The highest survival-value archives that fit on a modest drive.

The Big Archives needs a large drive / SSD

The complete sets. Sizes are approximate and grow over time — pick the flavour that fits your drive.

💡

Tip: Wikipedia comes in three sizes — maxi (full, with images), nopic (full text, no images — ~75% smaller), and mini (article intros only — ~95% smaller). Pick by how much room you have. The download links below open the official Kiwix directory where you choose the flavour and the latest date.

Offline Maps & Navigation

Your phone's GPS works with no signal and no SIM. The GPS chip listens to satellites directly — once you've downloaded the maps while online, you can navigate offline, anywhere, forever, even in full grid-down. A whole-UK offline map is well under 2 GB. Download your region now.

🗺️ Open the built-in offline map — renders right in this browser, no app needed. Prototype region: Northern England & Yorkshire. Add any region with extract-map.sh.

UK map, by detail	Approx size
One region / county (e.g. your local area)	~100–400 MB
Whole UK — navigation (Organic Maps)	under 1 GB
Whole UK + topographic contour lines (OsmAnd)	~2–2.5 GB
Raw OSM data — Great Britain `.osm.pbf`	~2.0 GB

Scripted download (optional)

Prefer the command line? get-knowledge.sh in the repo downloads a chosen ZIM with wget/curl and resumes if interrupted — handy for the multi-gigabyte files. Edit the URL inside it to the file you want from the directories below.

ZIM files and Kiwix are produced by the Kiwix non-profit and are free to use and share. Wikipedia content is CC BY-SA; Project Gutenberg texts are public domain. Browse the full catalogue at library.kiwix.org.