Survival LLM: Your Own AI Assistant and Emergency Library That Answer Without the Internet (From Scratch)

Usually, when something goes wrong, you open a search engine or ask ChatGPT.

You burned your hand on the stove. The power has been out since morning and there is meat in the fridge. The generator at the cabin won't start.

But search and chatbots only work while you have internet. And it tends to disappear exactly when you need an answer most: along with the power, on the road, out of town.

An offline assistant solves this: the AI and the reference books live right on your computer. One of them, Survival LLM, was released for free and as open source by developer Ronny Fernandez. On October 27 a link to the project reached Hacker News, a forum for programmers, and collected more than three hundred upvotes there.

Below we install it from scratch. By step 2 you will have your first answer, received with Wi-Fi switched off.

What Survival LLM is, in plain words

Imagine a librarian living in your home with a shelf of reference books. You ask a question, they find the right pages, read them and retell the answer in their own words. Then they put the open book in front of you and point to the paragraph it came from.

Survival LLM works the same way. The librarian is a language model, a program that understands the question and writes an answer in plain human language. The shelf is the library the program downloads to your disk. It holds about 930,000 of the most-read Wikipedia articles and a dozen specialist collections:

1. 1

   Medicine

   The WikiMed medical encyclopedia, MedlinePlus from the US National Library of Medicine, the WikEM emergency medicine reference and a British drug reference.

2. 2

   Emergencies

   Ready.gov guides from the US agency FEMA, CDC recommendations, military manuals on first aid and survival.

3. 3

   Repairs and home

   wikiHow instructions, iFixit repair guides, Appropedia on simple technology, and Q&A on home, cooking, gardening and amateur radio.

4. 4

   Your documents

   PDFs, Word files, e-books and notes you add yourself: the generator manual, a list of medications, a family emergency plan.

How is this different from ChatGPT? A regular chatbot answers from memory and lives on the company's servers, so without a network it goes silent. Here the model runs on your computer and searches the library before it answers. No account, no tracking, and your questions never leave the computer. It is the same idea as voiceovers in your own voice without the cloud, only for a reference library for a rainy day.

Do you need it

It is worth an evening if:

• you get power cuts or spend long stretches out of town;
• someone in the family has a chronic illness or allergies, or you have small children or elderly parents, and you feel calmer with a reference at hand;
• you travel where the signal drops: mountains, hiking, long flights;
• you would rather not send health questions to someone else's server.

You can skip it if you have an Intel-based Mac or a computer with 8 GB of memory (more on that in "Where Survival LLM falls short"), or if your connection never drops and cloud ChatGPT is enough.

What your computer gets, according to the author's table:

The "author's test" is 22 questions about blackouts and first aid. Answers were graded blind: did the main point match the official recommendation. The more memory, the smarter the model and the less often it gets things wrong.

Step 1. Check your computer's memory and pick a library

What you need up front: a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or newer) running macOS 14 Sonoma or later, or 64-bit Windows 10 or 11. Plus an hour or two on a good connection.

First, see how much memory you have. On a Mac: the Apple menu, "About This Mac". On Windows: "Settings", "System", "About", the "Installed RAM" line. The program uses this number to choose a model from the table above on its own; you don't have to decide anything.

There is one decision to make: which library to download.

• Full. Everything at once, including Wikipedia and the iFixit repair guides. A 9 GB download, 19 GB on disk after installation.
• Light. No Wikipedia or iFixit, but with the medical references, emergency-service guides and household instructions. A 1.3 GB download.

You need as much free space as the model takes plus 5 GB, and about 27 GB more while the full library installs. If your disk is nearly full, take the light one: it covers first aid, food and water.

Result: you know which model you will get and which library to install.

Step 2. Install the app and ask your first question offline

1. Open the project page and download the version for your system. The installer is 212 MB on Mac and 25 MB on Windows: the program fetches the rest itself.
2. Unzip the archive. On Windows, right-click the archive and choose "Extract All": the program will not run from inside the archive.
3. Launch it. On Mac, double-click Survival LLM; on Windows, double-click the Survival LLM.bat file in the extracted folder.
4. Your system will warn you that the program is not from an app store. That's true, the author distributes it directly:

# Mac
Done → System Settings → Privacy & Security
"Survival LLM was blocked" → Open Anyway → password
# Windows
More info → Run anyway

5. The program then opens in its own window and walks you through the steps: the engine for the model (built in on Mac, a one-click download on Windows), the model itself and the library. Keep the computer on and online until the download finishes.

The whole installation takes anywhere from 20 minutes to two and a half hours, almost all of it download time.

When everything is ready, switch off Wi-Fi. This is the real test: if the program answers without a network, it will answer during a power cut too. Ask your first question:

The power went out today at [time]. The fridge has [food]. How long will it stay safe if I keep the door closed, and how can I tell when something should be thrown out?

Replace: [time] and [food] with your own, for example "9 a.m." and "chicken, milk, cheese". Result: a step-by-step answer with a list of the articles it was written from underneath.

Step 3. Check the answer against the source

This is the main reason to install Survival LLM. Models make mistakes, small ones more often, so every answer comes with a list of articles.

1. Under the answer, click any article in the list. It opens with the passage the model relied on highlighted.
2. Compare: does the advice match what the passage says? If the answer has numbers (temperature, time, dosage), find them in the article text with your own eyes.
3. If you want to see how the model reached its answer, open Show reasoning under the answer. It shows what the model searched for and which articles it read along the way.

You can also ask directly:

Where did you get this? Show me the article the advice about [part of the answer] comes from.

Replace: [part of the answer] with whatever you doubt, for example "hold the burn under cool water". Result: the program opens the right article on screen.

The author admits that models sometimes named sources they had never opened. So the program checks the list of sources against what the model actually read and shows only real articles. That does not replace the habit of reading the passage. We collected how to check any AI answer in our checklist for any chatbot.

Result: you know which reference each piece of advice rests on.

Step 4. Add your own documents and notes about your family

General references don't know what generator you have or what your child is allergic to. You tell it that yourself.

Your files. At the top of the window there is a Your files section. Drag in whatever would help in an emergency: the manual for your generator or boiler, a list of medications, a family emergency plan. The program accepts PDFs, Word documents, EPUB e-books, web pages and text files. The files stay on your computer, in the Survival LLM Files folder in your home folder. It can't read scans or photos of pages yet, so it's better to find a PDF of a paper manual on the manufacturer's website.

Memory. Tell the program about yourself in ordinary words:

Remember: [who] is allergic to [medication]. At home we have [a generator, boiler, stove]. We live in [city or countryside], the nearest hospital is [distance] away.

Replace: everything in brackets with your own details. Result: the program saves short notes and takes them into account in future conversations. All notes are visible in the Memory section; you can edit them or turn saving off.

Step 5. Get it ready for a power cut

An assistant that died along with the laptop battery is no help at all. A couple of settings in advance:

• Battery. The author measured it on a MacBook Pro: about 100 W while the model is answering, and 5 to 40 seconds per question. A full battery lasts roughly 100–300 answers, and a small power station runs the program easily.
• How long to think. Next to the Send button there is a Reasoning setting: how much the model may think before answering. Set it lower when battery matters and higher when the question is hard.
• Instructions. The Instructions button shows what the program tells the model before each conversation. You can add your own, for example "answer briefly".
• Updates. At the bottom of the window there is a Check for updates button: a new version installs in one click, and the models, library and your files stay put.

Result: the assistant is ready, and you know how many questions it can handle on a single charge.

Where Survival LLM falls short

How to do it right. Treat the answer as a hint that knows where the right page is, not as a doctor: open the source, especially when it's about medication and children. In an emergency, call emergency services first if you have a signal. And one more caveat from the author: the tests ran on an earlier build of the library, so the table compares the models with each other rather than promising accuracy.

Version 0.3.4 and terms as of October 28, 2026. The project updates often, so check the project page for the current state.

Examples: how to put it to use

A power cut at home. The fridge, tap water, hypothermia, carbon monoxide from a generator: the author tested the models on exactly these questions, and they are a good place to start getting to know the program.

A cabin or country house. Add the manuals for your pump, boiler and generator to your files. When something stops working and there's no signal, the program will look for the answer in them and in the repair guides.

A family medicine cabinet. Put into memory who takes what and who is allergic to what, and add the list of medications as a file. The program will work through a question like "can I give this to my child together with that" with your notes in mind, and show the source.

A hike or a long trip. Install the program on the laptop that travels with you. A bite, hypothermia, how to make stream water safe: the reference comes along, even where there's no signal.

A laptop for elderly parents. Set the program up for them, add "answer in simple words, without jargon" to the instructions and show them where to click for the source. That's more reassuring than a random forum.

Prompt kit

All questions go straight into the Survival LLM window. Everything except the [brackets] is copied as is.

Food without power

The power has been out for [how many hours]. What from the fridge and freezer is still safe to eat, and what should be thrown out? Give a short list by product.

Water

Tap water may be unsafe. How can I disinfect [amount] of water with what I have at home: [what you have, for example a kettle, bleach, tablets]?

Burn

[Who] burned their [body part] on [what]. What should we do right now, and which signs mean we need a doctor urgently?

Generator

How do I safely run a [model] generator during a power cut? Where can it be placed and where not, and how do I avoid carbon monoxide poisoning?

Hypothermia

A person was out in the cold for a long time and now [what you see: shivering, confused, pale]. What should I do step by step, and what must I not do?

Emergency kit

Make a list of supplies for [how many days] without power and water for a family of [how many people], taking into account [children, pets, medications]. Mark what to buy in advance.

Simple answer

Answer again in five short points, without jargon, and say which article each point comes from.

Plan for the evening

1. 1

   5 minutes

   Check your computer's memory and free space, and choose the full or light library.

2. 2

   5 minutes

   Download the program, unzip it and get past the system warning.

3. 3

   Up to 2.5 hours

   The model and library download. While you wait, gather your appliance manuals and the list of medications into one folder.

4. 4

   5 minutes

   Switch off Wi-Fi and ask your first question about the fridge without power.

5. 5

   10 minutes

   Open the source of the answer and compare it with the highlighted passage.

6. 6

   10 minutes

   Add your own files and tell the program about your family.

Before and now

Before, advice on a burn or spoiled food was exactly as far away as the nearest cell tower. Now the reference library and the assistant live on your laptop, answer without a network and show where every piece of advice comes from.

Survival LLM isn't about the end of the world. It's about making sure an ordinary accident, a power cut or a road with no signal doesn't leave you without an answer.

Our opinion, which you are free to dispute: Survival LLM is worth installing in any home with a computer that has 16 GB or more: we haven't seen a more convenient free reference for a rainy day. We'll be wrong if you need answers strictly under your local rules without double-checking: then a paper reference is still more reliable.

If you'd like to keep other programs on your own computer instead of cloud subscriptions, take a look at our list of services you can host yourself.