IN MAX BROOKS' EPIC ZOMBIE apocalyptic horror novel, World War Z, the fictional author interviews a representative of ‘Radio Free Earth’. This was an initiative to transmit vital information to isolated communities, such as how to grow food, build shelters, and purify water.

US residents caught in the wake of Hurricane Helene in September 2024 will also remember how Starlink had to set up internet hotspots due to telephone lines being down. Fortunately, this was just temporary, but in the event of a prolonged outage, it’s good to know that you have vital information at your fingertips.

This is where Kiwix comes in. It supports creating copies of public domain websites like Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, and TED Talks for offline viewing. It uses the open ZIM (Zeno Improved) file format for downloading information, all accessible from a browser-like interface.

Even if you’re not a survivalist, Kiwix is useful for people in locations with unreliable internet. You need a stable connection to download the ZIM files, but as the files and the Kiwix software is portable, you can easily download them to an external drive, then mail it wherever it’s needed.

In this guide, you’ll discover how to set up Kiwix, add archives, and share your post-apocalyptic vault with others.

–NATE DRAKE

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1 S ET UP KIWIX (WINDOWS)

As Maximum PC readers are advanced users, we’re aware that you don’t need your hand held when it comes to downloading and launching installers.

» However, Kiwix offers several setup options. To see your choices, head to www.kiwix.org on the machine you plan to use for your vault, then choose ‘Downloads’ > ‘All Apps’. As you’ll see, there are native Kiwix applications for virtually every platform.

» Change the ‘All Applications’ drop-down menu to ‘Windows’. If your machine is running Windows 10 or 11 then we recommend simply downloading the standard Kiwix 2.0. This is in the form of a compressed ‘ZIP’ archive, which can run from any location. This is useful if you want to store your vault data files on an external drive, as you can place Kiwix there, too.

» Once the download is complete, move the ZIP archive to your desired location. Next, extract it and run ‘vc_redist.x64.exe’. This will install the latest Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 from Microsoft, which is necessary to run Kiwix. Launch the app itself by running ‘kiwix-desktop.exe’.

» According to the developers, you’ll get the best performance from ‘native’ versions of Kiwix like this. However, you can also install Kiwix JS. This is written entirely in JavaScript, so is compatible with virtually every web browser. It’s available as a browser extension for Edge, Chrome, and Firefox. [Image A]