Local LLM as prepping resource

I take a slightly higher tech approach to preparedness. I have a local copy of wikipedia. I know enough to run a small machine or two off small solar panels if needed.

I also have a DGX Spark. It is a neat little box, basically a mini-computer with 4TB of storage and a very solid GPU. It occurred to me that it might be an interesting resource for when I encounter something I just don't know how to do. When running all out, it uses up to 250watts, which is a lot but for a short time quite doable. When not taxing it, it is much much less.

So I decided to test it. I ran the gemma4:31b model and told it there was an earthquake, I had a water storage tank and wanted to keep the water safe to drink. This is something I've researched myself so I knew the right answers already. It did great, giving me the right warnings about using food safe plastics, how to dose the water with chlorine, what chlorine to use. I quizzed it about using pool test strips to make sure the chlorine was right. Its answers matched the research I've done before.

With how I was running the model (straight ollama terminal) I know it had no way to reach out and do any web searches, it was answering from its own model weights.

Now that information might be in my wikipedia archive as well. But maybe not. The nice thing about an LLM is you can describe your situation and what you have and it can come back with a step by step plan for your situation. I could see that being useful for all sorts of things I just don't know, like how to skin a rabbit or how to eat acorns.