I always thought that one of the chief issues behind getting computers working again was for a few reasons:
One, either MilGov or CivGov can quickly process a census and then appoint a legitimate US Government instead of the rump government in Colorado Springs (you know, the one with multiple senators from the same district, fistfights and shootouts on the senate floor, etc.) That's the thing that's stopping MilGov from handing power back to the government: voting, election, establishment of a clear civilian government since the line of succession broke down and Continuance of Government took so long to restart.
Two, recovery of economic and financial records. NYC is still intact, and there are billions, possibly trillions, of dollars in electronic funds in downed computers there (and elsewhere in the country). Even factoring in massive deflation and currency devaluation, there's lots of money still in the US. Getting that money to trading partners without relying on a sketchy tramp steamer maybe getting gold bullion to France or Australia in six to eight months would be an enormous boon to the US recovery.
Three, management of disaster recovery resources. It's all well and good to say "We're going to send the 805th Military Police Combat Brigade to help reestablish a bridgehead in St. Louis and clean out bandits so locals can plant and rebuild and a major Mississippi crossing can be reconstructed" but what happens when after weeks of drive-brew-refuel-drive-brew-refuel you get there and there's literally nobody left, because due to famine or plague rumors the 1200 or so civilians fled? Now what? Real-time (or nearer-real-time) communications would ameliorate such situations.
Four, manufacturing. Even in the 80s and 90s there was a lot of computer controlled manufacturing in the US. I could buy, for $2500 in 1990, a computer-controlled milling machine that would run off of my PC and produce some pretty amazing tolerances - it was sold as a geek toy! Most computer controlled machinery and so forth runs on incredibly low-level hardware. Imagine getting just one or two auto parts factory lines working again and loading in other 3d models and so forth, so now you can make parts for water pumps, hospital equipment, refinery parts, and so on. Same thing goes for drug manufacturing: being able to precision control environments for producing more exotic drugs will help greatly.
Five, communications. I mentioned in another thread that DARPA/ARPAnet was designed to survive a nuclear war, and it would. It would be particularly healthy after a low-level exchange as outlined in Twilight:2000. However, computers to use the infrastructure are going to be rare. Getting extant systems working again will be key - and you need nothing more powerful than a computer that can run a VT52 terminal emulation program and some kind of IP stack and support some kind of networking (RJ11, Token Ring, RS232, IEE488, and on and on) hardware. A Commodore VIC-20 can do it. An Imsai 8080 with a terminal and keyboard can do it. Likewise, what if NASA or better still NOAA could communicate with satellites again? Hurricanes ravaging the southeast without warning would cease to be a huge problem. Tie that back into a working ARPANet and now you've got the problem under control.
Direct military applications of getting computers working again is of course a high priority too. Imagine an M577 actually becoming a command track again rather than a big air-conditioned personnel carrier. What if electronics that required computer tests to maintain (radar sets, computer controlled rangefinders, etc.) and consequently hadn't been working or working properly for 2-3 years could now operate again?
Finally, something I didn't touch on in the other thread but I will here: working computers are a sign of recovery. Imagine, you go down to register yourself and your family at a relocation zone. You walk into a half-destroyed building, everything's lit with kerosene lanterns, the clerk writes your name down in pencil on a yellow pad, slips an ultra-worn out piece of carbon paper between two pages and has you fill out your ration chit...very depressing. My god, you think, this is...this is 1890s...we're never coming back from this...Same scene, but there's power, and they've got a kaypro luggable. Your info grinds out on a dot-matrix printer, is saved to floppy disk, the clerk tells you if you need another copy of the chit, come see him, he can print another out. That says "things are getting better" or "things aren't that bad". It gives people hope.
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