Survival LLM: AI assistant and emergency library that runs on your own computer

What it claims

Survival LLM 0.3.2 (October 27, 2026) is a local AI assistant with retrieval over a bundled offline library of about 930,000 of Wikipedia's most-read articles plus medical, emergency and repair references. The developers state that questions never leave the computer and that the app needs no account and does no tracking. Every answer lists the articles it read. Clicking one opens it with the exact passage highlighted.

How it works

On first launch the app checks system memory and downloads the AI model that fits; more memory gets a larger model. Besides Wikipedia, the library holds WikiMed, MedlinePlus, UK Medicines A to Z, WikEM, Ready.gov (FEMA), CDC travelers' health, U.S. military medicine and survival manuals, life tables and U.S. death rates for micromort estimates, wikiHow, iFixit, Appropedia and Stack Exchange Q&A on home repair, cooking, gardening, the outdoors and ham radio. All of it is stored as plain text and searched in under a second.

Users can add PDFs, Word files, ebooks and notes, and the AI searches them too. Version 0.3.0 added Memory, which keeps short, editable notes about the user across chats, and its saving can be turned off. Version 0.3.1 added "Show reasoning", which exposes the model's thinking, searches and articles read. Most models reason first only when "Think harder" is ticked.

Evidence

The page defines "right" as getting the main point of official guidance right on 22 blackout and first-aid questions, graded blind. The test ran on an earlier build of the library. The page text does not include per-model scores. On a MacBook Pro the developers measured about 100 W while answering, for 5 to 40 seconds per question. A full battery answers roughly 100 to 300 questions.

How to use it

Supported systems are Apple Silicon Macs (M1 or newer) on macOS 14 Sonoma or newer, and 64-bit Windows 10 or 11.

The full library is a 9 GB download, 19 GB installed. The smaller library leaves out Wikipedia and iFixit and is 1.3 GB, 3 GB installed. Free disk needed is the model size plus 5 GB, plus about 27 GB during the full library install (10 GB for the smaller one).

Setup takes 20 minutes to about 2.5 hours, of which about 5 minutes is clicking. It must finish while online:

1. Download the zip and unzip it.
2. On Mac, double-click Survival LLM. On Windows, double-click Survival LLM.bat in the extracted folder.
3. The app downloads the AI engine (built into the Mac app), the model and the library.

The binaries trip OS warnings. On Mac, approve the app under System Settings > Privacy & Security > "Open Anyway". On Windows, choose "More info" > "Run anyway". "Check for updates" installs new versions and keeps models, library and user files.

Limits

The page states that the AI can be wrong and that smaller models make more mistakes, which is why sources are always shown. Some library sources are licensed for non-commercial use only. Each article shows its own license. Version 0.3.2 fixed two problems: questions were being saved as memory notes, and some answers opened with a fabricated "Sources:" line listing search commands instead of articles. Linux is not supported.