Everyone knows 3-2-1 backups, but that "1 offsite copy" is the part that trips people up. Rather than pay for a storage subscription, why not enter a pact with a friend? You'll both grab your stuff from the cloud, store them on a big drive, and sync a copy to each other's big drives—fully encrypted and inaccessible.

This is the true story of how I walked a friend through this experiment and became their Fireproof Backup Buddy. Their most important stuff is on my NAS; my stuff is on a drive attached to a raspberry pi at their place. Flood, fire, ransomware, deeply stupid technical decision: we're both covered, and neither of us pays a grudging backup bill.

This talk will walk through setting up a system with:

• Kopia encrypting, de-duping, and versioning snapshots
• Encryption keys you have to keep safe
• Tailscale (or just Wireguard) for reliable remote access
• rclone keeping your Google stuff up to date (reality check for many friends)

Will I be able to restore a real file from my friend's computer, during the talk? Maybe! Probably. Could be fun.