Apocalorie.co is a survival web app built during Hackabull 2025, a 24-hour hackathon hosted at the University of South Florida (April 12–13, 2025). This project was developed collaboratively by our team. This fork exists to showcase my (@EthanDelCampo) individual contributions. The original repository is owned by @Renblas, my teammate during the event.
In a post-apocalyptic world, food, calories, and danger zones are critical for survival.
Our app helps users calculate their daily calorie needs, recommends forageable foods based on their location, tracks their food inventory, and shows danger zones on an interactive map.
In a post-apocalyptic world, survival would depend heavily on proper calorie intake and food management.
We wanted to create a tool that could help users stay alive by recommending how much they should eat, what they can forage nearby, and what areas to avoid — all automatically.
Plus, we wanted to learn new technologies and just have fun building something cool!
- JavaScript
- React.js – Frontend framework
- Node.js – Backend runtime
- Express.js – Backend server
- MongoDB – (Optional) Database for storing user food inventory
- CORS – For backend API handling
- Google Gemini API – For generating AI survival food suggestions
- OpenAI – For enhancing AI content generation
- Mapbox API – For displaying interactive danger maps
- dotenv – For managing environment variables
- fs – For server file system operations
- ngrok – For secure tunneling during development
- Calculates daily calorie needs based on height, weight, age, sex, activity level, and location.
- Recommends forageable survival foods using AI (Google Gemini API).
- Allows users to track their food inventory and monitor calorie intake.
- Displays danger zones on an interactive map powered by Mapbox.
- React.js for the frontend to make the web app fast and responsive.
- Node.js and Express.js for the backend to handle user data and API integrations.
- MongoDB (optional) to manage food inventories if deployed at scale.
- Integrated the Google Gemini API for smart food recommendations.
- Used the Mapbox API to dynamically show danger zones based on location data.
- It was our first hackathon ever, so a lot of the technologies and working as a team under pressure were completely new.
- Managing time effectively — there’s always more to build than the time available!
- Figuring out how to prioritize and focus on the most meaningful features within a strict 24-hour window.
- Balancing learning new things while still making sure we had a finished, working project.
- Building a working full-stack app in such a short amount of time.
- Successfully integrating multiple complex APIs like Google Gemini, OpenAI, and Mapbox.
- Designing a fun and functional survival tool.
- Most importantly: having so much fun and completing our first hackathon!
- How to work effectively and prioritize tasks within a 24-hour sprint.
- How to collaborate as a team under tight time pressure.
- How to integrate multiple APIs into a single full-stack application.
- How to quickly decide between nice-to-haves and must-haves.