I downloaded the original package from an ubuntu mirror with the following command:
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/p/perl/perl-base_5.18.2-2ubuntu1_amd64.deb
then for the install
sudo dpkg -i perl-base_5.18.2-2ubuntu1_amd64.deb
After that I could finally apt-get update without error. Some other commands are having issues because they reference modules that currently don't exist. I applied the same logic to the other perl modules by finding the ubuntu package that contains them.
The next package was doc-base but that depends on libuuid-perl, so complete the same steps as above but with this mirror instead:
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/libu/libuuid-perl/libuuid-perl_0.05-1_amd64.deb
Also, libyaml-tiny-perl
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/liby/libyaml-tiny-perl/libyaml-tiny-perl_1.56-1_all.deb
Then for doc-base:
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/d/doc-base/doc-base_0.10.5_all.deb
... dpkg -i all of these downloaded files.
As you start running programs and get errors such as
Can't locate Debian/AdduserCommon.pm in @INC (you may need to install the Debian::AdduserCommon module)
in my case, apt-file search the AdduserCommon.pm file and reinstall that package
If you find yourself apt-getting without errors you can execute apt-get --reinstall install *package name* instead of downloading the file the dpkg -i the package.
