Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Are You Apocalypse-Useful?
An anonymous reader writes: "Young people, when choosing a profession, are often told to 'do what you love.' That's why we have experts in such abstruse fields as medieval gymel. But let's talk hypotheticals: if there's a worldwide catastrophe in which civilization is interrupted, somebody specializing in gymel wouldn't provide much use to fellow survivors. In a post-apocalypse world, medical doctors would be useful, as would most scientists and engineers. The bad news for Slashdotters is that decades without computers would render computer science and related professions useless. What do you consider to be the most useful and mostly useless post-apocalypse professions? How long would it take for society to rebuild enough for your profession to be useful?"
What good would a medical doctor be without CAT,X-Ray,IRM, Ultrasound, antibiotics or vaccines?
Go homeopathic?
There is a cute song that addresses this question :
https://music.metafilter.com/2218/1000-AD-Sugar-Fix
via https://www.metafilter.com/72797/1000-AD
People can survive quite well without the care of physicians. Going without food is more difficult.
Electrical Engineering... for making crystal set radios
This is why I practise my procreation skills every day. I could be the last man on Earth.
Computer scientists would still be useful, just not in the same ways. Algorithms are carried out by people, too, not just computers.
At least it will be cool for a big EPM to take out your student loans
The bad news for Slashdotters is that decades without computers would render computer science and related professions useless.
Says who? Are we talking about a magical scenario where all technology just stops working?
There is a massive cache of existing technology which can be repurposed to rebuild society. Whos gonna do it if not Slasdotters?
We can individually maintain libraries billions of times larger than that of ancient alexandria and provide that wealth of knowledge to others at the cost of suns rays.
I have a neighbour who is a weaver. She most certainly has skills worth sharing. The post-apocalyptic world would also need blacksmiths, potters, carpenters, farmers and so on. Not to mention someone capable of swinging a sword and lopping the heads off marauders intent on dragging off the young women and torching the village. The challenge is that scientists and engineers do not necessarily have the skills most critically required in the first decade or two of a new civilization, but their knowledge is critical to helping a society advance rapidly later. Hence, we'll need monks well versed in the scriptures of science.
I will still be use full for 30 years or so I am renaissance man I can build walls , basic equipment , repair equipment , shoot teach swordplay , unarmed combat , hunting and dressing and a lot of other skills that will suddenly become important again.
It's that it doesn't matter if you're useful, you're still vulnerable to getting shot in the face by that douche bag who just happened to have a double-barreled shotgun and ammo lying around. However, my skills are probably not invaluable for the post apocalyptic society, but useful: I know how to get people to do what I want. i.e. I'll probably survive until somebody crazy with a weapon stumbles into me and shots me on sight.
Hams often build communications equipment fro scratch. Building a generator with enough juice is also not that hard. Especially given there would be loads of electronics around, cobbling bits and pieces together would be extremely useful.
Communication is key!
I'm an Apocalypse speculator. You might think I'd be at the bottom of the list; but we have been in business since ancient times. We're probably in the top 5 oldest professions. The people who run Slashdot are whoring out to something here, so apparently they will do well also.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
A nineteenth-century schoolbook addresses this question. Post-apocalyptic society might not be too different from that of a "colony." Farmers, millers, carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, shoemakers, doctors, school-masters make the cut; barbers, just barely; silversmiths, soldiers, dancing-masters, lawyers, politicians, and "gentlemen" do not.
[note.â"Mr. Barlow one day invented a play for his children, on purpose to show them what kind of persons and professions are the most useful in society, and particularly in a new settlement. The following is the conversation which took place between himself and his children.]
Mr. Barlow. Come, my boys, I have a new play for you. I will be the founder of a colony; and you shall be people of +different trades and professions, coming to offer yourselves to go with me. What are you, Arthur?
Arthur. I am a farmer, sir.
Mr. Barlow. Very well. Farming is the chief thing we have to depend upon. The farmer puts the seed into the earth, and takes care of it when it is grown to ripe corn. Without the farmer, we should have no bread. But you must work very +diligently; there will be trees to cut down, and roots to dig out, and a great deal of hard labor.
Arthur. I shall be ready to do my part.
Mr. Barlow. Well, then I shall take you +willingly, and as many more such good fellows as I can find. We shall have land enough, and you may go to work as soon as you please. Now for the next.
James. I am a miller, sir.
Mr. Barlow. A very useful trade! Our corn must be ground, or it will do us but little good. But what must we do for a mill, my friend?
James. I suppose we must make one, sir.
Mr. Barlow. Then we must take a mill-wright with us, and carry mill-stones. Who is next?
Charles. I am a carpenter, sir.
Mr. Barlow. The most +necessary man that could offer. We shall find you work enough, never fear. There will be houses to build, fences to make, and chairs and tables beside. But all our timber is growing; we shall have hard work to fell it, to saw boards and planks, and to frame and raise buildings. Can you help in this?
Charles. I will do my best, sir.
Mr. Barlow. Then I engage you, but I advise you to bring two or three able +assistants along with you. William. I am a blacksmith.
Mr. Barlow. An +excellent companion for the carpenter. We can not do without cither of you. You must bring your great bellows, +anvil, and +vise, and we will set up a forge for you, as soon as we arrive. By the by, we shall want a mason for that.
Edward. I am one, sir.
Mr. Barlow. Though we may live in log-houses at first, we shall want brick-work, or stone-work, for +chimneys, +hearths, and ovens, so there will be employment for a mason. Can you make bricks, and burn lime?
Edward. I will try what I can do, sir.
Mr. Barlow. No man can do more. I engage you, Who comes next?
Francis. I am a +shoe-maker, sir.
Mr. Barlow. Shoes we can not well do without, but I fear we shall get no +leather.
Francis. But I can dress skins, sir.
Mr. Barlow. Can you? Then you are a useful fellow. I will have you, though I give you double wages.
George. I am a tailor, sir.
Mr. Barlow. We must not go naked; so there will be work for a tailor. But you are not above mending, I hope, for we must not mind wearing +patched clothes, while we work in the woods.
George. I am not, sir.
Mr. Barlow. Then I engage you, too.
Henry. I am a silversmith, sir.
Mr. Barlow. Then, my friend, you can not go to a worse place than a new colony to set up your trade in.
Henry. But I understand clock and watch making, too.
Mr. Barlow. We shall want to know how the time goes, but we can not afford to employ you. At present, I advise you to stay where you are.
Jasper. I am a barber and hair-dresser.
Mr. Barlow. What can we do with you? If you will shave our men's rough beards once a week, and crop their hairs once a quarter, and be content to help the carpenter the re
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Is it strange that I've had dreams and thoughts about myself surviving in a post-apocalyptic world? I was born in the 70's, and this started well before I'd seen any film of the like, or heard the term. I'd almost qualify it as a fantasy, only because it's stayed with me through adulthood to the point where I think about it today. I don't have a 'gameplan' for such a scenario, and I'm not a "doomsday prepper", as they're supposedly called, but the thought of having to survive on my own, protect my family from others, and thrive in a world with no society has been in the back of my mind, and continues to be, since I was a kid.
Regardless, I would probably be very poor at this life. While I know human nature and it's easy to see the most obvious paths for others in this scenario, my pre-planned flight on foot to the north would probably meet a frightening and depressing end for me or my family.
The most important people in any survival situation are those who can secure or create the 5 C's of survival Cutting Tools, Combustion, Cover, Container, and Cordage. The hard part for many will be to start basic and rebuild the tech tree to more advanced tech. You will need to start with a camp fire then move up to a kiln then on up to a forge to make steel. Engineers may seem practical in a post-apocalypse situation but many engineers would also find their skills useless since the tech tree to apply their skill set may be disrupted or none existent. But those who can function at the most basic level will probably make it. I think you would find that the aboriginal people of Papua New Guinea are not particularly impacted if the global communication network goes down or the power grid stops functioning.
I'm in corpse disposal, so yeah, they'll probably be work for me after the end.
Knowing how to shoot and shoot well would be an invaluable skill.
there is no electricity. See? No magic involved. And not far-fetched, either.
On topic: coders usually are good at solving problems -- given a completely different (off topic, so to say) set of problems might make a difference, but skills are skills.
Although my main profession is software, I also do circuit design, construction, metalworking, carpentry and most of the other building trades
I find that even though the specifics are different, the fundamental skill is the same..problem solving
Software, circuit design, carpentry or any of the other disciplines seem more similar than different
The steps are the same..clearly identify the problem, look at the tools and materials that are available, then find a solution using what you have to work with
Lack of exertion makes for tender vitals. I.e., useful as food.
My profession was useful long before modern civilization took shape, and shall continue to be useful until Heat Death of the Universe or our extinction, whichever happens first.
OTOH, good luck forging that kingly sword of awesome, made of pure titanium, without modern technology.
Ham radio, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Math, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering. Anyone with these skills has what it takes to improvise. By the way it's best to have all or most of the skills. Bring your own tools.
Concrete can be made out of sea shells. Bricks out of grass and mud. Rope, traps, and netting for food. Boil see water for salt. Find copper and tin for bronze. Move quickly into the Iron age. Boilers and Dams for Energy.
You like to eat and have fire, right? Sure, something as esoteric as a "particle physics research engineer" wont help in this 'world', but science is in everyday life and helps keep people alive.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Robert A. Heinlein
I work with alternative/renewable energy sources (solar, wind, etc). though eventually battery banks will die, i've been working on making my own batteries as well. I live entirely off grid, coming into town irregularly for beer (being honest here, need to start distilling). I run a constantly online freenet node on open wifi, several neighbors connect through it, and it's powered entirely by solar at the moment. though in an apocalypse the internet would not be useful i maintain a modest database of survival guides and random useful information relevant to the surrounding area (desert, so rainwater catching/purifying, low moisture gardening, and electrical generation/storing manuals and the like). keeping this information open and available to anyone who can access it in the area, which is an entirely off grid area (no lines out here...) i'm hoping that in an apocalyptic situation we'd all do rather well :)
being a crazy person is astonishingly apocalypse-useful ;P
Dragon-Slayer
Table-ized A.I.
Sadly survivors with guns will dominate the scenery. Anyone who can farm skills will be important but dominated by unskilled morons.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Yes . As cattle.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Pace the implication of the article, medieval musicians and other low-tech entertainers would likely be in high demand.
If electronic technology magically stops working (somehow), then judging by the amount of purchased and pirated music today, one of the most secure professions would probably be musician. And if technology is low, medieval music (or some synthesis of it and modern forms like jazz) would be the go-to.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Pre WWII society thrived without high-tech electronics. Contruction was still possible. Transportation, communication, production of safe food and clean water were possible, etc. Even advanced products can be made without computers - machines USED to be controlled by skilled blue-collar middle-class workers (who earned wages good enough for a family to live on just one person's paycheck). Given that the KNOWLEDGE of everything post-WWII would likely not be lost in even the most-severe calamity, all you need is a generation of people who can do things manually to re-bootstrap and then society is back on its feet. As long as you do not let government get in the way with mountains of regulations that were not there the first time, the rise of high-tech the second time should be MUCH faster and easier. Therefore, what you need are:
1. Engineers (most-importantly: mechanical engineers, but also electrical and hydraulic)
2. Machinists, lathe operators, etc
3. Draftsmen (the pencil, T-Square and triangle sort)
Interestingly, geeky high-tech folks are perfectly capable of learning all these skills now as a hobby; If you have setup and run your own CNC milling machine, for example, you have probably already learned many of the things you'd need to know to run a milling machine manually. As a general rule, it's a good idea for younger people to get skills in more than one area now given that people have long careers and often end-up changind fields. Were I young and in college now, I'd probably double-major in something like EE and ME (two possible career options AND a good basis for a robotics career)
In fact, the knowledge to be able to build a computer from scratch, even a simple one, would be incredibly useful for many reasons, including survival.
Electricians will be incredibly useful too since they will be able to give us light, and in turn security, for whatever bases may be built to survive in, be it anti-zombie base or anti-crazyfucks base. (the generic raiders in games like fallout or films like mad max)
Motors would be useful especially to allow for a lot of automation, which could aid and save time in things such as farming.
The ability to repair and work with medical devices would also save lives, important in such situations as people would be in smaller groups, most likely, so keeping as many people alive as possible for the sake of the species would be important.
Archival of the past would be incredibly handy for those that actually survive.
Even etching out the entirety of wikipedia on to stone plates sealed in resin would be useful.
Adding the image of a lens with text getting progressively smaller would allow the ability to encode even smaller data to said stone plates. A species smart enough to understand that will almost certainly be able to use the information on it.
Said information would also need to be translated to some simplistic language that would be easily decoded from an "alien" perspective.
If they don't survive and something else found it however many years later, it will be helpful for them at least.
These are just a few I can think of at the moment from major areas.
Quite a few technical areas can be used in an apocalyptic scenario. Way more than I have listed. We aren't going to suddenly end up like Fallout universe unless a nuclear war actually does happen, which is unlikely. The biggest craptastrophe that is likely to happen any time soon is Yellowstone erupting and wrecking half of America. (if that even happens)
Either that or some larger rock than the one that exploded at Tunguska and Russia just the other year there. Or a cluster. That'd be more likely, and considerably worse for us since we'd be unable to do a thing about it other than hide from the nuclear-levels of energy released. At least it won't pollute the planet with much since at best it will fuse to very low unstable elements that will die quickly.
Still, it isn't a bad thing to get knowledgeable about many manual tasks, even entry level.
Which, it turns out, has very little to do with actual computers.
The intellectual skills involved in CS could, with not much difficulty, be turned to other kinds of problem solving such as operations research. Seriously, you're going to leave questions like how to most efficiently distribute scarce resources such as food to someone with a *business* degree? As a computer scientist, I'd create a model of the underlying problem, develop alternative algorithms, then show how those algorithms and model apply the real world problem. I use computer science every time I come home from grocery shopping. As I remove items from the bags I stage them by where they are eventually going to go. Why? Because efficient sorting algorithms eliminate lots of entropy early on. Consequently I only open my refrigerator *once*.
Computer science is essentially about figuring out the resources needed to accomplish things. If you want to figure out how much fodder it would take to move your draft animal powered army over a certain distance, you *could* consult a historian who specialized in the logistics of pre-mechanized warfare who'd tell you how Viscount Howe did it in the New Jersey Campaign of 1776-1777. Or you could find some CS graduate who pulled at least a "B" in algorithms to figure it out for you.
As for experts in gymel -- a technique for singing polyphony with one voice -- it's worth considering that the technique was developed in a period of human history that would be considered apocalyptically awful by modern standards. Even when times are violent, disordered, and desperately poor people still need art and music, and if we're stipulating that apocalyptic == "no computers", that means no iPods either. So it seems quite plausible to me that experts in gymel might find their services *more* in demand in a post-apocalyptic world.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I make a great serf. They are always in demand, by feudal lords and capitalists.
I recently took Blacksmithing I and II at Tillers International for this *exact* reason. As a Network Architect, I'm the alpha geek for data transport and a Blacksmith is the alpha geek for a world gone straight to hell.
we'll really learn to 'believe' in our good spirits & connection to one another by nature, time space & circumstance ... thanks moms
I was lucky enough I guess to have paid my way through school by working as a carpenter. I earned my degree in Comp Sci while working with my hands. Long story short, I can still build a structure without the use of power tools so I believe I would be exceptionally useful.
Put the devs to work using various sorting algorithms to sort the plunder of canned goods pillaged from peoples pantries.
How exactly would scientist be useful in an apocalyptic world?
The most useful profession would be Builders and Farmers, followed by Doctors. The primary needs for shelter and food outweigh the needs for medicines.
That said, like many here, I'm a PC tech, so I would pretty much be jobless at that point.
I have studied this extensively, even deep studies of middle ages Black Death and collapse of civilizations. In this senario you need the same skills as a cannibal if you are to survive the first few months. Reason is very few other animals in cities, and in the country very few animals survive more that a few weeks without fodder and salt. All edible plants will be gone in days and probably wasted by inexperience. Fire making skills are essential.
Someone who can produce antibiotics would be absolutely amazingly valuable. Assuming that the fall of civilisation wasn't due to the evolution of broad band antibiotic resistance.
Its not hard to do; on the documentary 'Sliders' one guy made an antibiotic just out of mouldy bread and saved a civilisation.
But yeah, antibiotics is what makes modern civilisation possible, enhances population growth rate, increases productivity etc etc etc and without them we would be fucked.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I've been a dozen things in my life, including parent, carpenter, ambulance attendant, psychiatric aid, short order cook, martial arts instructor, hospice worker, and cyborg designer. (Had to pay for college on my own, and I was very broke.)
I figure I'd be useful from the moment the zombies showed up until my village ruled the world.
Some studies like medieval gymel are barely useful now. Can you even make a living at that now?
Others like blacksmithing are nothing more than entertainment now but would be highly useful in a collapse.
I don't think you can discount computer scientists though. Not counting my hobbies, my primary job as
a computer programmer is repairing computers, fixing systems, and making stuff work.
If we did suffer a total collapse, the problem solving and improvising skills used daily by computer
programmers not to mention the broad knowledge base could prove to be useful.
Most computer programmers I know are also geeks so they tend to dabble in stuff like bee keeping,
appliance repair, blacksmithing, etc... which would also prove to be very useful.
I bet raping and pillaging acumen would make a killing.
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
What might be useful would depend on how bad the catastrophe is. If its something like the TV show "Revolution" where electricity magically stops working, different people would be useful vs a situation where electricity is still available.
"In a post-apocalypse world, medical doctors would be useful..."
Not so much these days as doctors rely on drugs, lab tests and advanced medical equipment that would not be available. Few doctors will be able to treat infections diseases, cancer, and most other forms of illness. At best they can treat cuts,and simple broken bones if it does need medical implants (bone-screws).
"As a computer scientist, I'd create a model of the underlying problem"
You're hopeless and delusional if you think that is going to be useful.
" If you want to figure out how much fodder it would take to move your draft animal powered army over a certain distance"
LOL! Yeah, everyone one in the burbs and cities keeps a draft animal. You'll be in high demand come the Apocalypse!
The Zombie, as an archetype, is representative of the proletariat; much like the vampire is representative of the bourgeoisie. We are being trained to fear the uniform mass acting in concert. Though fast zombies are a threat that not even Australian parliamentarians can comprehend (check Hansards). And extreme measures, outside of civil society, need to be taken to protect from zombies. Extreme measures like small armed bands of privileged jerks shooting people in the head. In the head.
So "are you useful in an apocalypse" is basically a way of asking, "Will you implement fascism when the working class rise."
If it is a true apocalyptic scenario, 99% of us will be dead anyway, so my plan is to not prepare at all. It's worth making preparations for scenarios that are more realistic, like bottles of water in case the water gets cut off after an earthquake, or food for a few days when transportation is interrupted. Those kinds of things happen in real life.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
n/t
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Frankly, as a sysadmin, it would take quite some time for my profession to be useful. However, I am not solely defined by my profession. My hobbies, such as firearms, cooking, woodworking, dabbling in a little gardening and other low tech stuff would end up much more useful, after the apocalypse. I actually enjoy unplugging and doing something that doesn't require a computer now and then.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
A huge portion of engineers rely on computers in their work. When 90% of everything in the world has electronics in it, you can imagine where the majority of our engineering talent lies nowadays. Ignoring that, I'd expect most CS majors to be about as useful as an engineer since they share a similar mindset. I agree that surgeons would still be useful, though my disclaimer is that I'm currently in a surgical residency. Most scientists would be much less useful, but those that practice science at home and or really any amateur scientist would have skills that would be useful. I suspect though that the mindset might end up becoming more important. A piece of paper saying you are a doctor or an engineer may be less useful when someone with no formal training provides better results in an environment unfamiliar to you both.
Even the ancient Greeks had those. Telling time is a relevant pursuit for any engineer in a post "apocalypse" world (this is not 10-30 km asteroid impact we are talking about). Farming and sometimes even fishing and hunting are dependent of it. Resource measurement, pooling and allocation are a fundamental job for a society trying to accomplish something together. Mechanical control systems would be necessary for efficiency everywhere. So yes, the remaining computer scientists might have more work than ever before, assuming a fictional "Revolution"-style "apocalypse", of course.
Actual apocalypses don't tend to leave much people left to talk about it. Which is in fact, the first rule of any actual apocalypse.
The moment folk start arguing over who owns what, that's when there'll be lawyers. I don't imagine it'll take long.
"...decades without computers would render computer science and related professions useless."
The idea of graph theory is perfect for building social systems, that withstand breakdown.
The idea for example not to over centralize government for example to avoid disastrous consequences.
We know from graph theory nodes with too many edges are suspect and reveal design weaknesses in computer networks.
The same happens in human social/governing systems. Kings, Queens or many forms of government that are too centralized results in war, death and darkness.
One thing to do after the apocalypse is pick up that graph theory and get to work in building a highly distributed, non centralized society.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Are you forgetting that barbers were surgeons for hundreds of years as they were the only ones who could handle fine sharp instruments? Not saying they were ideal but they did it when no one else would such as taking off gangrene limbs.
I feel comfortable with an impending apocalypse. I know how to keep things working, how to fix them when they break, and how to get people numb enough to extract teeth without causing much discomfort. Yup, I'm good.
Buildings need to be built and fixed.
That never changes.
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
I'm a published poet.. ::BANG::
The hipsters we'll keep around for the heavy lifting as long as they're useful.
I transitioned from Software Engineer to RN. Med-Surg, then ER. Licensed. Also US Army veteran, so doubly useful. My wife is a pastry chef (baker) - and an amateur brewer -- as well as an Army veteran too (thats where we met) So if the worst happens, we will be well positioned to help.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
This is a Hollywood-type confusion, very frequent.
A catastrophic event, as the one clearly meant in the summary, is one where lots of people die, technology is damaged (ie, electric infrastructure is busted, telecomm stops working, etc.) and life as we know it is no more, but life goes on.
Apocalypse is an event of biblical origin (apocalypse is the last book of the Bible, meaning "revelation"), and it explains the end of the world, that is, the end of life as we know it, and the world as we know it, and humans in general as we know them. Apocalypse will be a time when the dead will live again, with different qualities, and Earth will be renewed.
So talking of "life after apocalypse" is a confusion of terms. It would be a lot more proper to talk of "life after a catastrophic event".
It usually churns my stomach -as a Christian- to watch movies like 2012, where we have an "apocalypse" (catastrophic event falsely linked to the biblical event) just to find out that now we have a broken up, backwards world, ruled by some advantageous morons, and inhabited by egotistical ciizens. My, what a world!
To keep things clear, the main event of the biblical apocalypse is the second coming of Jesus Christ, to renew everything and rule an eternal life of complete happiness. And, if you are not christian, or believer, if you are a person (a lot of them here on /.) who mock on religion, judging that it is a lie, or a loss of time, or such opinions, at least accept the "apocalypse" as a cultural-literary event, described in the most reproduced book in history.
Apocalypse will invove a catastrophic event, no doubt, but things afterward will be a lot different.
Although I think the Ancient Aliens will protect us from the apocalypse. Or until we elect the next Republican president.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Would be invaluable!
I know how to make beer...
Are you forgetting that barbers were surgeons for hundreds of years as they were the only ones who could handle fine sharp instruments? Not saying they were ideal but they did it when no one else would such as taking off gangrene limbs.
You mean we can look forward to this again? Gee, I can hardly wait!
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Checkmate, suckers.
Perhaps if you all show enough deference, I'll take you with me to the top.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
If the effect is to kill a large proportion of the population, then the clothes left behind will mostly last forever, so there will be no need for new clothes. Actually the number of clothes that most of us have is FAR more than we will need for the rest of our life, so it's dubious that there will be much of a need for it, unlike food production, which will need to be restarted quite soon.
In either a sudden collapse, or gradual decay, much will be lost. Let me remind you that when the Roman civilization decayed, technologies as simple as the making of cement were lost.
Cement.
Not exactly what we'd consider "high tech." It demonstrates just how fragile our scientific advancements are. They can be wiped out by a few generations of relative illiteracy for the great mass of survivors. In three generations, electric lights are a distant legend and those ubiquitous round copper disks find their most frequent use as quick, easily made arrowheads.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Look, the post-apoclyptic world is going to need the equivalent of "peons" to work under a feudal lord, and who better to be that under trodden class than the Gymelists?
Indeed, they would be the new upper-crust. For under them, would sit the people really lacking in skill - the woman's studies or journalism majors. Those guys can't even sing to amuse the king.
The CS people would be fine because of the extensive study of primitive weapons through various anime, and years of working with computers having toughened them into being the ruthless bastards the new world requires in leaders.
The only question would be which faction prevails in the new lands - the Emacsamuri, or the Vimerpial Force.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Beekeeper, distiller, brewer, weaver, apothecary, farrier, metal worker, farmer and lots of other occupations in the same line. Without technology or reliable power all of this will become more critical and more labor intensive requiring above average skills.
Computer programming is 70% troubleshooting, 20% problem solving, 8% pure logic, and 2% typing. I'd think troubleshooting and problem solving would be VERY useful. Of course, I'm thinking of programmers who are actually good at what their doing, not copy-paste people.
Butane torch (or methane/methanol from brewing), or a small sealed container in a wood oven at about 200F for a short time would heat the solder to the melting point. Sure, 200F is a ways away from the fire of a hot oven, but it's achievable. To re-solder the pieces, rosin from pine + tin/lead/silver from metal work (or saved from desoldering work) and the same hot oven box or a torch and a heat sink like a solder iron tip or screw driver. Heat tip, touch pad, repeat. BGA parts would be a beast, but who's going to need many of them?
I full time work as a professional...who cares, I'm a good shot with a gun.
Lets just see how well those post-apocalyptic bands of cannibals can find their way between supply caches without someone who knows how to perform an A* search!!
I stole this Sig
Master Blaster!
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
...When Bessemer went to push them into the ladle, he found that they were steel shells: the hot air alone had converted the outsides of the iron pieces to steel. This crucial discovery led him to completely redesign his furnace so that it would force high-pressure air through the molten iron using special air pumps. Intuitively this would seem to be folly because it would cool the iron. Instead, the oxygen in the forced air ignited silicon and carbon impurities in the iron, starting a positive feedback loop. As the iron became hotter, more impurities burned off, making the iron even hotter and burning off more impurities, producing a batch of hotter, purer, molten iron, which converts to steel more easily....He realised that the technical problem was due to impurities in the iron and concluded that the solution lay in knowing when to turn off the flow of air in his process so that the impurities were burned off but just the right amount of carbon remained. However, despite spending tens of thousands of pounds on experiments, he could not find the answer.[7] Certain grades of steel are sensitive to the 78% nitrogen which was part of the air blast passing through the steel.
I don't know precise formulas for 19th century steelmaking, but I know right where to look in a library. There's was a PhD in the family for metallurgical engineering. Now materials science. I'd feed myself, won't freeze to death.
I plan on being a zombie. I plan on leading the zombies. We are talking zombie apocalypse, right?
Slashdotters tend to have vaguely higher intelligence, judging by their impeccable skill at moderating posts and speed of typing "frist post". Completely ignoring science as any good zombie would, I deduce that their brains must be tastier and more wholesomely satisfying to my soon-to-be-acquired tastes for human brains.
Nobody asked which side I'd be on after the apocalypse. I plan on being on the winning side. Now, go make me a sammich... with your ears as bread.
You're question seems to come down to: What if the world changed so that a specific skillset I have in mind becomes invaluable? Well that is easy: The skillset you have in mind becomes invaluable. The real question becomes: Why would the world change towards that specific skillset and not to one of countless other skillsets? If an apocolypse does not pose some real serious challenges to our known skills, would we still recognize it as the apocolypse?
Although I am an IT professional, I also make shoes. Comes the revolution, my collection of leather will be worth more than gold IMHO.
Like this guy.
The ability to think logically and to analyze and solve problems would be highly useful.
I'd be pretty useless post-apocalypse, outside of teaching professions (PhD in physics, working as a data scientist, very dependent on computers), but my wife, despite working in IT for a decade, currently works as a production weaver, is an expert knitter, can work a letterpress (and does her own type-setting), knows how to can and makes soap, candles and bread from scratch. Even assuming a Revolution-style apocalypse (no electricity whatsoever), she's got enough useful skills to float the both of us, easy.
Read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" by Walter M. Miller for a cautionary tale about the value of scientists and engineers post-apocalypse. In this book, "simpleton" mobs hunt down and kill anyone of learning as they are blamed for developing the technology that enabled the nuclear holocaust of WWIII.
Myself, I plan to play dumb and leverage my homebrewing talent to appease the simpleton mobs.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
A diagnostic mind would be the best skill to have and be useful to society Both post and pre Apocalypse.Troubleshooting cars, computers, electronics, structures, simple machines, repairing other tools... Without the internet or manuals, being able to figure systems out and use of correct tools in diagnosis and repair.
Because you simply won't be able to get new shit in such abundance, whatever world you think we are heading into.
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What's all this stuff I read about you trolling people here with sockpuppet fake accounts you made to do so and getting caught?
The problem is not that a post-apocalyptic society would fall to where we were at, say, the beginning of the 1800s. The problem is we'd probably back to where we were in the early Iron Age. Too many trades that could be useful, like carriage-making, coopering, making weapons from wood (bows, arrows, spears, etc.), blacksmithing, etc. have lost knowledge that used to be handed down from master to apprentice, but has now all but disappeared from the world.
All of that knowledge and skill would take time to re-develop. Sure, we'd have a head start as the first generation or so would remember that such knowledge and techniques once existed, and there'd be lots of scrap metal and such that could serve as raw materials. But the ability to build high-quality wagons, carriages, etc. from wood, in quantities large enough to be useful to a re-developing society, would take so long to re-develop it's not certain the society would last long enough to achieve it.
Not to mention farming as it was done by hand tools "back in the day" has essentially gone out the window in place of large-scale agriculture based on equipment and chemicals (fuel, fertilizer) that the society would lack. And the kind of farming that would likely be practiced at first by post-apocalypticals would not feed a very large population. As far as hunting animals goes, anything on four legs that could be digested by humans would probably be dead within weeks or months. Hunting is not the answer.
I'd say the first skill that would be in great need would be woodworking with hand tools likely to be available to post-apocalypticals. The second would be blacksmithing.
from Lucifer's Hammer. It opens ones eyes when first reading it...
I guess I'm just lucky I have diverse skills. Sure I work in IT security and love to code and all things computer related, but I also know how to hunt and fish and various other stone age level survival skills.
Way back in the dark ages when I was in high school (the 70s) we had a project to select the people required to colonize another planet. I argued intensely with my group about a fundamental error they were making. They chose mostly science and engineering types. Not one farmer was included. A modern farmer doesn't just stick seeds in the ground and ride around in a tractor. He also analyzes the soil to know what should be added for a healthy crop along with a lot of other "sciency" things. On another planet, that is especially important.
When it came time to present our choices to the class, I immediately said that our group would be dead within a year due to starvation. Surprisingly, none of the other groups bothered to include a farming expert.
Also, I argued that every essential skill had to be duplicated. You didn't want to have just one medical doctor because shit happens.
-- Will program for bandwidth
No modern "career job" is useful after an Apocalypse. If you are involved in any kind of competitive (free market) industry, you are using the infrastructure to its best advantage. "Modern" farming knows little to nothing about how to farm without fuel or pesticides. Similarly, modern medicine isn't about basic hygiene or simple infection control.
If you want to be useful after an Apocalypse, take up survivalism as a hobby, learn to grow your own food, make your own tools, including weapons for hunting / defense, and do construction without power tools. But, don't think you can make a living in the real world with these skills, unless you are a promoting your hobby and selling it as a service to others - which takes: modern technology to effectively do your advertising and customer handling, competitively.
Also, the dominant early Apocalypse survivors will be all about Max Max style scavenging of whatever is leftover, you won't get down to the true basic skills until the stores are picked clean and structures have fallen to rubble - and the "natural world" may not resemble anything familiar... adaptability is key.
42
Could this question be any more vague? "Society interrupted" and "no more computers" is the total of the description of our situation? How is society interrupted, did we forget spoken language, or did Facebook go down for a week? What does "no more computers" even MEAN? Does it mean they all evaporated? Does electricity (like what keeps your damn heart beating) no longer exist? Did an EMP destroy all the transistors meaning we just need to make more?
If the technology suddenly poofed or broke (massive EMP, etc), fine, fix or replace them it. I think you'll find slashdot users to be invaluable during a global technology rebuild. Did humanity simply have all of their knowledge of technology erased from their minds? If that's the case, those doctors are going to be pretty useless as well seeing as 99% of medicin was discovered thanks to some sort of technology. Or is the "electricity no longer exists" BS scenerio where nobody's heart would be beating anymore, rendering the rest of you just as "useful" as the slashdot community?
This question is just stupid.
I write software, as I have been doing for many decades. However, I can rebuild a car engine, I know electronics including building a radio from scratch, I can frame a house, build weapons from scratch, I know chemistry, cook, sew, farm, and any number of other useful things.
It's not about whatever skill you currently possess. It's about intelligence.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Sysadmin by trade.
I make booze and siege engines, sometimes at the same time, and will happily accept induction into your band of raiders, Mr. Warlord. Farming and rebuilding the same society that led us to the apocalypse is for bitches, sir. Now let's hurl some smartcars into that peaceful settlement.
The bad news for Slashdotters is that decades without computers would render computer science and related professions useless.
The world will need ditch diggers too. Strong backs will always be needed unless there is a food crisis. Everyone can contribute SOMETHING, even the very young and very old. Of course it depends a lot on the apocalypse.
Without chemicals and modern equipment most industrial farmers at least would starve.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
This is a silly scenario. The real question should be, what is necessary to prevent such an apocalypse?
Anyway, even in an apocalypse, you should have historians and philosophers and religious people. Otherwise you'll just repeat what made the apocalypse happen.
post apocalypse, the most important profession is going to be farmer. People got to eat. Skilled trades will be in demand, post apocalypse as before: carpenters, bricklayers and blacksmiths, for example. People need shelter and safety. After that, scientists or engineers who can make things happen, build things, fix things...
Why would you need a teacher for the next generation when there aren't any women around to need a hairdresser?
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Yeah, I'm screwed.
For certain kinds of apocalypse, professional zombies will have the advantage over lawyers and computer programmers by being superbly capable of devouring all that now-useless human flesh. Remember, the brain is the best part! That's about the only thing my local ivy league university teaches in its freshman Introduction to Zombieism, but it's a new department.
A soldier and a leader (not some run-of-the mill politician) can mean the difference between a successful recolonization attempt and a mini-"civil war" between farmers, engineers/builders, and doctors/faction infighting/dictatorial regimes.
I'm a historian, I'll be there to say ÂWe told you capitalism is shitÂ
Submitter has read too many bad books.
Remember, in stories, the world works the way the author needs it to work for dramatic purposes, not necessarily the way that it most likely would in reality.
The typical Mad Max scenario is unlikely. Just like SciFi authors thought we'd have flying cars and take our vacations on the moon, but didn't forsee the Internet and mobile phones, the real scenario will very likely be quite different from the movies you've seen.
Which basically means: Who the fuck knows which skills will be useful and which ones won't? Maybe computers will be worthless and shooting is important. But maybe supply of ammunition runs out a lot faster than electricity which we increasingly generate decentralized with solar and wind farms.
Maybe something entirely unexpected turns out to be the most important skill to have.
Also: Looking at history, civilization-destroying catastrophies are incredibly rare. Most civilizations enter a phase of decline and slowly fade away.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This book by John Ringo does a pretty decent take on it.
In a post-apocalypse world, medical doctors would be useful, as would most scientists and engineers
You're thinking of a weenie little apocalypse. The word kind of implies something a bit bigger.
A doctor, and engineer and a scientist are no use in a world that can no longer produce drugs or scalpels, construction materials or lab equipment.
Post apocalypse useful skills would be bivouac building, stone toolmaking, farming and animal handling. Rope-making from vegetable fibres and tannery would come in handy, and the single most useful skill in the world would be making a fire without a match.
But no engineer can build a combustion engine from magnetite sand, and no doctor can pin together a fractured bone with their bare hands.
Barbers were surgeons when getting surgery had a higher death rate than not getting surgery.
I would have to say that doctors would be on the low end of the list of usefulness. They mostly prescribe drugs that are useless and only a surgeon would be handy to have around. On the other hand, one who is very knowledgeable about herbal medicines and such would be much better. These meds work, but you have to know what they are and how to use them. People who work in wood, metal and gardening would be high on the list. Pretty much anyone with a manufacturing skill. Service workers and that kind of knowledge would be useless. Teachers of these skills would be priceless. Hell, they are now.
Anonymous Coward- since I hate having to sign in every freaking time.
You know the joke about the brothers so poor that only one of them could go to school each day because they just had one pair of shoes between them? Well, I was almost there.
I grew up learning how to fish and hunt because that supplemented the Spam and the potatoes. You're going to think I'm pulling your leg, but my first rifle was hand carved. The action was salvaged from a 40 year old rusty rifle whose stock had rotted away on account on being kept in my grandfather's leaky shed. It took days to clean it, carve the new stock, and rig a trigger because the original one had rusted away. So, in the Apocalypse I can probably fix most firearms.
My first job was in construction, building hotels down in the Florida Keys. I suppose that I could use that skill in the Zombie Apocalypse building barricades, and eventually, houses. I was only twelve and had to say, "I'm with my dad," if anyone from child services came by.
I worked on a fishing boat for a year. Remember that I used to feel bad about all the stuff we tossed back. My neighbor had a boat and he'd pay me $5 for the day. Eight hours of work for $5. Seemed like a fortune back then. So I know how to operate a boat and how to catch most anything. I can cook it up too.
I worked in a warehouse when I was 15. I learned how to drive the forklift (but no one could know). This place made spear guns and other diving gear. Thirty years later and I still know how to make a spear gun from some rubber tubing, some piping, steel rod, and a hack saw.
Government sent me on vacation for a few years. There's this joke about a southern gal who goes to the army and aces the marksman and combat drills. Yeah, that was me too. I suppose in an apocalypse I could use those skills to make an SOS ration at least somewhat palatable.
The rest was just gravy. Went to school to learn mathematics and computers. Got a job writing software for a company in Boca Raton. There were a bunch of ham radio folks there and somehow they snookered me into getting licensed. So I can operate a radio and am reasonably proficient in Horse Code.. or something like that. Maybe in the ZA that will be useful. I can also fix old CRTs but there's not many of those around any more.
And not just on a range. Open fire is no problem.
I think in the event of total collapse, enough paper books would exist and enough nerds will be around to read then, and make use of them to get back to where we are. Or some reasonable faximile.
So it's less about chosen profession, and more about hobbies. What a paradox.
You know, like all those people that nerd out on steam engines. They could prove useful, no?
You get the idea.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
The challenge is that scientists and engineers do not necessarily have the skills most critically required in the first decade or two of a new civilization
Not true. Many of the oldest trades no longer exist so you need someone to develop the techniques and skills again. As a physicist I've never made a steam engine or a large scale electrical generator but I know the basic principles behind them and given time could get one working or figure out how to repair one which breaks. Put that together with a chemist who can figure out how to extract copper and steel from ores and a biologist who can figure out the best crop rotations and dietary requirements and you have the skills needed to greatly increase your survival odds in the first few years.
The advantage of scientists and engineers is not that we are trained for some task but that we have the training to figure out how to do many, many different tasks. We routinely build and do things that nobody knows how to build or do because they have never been built or done before. In modern society it is more efficient to have individuals trained for each special task but without that scientists and engineers will be the ones who will need to reinvent everything which is missing and in the longer term teach the next generation.
That's interesting. It's from Saturday Night Live. I'm in America, YouTube says I can't view it in this country.
I just love the Internet.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The poster must be a guy and a nerd at that. Some of the most intense music making of all time happened during the bleakest periods of human history, including the Middle Ages. So, a medieval gymel expert might well find better and more lucrative employment compared to someone who services a machine. Gymel is not so abstruse after all, unless one listens exclusively to bad classic rock... riffing on what your voice can do, the first human instrument, may have occupied a lot of talented people back in the day. Bards, jesters, poets, writers, and other creative types made it big in tough times, as they do now sometimes.
I build custom electronics (prototyping and the occasional small scale run). I expect that depending on the type of apocalypse, a McGyver type would do well, especially one who can also sail. However, realistically I'd end up shot or in chains, for I am rubbish in a fight.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
We actually had events happen that killed 40 to 50% of the population, its called a plague. These unrealistic scenarios happened every 500 years or so. Even in our modern society if a plague kills so many that medical infrastructure is overwhelmed you can have a vaccine available but lack the means to distribute it or the quantity necessary to vaccinate most of the population.
My supreme skill is calculating the intersections of triangles with tetrahedrons with highest possible accuracy at the lowest computational cost. I am sure there is a job for me in the post apocalyptic world. But, in the odd chance there isn't, I certainly will be useful, may be as food.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm surprised no one mentioned musician - there have always been bards, usually people who preferred to avoid actual work. That would be my contribution.
When I gather wood or water or food, I won't be walking.
Don't mess with The Phone Company. Piss them off and you'll be using two tin cans and a piece of string.
Either find them on highways, or peoples houses.
Or make a hand powered generator , or wind powered generator.
Preserving the highest hitech of the day, and keeping whats left working is damn important.
Next step.... find your way to the nearest Intel fab plant, if theres any place to settle down its a place like that full of tech.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Here's my opinion on apocalyptic planning. You're wasting your energy. We've been predicting that the apocalypse is right around the corner since the dawn of civilization.
Prepare yourself for _likely_ (mathematically probable) scenarios. If you're 40 or under, prepare yourself for the possibility of dying or being seriously injured in an automobile accident. Buy the safest vehicle you can afford, because this is your leading cause of death. If you're over 40, take measures to prevent yourself from dying of heart disease by eating right and getting more exercise.
A cache of guns and a bomb shelter full of provisions won't do you any good if you're obese and you die of heart attack at age 55. Nor will it do you much good if you're in your late 20's and you die in a car crash on the way to Wal-Mart to purchase rifles and canned food.
Continue doing whatever you're doing because if something serious like an asteroid hits Earth, you're already dead. Anything serious like that will completely rewrite all the rules for life, and you can't predict what you will need. Maybe the only thing you will need is genetic resistance to the diseases that will run rampant. Or the ability to hide. Or the ability to relax and not worry. Or the ability to accept death.
Without laying down what we mean by this "apocalypse" (What happened? Where? Why?) no useful discussion can result (well, this is Slashdot, so perhaps I am being redundant).
Is industrial civilization just going to sort of evaporate? Really? How?
Why would we revert to pre-industrial society, rather than to an earlier form of industrial civilization, or more likely a hybrid of early and later technology?
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
The chemicals and equipment make it more economical and profitable but you are greatly underestimating the knowledge and abilities of farmers. Most of them would have little difficulty getting successful crops using old fashioned methods. They know very well how to do it with readily available fertilizers and labor.
If their was an apocalypse I'm pretty enough to be a well paid or well looked after whore.
Being a bum.
No, I'm dead serious. In a post apocalyptic world, you won't need woodworkers and blacksmiths. We're not suddenly back in the middle ages. Everything we had will still be around, but society will break down. And that doesn't mean you have to learn how to make bow and arrows so you can go hunt for deer. It means find the shotgun so you have an upper hand over the other looters in the local Wal Mart.
Why everyone thinks that "post apocalypse" means that everything we did in the last 500 years goes poof over night and we have to fall back on feudal technology is beyond me. It's very likely that at the very least most of what we have will still be there. What will be lost is probably everything that requires some kind of central organization. I.e. don't expect gas, water, power, sewage or any other municipal or other central service still to work. But the stuff will still be there. Your car will still run at the very least as long as there is gas in it. You might not get to refill at the next gas station, but there's still gas in your tank! You might not get power from the power grid anymore but batteries still work. And while you might not know how to build new firearms, there's still plenty of them around along with ammo for them, so there's no need to rely on the ancient art of war. By the time you need this, chances are that YOU won't need it anymore.
Because until we have to fall back on "old tech", I'd guess that a good portion of us would no longer exist. The first ones to go would be the ones that rely heavily on medical treatment. Like dialysis patient. They'd be gone in a week or so. People with severe allergies won't last long either. If society as a whole breaks down, I would not rely on surviving if you're by some stretch handicapped, i.e. if you can't move or if you can't survive on your own. People who need hearing or seeing aids might get by, depending on their disability, but one thing's certain, your glasses better not break. My guess would be that about 5-10% of the population in our "civilized" world is simply unable to make it without said civilization.
Another 10% loss is to be assumed for looting, pillaging and general "I don't like you and no cop can force me to" behaviour. This would of course depend on the amount of firearms that are around. The more, the merrier. Yes, if both sides are armed it means that the other one can shoot back but face it: When you have food and a gun, and I have hunger and a gun, I will attack. Whether I die of hunger or by your bullet, do I give a shit? Attacking you gives me a chance.
So with fights and accidents, I think it's conservative to assume a total loss of personnel of about 50% before we have to think about moving away from living "off the land" (i.e. sustain ourselves by looting and pillaging) and actually have to pick up ancient skills like farming.
So the most apt "profession" to even GET to that 50% phase is, oddly, bums. They already know how to do that. They don't have to learn anything. They know all that is necessary. Where can you scrounge successfully. Where do you find stuff you need to survive. How do you approach others and how to gauge their reaction. How to get the hell outta some place if things get rough.
It's nice if you know how to plant fruits and vegetables, how to build your own tools and how to hunt game, but unless you somehow manage to GET there it's moot.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I know someone who dreams of post-apocalyptic scenarios for that exact reason.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You can thank the MPAA for those restrictions. I love the internet too - maybe look for another thing on the internet called a free proxy.
That's always in demand, and probably more after the apocalypse. Whiskey and ammunition...
I don't think that would even stop them form collecting debt.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I would choose a lot of people from "the lower classes", as they have been accustomed to making do with what they can get.
I live in an area where I have seen people do amazing things with what they find laying around. Some have taught me many things. How to make a welding transformer out of an old "pole pig". How to power up houses with welding generators. Refrigeration using propane and ammonia. How to build damned near anything. Using old washing machine motor to run a drill press, lathe, and table saw. More MacGyver kinda stuff you would ever want to see.
I think these people will survive.
However, I also believe the Waggers of the Pens will be trying to find any way they can to tax them. The police departments, bound by Obedience to Authority, will have little choice but enforce the wishes of the owning classes until the little guys upset the apple cart big time doing the French thing.
Loved everywhere, supplier lively elixirs including ordinary hard apple cider for safe hourly consumption and likely to be the person to run the local waterworks as society then progresses.
It might be a good thing for 'civilized' countries to die out.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
With a philosophy degree. This is very useful about 100 years after the apocalypse, assuming everything has settled down, but completely not useful before that.
And of course, I'm using that as part of a multifaceted effort to become a full time game designer. Again, great for getting culture and such going again. Totally useless while shit is still in contact with the fan.
We're getting close to what could be the start of World War III. It looks like a land war between Russia and Ukraine is about to start. Reuters: Ukraine prepares armed response as city seized by pro-Russia forces. This is not about Crimea. Russia has now taken over cities 150Km inside the eastern part of Ukraine.
WWII started very much like this. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland.
Always useful. Then, and now, and when.
Having made and helped some friends who had a tiny tofu business making fresh tofu for restaurants I can add in:
1. it is low tech, only requiring some fire, containers and wooden stirring tools.
2. compare to the tofu you buy in store in plastic container, fresh tofu is niiiiice. Enjoyable, even tasty.
3. of course, the Monsanto GM modified tofu depends on round-up, is sterile, and alas, the crops are hundreds of thousands of mile from me.
A lot of our modern food crops are sterile. Not good for civilization surviving the next "big one"
The OP states: "...medical doctors would be useful, as would most scientists and engineers."
But a lot of medical doctors, etc., in the modern world depend on high tech devices. One of those at random may or may not be able to transfer their currently useful skills to skills useful without the high tech support. That is where attitude, ingenuity, creativity come in.
Maybe if Mr. Barlow would keep it in his pants more, we'd have less need to colonize the fuck out of everywhere.
"The bad news for Slashdotters is that decades without computers would render computer science and related professions useless."
We'll see how "useless" the automated gun turrets that I build out of spare parts are!
Apocalypse in current usage means the end of the world. By that definition - no skill will be 'Apocalypse Useful' - because no one will be around in the aftermath of the end of time (with the possible exception of an intrepid band of our great grandchildren who might figure out how to jump between multiple universe branes at the precise moment of the 'big rip' - a very remote possibility imho).
Really what we are talking about are events that while devastating, are short of the level of destruction needed to end the world. The very nature of that definition means that there will be locations that are not directly impacted by whatever happened. The most key struggle would come from dependency on things that moved by long distance transport; various foods, fuels, technology, and other manufactured goods. As a result, local replacements would have to be found and developed.
In those areas harder hit - it would be very bad, if not impossible to survive after the initial event. I can see migrations of people from these 'hot zones' to more habitable areas. Refugees might put too much pressure on less impacted areas - causing a crisis in those areas. The first few years after the event might be very chaotic due to these population pressures and migrations. The very best way to avoid a humanitarian disaster would be to make sure all of the surviving zones have good communications - and plans in place for relocating and organizing the influx of survivors into their communities. I think you would also want to move as quickly as possible to restore technology to society - maybe not in the exact forms that we are used to - but restoration just the same. Having running water, food, medicines, heating and cooling, and energy in general are critical to sustaining life. As a result, I think all disciplines will be useful to society in that situation in one way or another. One example: artists and story tellers would be useful in bringing entertainment and beauty into the lives of the survivor communities - and might be very important in keeping human knowledge alive until information systems can once again be restored. Ultimately, people would be so hard pressed to survive that it would quickly become apparent that the survivors will do better by banding together rather than fighting among themselves.
Overall - I think if the event was large enough to depopulate the world significantly, I think the survivors would be very busy indeed, with little time or energy to waste of the staples of post-apocalyptic fiction: warlords, societal breakdown, and descent of our humanity to that of the animals, leading us to prey upon our fellow man. While there may be a few sociopaths who try to benefit from the situation, I expect the rest of us to quickly control that. Essentially, humanity has lived through these sorts of things in the past, and I am sure we would make do and get on with living in the aftermath of whatever mother nature sends our way again.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
someone capable of swinging a sword and lopping the heads off marauders intent on dragging off the young women and torching the village.
I doubt a post-apocalyptic world will be much like the mediaeval times portrayed in Game of Thrones. In fact the medieval world wasn’t much like that.
Swords were very expensive and used only by the nobility. The peasants use staffs or slings - i.e. sticks and stones, or long bows at certain periods.
As others have pointed out, there can be expected to be plenty of rusting machinery available, so the economy & warfare would be different. It's a lot cheaper to get iron by melting a car engine block - no matter how rusted - than smelting it from iron ore.
So maybe weapons would be different, too. Perhaps with more metal available everybody would have a metal bow, or perhaps with fewer forests and less firewood, metal would be more expensive and nobody would have swords.
Moderated Usenet
But, would be nice to develop it before-hand; from: http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/...
---
Self-replicating technical artifacts such as dogs, corn, and trees have been in use by humanity for thousands of years. While humans cannot lay credit to the original creation of such systems, they can claim the adaptation and selective breeding of these for defense, food, and building materials.
In the past few millennia, many people have become dependent on technology that is not self-replicating. Primarily this technology involves fairly pure forms of metals, plastics, and crystals. These technologies have expanded the earth's human carrying capacity in the short term, but are not sustainable in the long term. Such technologies lack the closed resource cycles, independent operation, redundancy, and resiliency found in natural systems. A symptom of the use of such non-sustainable systems is the fear that a single problem (like Y2K) could cause a major disruption of life-support infrastructure in the developed world.
For example, both Brittle Power (Amory and Hunter Lovins) and Energy, Vulnerability, and War (Wilson Clark and Jake Page), make clear how vulnerable our energy infrastructure is. As Brittle Power (pg.391-392) mentions, this vulnerability also holds for food and manufacturing production:
"The production and distribution of food are currently so centralized, with small buffer stocks and supply lines averaging thirteen hundred miles long, that bad weather or a truckers' strike can put many retail stores on short rations in a matter of days. This vulnerability is especially pronounced in the Northeast, which imports over eighty percent of its food. In a disaster, the lack of regional self sufficiency both in food production and food storage would cause havoc, but no one is planning for such possibilities."
And in reference to energy production:
"The Joint Committee on Defense Production notes that American industry is tailor made for easy disruption. Its qualities include large unit scale, concentration of key facilities, reliance on advanced materials inputs and on specialized electronics and automation, highly energy- and capital- intensive plants, and small inventories. The Committee found that correcting these defects, even incrementally and over many decades, could be very costly. But the cost of not doing so could be even higher -- a rapid regression of tens, or even hundreds of years in the American economy, should it be gravely disrupted."
In a long-term space mission or a space settlement, a self-sustaining economy must be created and supported. Therefore, addressing the problem of technological fragility on earth is an essential step in the development of the development of human settlement in space.
The heart of any community is its library, which stores a wide variety of technological processes, only some of which are used at any one time in any specific environment. If an independent community is like a cell, its library is like its DNA. A library has many functions: the education of new community members; the support of important activities such as farming and material extraction; historical recording of events; support for planning and design. And the library grows and evolves with the community.
The earth's library of technological knowledge is fragmented and obscure, and some important knowledge has been lost already. How can we create a library strong enough to foster the growth of new communities in space? How can we today use what we know to improve human life?
---
The development of the Oscomak infrastructure will be an ambitious undertaking, requiring the involvement of tens of thousands of knowledgeable individuals over a period of years. There is no way one single entity can fund this work. However, there is a way to allow such individuals to cooperate -- as an "open source" community, sharing knowledge and building a distributed repository over the internet.
The revolutionary aspec
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It would be stupid to chose your profession based on something which has low probability of happening.
In the scenario 90 per cent of human polulation is lost. What is left? Some tribes in Papua, Amazon and Mongolia. It will take generations before even the news of apocalypse reach them. They are however less than 1 percent. Who are the rest nine percent. In the first generation only the most selfish, ruthless armed gangs. Is there any point even to apply for membership?
I'm a microbiologist/soldier/lab tech/medic/hunter/taxidermist/seamstress/mom/teacher/lifeguard/fisherwoman/Cafetalera (coffee grower)/barista/coffee roaster/artist/smartass! I'm married to an engineer/fisherman/brewmaster/gardener/soldier/sniper/hunter/father/carpenter/electrician/machinist/gunsmith/sarcastic smartass! Now we just need dairy farmers, an herbalist, apothecary, plumber, housekeeper, chemist, dentist, midwife, doctor and a butcher!
Doesn't mean that I can't do anything else.
Provided I don't lose everything in the apocalypse:
I think that the following will work out:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
What I think you don't understand is that an 'apocalypse' (even if it's a 'minor' one like electricity going off permanently in the US rather than a catastrophic meteor impact) doesn't go from lights off to happy folks living a simple but somewhat dangerous life with their bows and such. No, in the first few weeks (if not days) people will start murdering each other over a can of Vienna Sausages.
So, unless one is protecting these useful people, really the best thing is to put some useful books in plastic bags and hope that you're hard-core enough to stay alive until most of the nutjobs have killed each other off.
Civilizations have rarely ended in abrupt catastrophes. The most analyzed ending of a civilization is probably the Fall of the Roman Empire, and that ended over hundreds of years of debauchery and neglect. It takes a while for a major civilization to collapse.
Modern Western Civilization could end faster. A nuclear power plant dies much more quickly than a Roman aqueduct, and fluctuations in the market for crops in America have destabilizing effects on governments in the Middle East. On the other hand, the widespread travel and communication among nations' elites seems to be making them less likely to disrupt the channels of commerce.
In general, survivalists are ready for civilization to end suddenly. They are not prepared for civilization to continue.
Have a nice time.
But let's talk hypotheticals: if there's a worldwide catastrophe in which civilization is interrupted, somebody specializing in gymel wouldn't provide much use to fellow survivors.
Are you kidding me? Without electronics and industry, all performance arts are live and local. There's no high-quality music on demand from iTunes or YouTube, no recorded music playing at restaurants, parties, or festivals, no constant background music in television and movies. Maybe you can get crappy records made out of wax if you're lucky.
During the day, when most people are doing grunt work, the gymel expert might not be anything special. (Or they might -- people are not solely defined by their profession.) But at night, when everyone's sitting around a fire relaxing? I bet someone who can make strange and beautiful music would be very popular indeed.
Visit the
As long as we keep good backups, we'll be fine.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
For 25 years I was a computer programmer (software designer) (systems engineer) (ehh, pick your own title). Then I got laid off and fell back on my hobby, which was brewing beer. I think I'd do okay.
"The chemicals and equipment make it more economical and profitable but you are greatly underestimating the knowledge and abilities of farmers. Most of them would have little difficulty getting successful crops using old fashioned methods. They know very well how to do it with readily available fertilizers and labor."
You're forgetting the fact that farmers need electricity to run the water pumps to irrigate the feeds. Those in the arid southwest are screwed. Also I'd like to see you harvest 3000 acres without a combine, there will in fact be a major food shortage if farmers don't have fuel to power their equitment.
If you click on "read the rest of this comment" and you will find barber is also a doctor.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
I don't know about near you, but near me every woodcrafting, gemcutting etc group is stocked with retired people with incredible skills. There's one old guy I know that makes furniture, he has to stop every twenty minutes or so when his hands start shaking, but he still turns out better work more quickly than a young professional cabinetmaker.
The other thing is to take a look at real disasters instead of disaster movies (which is how most posts here seem to frame it). What you've written above only makes sense when you have a bunch of unconnected individuals thrown together, which is why that is a common plot point in such movies. In reality someone is going to at least try to look after old Mr Smith and hothead Jim the tough and glib is going to be told to pull his head in by a dozen less tough people if he tries to take over.
People are not so that stupid that large numbers are going to stay where there is no food. Once again it's the disaster movie premise - nobody can get anything done or work together until the hero tells them what to do. In reality disasters turn just about everyone into "heroes" - people find a way to help. Skills that do not seem disaster related can be critical, for instance the people that communicate between teams can have a hand in saving more lives than any one of the people in those teams. Those that do nothing but boil water to make it safe to drink save lives.
Personally I see this article as somebody making a big deal about how they can camp, hunt and maybe some craft skills. They neglect that you can't keep a society running like a camping trip.
If you guys want a skill useful for a disaster that destroys civilisation there are plenty. If you want to get incredibly basic take a look at how the Hittites made iron from iron ore, read that and it's only hard work and the skills of others to deliver that iron ore to where you have your hot fire and hammer between you and a useful metal. Meanwhile however the unskilled guy picking at scrap has also earned his bread.
Obviously, you are not a farmer. Modern farming equipment and chemical fertilizers are helpful in multiplying the quantity of crops that can be grown, but are not necessary to grow enough to feed your own family.
How much food do you need to grow? For your own family, you can till and prepare enough soil with a pick and shovel. If you plan on sharing your harvest with multiple families, you probably need a horse or ox to pull a larger plow. Depending on the crop you select, you can probably plant enough seed or starter plants by hand. Harvesting is another time when you will need to some help to get all the crops in. If you grow grains, you will have to cut, stack, dry, thresh, and store the grain. This can be done by hand, or with hand tools (a flail to thresh grains) without needing powered equipment.
As a mental exercise, pick a 20' x 20' section of your lawn and imagine what you would need to do to turn it into farmable land. Dig up all the grass or till it under, test the soil for acidity and add lime or sulfur to balance the Ph, fertilize with animal manure, plant something (example wheat), irrigate it, harvest it with a scythe or sickle, thresh the grain, then store it. No modern equipment is indispensable, but it still takes a LOT of hard work.
~~
We shouldn't need such rubbish, however it is a good workaround.
IMHO a better workaround is an IPv6 tunnel so that the GeoIP thing blocking you becomes completely useless (until some fools put lats and longs in the IPv6 packet header as had been proposed). Some parts of the world may still have a lot of IPv4 numbers to play with but we're going to have to go that way eventually. Plenty of phones (via LTE for example), set-top boxes for internet "cable TV" and others are already on IPv6 so the content is unlikely to be blocked even though the provider doesn't have a clue where you could be.
You are describing my childhood fairly well :) However when things get very basic there are plenty of roles available for those that only know how to pick up things and carry them to other places or drive a wheelbarrow. Even Mr Superficial Bastard in Advertising can be sent out to collect firewood. If a huge disaster causes a collapse of society we won't be short of things to do.
That's reminding me of a town (I think it was in France) that was built on the floor of a Roman stadium and didn't outgrow it for well over a thousand years. They had their ready built wall and plenty of dressed stone to build houses.
Organizational practices are a technology just like any other, and neither will they disappear over night. Ideas like democracy and equality will likely help keep us (or some of us) from regressing into an honor based society or something similar. Capitalism is an ideology no different from communism (even though we take it for granted), and it too will likely survive.
Basically, I'm pretty sure a true apocalypse is impossible unless all the adults are wiped out, leaving only children who have not yet internalized the fundamental concepts of various technologies--combustion engines, germ theory, democracy, etc.
I've seen a youtube video on making a soup can forge, would probably go into metalworking.
To be big enough to be called "apocalypse" it would probably need something like nukes taking out all major ports etc so that it's a global disaster. Thus the EMP assumption is no more silly than any of the others about this "apocalypse". You may prefer "death of grass", a supervolcano, meteor strike, gamma ray burst frying one hemisphere or whatever but the above poster seems to prefer nukes for his choice of unspecified nightmare.
It's all very silly anyway and answered well by the guy quoting an old book about colonists.
I work with IT, but my hobby is locksmithing- i collect locks, pick them up, bump them up, change the cylinders, recode them, make my own keys etc.
I would be able to help other people lock in their stuff, or other ppeople get into those places :)
Follow human basic needs
Top 3 would be
- Field medecine (including medicinal plants)
- Agriculture
- Leadership (this one will not exactly satisfy others basic needs but will put you on the top nevertheless)
These would make valuable to a large quantity of other individuals who will
- protect you
- share food with you
- procreate with you
Skills like fighting ans hunting are are good to but rely on those solely would put you under constant physical stress and risk therefore reducing your survival rate.
I have collected numerous skills throughout my life. This has allowed me to literally uproot, land in a new region, and find a job within 72 hours flat (tested on several seperate ocasions). It may not be a fun job, or a job in my chosen profession, but a job and a roof over my head. So what skills could get you, and keep you, gainfully employed if you lost everything and started over in a new place? Now bonus points if these skills actually support your chosen profession -- I learned to be a machinist, a blacksmith, and electonics tech due to my interest in robotics. I've made a living for decades doing the first three, and never got paid for the last...
So, you do not have to go all post-apocalypse. You just have to imagine starting over from nothing.
If the apocalypse were to come in my lifetime or a couple centuries after, there would be plenty of bicycles that would be tremendously useful if there was someone to keep them running.
-- My Weblog.
The 'network' will survive any apocalypse. It will be the first tech to be re-build and deployed.
We likely won't be using it for twitter as it's cost will be higher, but global communication is critical for long term survival with a good standard of living.
Communication leads to trade and trade leads to not starving when you have a drought in your area.
Communication is important for any kind of mass-manufacturing as it's what connects you with your customers.
Simple computers aren't difficult to make if you know how, and there are a lot of people that know enough.
I know how to make a rope making machine with sticks and a nail. While I'm a software engineer right now, I think I could make a pretty good living as a rope maker, this assumes if rope suddenly becomes a lot more valuable than it is now.
It's good to have a fallback career because it would probably be quite a while before anyone makes computers for me to program.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
That is blatant nonsense. Bums are dependent on the welfare-system, dependent on private charity and more often than not dependent on alcohol and/or other drugs.
They cannot make it on their own in our current rich civilization, never mind after the crash.
...if things get so bad that we revert to a medieval or even more primitive society, the only skill worth having will be the ability to dish out violence.
...that computers wouldn't survive the apocalypse ?
Depending of the cause of the apocalypse many computers could survive it and nerds would be needed to use them.
That would prevent "an interruption of civilisation" (who the hell talks like that anyway?).
But a white country being taken over by braindead, parasitic, dysfunctional THIRD WORLDERS will indeed end up without civilisation as we know it.
THE TRUTH is the only thing we need right now, and I know that Slashdotters sure hate allowing people to disagree with them, don't you...
Food - make a solar cooker. Super easy with some tinfoil and cardboard - or anything shiny you can direct to one spot. Boil water in a pot in minutes and can do crockpot style cooking simply.
If it's a no electricity apocalypse I'd find a local Amish community to fill any gaps in the skill pool. Sure they don't necessarily trust outsiders but they do trade. Although I have 2 nuke plants within 100 miles of me. Depending on why there is no electricity I may not be around to bother. If it's simply a catastrophe then it could be like lucifer's hammer and a nuke plant would be the place to bootstrap civilization - it has power, weapons, tools.
Now zombies...that's another matter. Although a nuke plant may be a good idea there also. They've been made very secure since 911 and electrified fences may help.
Imam - it already works well in the most desolate parts of the world, and has for hundreds of years.
For example, my mother was a housewife but she volunteered for the local ambulance for years and grows her own garden every summer. So, she knows how to handle triage and grow food.
I'm into kayaking, hiking, sailing, and used to go fishing with my Dad all the time. I even know how to make flies for fly fishing. I'm also a good shot with a gun or bow. All of these are skills that could come in handy during an apocalypse. None of these are skills learned as part of my profession, but more as a part of growing up in Canada.
I'm sorry? Why would "decades without computers ... render computer science and related professions useless"?
I don't think you get that "science" bit on the end of it. Nor that much of computer science goes back to extreme basics. Morse Code? That's coding theory. It's only if you take a narrow-minded view that it doesn't appear as computer science.
You can build a computer from the simplest of building blocks - it just so happens we prefer semiconductors - but as has been historically proven you can build a mechanical computer capable of just about anything (and that was proven how? Turing machines? Oops, that's computer science!). Maybe not fast, but accurate and useful when it comes to larger calculations. We had a need for such things several hundred years ago and, even big projects aside, we made them and used them (Abacus for thousands of years? Calculating machines were rife for centuries from the 1600's).
The fact is that computer science is, like any other science, not only useful as a nurturer of people with a logical mind, but also directly useful in any size society once it's settled a bit. Mostly because much of it is maths. And the rest of it is directly applicable to real-world calculations.
Sure, you can live without it. But you can live without an awful lot of things. But with it, you gain an advantage. Where best to site my defence towers against the pillaging hordes? How best to send a message asking for allies to appear without the enemy knowing what is in it? How to ensure we don't waste time dividing food equally with various random weights and measures?
It's the old fallacy - but it's wrong. You do not need a computer to perform computer science. And you do not need a computer to get useful data out of your computer science. It just helps, and speeds along the process.
Fact is, in any kind of apocalyptic even like this, you'll be glad of any academic, especially one that can provably solve practical problems like this. Hell, simple ballistics is a nightmare to solve by hand.
And, if it comes to it, you can build a computer out of blocks of wood (there are several examples of this), water-filled tubes (the Russians did concrete calculations on one), or pieces of paper. We're all taught how to do at least the last one of those in computer science courses, too.
A computer scientist may not be the immediate asset who scavenges food or heals the sick or welds defences. But you'll want one on your team before long, and they'll give you an advantage over any group that doesn't have one.
Doesn't everyone try to pick up every skill that might be useful in a disaster situation, given the slightest opportunity?
I've helped built houses, I've done plumbing and electricity - I can build a generator, but I forgot how to build a radio - I've done basic car mechanics work. This is just from things I needed to do while helping out, or because I didn't have time or money (or could be bothered) to hire someone to do it for me. To me it seems like most people with a brain could pick up that quickly, maybe not be good at it at once, but still.
I'm training Aikido and medieval swordfighting. That might be useful, but I really hope not.
I can't lift heavy things, due to a disc that doesn't want to stay put. That is not so good.
My current profession is embedded programmer/software architect. That will be utterly useless, I think.
But, in the end, I think the most useful skill I might try to use is to get people together to help each other.
(For something interesting on the line of what you can do with very little at hand, I recommend the BBC/Open University series Rough Science, especially the first season.)
The Amish would survive rather well, I expect. Add a few young surgeons and you're set up for survival.
What's all this stuff I read about you trolling people here with sockpuppet fake accounts you made to do so and getting caught?
"You are in a maze of twisty AC posts that all look alike."
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
That's interesting. It's from Saturday Night Live. I'm in America, YouTube says I can't view it in this country.
I just love the Internet.
For folks looking for a chance to use the "ironic":
Yes, this is pretty much a textbook case of it.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
"So with fights and accidents, I think it's conservative to assume a total loss of personnel of about 50% before we have to think about moving away from living "off the land" (i.e. sustain ourselves by looting and pillaging) and actually have to pick up ancient skills like farming."
LOOOOL!
Ever looked at how many people live in an average city and how many basic resources all these people consume on a daily basis?
How long you think there will be loot when whole cities (and most of our population is in cities) are not supplied with food and water and 'stuff' ?
In case of main infrastructures breaking down it's likely 99% of people will die off one way or another.
A gasstank full of gass won't even get you out of a city, on average. And you can't grow crops in a city very efficiently. At the very least you will need lots of fertilizer. Well, of course you could get creative with all the corpses.
The fallback to 'old tech' would be immedate.
Old tech being i break your skull for a can of tuna for most of humanity.
And since there is no new supply of canned tuna being delivered to where it can be scavenged his problem will solve itself soon enough.
Who will survive the best are the hunter gatherers that live far out in the open world and who do not depend on modern infrastructures, i.e. not us.
We are modern humans that have absolutely no idea how to get food throughout the year without a supermarket.
Old style farming will be the the prime job for anyone surviving. Toolmaking will be the secondary job of many.
Crafts like carpenting and masonary will go a lot lower on the list than most here assume because most people will survive with crappy chairs and crooked shacks but will not survive when a crop fails.
For crops to be helpfull you would first need to survive long enough for them to grow. That by itself is a problem. You will need to stay with the crops to protect them but you will also need to scavange for food in the meanwhile. Dilemma.
I mean, in a controled environment you could get away with a lot of things. In reality, if you break a leg you can't work the fields and your future food will waste before your eyes. The reality of survival has nasty details that make it a lot worse than most people here make it out to be.
"So with fights and accidents, I think it's conservative to assume a total loss of personnel of about 50% before we have to think about moving away from living "off the land" (i.e. sustain ourselves by looting and pillaging) and actually have to pick up ancient skills like farming."
I think even 95% would be very very optimistic.
Most cities are large coffins in such a situation.
Before the core can get anywhere near the outside it will already be thoroughly raided by the people starting out on the rim. Most people in cities will simply die one way or another.
Today's mass-scale manufacturing will collapse, and needs will change, so my bet is that it will be very useful to be the guy who can design models to be fed to 3D printers.
This is going to become a useful skill anyway in the next few decades, so it's not a bad investment for a hobby today.
Will lawyers be useful? (I know many slashdotters will laugh and say we'll be better off without them, but the new forms of society will need new rules and a new justice system - and programmers would do this as badly as lawyers would program.)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Supposing the event is indeed apocalyptic in scale that it would destroy the very foundation of civilization, then indeed on a short to medium term the more practical skills and knowledge sets will be way more valuable. However, from medium to long term onwards the scientists, the engineers, the historians and also the knowledge they have or have salvaged in some kind of material, eventually recoverable form will be of much greater importance for the restart of the civilization. Libraries, data banks of any kind will be of great importance, while relics, artpieces and historical sources of information of and about the "old world" will eventually come to hold great value for those who managed to protect such artefacts (just as we praise today artpieces of the past epochs). Unfortunately it may take some time until the focus switches from "immediate survival" to "planning for the future" and it will be important for those knowledge holders to be protected until their skills can be again used. How to protect the knowledge holders and knowledge containers ? That may be the the greatest challenge of all, and I myself don't know what kind of social entity could have the vision, the power and will to find,recover,keep, guard and evolve them until the world is able to use them again. The church ? The remnants of the state ? Other social of economic organization(s) ? We'd better not get in this situation at all,rebuilding stuff is not as easy as breaking it in the first place.
Your car will still run at the very least as long as there is gas in it. You might not get to refill at the next gas station, but there's still gas in your tank!
All the gasoline will be shitty within a year and worthless within three.
The diesel will be shitty in about three years and worthless within, say, ten.
How long do you think it will take after a major upset to get refineries going again?
And while you might not know how to build new firearms, there's still plenty of them around along with ammo for them, so there's no need to rely on the ancient art of war. By the time you need this, chances are that YOU won't need it anymore.
The ammo will keep a hell of a lot better than the fuel.
You know, once a car battery has been run down, it is permanently damaged... Which usually only takes a few months. Sometimes you get lucky and a car starts after years, but rarely any of these fancy new computerized whatchamajiggers.
So the most apt "profession" to even GET to that 50% phase is, oddly, bums.
The people who are going to do the best are those who figure out how to mob up without falling apart due to internal power struggles. Ironically, your first point is probably the most incorrect. People will recentralize.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
People can survive quite well without the care of physicians.
I am not a doctor (but will be in a few more months ;)
In this matter, you are certainly correct. In the past (and in some places, even today), there were human settlements in which there has never been a doctor -- at least not in the modern sense of a doctor. And for the most part, life went on. Humans managed to be born, grow up, and grow old. Occasionally those lives might be cut a bit shorter and harder than otherwise -- but on average, these occurrences were infrequent enough that we could be assured the younger generation would survive to repeat the next turn of the cycle.
Yet, in each of those villages, you would find a healer. A shaman, a medicine-man, or maybe some weird old lady living at the edge of the settlement. Sometimes their herbs and potions would actually be useful; mystical incantations probably somewhat less so. Regardless of how primitive these healers were, they would be summoned to offer up what they could. They were a source of comfort that could be turned to, when a loved one was sick or dying. And they were also one of the few educated people (whether formal education or by traditional teachings) in the village that could be turned to for knowledge and advice (clergy being the other major source).
Many of us on Slashdot do not have families of our own, or at least that's the stereotype. We often have only a dim understanding of what illness can do to the structure and functioning of a marriage, a family, a clan, or even an entire village. When people don't understand what is happening and begin to fear, when they believe nothing can be done and begin to despair -- the social bonds that hold us together fray and rip apart. This dynamic is why healers exist and are so highly valued in society, even in a modern age where miracles are commonplace and expected to occur on demand. And why post-apocalypse, they will continue to be valued.
That being said, I would agree that some doctors would be more useful than others. Rural Medicine, Wilderness Medicine (an uncommon specialty), General Surgery, and Veterinarians would be the most immediately useful. As for the rest of us, at least all doctors go through medical school and internship, have studied anatomy and physiology, dissected cadavers and such -- it might take some retraining, but it should be possible to get at least the more adaptable ones back up to speed on how to remove an inflamed appendix or gallbladder, perform a Cesarean, or set a broken bone. As for our other skills -- the skills of compassion, comforting, and guidance -- hopefully they practice these most basic Physician's skills on a daily basis (although sadly enough, I know not all of us do).
They're posting ac as I did since we're worried you'll troll us with sock puppets and tell lies about them also.
1. Computer Jock ( various)
2. Engineer
3. Military Engineer
4. Mountain Climbing
5. Scuba Diving.
6. Wood worker
7. Carpenter
8. Electrician
9. Plumber
10. Small engines
11. Sawyer
12. Lumbejack
13. Fixer of problems.
Depends on which appocalypse you're talking about. If the lawyers, politicians and fat cat labour and management all were to suddenly disappear then I plan to start working to become captain of the starship Enterprise ;-)
And the policeman and soldir banded together with the other outcasts to invade and take over the town.
The twenty minutes will turn into a few hours when people have to walk out of the traffic jam. This might give you some time to flee.
For the shits and grins I actually tried the walking part for my particular city and the 20minutes turned into 2-3 hours. It was an incredibly pleasant day for the hike, but my feet hurt like hell afterward due to inappropriate footwear (sandals).
Je me souviens.
Minor point - 200 F isn't near the melting point of tin-lead or tin-antimony solders. 63/37 , the old standard for electronics work, melts at around 360F. Most of the lead free stuff melts at a higher point, over 400 for a good liquid rather than slurry.
Yes, there's scrap from cars. Duh. Less and less each year though - most cars are recycled, and the steel quantity in each individual vehicle is dropping with each model year to save weight.
But you still need someone to strip the car and transport the material to the forge site. You still need fuel for the forge. Etc... etc... Here in the real world, that's called infrastructure. I have no idea what it's called inside that piece of rotted shit you call a brain.
Let's let TOM speak shall we:
"I'm having great conversations on this site with one of my alias accounts" - by Tom (822) on Monday April 07, 2014 @02:29PM (#46686259) Homepage
FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> Tom *tried* to libel me & failed after I destroyed him in a technical debate on hosts files... result?
Tom ended up "eating his words" here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... spiced with "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat" + HIS FOOT IN HIS MOUTH
... apk shall we:
You're the one following people around ranting about "destroying" them, not me.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
"computer science and related professions useless"
Hardly. All this does is show an assumption that the life of the modern geek is wasted on frippery such as social sites, etc.
Maybe we won't have electricity for a while. We'll remember, and recreate it. Meanwhile, a knowledge of computability, efficiency and optimization, security and ethics is transferable to other fields.
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
From mobile life, major immediate problems encountered:
- staying warm and healthy
- moving around; fuel
- clean water, staying clean
These are major, major problems. If you've lived in a campervan for any amount of time, lived in a swat, a yacht or on the street you'd know it. Desalination is too inefficient. Carrying the water in a squat is the biggest chore. Bums are usually dirty.
Electric is less of a problem these days.
Other stuff beyond this is more interesting - can anyone locally remember how to be a blacksmith or carpenter? That kind of thing. But you can muddle through it because it's not an immediate problem that's killing you. The water, warmth, fuel thing is the big problem.
Maybe it's not so far fetched either. There's a war breaking out over fuel right now on the edge of Europe.
Main things I think to learn are how to stay warm without heating and how to clean water.
Most of the professions are surely going to go out of the window-irrelevant. Would hobbiests come to the fore or is that disillusion dreaming?
Poor people are going to be best suited to this. Anyone who knows how to sew their own socks. So to that matter then the less professionally successful then could that be a good thing? It's difficult to simulate, we'd have to look to history. If someone is successful in a company environment then there's an advantage there to organise people - no change there?
A blog I run for the wealth
You destroyed yourself sockpuppeteer and liar that you are http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Stone knapping, obviously, along with fire making. Familiarity with local sources of rocks exhibiting conchoidal fracture would also be good.
I'll make your arrowheads; you provide me with rabbits.
-Gareth
He didn't say there would be no women. He said there would be no "ladies". Think "Lady Diana"s. He also said there would be no gentleman--but that doesn't mean everybody would be rude. Remember, this is a 19th century reader. The language is a bit different.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This AC is a seriously disturbed individual.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Hey let's face it, the mechanics of arms are not going away any time soon, unless the anti's have their way and doom us all to those stupid bracelets that won't let you fire it unless you have it on. Gunpowder not difficult to make if you have the recipes, arms and warfare should be just fine..
I often think that Mexican day labours have a heads up on this game. Even when they choose a skilled profession, they tend to pick things that will make them money over their lifetime, i.e. plumbing, HVAC maintenance, auto-repair, food service, nursing (mostly female) and landscaping.
Unlike most of my fellow lower middle class college mates who cannot find jobs in their professions even in a good economy. I know of guy why is in "Forestry". Shit, I did not know that one has to go to college for that. After all, isn't that a career that you can learn on the job. Lets not even talk about the ones in Film and Communications.
Yeah I agree with this. I think it was Zimbabwe (?) where they threw out the white farmers and gave the farms to people who just didn't know anything about it, and as a result the agricultural sector basically collapsed. There's a whole lot of skill to farming.
Show me a quote of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
How about *all* of them, pretty much?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Apk he can't. We all know it. He's running from it like a scared rabbit http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Yeah, its still more or less like that every time I get a haircut.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Based on the comments I'm seeing, it appears that humble bragging about all extracurricular skills and abilities /.'ers have will be the most valuable in the future.
I would choose a lot of people from "the lower classes", as they have been accustomed to making do with what they can get.
Nope. Replace "the lower classes" by "the third world" and you'd be getting close.
Did you know there are people who hand-rewind electric motors?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The people most likely to make it through any kind of collapse are ones who can organize or join a social network that functions despite the new challenges. They would willingly watch the backs of their friends and receive the same benefit from them. They would shut up and work on the projects of the group, even if they suspected a "more optimal" strategy was available.
The first people to starve or die from infections would be the individualists who think that as soon as things get tough, they have to retreat to bunkers with their guns. People with social skills, people who are easy to like, people who are good with kids, people who evoke sympathy from others, people who are hard-working, open and jovial - they would be the ones that are in the best position to benefit from the cooperation that will become necessary when things get tough.
The way I see it, the fact that we can survive without the explicit beneficence of others is probably the biggest luxury of our age. We work for money, trade money for necessities and comforts, and this works fine even in the complete absence of exchanging favors. But this kind of lifestyle is a complete anomaly in human history. Actually, even now, the majority of the Earth's people do not live this way. This kind of informal social reciprocity is what we would need to return to. We would become tribal again. On Slashdot, people are under the illusion that the individualism of late-industrial society can somehow survive its collapse. That would be a fatal mistake. The right strategy is to give up a great deal of our autonomy for the sake of being useful to others. What you're ultimately doing after you subordinate yourself to the group will probably not involve much of what you learned in your jobs and hobbies. A lot of it will involve digging, carrying, sawing, gathering and socializing. Grit and attitude are far more valuable for these necessary things than skill and knowledge. Even complete non-experts with the right work ethic will contribute a great deal to their collective group, because of the sheer amount of extra work that will be necessary in a post-collapse society.
I've no need to "back up" anything, because anyone who cares can check the posting histories of those whom you've targeted.
The pattern is easy to see, and your actions follow this pattern again and again:
-As long as you think you're "winning", you post as a "friendly" AC and flag yourself prominently as "APK".
-When someone who's logged in disagrees with you, points out that your "contributions" are not relevant to the discussion, or offers the opinion that you're acting like a lunatic, the attacks begin. Typically, you commence tracking your target's posting history and post attacks against them in response to every new post they make. (You even went so far as to follow several days' worth of my history and to post troll responses to a large swath of my posts, in reverse chronological order. Perhaps you think that disguised what you were doing, but in actuality, you just made what you were doing very obvious, in addition to petty, and a bit silly.) These attacks appear to increase in frequency and venom in proportion to the perceived vulnerability of the target. Again, these posts are AC but signed by you.
-When someone calls you out on this, there follow a string of poison-pen AC posts trying to discredit them. For some mysterious reason, these posts re-use your favourite catch-phrases and links, but conveniently omit any mention of the fact that they're (very obviously) being posted by you.
You tolerate no disagreement whatsoever, and you appear incapable of admitting when you've made a mistake--every one else in your world is always wrong, but never APK--and you go on endlessly about "beating" people. These are not the marks of an intelligent/rational individual engaged in civilised discussion or debate. What they are is pathological.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Wow. Way to go proving one of my points before I'd even finished writing them.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
You do need to back up your libel + false accusations Zontar http://slashdot.org/comments.p... and apparently you can't back up your crap.
Most useful: blacksmith, farmer, carpenter, candle maker, weaver, gun maker, machinist, miller... Basically anybody who does a skilled job that puts a roof over your head or food in your mouth.
Least useful: lawyers, brokers, retailers, government workers, clerks, academics, teachers... Anybody who does something from behind a desk.
Notice that this completely inverts the "Important person" pyramid of our present society. If you want to see what this looks like in practice, just go look at Somalia or some other third world country where there's no technology.
Note here for those above arguing that doctors are important, THEY ARE NOT. Doctors are a -luxury-. Most of the poor in the Third World have never seen an actual doctor up close, much less had proper medical treatment. Our grandparents (great grandparents for you whippersnapper GenX/Y types) visited doctors only in the most dire of circumstances, because it was expensive.
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION: Show me a quote of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
---
Lastly:
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION: Show me a quote of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
---
Lastly:
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION: Show me a quote of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
---
You avoided backing up your accusation where YOU said I say you are Barbara, not Barbie = TomHudson (same person http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... , & sockpuppeteer like you) -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Funny you can't back up your "bluster" there either, lol...
---
Why?
You're crackers! See here multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
---
Lastly:
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
APK
P.S.=> So, THIS quote below is my policy on sockpuppeteers like you Zontar = TrollingForHostsFiles (your sockpuppetry):
"The only way to a achieve peace, is thru the ELIMINATION of those who would perpetuate war (sockpuppet masters like YOU, troll -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ). THIS IS MY PROGRAMMING -> http://start64.com/index.php?o... & soon, I will be UNSTOPPABLE..." - Ultron 6 FROM -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Which quite obviously, I am, since none of you DOLTISH TROLLS are able to validly technically disprove my points on hosts enumerated in the link to my program above of how hosts give users of them more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity... period!
(Trolls like YOU that use sockpuppets http://slashdot.org/comments.p... (your sockpuppet "alterego" TrollingForHostsFiles) & TomHudson - Barbara, not Barbie too http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... before you)
... apk
Therefore anyone who works it IT
I don't think it was about the handling. They were the only ones who HAD a room full of sharp instruments ready at all times.
we should all just take an assessment of how our computer skills could be applied in a non-electronic world. this might be hard for some strictly software people. even if its just organizing a garden or how to store rainwater. you can make the plans now, just make sure you have a hard copy.... and i kept all my grandfathers hand tools.
The guy who can turn raw materials into tool like hammers, knives, saws, axes, etc will be valuable.
The guy who does medicine - not the kickbacking RX scribbling overpaid puppet, the guy who still remembers advanced first aid and physiology and chemical drugs - will be valuable.
-AC.Falos
There's money to be made burying corpses! Yihaa!
These are the professions that are FEEDING the population explosion on this planet - so all are TERRIBLE for the post-apocalypse. Hunting, gathering and skills related to weapons, clothing and fire are ALL that are necessary. Doctors prolong the lives of the useless, Lawyers and Police prevent ridding the population of deadwood and farmers' environment of cheap, easy food - increases sedentary lifestyle which leads to the need for Doctors, Lawyers and Police.
Another LIE, Zontar? What was this then http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... Hmmm? You were nowhere in that thread before it, only apk and geminidomino (who he utterly dismantled point by so called "point" of his) You claim apk barges into conversations. What about you, sockpuppeteer hypocritical libeling scum that you are?
Funny, I recently bought a place and I'm planting a garden. The soil is so clay heavy I could throw it on a wheel, and fire it to at least earthenware temperatures. This also means a rototiller is useless, so I've been using a shovel to remove the grass layer, which I pile up around the edges of the bed, a fork to break up the top 10 inches of clay, and then a wheelbarrow and shovel to cart over topsoil from a pile I had delivered. In a post-apocolypse world, we can omit the delivered dirt, because you wouldn't choose such crappy soil to start with.
I'm 45, not a weightlifter, runner ... not even a regular exerciser. I'm a little chubby from sitting at a desk all the time. In about about an hour and half I can dig up, till with a fork, and wheel barrow over a 10" layer of top soil to do a 10x10 area. This gives me about 20" of planting bed, the 10" I broke up with a fork and the 10" I dumped on top, the grass clumps act like the frame for a raised bed. If this was done in good dirt without the need for added topsoil, subtract half an hour because of easy digging and no dirt hauling.
If I did two of those beds per day, one in the morning and one in the evening, I could dig up 1400 sq ft in a week.
It looks like I'd need about 23,000 square feet to feed myself, but some of that can be made up with space devoted to animals -- most though still goes to garden.
http://www.treehugger.com/gree...
I started this post feeling sort of positive, but tilling soil in this manner burns 4-500 calories per hour. Do this for three hours per day on a 2000 calorie/day diet, and you're going to turn into a rail fast. If it was only 400 calories to dig 100 sq ft of easy soil, and I had to dig 15000 sq ft, I'm going to need an extra 60,000 calories to make it -- an extra month's worth of food to invest in labor to plant a garden. It is sounding increasingly unrealistic to hand dig a garden in the absence of outside inputs, i.e., food for the digger.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
well older farmers from just a few decades ago were not just farmers they had to have more skills to make a living. A (small farm) farmer had to have experience as a mechanic,wielder,plumber,electrician,carpenter and engineer/problem solver. I grew up on a small farm with old failing equipment.
Essential - cooking, baking, bread making.
Brewing is another basic skill that produces a product that can be used for barter.
Farming / growing crops - how else will you get the grain/fruit for cooking?
Hunting - obvious one there. But the other side of that coin is butchering. How many butchers do you know?
Sewing, to repair clothes that won't be replaceable for a while.
I could go on.
In The Walking Dead comic, knowing how to reload ammo rounds is the most useful survival skill.
Weapon dealers > [insert essential good here] dealers > paramilitary related jobs.
Medics aren't really a necessity when having enough food for whoever is alive is the main issue. It will be a bonus for oneself to have such skill, but it will only take a medic so far before he faces more serious problems than his health.
Pretty much anyone who has an eye for social manipulation will have a huge head start in any state of social disarray, such as those in an apocalyptic dystopia.
People might argue the question was about usefulness, but well, since we are doing the "what if" possibilities, we might as well speculate on the most successful and/or having the most life-expectancy. Criminal activity will surely boom and kingpins will have a field day (or years).
I am a problem and puzzle solver who applies those skills and abilities to computers, networks, and electronics. My skills are infinitely transferable.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
> medical doctors would be useful, as would most scientists and engineers
A small subset of them would be able to apply a small subset of their skills and knowledge. Without infrastructure and technology, very little of what scientists or engineers learn is remotely useful, and most of that is stuff they learned in high school. The medical doctor only fares little better unless they specialized something like trauma surgery.
Without electricity and advanced industry, we're nothing but particularly clever monkeys.
I farm. I use some technology but everything I do I can do without any of the modern tech falling back gracefully to older and older ways. My kids farm with us and they understand these things and the need.
Civilizations rise and fall. There will be another fall. Another dark age. Maybe this decade, this century, this millennia. *shrug* I enjoy technology but I don't let myself be dependent on it. If there is a fall, my pastured pigs will be worth more than gold and bitcoins will be useless.
Zontar The Mindless has no accusation, just facts.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
EPM? Like an Electro-Pagnetic Mulse?
Philip. I am a soldier, sir; will you have me?
Mr. Barlow. We are +peaceable people, and I hope we shall not be obliged to fight. We shall have no occasion for you, unless you can be a +mechanic or farmer, as well as a soldier.
One thing to remember though...
It's the Apocalypse, not club med.
Yes, you need food. Yes, you need water. And clothes, shelter, playstation, etc...
And edible food, clean water and working play stations are all in short supply.
What you will need to keep your society going is people that will allow you to *keep* what you need to keep your society going.
Soldiers, fighters, guys that turn into ugly drunks. Jack Bauer.
That's why the Spartans were a force for a while. They farmed. They had artists and craftsmen. They had schools.
They had a reputation as a society not to mess with.
As much as it pains me to say it, life after the Apocalyse is not going to be full of utopian startups (at least not for a while), but will have bands of assholes running around. Like King Street, Melbourne on a Friday night.
P.s. For what its worth, paramedics would do as well as doctors come the end of the world.
Have you seen the syringes used by 18th century dentists (barbers)? The needle tip had a 5mm diameter. Imagine that being shoved into one's cheek!
Particle Physicists would probably be SOL.
Hedge fund managers and investment bankers too (bless their hearts).
Lawyers will probably survive longer than anyone really wants.
As for most useful: it's pretty clear that anyone who already lives off the grid is going to be way better off than the rest of us. The Amish, subsistence fishermen/hunters, and pretty much anyone who lives in Small-Town Alaska or Northern Canada will probably be fine.
Let's be honest: if there ever is a nightmare scenario, what's really going to matter is your ability to stay protected during the adjustment period:
People who have no skills and no protection will starve. (Culls)
People with no skills and sufficient ammunition will attempt to take whatever they can. (Bandits)
People with skills and no protection will be exploited or killed (Golden goose syndrome).
People with skills and sufficient protection will be a the seeds of the next civilization.
Keep that in mind. Your skill set is necessary, but not sufficient for surviving long enough to rebuild a civilization. The community you belong to is absolutely critical.
Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
Sorry you heard it from someone who got it wrong. The Roman punishment was to kill nine in ten in a regiment leaving one- the tenth man alive. (It was described as being one of the severest punishments and leaving 9 out of 10 alive wouldn't be that severe.)
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
I'm all set, then. Not only do I know how to brew beer, but I also used to work as a refrigeration technician.
(I've also worked building houses, but I can get someone else to do that for me if I've got cold beer and ice. :).
I grew up in a rural environment. The basic thing you need for farming in a non-mechanised environment is lots and lots of muscle power. Especially for ploughing the fields. If we also didn't have burden animals like heavy horses or oxen (big cows) - things would get incredibly difficult incredibly quickly, and every farm would need hundreds of people just to do the basic work. Even then it would be pretty marginal if they could make enough food just to support themselves to survive. In the time before mechanisation those beasts of heavy burden were often worth more than the lives of people - simply because they were so important for making enough food for society to survive.
Hunting gathering works but only with incredibly low population levels, go above that level and you rapidly start to run out of animals. A better solution might be the coast and fishing - but you can bet that a lot of others will be thinking of that too.
The real solution for farming is to fix the mechanised equipment and use that. That takes a little more than blacksmithing, say to convert a modern machine to run without its complex electronics would be pretty difficult. - the kind of thing that needs a good engineer and tinkerer. Making replacement parts is more difficult, especially if you don't have a local machine shop with lathes and milling machines and so on. And a bigger problem than the machines themselves is getting or making - or trading enough fuel for them to run. A lot of modern machines would need conversion to run on primitive fuels, and might have reduced lifespan..
Oops shatter another common delusion - on food, there are no 'unlimited' stockpiles of cans out there. For most foods and goods there's no more than a months margin in the current food supply, probably less than that. (Thanks to 'Just In Time' stock-holding.) Back in the cold war days I'm pretty sure some governments used to keep big emergency food supplies, but such things are very expensive to maintain and I don't think they really exist any more. FEMA has some but they're pretty limited, and there are stock-piles of emergency army rations - but they could not feed large numbers of people for more than a few days or weeks. Food is priority number one.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Tell it to the sources Wikipedia used: "decimate. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000". Dictionary.reference.com. Retrieved 2014-03-22. ^ Jump up to: a b Polybius, History of the World. Quoted in Shelton, Jo-Ann, As the Romans Did, p. 248 ISBN 978-0-19-508974-5 Jump up ^ G. R. Watson, The Roman Soldier (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969), p. 119 Jump up ^ Ab urbe condita, ii.59 Jump up ^ Livy: History of Rome 2.59.9-11, quoted in Sage, M M: The Republican Roman Army; a Sourcebook (2013) p147 Jump up ^ Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life of a Colossus, 407 Jump up ^ Plutarch: Antony, c. 39 Jump up ^ Suetonius, Augustus, 24 Jump up ^ Suetonius, Galba, 12 Jump up ^ Tacitus, Annals, 3 Jump up ^ Watson, Roman Solder, p. 120 Jump up ^ Codex Parisiensis, Bibliothèque National, 9550, reproduced in Louis Dupraz, Les passions de st Maurice d'Agaune: Essai sur l'historicité de la tradition et contribution à l'étude de l'armée pré-Dioclétienne (260-286) et des canonisations tardives de la fin du IVe siècle (Fribourg 1961), Appdx I. on the historicity of the Theban Legion. Jump up ^ Huw Strachan (2003) The First World War Jump up ^ Antony Beevor, Stalingrad, p. 117. Jump up ^ http://web.varkaus.fi/Varkaus_... Jump up ^ http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.pls...
Looks to me like more of your spamming. (And don't bother speaking of yourself in the 3rd person when it's obviously you, Sparky.)
It's pretty obvious that this is what it is when you post a 300+ word 'response' to a 1-line comment less than 15 minutes later, and this 'response' is about 90% the same as a bunch of your other posts.
Basically, you have this long, drawn-out screed that you've already written and keep handy, looking for opportunities to spam discussions with. And you do, repeatedly.
Anybody who's ever administered an online forum can recognise this pattern quite easily.
If you pulled this crap on the forums that *I* help administer? Well, I have a very special button on my admin page just for such occasions. One click, and you, your account (we don't allow anonymous posting there, gee I wonder why), and all your posts would be gone. *poof* Not going to tell you which one because I don't want you showing up there.
(BTW, I know even more about you and your activities at Ars Technica, Wikipedia, and a couple of other places than remains available on the Web, because... Guess what? *I know people who work at these places and I've asked them*. But to keep things fair I'm citing *only* stuff that anybody can find online for themselves.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The problem is that 20 minutes. Make it 7 days by foot and you are all set. It's not like those fatasses could walk over there without dying of hunger first. Amazingy having shitloads of fat doesn't help if you have to walk all the time and get no food at all.
>Medicine, nursing, virtually any health care skills you have would make you very useful. Having the tools required is a big plus.
>The skill of reasonableness would also be invaluable, as you'll do well to get along with a broad varuety of folks. Angry, frightened people, some of them mean and determined to take what they want, will make self-defense and negotiating skills a damn good thing to possess.
>If you're a musician, you've got another good portable skill. Blues players have an edge, most likely. We'll always need music.
>Knowledge of and equipment for amateur radio will benefit you, as will some basic engineering and technical knowledge.
How long it might take to recover? That's a tough one, as the measure of recovery is vague. Overall, I'd say that IF people, governments, -we- can avoid fighting over scarce resources, things like water and food, we might be climbing out in three to five years. For example, suppose there was a massive solar storm, and the limited plans the utilities have weren't enough to avoid massive destruction of transformers and other major parts of the grid. They say it'll take two to three years toi build and replace the damaged transformers alone.
>Human nature being what it is, and given that so many people today expect everything to be done for them, given to them, I think we'd be pretty well fucked.
>I'm just glad I was young when I was, and actually lived to be as old as I am now. I wouldn't want to be eighteen today, the future looks fuckin' scary. I lived for many years, growing up through the Cold War, expecting to be nuked. Many of us lived in the here and now, and didn't plan too far ahead. I did, to a point, and it's played out well, but a fair bit of that success was simple good fortune and good education. If we had a big 'event' that pushed us waaaaaay back, would today's young people be survivors? WOuld they be givers or takers, cooperative or selfish, reasonable or dangerous? I'm glad to be old(er), an apocalypse doesn't scare me much. It's the survivors of said apocalypse that scare me, people suck.
Actually most of the System Administrators and IT specialists , developers etc.. have engineering degrees, (those usually associated with somewhat higher than average IQ), most of the IT staff have different interests and hobbies and good theoretical knowledge of general engineering, math, physics, common chemistry.. They also possess encyclopedia-type knowledge just about anything.
When hunger start spreading, get rid of the lawyer and simply find an engineer- he'll think of something.. because ingenuity.. got it ?
As a software tester I can say that I have a heart for research and thinking up scenarios to try and prevent those from happening.
So if you make yourself a nice base and need your defenses checked, give me a call!
Ok, sorry I got it wrong. (I bow to the greater knowledge of WP (again). )
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Well, chances actually are, that some people that know gymel also have a wider understanding of the middle ages, and thus acquired skills, or at least know how, on how the middle ages work. So they might be able to build a fire with flint and steel, or produce pottery, and so on...
reenactors and experimental archeologists might be able to cope rather well without modern technology, because they already tried it.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Zontar, we can read you know. You lied in your post here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... You did follow apk around into a post where you weren't there before him Zontar.
One thing we can be sure of is that whoever ends up in charge will be wanting certain, uh, "services" - just like our current crop of leaders do. There's a reason they call it the world's oldest profession, y'know!
The skills y'all should be practicing aren't primarily technological.
Arid area farmers would have difficulty but 3000 acres is no problem. It would just take 80 men instead of 4. It would take a few years to build the populations of draft horses needed to do it well.
Any remote/island community is already living in this sort of situation.
They're generally self-sufficient for food. They're able to make most spare parts as it takes weeks/months to get something from "civilisation". But probably most important is everyone knows who has which skills and more than one person in the community has those skills.
Most of what MDs do is not useful without the entire medical economic structure behind them. "You've got these symptoms, which means I think you've developed this condition, and now I'll prescribe you this drug. Oh, wait, there are no drug makers making that drug, so take two Aspirin and call me in the morning. Oh, wait, Aspirin isn't available and there are no phones available." And most forms of surgery, beyond the most crude... well, let's see how well you heal without antibiotics and the other plethora of devices. Most scientists and engineers: Same category. They can't practice their professions without computers anymore. (And more essentially, electricity.) Give me an expert in medieval gymel who has primitive camping as a hobby over the most polished expert in medicine who's never eaten with an unsterilized spoon, any day of the week.
WTF? I posted in that thread roughly 14 hours before you did, APK.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
"This AC is a seriously disturbed individual." - by careysub (976506) on Sunday April 13, 2014 @10:53AM (#46739833)
Do you possess a PhD in the psychiatric sciences & a license to practice them, along with a formal examination of my "alleged mental state", according to YOU, "Dr. Quack - the 'SiDeWaLk-ShRiNk' of /."?
No? Thought not... lol!
* Better see my subject-line above then, Zontar sockpuppet (which we KNOW Zontar uses sockpuppets being caught in the act red-handed -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... )
NOW - Since you ARE libeling me... & you aren't qualified legally to do so.
If ANYONE's "disturbed", it's Zontar (admittedly) -> multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> Funny (not) how YOU always "miraculously appear to defend Zontar", eh? You sockpuppet... lol! Hilarious - when the "best you got" is libeling me & being legally unqualified to make your "snap prognosis/diagnosis" as you did? You FAILED - badly (it's a weak failing illogical off topic ad hominem attack with NO valid basis @ all, a troll tactic when they're on the ropes)
... apk
What was THIS (not what you pointed to) Zontar? http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
QUESTION: Did YOU post that well after that conversation was WELL underway, off topic, trolling, LONG after I was there first? Looks it!
Didn't YOU say this
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
About ME folowing you to threads? You do the same, hypocrite!
Of course, I admit it, I am!
Why?
Well, simple: I am merely confronting YOU directly on your lies & libel regarding myself -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... rightfully so too in righteous indignation on MY part since you are LIBELING ME attempting to harm my professional reputation - just like Barb, not Barbie = TomHudson (another multiple sockpuppet account using troll like you trie dto do, and she left in May 2012 supposedly, but YOU act just as she does - libeling me http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
Funny you accused (or projected rather) that YOU are indeed him/her but you can't back that crap up either accusing me of saying you are TomHudson/Barbara, not Barbie too -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Man, you probably ARE him, just judging by that alone - or, are you going to *try* to tell us that wasn't YOU & your account password was "hacked"? Com on... lol!
APK
P.S.=> You truly are, UNBELIEVABLE -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... ... and stupid! apk
I dare say careysub's got a better idea of what "libel" means than you do.
You don't need to be an optometrist to be able to tell that someone is near-sighted. And you don't need to be an expert in the social or behavioural sciences to be able to tell when someone's behaviour is sociopathic.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
You're *trying* (& failing since I defend myself) to ADVERSELY affect my professional reputation + career as a coder http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
(AND YES, THAT IS LIBEL...)
* YOU LIBELOUS DONE ZERO IN COMPUTING PIECE OF SOCKPUPPET USING ( http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ) EXAMPLE OF ONLINE TRASH...!
APK
P.S.=> By the way - saying or even INFERRING someone is 'crazy' (unless they admit it like you that is multiple personality disorder http://slashdot.org/comments.p... + manic depression http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ) IS LIBEL if you're not a licensed psychiatric pro WITH a formal examination of an alleged nut given in a professional psychiatric envrions, you libelous moron... apk
The use of the Plow for farming was one of the most beneficial inventions ever.
This question is too broad. There is a vast difference in the skills needed for survival *during* an actual apocalyptic event, and the skills needed for survival immediately after (the first few days-weeks-months), and the skills needed for survival long after (hundreds of years). The skills needed will change over time, but in general, people who today live the "life of the mind" will have to bring secondary skills that are more immediately useful to the forefront for the first few eras of the post-apocalyptic world. I'm going to assume for the purposes of this post that most apocalyptic events that could happen will not completely destroy *all* resources that had been produced pre-apocalypse, such as food stocks, vehicles, fuel, etc. If absolutely everything gets decimated, then there's no post-apocalyptic society to speak of; everyone is dead and there's just nothing.
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs clearly defines our built-in needs in terms of priority. These are pretty much hard-wired to our biological makeup; it makes no sense to seek musical transcendence when you're being bashed in the head or starving to death. Let's see what skills and abilities lend themselves best to each level of the pyramid, going from the bottom up.
When an actual apocalyptic event happens, all needs except the most basic ones -- the physiological -- take a back seat. First, you need to protect yourself from whatever immediate forces (assuming nukes or an asteroid blast or something) may be threatening your physical well-being. If we "just" run out of oil, there may not be any immediate "ka-boom!", so this step may not apply.
Second, you need to have access to food -- either by growing it or looting it -- and be able to kill anyone who might try to take your food from you. This period of living in the physiological-needs-only environment could last weeks, months, or years, but I suspect that it'll probably be over within 6 months, because most people who are unable to meet their immediate physiological needs will starve or be killed; those who remain will have established relative food security (enough to survive, but probably not enough to pack on pounds like we do today). During this period, you will either be extremely resourceful at finding existing sources of food; growing your own; or taking it from others. Regardless of your circumstances you will need to have the means to defend yourself, if not outright assault others to take their stuff. Guns will be a big player early on, but as sources of ammunition (which can't easily be replenished post-apocalypse) dwindle, hand to hand combat and improvised weapons will be more important.
Once the remaining survivors are able to meet their physiological needs with some regularity -- either through farming or continuous migration and looting of the remnants of society -- the safety level of the pyramid will start to become valuable. This is where ideas of human organization (aside from pre-apocalyptic organizations that you inherited, assuming they survive, such as a family unit) begin to become possible. Groups of people who have access to food supplies and shelter will tend to band together to increase their mutual safety and resources, and they can also pool knowledge, skills and emotional capital (comforting each other, etc.) At this level, doctors and skilled manual laborers become extremely useful.
Once small bands of people start having success at forming basic localized societies, the love/belonging level of the pyramid becomes possible. Family units will form or re-form, and care for children and spouses will become an important part of the proto-society's life. This sets the stage for rule of law, at least in some rudimentary form, so people who have a knack for setting fair and equitable policies will rise to natural leadership positions. If resources prove to be scarce and there are non-cooperating groups occupying adjacent territories, war is almost inevitable, thereby re-introducing martial prowess and/or access to pre-apocalyptic weaponry as an imp
Let's let TOM speak shall we:
"I'm having great conversations on this site with one of my alias accounts" - by Tom (822) on Monday April 07, 2014 @02:29PM (#46686259) Homepage
FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> Tom *tried* to libel me & failed after I destroyed him in a technical debate on hosts files... result?
Tom ended up "eating his words" here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... spiced with "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat" + HIS FOOT IN HIS MOUTH
... apk
Let's let TOM speak shall we:
"I'm having great conversations on this site with one of my alias accounts" - by Tom (822) on Monday April 07, 2014 @02:29PM (#46686259) Homepage
FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
APK
P.S.=> Tom *tried* to libel me & failed after I destroyed him in a technical debate on hosts files... result?
Tom ended up "eating his words" here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... spiced with "the bitter taste of SELF-defeat" + HIS FOOT IN HIS MOUTH
... apk
Well... I would take my guns and training and turn most of you into drones and cannon fodder.
tee he he
Hahahaha, the great 3 digit slashdot registered luser Tom shot down in flames.
I have a big ass file that has all the essentials of how to rebuild society should worse come to worse. I guess I should print it since more than likely there won't be electricity.
The story is rather dumb. The more educated you are, and the more used to learning you are, the better you can lean new things or adapt to new situations. And anybody who wrote enough code, or deployed enough network equipment, or just was just very technical overall is probably better suited than most for problem solving. I'm not saying they'd replace the other ones, but that they are certainly not useless.
Sure glad I kept my slide rule.
But seriously, these apocalypse scenarios are all based on the assumption that some bad event happens and then we all band together and buck up in a stiff upper lip British way and put things right again. This comes from the way that the world currently handles mini-disasters like earthquakes, floods, or tsunamis that are locally devastating, but are still profoundly local in a global view. The rest of the world continues to function to provide support and aid.
In the apocalypse, the bad is just going to keep coming. Shows like Jericho and Revolution are all hopelessly sunny in their outlook. The Left Behind series is an interesting look at the Biblical prophecies unfolding in that apocalypse, but even LaHaye and Jenkins are too hopeful in man's ability to survive - they assume a lot of things will be able to be patched up quickly. I'm sure humanity would be able to recover from a rapture type event at a large cost and extended amount of time. I'm less optimistic when the hits keep coming as they are prophesied to do in Revelation.
Cut a bunch of pipelines all at once by earthquakes. Kill the electric grid all at once by the same means. Do this worldwide - at the same time. Add disease, no new incoming food once what was in the stores disappears due to no fuel to move food and supplies or blocked or destroyed transportation networks, no power to provide clean water once the emergency generators which run the pumps in most of the world run out of diesel, long distances between where most of the food is and where most of the people are, dead bodies not being disposed of, fires, throw in some tsunamis from earthquakes taking out major world ports, throw in civil unrest from wars as various factions fight for power... Take the majority of the 7 billion people who depend on others for food and water and cut it off. It will get grim astoundingly fast. Understand that anyone who is smart will be blamed by the hordes for letting this happen - so your life expectancy is probably much shorter the higher profile you were.
Apocalypse - useful? is meaningless. The majority of the civilized world will be in chaos and only the groups with reserves will have the ability to do much of anything. They'll be using the reserves for their own purposes and not to help anyone who is not part of the group. So the military forces will have the best chance of surviving and moving forward for a while at least.
For everyone else, it's just survival - mano a mano. And hope you live someplace where there is something to hunt and a low population density and that you can craft a bow and arrow or crossbow, and have some sharp knives. Knowing how to start a fire - good. Knowing how to compute pi using a shotgun blast - bad. While being tougher than the person next door might be useful in the short term, being tougher than the wild pack of dogs that comes after your kill will be the real test. And even this bleak view is probably not bleak enough.
I guess there is more but the above listed general conditions are basics and no amount of skill can help if you run out of luck, cannot see lucky condition because lost hope, or being stubborn enough to die. There are also some other issues with that - I guess the agent of apocalypse must be strong but mild enough to let big enough part of society to survive or else the discussion is rather pointless. Plaugue for instance killed somewhere around 1/3 of Europe population - it did not destroy civilization but made quite an impact. Is this enough to call it apocalypse? Large enough flying rock impact can be devastating but depending on how big it maybe devastating more for some than for others leading to war etc. In such situation being an intelligent psychopath can be very helpful. Still if some groups of humans survive the most important factors are the above with skills like hunting, fighting and knowledge about simple health helping techniques being just a bonus.
"You barge into discussions with your off-topic hosts file nonsense" - by Zontar The Mindless (9002) on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:51PM (#46731153) FROM -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You said my "APK Hosts File Engine" is a virus/malware http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but it's EASILY PROVABLE it's not, right there in that link too.
Now PROVE YOUR FALSE ACCUSATION above: Show me a quote OR POST of me posting off topic on hosts where they did NOT apply... go for it!
APK
P.S.=> "Run, Forrest - RUN!!! you'll avoid THAT like the plague (per my subject line above) - why's THAT, Zontar, you libelous freak? apk
You can all bow to me, as I can grow hop and brew BEER! This is probably the only sure thing about a post-apocalyptic world: people will still want to get wasted to forget
Without constant supply chains from Farm to Walmart, the groceries would be gone in a week. Maybe two weeks max. Having a supply of fruit/veg seeds, a rifle, a fishing pole/net, and a little bit of survival knowledge would be very useful by week 3.
The only way that you'd have years of groceries left to loot is if something like The Walking Dead happened where 99% of humanity was killed quickly.
In a world with no central power to establish order, limited supplies, people knowing both those facts and guns aplenty, 99% of humanity dead in a week doesn't sound so outlandish, does it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is not a popular idea because it requires people to get over their personal drama and work together toward a goal, instead of finding reasons to justify doing whatever they personally want to do.
However, it's true. Strong leadership gets results. This country was much more "fascist" back in the days when we actually invented real stuff, instead of just moving bits around like a big game of "Puzzle."
Futurist Traditionalism
You say that politicians do not? ha-hah! Poor lad. You still think that digital watches is a good idea, eh?
This is a very good post. It shows great intelligence, but not great experience. Bums do have many of the attributes listed by the authorâ"great ability to size people up and know when to get out of Dodge.
But society allows Bums in very low ratios to exist within it, then society takes action. It creates laws against âoevagrancyâ, and it enforces those laws by transporting Bums to the County Farm where the Bum is actually at an advantage, getting room and board for free for 30 days, or transported to the county line where the Bum has the opportunity to catch a lift from a passing car or to catch a freight train. (The county line is actually a pretty poor habitat in which a Bum can thrive. They do much better in modern cities where food can be had from charities or out of the dumpsters of places that distribute or serve food. In the modern world less than a dozen people might use one of these sources. In a post apocalyptic world there may be scores.) The modern city offers more building materials to build shelters and shorter distances between resources than the county line.
In a post-apocalyptic society Bums will be considered a threat to people with houses, esp. since the number of visible people living on the street will rise from less than 1% to well over 20%. Shooting people on the street will be so common that coronerâ(TM)s inquests will report people âoekilled by gunshot by persons unknown.â The police will not have time to investigate them all. In fact, the police will be overwhelmed with crime reports.
The America of today is far different from the America of the 1920â(TM)s. People still often had privies in their back yard. In towns a man came by once a week to clean them out. Out on the farm, they dug another hole every once in a while and moved the privy. People often had wells, and water-borne diseases were common. In a post apocalyptic world these features will rise again to being common.
I expect a post apocalypse to have a time line:
In the first week:
Electrical power fails permanently. Community water supplies fail.
Food disappears off of store shelves and price of food doubles.
Gasoline disappears from gas station and the price of gas doubles.
In the second week:
Looting, destruction of property, rioting.
In the third week:
Men with guns sell food and gasoline from the back of semi trucks.
Diseases from bad water and bad food begin to appear.
Redneck farmers form militias to discourage or kill trespassers.
Most phone service dies. Without electrical power to that cell tower and a charged battery in that cell phone, the system is dead.
In the fourth week:
Community leaders form emergency committees to handle various problems. The system that develops will look a lot like Russian communism.
Starvation and allied problems will begin to whittle away at the population.
More riots, raids, and other civil disturbances.