I love watching post-apocalypse movies, but sometimes I get to wondering: how useful would I be if I found myself living in a post-apocalyptic world?
As we see on The Walking Dead, there’s always washing and cooking to be done. However, anyone able-bodied can wash stuff, and even if you can’t really cook you could peel potatoes, so there’d be an abundant supply of washers and kitchen-workers, so my abilities there wouldn’t necessarily make me worth feeding if things got tight. I could teach the children, but then so could any adult who can remember a reasonable amount of what they learned in school.
I’m a good organiser, so maybe I could be the quarter-master. Give me a room with some shelves to set out all the camp’s stock and I could mete it out like a sonofabitch.
I can grow things; I know how to run a compost heap. Some vegetables I even know how to save seeds – we’d have lots of potatoes and tomatoes, they’re easy to propagate. So I’d be of use in that job.
There’d be sewing do, mending and all. I could cut shirts, pants and coats without a pattern, if pressed, and I know how to make a no-zipper-needed closure on a pair of pants. But initial survival would rely on raiding the stores, and god knows there’s a shitload of clothing lying around in stores, so it would be a while before my skills were needed.
Also worrisome is the fact that my sewing-from-scratch skills would require a good supply of cloth, scissors and needles. I could probably remember enough to set up a loom, and maybe a spinning wheel, if I had a good carpenter to work with. Scissors are very difficult to forge, but a sharp knife would work to cut out the cloth. But needles – sewing without modern needles would be very, very evil. Once the needles ran out, we’d all be going around in togas.
Other than that… I can’t drive a nail straight to save my life. Not strong enough to chop down trees, or pull a bow. Lousy shot. Can’t ride properly. I guess I’d be ok minding the cows and horses, so long as nothing advanced was required, and the animals weren’t too ornery. Milking can’t be that hard, but helping with a difficult calving or foaling…
What skills do y’all have to help us survive in the post-apocalyptic world? Our nurses get an automatic free pass, and an invitation to set up shop in my camp.
