Lambdas and meathooks and crossbows, oh my!

[pozorvlak]

I have now returned from Edinburgh, where I was visiting a symposium to celebrate the 60th birthday of Gordon Plotkin (not his death, as totherme and I had somehow assumed: fortunately, we discovered our mistake before we tried to console anyone). It was a theoretical computer science conference, which isn't really my area, though there's some overlap: I

Comments

[ext_5743]

One of the things I've learned from talking to people here at Rothera is that having a trade (as distinct from a profession) is much more useful in more places. So for example, plumbers, electricians, mechanics, builders and carpenters are all capable of doing those sorts of jobs all over the world, and that there are many places in the world crying out for them to do just that. I would recommend the following list of professions for surviving in a world of decreasing technology:

- hydraulic engineer (in places where wars are not being fought over oil they may well be fought over water)
- electrician (particularly with knowledge/experience of autonomous systems and alternative energy)
- mechanic (even with rising oil prices the internal combustion engine will be with us for a long while yet)
- textile worker (even with global warming and relaxing social attitudes to sex, people will still want clothes and tents)
- ceramics worker (making stuff out of clay is low-tech and very useful)
- farmer

[pozorvlak]

Ceramics are a good thought - it's one of the oldest technologies there is, so you can presumably bootstrap a kiln out of very little. And the others are good, too. There will be rather a lot of textile workers, of course, but it can't help to have the skills yourself. Hence the interest in darning, to some extent...

[johnckirk]

This webcomic advocates pottery as a useful skill in GMF:
http://www.partiallyclips.com/index.php?id=1120&c=1

[johnckirk]

Certain types of first aid are probably useful, but not the way it's taught now. E.g. it would be good to be able to fix a broken leg with the aid of tree branches, but it's not much use to know how to use an AED. Arguably it might be more useful to learn a martial art, so that you can beat other people and steal their food :)

There was a blog entry along similar lines that I saw recently:
http://blog.air0day.com/2006/06/04/are-you-worthless/#more-49
and you might find it amusing, although it does contain some spoilers for early episodes of Lost season 2. Actually, you'd probably like his blog in general (Bruce Schneier recently quoted from this entry.)

[pozorvlak]

That is a good blog! And don't worry, I've never seen Lost.

Speaking of martial arts, one of the things that got me thinking about this was a thread over on esrblog in which one of the gun-nuts (of which there are many) said that even if this global warming thing wasn't an alarmist hoax, then stocking up on guns would be good for survival in the GMF (though he didn't use that term). One of the liberals (of whom there are very few) said that while guns and canned food may have their place, they're not a long-term solution (unless you intend to be an out-and-out raider): to survive long-term, you need the kind of skills that MP-J mentions above. I'd include a link, but I can't find it with Google, and lack the stomach to trawl through loads of ESR blog comments.

[johnckirk]

I've been re-reading Batman: No Man's Land recently, where the USA seals Gotham off as a lost cause, and it turns into a semi-feudal society. There was an interesting standoff in that, where a guy tried to mug someone with a gun, and the would-be victim said "You're bluffing, because if you did have a bullet then it would be worth more than [the item he'd get]". Archery might make more sense, particularly if you could get away with sharpened sticks rather than metal arrow-heads.

[totherme]

Arguably it might be more useful to learn a martial art, so that you can beat other people and steal their food :)

I'm firmly of the opinion that surviving as an individual by martial ability in a hostile environment for any length of time is untenable. There's always a bigger guy. Failing that, two guys. Or four. Call it an even dozen. What if one of them's armed? All of them? Maybe you've got a headache, and are reacting a bit slow. Or you slip on a banana peel. And you've got to sleep sometime