Today I have a guest post on Unorthodox Skills For A Post-Apocalyptic Scenario. Should be some you’ve thought about and some you have not. Enjoy!
Unorthodox Skills For A Post-Apocalyptic Scenario
When we consider the potential of a post-apocalyptic scenario, or a general collapse of established society, there are some types of skills that come to mind as general necessities. If you’re reading here, you’ve likely considered things like knowing how to forage safely, knowing how to start a fire, being able to find or create shelter, basic knife skills, stretching a store of canned food, etc. If you’re to be fully prepped for this kind of situation though, there’s really no cap to the skills that might come in handy. So I did some thinking, and a little bit of research, to come up with some more unorthodox skills to consider adding to your arsenal.
Martial Arts
Martial arts for survival have been covered here before, so I won’t harp on them too much again.
Suffice it to say however that there’s typically a lot of focus on weaponry and very little on hand-to-hand defense in these conversations.
It pays to learn how to use a blade, train yourself in archery, and even know how to shoot on the off chance you need and have access to a weapon in a post-apocalyptic world. But preparation isn’t about anticipating these kinds of perks or luxuries.
All you know you’ll have is your own body, and you can train it to defend itself all alone.
Networking
I know, the very term “networking” makes you think of a boardroom or a college student center full of name tags – not a post-society setting in which you’re struggling to survive.
Nevertheless, it’s exceedingly likely that in any kind of drastically different future it will be very important to know how to make friends and alliances, maintain connections, and trade value with other individuals. That’s basically what networking is, when you come down to it.
It’s not the easiest thing to practice – some people are born networkers and others roll their eyes at the very concept – but to make things simpler I’ll just say you should always be working on your people skills, and you should try to learn how to be comfortable in a variety of social circumstances.
The last thing you want to be in a societal breakdown is to be alone.
Betting
In a true breakdown of society, there’s no telling how people will handle financial dealings, nor how we’d stay entertained. But there’s a good bet these things will mix, because throughout most of human history we’ve had a tendency to play wagering games, even when there’s not much to bet with.
Incidentally this is something that’s gaining steam in the U.S. seemingly by the day. We know that Las Vegas has long had gambling activity, but New Jersey could soon eclipse Nevada as the largest U.S. betting market, and more states are soon to follow.
This means more and more people will be both learning how betting odds and gambling games work, and becoming more interested in them – which probably only increases the likelihood that some form of wagering could linger into a post-apocalyptic society. You’d best know what you’re doing if that’s the case.
Gardening
One of the biggest survival stunts we’ve ever seen in a Hollywood big screen came just a couple years ago, in the form of Matt Damon’s character growing potatoes on Mars. And the crazy thing is, it would actually work!
This is actually to be expected if you’re familiar with the book The Martian, on which the movie was based, because the author went to great pains to explain most every aspect of the story with accurate science, or at least feasible science.
I realize we’re not talking about Mars here, but the film actually emphasized that in certain survival scenarios the first thing you’ll need to worry about is how long your food supply will last – and how you can grow it and make it last longer. For this reason a basic knowledge of how to plant, grow, and maintain edible crops is essential.
Making Soap
I’ll keep this last one short: hygiene matters! You won’t exactly be going on a Tinder date if the world as we know it comes to an end, but we don’t keep ourselves clean just to smell nice.
Hygiene is a major part of staying free of disease, and, one could argue, even one of the reasons for the spike in life expectancy over the last 100 or 150 years. And depending on what kind of world we’re talking about, hygiene might not be a given.
At the very least you should learn things like how to make soap, what you can use to clean your teeth without access to toothpaste, and other skills related to your everyday bathroom routine.
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