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[k0xxx]

My idea of the number 1 skill that everyone should learn is saving seeds, to be able to start the following years' garden. It's not as easy as I had assumed that it would be, with different techniques required for different plant types. Of course there are many others, but if you weren't able to buy seeds any more, this would be way up there.

 

[Neko-chan]

...

 

[Wifezilla]

printing stuff off and put in a binder

Working on that!

 

[Icu4dzs]

In a more-likely it-actually-happens-sometimes SHTF scenario, as opposed to reduced to stone age living kind of thing, I would suggest that the most valuable skills that many of us are weak in would include things like:

- Major carpentry, with emphasis on adequate seat-of-pants engineering decisions

- plumbing skills

- small engine repair/maintenance

- automotive repair

- electrical, with emphasis on not getting yourself killed or burning things down

- making anything from anything else (scavenging, repurposing and construction type skills)

- knowing what you can eat (and how to make it palatable) and what it would be wiser not to eat

- some reasonable knowledge of first aid


For more serious doesn't-really-happen-now-but-concievably-might type scenarios, I would add also

- Skill with hand tools, including good joinery both big and small without use of metal fasteners

- sewing and basic garment-construction skills

- knowledge of childbirth-related topics

- firearms skills (not just target shooting, but good maintenance/repair skills and *judgement* about when to shoot vs save the round for another time)

- reasonable hunting/fishing/trapping skills as appropriate for your area

- some knowledge of processing hides into something you'd be willing to sleep under or wear without having to have full removal of the olfactory part of your brain cells

- metalworking, probably not so much welding as forging and otherwise reworking metals

- skill -- not book learning, but many years of actual real-world mileage -- at growing and harvesting food plants and food animals, and storing the food appropriately (canning, drying, root cellaring, etc)

I'm sure there are others, that's just what comes to mind offhand.

Pat

What she said!!!! As I have heard somewhere and forget where MEGA DITTO! We do NOT have to go back to the STONE AGE as long as we have a few basic skills like the ones listed above.

The entire SS concept is based almost exclusively on this very thing which if we think about it is only limited to the "age" we wish to live in after a serious SHTF situation. There is a lot of banter on the MSM right now that the AlQueda folks are threatening to use thermonuclear devices on the US for killing Bin Laden.

Assuming that could happen for a minute and leaving out the types of things such as environmental disasters, etc that are not as far reaching, the list above by PatandChickens is not only extensive but encompasses much of what we would need to do in such a situation.

This leads me back to the question of "What age/century do you want to live in" if for any reason, life as we know it has a signficant change? Most of the SS folks here would probably drop back to the early 20th century with little or no difficulty. This is because they would know how to make electricity. For the use of engines and the like, it would be easier to consider saving diesel engines rather than gas engines because biodiesel can be made at home and gasoline requires petroleum based oil.

So the whole thing revolves around energy and its production. If you want to live in the 19th century, you will need to be able to make machines and work with metal but the power source is going to be either wind or water unless you know something else that would work. OK so you have a pair of oxen turning a post that is geared to make a gnerator turn...that is what I mean. Use what you have to make what you need.

If one considers the idea of living in the 19th or earlier, then we have to consider the issue of labor. In those days, the only transportation source was a horse or oxen. Not a fast travel. Yes, boats did exist but then there are some limitations to using them especially here in the midwest.

Labor is what they had back then. Families were big, sons were strong and there were lots of children to do chores. No one was exempt from work like they are now...no nintendo or cell phones to text message on either.

The folks who lived in those times did pretty well. Go tour a cemetary and look at the life spans of some of them. While they were'nt as long as they might be now, they were pretty long and healthy for the entire time. So that now brings us back to the list of skills.

A good book to read as a resource is American Farming Techniques which is written for about the turn of the century. Lots of stuff is found in that book that will show you how to "do things" and all you really need is the time to do it, the materials and the motivation. Our country became great because of the folks that "thought about how to make stuff better" back then.

Each of the skills listed are important, but we need to prioritize them with respect to the energy source they require if those skills are to be useful. Fixing a jet engine without kerosene is kind of "out of it" for now.

The skills that Pat mentions are among the most important. We will be able to keep much of what we have invented if we can make electricity so that might be a place to concentrate. Once you have energy you can do a lot of stuff you can't do without that energy source. That will determine which "century" you will live in and you can tailor your skills to that.

For my money, I chose to live in the 20th because I can make electricity and even if my current equipment fails, I can build more.

So while not making any specific list, what I am saying is first choose when you want to live and then learn the skills for that time period. It will save a lot of confusion.

Of course if we think about it, most of what exists right now will still exist even if someone blows up much of the US. We will either live where we are or we will find someplace already built. Fixing up something broken to make it habitable might be more the issue.

The tools and the equipment is all still here and by all rights will probably stay in such an event. Using them to our advantage will be the issue. BUT......

IMHO THE ONE MOST IMPORTANT SKILL we can learn is now to get along with each other. We will still have a variety of skills and will need to learn how to barter/trade with each other because we won't have the time or inclination to learn absolutely every skill. It just can't be done. Those who will be "LEFT BEHIND" will have either known skills or will learn skills dependent on their particular interests or needs. Others will learn different ones. "No man is an island" and that is true.

We, the SS mentality are the ones who will help lead those who survive any "halocaust" in the country because we have learned those skills. Our main job will be to TEACH those skills to whoever survives from the "techie" age so they can continue to be productive human beings. We probably won't have the internet to use then so we have to learn how to get along with each other and teach those less skilled to do with their hands. Lots of Vera Wang dresses are going to turn into curtains you can be sure.

//BT//
Trim sends

 

[patandchickens]

We do NOT have to go back to the STONE AGE as long as we have a few basic skills like the ones listed above.

And in fact I think that no matter HOW catastrophic or total the destruction of civilization you might get, people would have to be unimaginably stupid to be forced back to a TRULY stone-age way of life.... simply because there will still be so much of our modern cr*p that survives us, along with the cockroaches. At least for a couple of generations. And significantly longer once people think of mining garbage dumps

Metal and metal items in particular, but also glass, durable plastics, etc. Which can enable you to do a whole lotta things that yer basic stone age dude, no matter how cutting-edge technology he may have been for his age, could never have DREAMED of.

"What age/century do you want to live in" if for any reason, life as we know it has a signficant change? Most of the SS folks here would probably drop back to the early 20th century with little or no difficulty. This is because they would know how to make electricity. <snip> So the whole thing revolves around energy and its production. If you want to live in the 19th century, you will need to be able to make machines and work with metal but the power source is going to be either wind or water unless you know something else that would work. OK so you have a pair of oxen turning a post that is geared to make a gnerator turn...that is what I mean. Use what you have to make what you need.

Very good point.

Because that is the other thing we have that the stone age folks lacked -- we don't have to invent things, we REMEMBER them (and the principles by which they were originally constructed) so instead of saying "how can we get this heavy thing from point A to point B when it's too heavy to drag" we would have skipped ahead to "what can work to make a wheel" or any of a variety of other alternative solutions that tens of thousands of years of our ancestors have worked out the slow hard way.

IMHO THE ONE MOST IMPORTANT SKILL we can learn is now to get along with each other. We will still have a variety of skills and will need to learn how to barter/trade with each other because we won't have the time or inclination to learn absolutely every skill. It just can't be done.

I like that answer better than my own actually So totally true.

A few people can try to gut it out alone in the mountains with a bowie knife and buffalo skins and steel-and-flint if they want, but that ain't going to be how MOST people survive, not for long, no matter WHAT the type of catastrophe one is envisioning.

Pat

 

[Marianne]

Is that applause I hear?
Yes, I agree, as we all have better skills in one area and come up kinda short in others.

 

[valmom]

Icu4dz- what a well thought out post! I agree with everything you said. We won't be back to the stone age because we do remember and pass on what we know how to do. Energy generation is a critical factor in how we will live if TSREALLYHTF- whether it is a waterwheel or horsepower or an actual electricity generator.

I have also spent a lot of my life learning skills that don't depend on electricity. Mostly because I love to know HOW things are done and how they came to be. If I can go back to the root cause of something I really understand it and can re-create it. I think at the most basic how to create fire and how to purify water and store food are the tops of my list. I already have confidence that I can take anything reasonably long-staple and make it into something to keep us warm, so that isn't at the top of my list.

One of these days I really will make a rocket stove and learn it!

 

[Wannabefree]

I have basic capentry skills. I can work on vehicles, garden, swim like a fish(could come in handy), I can sew, do stitches...on a person, know basic first aid and CPR as well, know my way around firearms thanks to corrections work and hunting, which brings me to hunting and fishing, and harvesting the meat from those, I can trap, track, cook, and uh...I dunno what else, but let me get in a position to need it and I'm generally good You'd be suprised how many folks can't even figure out which direction N S E W they are going without a dang compass or GPS I can make a few explosives with random items too SHHHHHHHHHH!! Don't tell!! I know how to build shelter in the field and a lot of edible forage(enough to not starve at least) and can make my own weapons. Where will I ever use half this stuff?!?! I'm not crazy about camping :/ unless I have no choice I'm just gonna wing it when TCHTF C=CRAP!

 

[abifae]

*thoughtful*

Really the main thing I have is the complete conviction that I should be alive. I cannot think of anything I will not do to survive. I am utterly practical and qualmless.

As far as actual skills... well, I know basic survival training and I learn very quickly. Good at medicinals including herbs. *shrugs* Can do a bit of this and that and would be pretty handy on Auntie's little plot of land. But I'm pretty sure my best tool is my adorable sociopathic streak.

 

[Wannabefree]

I actually wouldn't mind NOT being here. It's gonna suck, because a lot of folks are so stupid and don't know how to function without their crackberries, and music, and clothes just so I think I wouldn't mind skipping that party It'd be like raising a herd of feral teenagers just being around most of the population and their incessant "feelings" BLECH! PATOOIE! I'll head for the woods if I survive whatever.