Let's say I don't want to be a self-sufficient farmer after the apocolypse

[conuly]

What else can I do to sustain myself? Give me some ideas, they don't have to be necessarily good or easy ones. I'm not talking *right* after, either. I'm talking when the dystopias pick up, several years down the line after things have settled down. (Ever notice how these books always assume that if you survive the initial upheaval of life as you knowing suddenly grinding to a halt, you'll be all right?)

(And yes, this entire post assumes the end of the world as we know it is coming. If you don't think that's likely to happen, speculate anyway.)

Comments

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

Learning how to make cloth would probably be pretty good.

[peaseblossom03.livejournal.com]

Learning to can would be useful. Even if you don't grow your own veggies, you can keep 'em longer, wherever they come from.

[conuly]

Well, yes, but I'm thinking of "what can I do for a living?"

[concordantnexus.livejournal.com]

Apocalypse (teasing you because I know that you're a spelling and grammar fanatic).

as for your question...

Survey says that if you're not a farmer or a fisherperson, then you're likely an *ahem* skill-less person trading sex for food or possibly a brigand that steals from people that grow, catch or raise food or possibly a warrior of sorts that gets paid by aforementionned farmers and fisherfolk to protect them from brigands. Incidentally, these warriors historically became nobility and thus history runs full circle.

[conuly]

I knew I had it wrong! Thanks! Hey, it looks like "calypso" that way, doesn't it.

I think prostitution would be an inherently risky job. Who's making condoms in the future, after all? And that seems to be the least of my worries, really.

How about a hunter-gatherer who does a little briganding on the side, just to keep busy? Hunter gatherers, statistically, work a lot less to feed themselves than farmers or herdspeople. And they're less at risk for famine and such. Downside? They're more at risk for oppression by neighboring farmers and herdspeople who hate them for their freedom. (No, seriously, I think that's *actually* why they get oppressed. More or less.)

Or how about founder of a cult? Seems to me there'll be a lot of people looking to find religion if the world suddenly (or even not so suddenly) should end, right? I can go mainstream, or make something up wholecloth, and you *know* some people will buy into it. I'd give examples, but why offend? (Alternatively, I could be a professional atheist. There's bound to be some people seeing current events as a reason to *lose* their religion, and why not help them along? But this seems like it'd pay less.)

What I *really* want to do is wander around telling stories, spreading news, and planting edible flowers (just call me Connie Nasturtiumseed), but it sounds to me as though I've been reading entirely too much pseudo-historic fantasy.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

My vote is to learn how to make something people will trade for--cobbling is good, but a real moneymaker is alcohol. Make wine and brew beer and your fortune is made. (The fact that this latter is one of my hobbies is only a slight bias.) Even brigands can usually grasp the concept of killing the goose/golden eggs...as in, if you mess with the brewer TOO much, there will be no more sudz.

Also consider that if civilization is THAT far gone, granny's herbal remedies and even a smattering of medical knowledge will be in HIGH demand. Just knowing how to splint, poultice, salve and bandage is more than many people know these days. Knowing how to MAKE your own medicines....

[conuly]

That's not a bad idea at all, you're pretty brilliant, have I told you that lately? I was already thinking last night that no matter how bad things get, sooner or later (especially if things get bad!) everybody will need a tooth pulled or a bone set.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Look to traditional jobs... pottery could be useful. Less useful if there's still plastic this and that everywhere for the taking, but if there isn't then people need containers to store food, carry things, water, etc.

Blacksmith is useful, both for general making of stuff, and if we have horses to shoe them. Can you ride? Can you tame a horse? Horses also make agriculture easier.

Fishing, hunting, knowing which berries, mushrooms, etc. are edible.

Doctoring was mentioned, but also midwiving. Without modern medicine, having a baby is dangerous. Even if you can't perform a c-section, knowing something about helping to get a baby out and turning a baby and such is useful. We might even have to go back to older methods of getting babies out... they can be less pleasant than the modern ones.

Art, music, and story telling. People will still want entertainment. Become a bard. If it works in DnD, it must work. :)

You're good with kids, professional babysitter might be an option. A less pleasant to contemplate temporary option is wetnurse, but let's not go into that.

You could go into the slave trade, but uh, let's hope we don't have that come up.

You could be a fighter protecting your community from the brigands and those who do go into the slave trade.

If you're a particularly good cook, you might be able to get other people to grow the food and have you prepare it for the community. Communal meals are much more efficient if everyone's willing to eat the same stew or whatnot. If you have a community like that, you might be able to be a professional cleaner. Have a bunch of people go out farming every day while a few people cook the meals for the community and some clean up after the last meal. It could work fairly well, while some people hunt and some guard.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Oh, or along with childcare - community teacher. Take care of lots of kids and teach them useful things. :) That'd be a neat job.

[conuly]

Less useful if there's still plastic this and that everywhere for the taking, but if there isn't then people need containers to store food, carry things, water, etc.

There'll probably be a host of people harvesting plastic and other stuff from garbage dumps in the event that the world ends. Good living for the first few decades, but eventually it'll have to peter out, yeah?

Art, music, and story telling. People will still want entertainment. Become a bard. If it works in DnD, it must work. :)

That's what I was thinking! Or how about a traveling teacher? Go around with other people and teach people how to do useful things that they don't know how to do, like make soap, farm, identify edibles, babywear (that's bound to come in handy), use flint and steel to make fire, etc. Only problem with that plan is that I'd be making myself rapidly obsolete, wouldn't I?

You're good with kids, professional babysitter might be an option. A less pleasant to contemplate temporary option is wetnurse, but let's not go into that.

Like, run a daycare (or, if we're being old fashioned here, a dame school? Maaaaaaaybe. Wetnursing doesn't strike me as inherantly unpleasant, but as I don't intend to bear younguns anytime soon, it does seem a little unlikely as a career choice. Unless, of course, I go the prostitute route. I'm sure lack of adaquate birth controle will speed things along quite nicely in that respect.

[leora.livejournal.com]

It was the need to make yourself lactate that made me dislike that option. That and if you're lactating, you probably just had a kid of your own. So, wetnursing tends to entail feeding two babies, which is a bit much. Or keeping yourself lactating and feeding a baby while your own child grows up. Unless you get rid of your kid somehow, but that option isn't great either.

[conuly]

Most people can nurse twins if they eat enough oatmeal and such, can't they? I thought that, like most mammals, humans can normally sustain as many infants as we've got nipples.

Why, thank you. Thank you verra much.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

/drops elvis accent/ I also do a lot of my own medicine involving herbs and so forth, and I'll note here that there's enough of a lack of confidence in our conventional medical establishment that I'm quite busy doing favors for friends in that area. I have little doubt that I could make a living that way if everything goes pear-shaped. (Although I wouldn't care to do dentistry without lidocaine.)

There's a Heinlein meme that went around a while back: "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."

I can and have done most of the above (sixteen of them anyway--dying gallantly is out for, um, obvious reasons).

[leora.livejournal.com]

Can, yes. How easy the nutrition would be to come by in your apocalyptic future, I don't know. But mainly it's a matter of, would you want to? Managing two babies and breastfeeding them both seems like a lot to handle. Maybe it'd work for you. I wouldn't want to do it without a really good reason, but I might if I were lactating anyway and someone I knew had a baby she couldn't breastfeed for some reason.

[conuly]

Neither do I. That's why it's the future. At any rate, I don't intend to have kids, so, let's just end discussion now. Wetnursing isn't a real option, then.

Re: Why, thank you. Thank you verra much.

[conuly]

Heinlein isn't my favorite author for pretty much just that reason. What if I don't want to be a renaissance man, anymore than I want to be a self-sufficient farmer?

[concordantnexus.livejournal.com]

I never said that 'wench' would be a good, fun or safe job...

I tend to think that hunter-gatherers get oppressed because:
1.) they're less numerous
2.) thus less strong
3.) people of the more numerous sedentary sort can oppress them
4.) how dare you hunter-gather my field you thief!

Go with Cult - it pays more. The demons thereof would be Bush, Dubya, Rumsfeld, Cheney... they are Legion!

Nasturtiums make good salad fixings! Mum sometimes adds the ones from her garden to her salads. =)

[conuly]

1. I know.

2. I know - but still.

3. YES!

4. Yup, yum. Of course, then I get people telling me "OMGNO!!!! SHE'S EATING A FLOWER!" about the baby. And they just don't listen when I say I gave it to her for that purpose.

Re: Why, thank you. Thank you verra much.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

I don't like his writing style, but I agree with his point. Perhaps it comes from being raised in a fairly isolated rural environment, but I feel that you should be able to do almost anything for yourself--maybe in a halfhanded, rough-made, amateurish way, but enough to get you through.

Essentially...what happens if you either can't FIND anyone to do it for you, or you can't afford to pay someone to do it for you? If you have the requisite skills yourself, everything's fine. If you don't, you're up the proverbial crick.

I've made a backstrap loom. I've made cheese and yogurt and churned butter. I've helped to butcher poultry for the table and dug potatoes. I dye wool, spin and knit. I brew my own beer and wine. I'm a damned fine cook and baker. I've bound books and made paper. I've even made my own ink (once was enough, what a mess). I know how to work leather and the rudiments of tanning. I can do rough carpentry and change a tire if I have to. Sewing and mending is easy.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Without modern medicine, having a baby is dangerous.

We might even have to go back to older methods of getting babies out... they can be less pleasant than the modern ones.



WHAT!?!? Someone has been brainwashed by the mainstream...


And...Funny, I thought the way I just had Annika 3 1/2 days ago was pretty damn primative, and it was darned sure more pleasant than my extremely medicalized births of the boys...

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Chris' mom never needed anything to bosst her supply when nursing him and Richard. Don't forget, nursing mainly relies on a Supply and Demand thing. There is a demand for enough for twins, most bodies will Supply enough for said twins, without all the extra stuff to make extra milk.

[conuly]

Well, she's right and she's wrong. It's definitely true that in developing countries, there is still a high risk of death-in-childbirth. And then, on top of that, there is the potential for crippling disabilities from childbirth... like permanent incontinence. Would that I were making this up.

But, it's not a guaranteed death sentence, not by far.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

Yes, many times it is dangerous, but in most cases, its not. So it would have been better said as "Without modern medicine, having a baby is sometimes dangerous." or something. But its that "OMG without a doctor your baby will DIE!!!!" mentality that makes childbirth such so badly in the US these days. :(I mean, crap. You can't even have a midwife assisted homebirth in New York state. Because the government has made it illegal Assholes. :(

[leora.livejournal.com]

Oh come on, you know better than that. An example means nothing, especially for a third child. I was a fifth child, born at home, with no fuss and no pain. That's irrelevant.

Sure, lots of babies will be born without problems, otherwise humans wouldn't be here now. But some of them aren't. The old advice used to be carry small, and you can go back to that. Carry small, don't gain much more weight than you have to, and you're less likely to have a baby that doesn't fit out like you do now. But you're more likely to have health risks for the baby.

Lots of babies fit out with just labor. Some need turning and repositioning. And some just won't fit. If a baby won't fit to get out it can kill both the mother and the baby. Stalled labor is real, even if you didn't have it. And the older methods, when turning didn't work and pushing and prodding didn't work generally involved breaking part of the baby. Sometimes you can just break an arm and get a baby out, but sometimes it's a collarbone. And in some, desperate situations, you need to break the skull and remove the baby in pieces or cut the mother open and remove the baby, but generally one or the other isn't surviving through it, and if you don't do either, often both will die.

It's a real risk. And without modern medicine, it will come up at times. Many of the cesarians we have today may be done without as much cause as is necessary, but some of them absolutely do save lives.

[lizziey.livejournal.com]

I never said there was no pain to Annika's birth. Far from it, having her without pain meds was the most painful experience of my life. However, it was far more pleasant than the birth of the boys, which was chock full of doctors and nurses doing with me what they would, and not thinking my body could do this without them (just as your comment suggested, in fact!!).

As for the rest of it, that is nature. Seriously.