If the grid were to go down following a major global disaster that wipes out 90% of the population, what kind of occupations would the survivors have?
Regardless of what job you were to pursue in this situation, you must be adaptable, courageous, surrounded by like-minded people, and willing to try new things. It’s these kinds of people who would be more likely to survive and get to the point where society could rebuild.
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The most popular kinds of jobs in society right now are retail, clerks, servers, waiters, janitors, secretaries, teachers, specialized services, and bookkeepers. The majority of workers, skilled or unskilled, are working in careers that will have little or no value in a post-collapse world.
There’s also the issue that people will be more focused on their survival than on their occupations. For example, a mechanic is someone who will likely be very valuable in a grid-down scenario. But at the same time, the mechanic of your group is going to be focused on his or her survival before anything else.
This means they may only work one to three hours a day on actually repairing vehicles, and the rest of their time will be spent gathering food and conducting other tasks related to staying alive.
To remedy this, the likely scenario is that we would have a more egalitarian society where people are expected to contribute equally and are paid equally for their work. Cash will no longer be a form of currency, but rather food, security, and shelter will be.
With the mechanic example, this means they would have their basic needs met by the rest of the group in order to ensure they could dedicate the bulk of their days to actually working on repairing vehicles. The same logic goes for other occupations as well.
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In this video, Canadian Prepper talks about these issues in detail and lists what he thinks will be the ten most common jobs after the grid goes down for good. Here’s his list:
- Leader
- Somebody who holds the group together and makes critical decisions.
- Some groups may have several leaders.
- Security
- Responsible for keeping the rest of the group safe.
- Food Procurement
- Hunters, fishermen, foragers, agricultural workers, farmers, etc.
- Cook.
- Trades
- Carpenters, plumbers, mechanics, etc.
- Medical Experts/Doctors/Nurses
- Weaponsmith
- Gunsmith, someone who can reload or build new ammunition.
- Seamstress and Cobblers
- Anyone who can repair shoes, clothes, blankets, etc.
- Entertainers
- Communications and Technology
- Engineers, computer experts, etc.
- Chaplin
For more information on these jobs and what it might be like to do them after the collapse, watch the video by Canadian Prepper below.
You’ve forgotten the most necessary job, butcher. I know it will surprise many to learn that animals don’t commit suicide. Even if they did someone still has to cut the meat. I’m sure some will reply “we’ll just live off what we can garden”. You have to eat 2-3 times the weight in plants to get the same caloric value as meat. That’s a lot of gardening. If you haven’t solved the refrigeration problem you have to cook and consume within 2-3 days of the kill. That’s why most underdeveloped societies herd goats and keep chickens. You can consume the meat quickly without refrigeration.
Thank you so much for all the work you have done and continue to do….I’m sure you are assisting countless many us to save our own lives,….and obviously everything you share can be modified for where we are, who we are, how we have prepared, and especially with who and what is available to us after the SHTF..
I know you will keep going….just wanted to give you a full on THANK YOU!!!!
You are very wrong in saying engineers would not be needed. As an engineer, I can tell you that engineers built this great and complicated world and they would be in great demand to do it all over again!
Even if all these jobs exist, who will pay you and with what money. You will end up in a ditch.
You will be paid in food and security.
This is part of working with a team. Each person offering a skill to keep communities going. Keeping us safe, fed, watered and able to care for children and those that are sick or vulnerable. It’s a bartering system where banks and ‘salaries’ are not relevant. It’s worth thinking about what each one of us can offer, otherwise certain individuals who sit back
and just expect reward, will not be needed.
Leaders. To pool people together for safety , find water and food, like hunting fishing and people with those Skills.
Entertainer?!?! I would say pedowood is one of the many reasons we have arrived at this SHTF moment.
Entertainers are vital in challenging times. A good laugh goes a long way. Think Bob Hope, Vera Lynn, Gracie Fields and others during World wars, Vietnam etc.
Looking over this list, I’ve been going over our group members to see who can do what. I know how nice it is to de-stress and listen to soothing music or have music with our worship services. I’ve also compiled quite an extensive cassette and CD library of audiobooks as well as a fairly well rounded library. While I know that should it come to this, and I hope it doesn’t, we are going to be so busy just trying to live with some sense of normalcy, we will also need ways to escape reality, even if only for a few minutes now and then.
What sort of Chaplin–Charlie or Oona? Maybe we could go ask the chaplain about it.
Chaplin? I can’t imagine much call for Little Tramps….
Basically a Mechanic ( or most other people) would not be working in a grid down scenario.
1) Modern cars, (and mechanics) rely on grid powered diagnostic tools.
2) Most parts houses use computerized parts matching and ordering systems ,(so no parts would be available to fix anything with).
3) In any extended grid down scenario, rioting and looting would have made the mechanics place of work,impossible to work out of, (burned out buildings, looted tools, looted supplies, etc),
The First Two Jobs are not really jobs, but positions.
Chances are they will be filled by some one who has another job in the group.
Job Eight, is a joke. No group will, support, feed and cloth, someone just to entertain them.
Job Nine, is not much better: Without power, engineers and computer techs etc, won’t have any usefulness. Not enough to consider them a regular “job”.
People with such skills, will double up in one of the other critical jobs or in a Trade, like a carpenter or mason.
Some of the people who make up these things do not use common sense or follow through on their basic premise. If you don’t have grid power, you won’t have a developed society.
So all the “jobs’ that such a society used to support, will no longer exist.
Such as the Arts, Opera, Theater, Actors and Actresses or High end Jobs, like Corporate Officers, Big Time Lawyers, Engineers, Architects, Fashion Models, etc.
I’m a mechanical engineer. I got my degree in 1989 and can do calculations without a computer or calculator, determine the best ways to divert a river to provide water for agriculture or to power a mechanism for a mill, build a shelter that will stand up under a heavy snow load, design/produce things like plows and other farm implements just to name a few things. People today hear the word “engineer” and think only of computers.
Mic,
The folks that write these things have no knowledge or experience in electrical generation systems. Power is one of the easier problems to solve. If you have that then you have food storage, information storage, entertainment and a host of other problems solved. The real challenge is getting the drive thru generation to understand that it takes huge manhours to do what has, until now, been mechanized. That garden won’t till itself, a fork and shovel will be required.
As for cars, 90% of the electronics in a car are the sensors that throw those “service now” lights. The cars still runs if the ECU is still good and the car body will act as a Faraday cage to a large degree. If you’re sitting directly under the detonation point of an EMP you have a problem. The USA has forces deployed all over the globe and under the sea. An EMP will be met in kind so are less likely. I think CME’s are a larger problem and they are less powerful and statistically less likely.
The term “grid-goes-down” has become an acronym for a full collapse. There are other circumstances (pandemic, solar minimum?) that can lead to a collapse without melting everything down