What are some "jobs" in this post collapse world?
- Banking - Not the old style 9 - 3 traditional banker. People who can maintain small local banks, protect deposits, lend locally and know the local community quite well. Flexible people who can deal with alternative currencies, maybe even locally developed ones.
- Sanitation workers - People who can install and service septic tanks, outhouses, ecologically designed in-house toilets. People who can integrate waste systems into compost piles. Other skills: water purification (as municipal systems no longer provide safe potable water). Can you turn compost in fertilizer? Because once the natural gas becomes unavailable, no more synthetic fertilizer. Bonus: Can you make natural pesticides?
- Fix-it shop keepers. People who can repair things, like furniture, cookware, bicycles, fireplaces, roofs and windows.
- Defense - State and county provided law enforcement services are simply going to break down in many areas. Police cars may not have gasoline available. Police services and the national guard may not be supportable. Full or part time local self defense will be a requirement for communities that wish to protect what they care. Can you make and maintain simple firearms? What about ammo?
- Lots of part time stuff, like: fire department staff, road, trail maintenance (forget about state and federal road support).
- Home builders and maintainers: People who can get hold of local mostly materials and use local tools to build and maintain dwellings.
- People who can make and work with glass and insulation and other vital building supplies. Can you repair a roof, or keep the cold out? Great!
- Traders - Can you build up relationships with distant suppliers of spices, fabrics, raw materials like cotton, iron, food, building supplies, glass, medicine, medical instruments, small electrical components like light bulbs, lamps, wire, batteries and sockets? Can you oversee their transport from where they are made/grown to where you will sell them? Then you'll be that all important trader and middleman.
- Food growers: Farmers who can grow for their own family and 2 - 8 other families, depending on land and resources. People who can grow part of what they consume. Remember: only natural fertilizers, i.e., night soil, yours and the animals.
- Blacksmiths and small machine shop operators. People who make lots of different items which are no longer available, especially if they were made overseas. And horseshoes: Yes, horses will be making a comeback in many areas. Can you make a plow and a hitch? Shovels, pliers, hammers, door locks? What about a fishing rod and hooks? What about a washing tin and a bath tub? A wood burning stove? A water pump?
- Medical care: Physicians and assistants who can treat people in ways that don't rely on a globalized medical instrument and pharmaceutical system. Can you make/fix/supply eye glasses? What about a microscope? [Forget about contact lenses - far too complex].
- Traditional pharmacists. People who can make pills and potions from materials available locally and regionally. Bonus points if you can make anesthesia, antiseptics, antibiotics, aspirin and birth control pills. What about condoms, band aids? Can you maintain an X-Ray machine, if electricity is available?
- Refrigeration techs, maybe even ice suppliers. People who can make low energy consuming systems/boxes that preserve food. Can you make and maintain an ice house, and deliver the ice?
- Insurance - An idea that's been around for centuries. Can you develop new ideas about how to create simple forms of insurance that can be funded and supported locally?
- Vets, animal techs and people who can buy/sell/breed horses, chickens, sheep, goats.
- Recyclers - People who can collect old junk - detritus of industrial civilizations - and find ways to use it again, more sustainably.
- Small scale electricity providers and maintainers. Not clear whether photovoltaics and modern wind generators will survive a collapse of industrial society. Will it be possible to make PV cells and small windmills and micro-hydropower on a small local scale? If you can figure this out, you might be able to get rich, whatever rich means in a post-industrial future. Can you make light bulbs?
- Stoves, ovens and fireplace maintenance installation and repair. Forget about electric heat. There will probably be natural gas until there's a major industrial collapse. Then people freeze if their dwellings aren't able to get heat from sustainable sources.
- Morticians, gravediggers and cemetery maintainers. The earth's human population is going to go through a major bottleneck in the 21st century. If the human race survives, it will almost certainly be at a level far below 1 billion people. Thus: a lot of dying, probably from diseases, starvation and violence. Safe disposal of the bodies will be a requirement if the survivors are not to get new diseases from failing to dispose of the dead. You'll need to work with the sanitation workers to pickup and safely dispose of contaminated corpses.
- Can you make soap and disinfectants?
- Clothing makers: Can you work with fabric? Can you turn raw wool into a sweater? Can you make new clothes from old ones?
- Fuel supplier: Can you provide firewood and/or other sources of sustainable cooking and heating fuels?
- Ecologists. People who can develop deep understandings of the natural environment and help promote sustainable human societies that also support a rich diversity of wildlife.
- People who can make/service wagons. carts, bikes, small transports power by horses.
- There will be new religions, or new versions of old religions. Can you help develop the theology and mythology that will be needed by a civilization in "decline and fall" mode? Can you lead a funeral service? Conduct a wedding service?
- Shopkeeper - For small shops like hardware, clothing, simple furniture, groceries, building supplies, mostly from local and regional suppliers.
- Butcher, baker, candlestick maker: Old time craftsmen and women. We'll almost certainly be restricted to diets with less meat, especially beef, but given human history, it's almost certain that some level of meat consumption will continue. And we'll all want bread and cakes. Candles? We can't count on 24x7x365 grids and backup systems may not be available or charged, but we'll still need lights after dark.
- Soap maker, vendor of cleaning supplies.
- Electricians and plumbers: There will almost certainly be les electricity available, and much of what is will be locally generated. Can you maintain these systems and the systems of small businesses and home owners? Can you work with low voltage DC systems? Can you install a simple windmill and keep it running? What about a solar hot water system? Can you clean out the pipes? Can you make, recycle and repair batteries?
- Arborist: Can you take care of trees and orchards? Deal with pests? Can you manage and sustain a tiny section of forest and supply neighbors with firewood?
- Grape or grain grower: yes, we'll still be drinking wine and beer, and stronger stuff.
- Watch and clockmakers - We'll still want to know what time it is
- Weather forecaster - Can you read the clouds and collaborate with other forecasters to develop accurate predictions? Without and satellite images? Local radar may be all you get.
- Experimental scientist - Like Ben Franklin and Galileo. Can you form hypotheses and test them without federal grants and expensive equipment? Can you identify diseases based on cell cultures? Can you find a "day job" and do the science "part time"?
- Jack of all trades - People who possess many skills and can undertake new projects and manage existing ones will be valuable.
- Miners - Can you mine metal from mines? Can you scavenge from junk yards and other detritus piles of industrial civilization?
- Brick and concrete makers: Can you make these from local materials? What about mortar?
- Newspaper and book publisher: Local papers will be making a comeback. Can you manage a daily or weekly schedule? Can you take care of a printing press and do the distribution? Do you have a source for ink? Can you recycle the paper?
- Paper makers - Can you make paper? The newspaper people will need you.
- Toy maker - I hope we live in a world where children still have the "luxury" of playing with toys.
- Beekeeper - Who doesn't like honey?
- Map makers - In a world where energy is expensive, we aren't going to be able to keep making sophisticated GPS satellites or launching them into orbit. People are going to have to rely on maps for more distant travel.
- Innkeeper - Can you renovate an old hotel, motel or multi-bedroom house cook and clean it and welcome travelers?
- Teacher - Up through high school. Math, reading, ecology, basic science, vocational skills
- Analysts - This is sort of my little joke that there will be opportunities for people who try to make some sense of what's going on, what the future may hold, and to explain it to fellow citizens.
Do you have more ideas?
Here are some jobs that will, post-collapse, be disappearing. Pretty much any profession that appeared after the middle of the 20th century:
Here are some jobs that will, post-collapse, be disappearing. Pretty much any profession that appeared after the middle of the 20th century:
- Software programmer, computer manager, designer. Solid state electronics requires a globalized economy and very complex, high energy manufacturing. This isn't going to be sustainable.
- Stock broker. While there will probably still be stock companies, the degree that country's economic systems will be financialized will be greatly reduced.
- Ski resort employees. Probably not much snow and certainly very little discretionary income to travel there and to pay for the electricity to run the lifts, which will be impossible to maintain.
- Car dealer. Maybe some used cars will still be used and traded, depending on price and availability of petrol. Learn to raise and sell horses.
- Big Box store owner, manager, employee: These kinds of businesses depend on a fully globalized supply chain and cheap products from overseas. That's not sustainable. Learn to be shopkeepers and sell local and regional goods.
- Airline pilot - Commercial aviation will largely be gone by mid 21st century.
- Web designer. The Internet will shrink a lot and where it remains, will be much more of a local/regional resource. People will be too busy earning their daily bread to surf.
- Long haul truck drivers. To the extent that diesel truck are still in use, they'll mostly be for local and regional deliveries. Forget about refrigerated ones - too much fuel required.
- Meeting planners, travel agents, cruise ship staff, airline personnel, rental car agency employee. All of these will be going away as travel become too expensive except for the very wealthy and the very daring.
- Politician, fund raiser - It's impossible to know exactly what kind of post-collapse, post-carbon future we'll end up with. Probably many different varieties, depending on region size, population size and what is produced. But only the very largest regions - of which there will probably be few - can support traditional politicians.
- University professor, college student. Yes, universities have been around for about nine hundred years. But modern universities are very much the creation of the cheap energy, fossil fuel powered industrial state. So if you're very bright and very lucky, you may find an new Oxford, probably sponsored by a religious organization, where you can work... If you can find the students. It's going to be very difficult for any but the children of the wealthiest people to attend any kind of university. But increasingly, it will be less and less necessary: the kind of jobs that today's universities are preparing people for are disappearing already.
Don't see what you want to do? What were people doing in 1859 or before, when the first US oil well was drilled? Maybe you could do something that was common in the mid 19th century or before.
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