I’m a teacher in one of the big neoliberal hellscapes and want to get the fuck out. I’m lucky enough that my partner is labor aristocracy and we are talking about trying to save money over the next few years to get a little bit of land to farm up north to get out of the climate apocalypse.
Our long term is to make a space for climate refugees to live in a community and provide mutual aid to people who need it as shit breaks down.
Friends of mine want to do similar stuff and have great skills like being nurses, gardeners, mechanics. As a teacher I have no physical skills but learn pretty quickly.
What skills can I learn to contribute in a post climate world?
Sure it’s not a ‘hard’ skill, but we’re still gonna need teachers
basic carpentry/woodworking, cooking/baking, sewing (repairing rips). also learn everything you can from everyone else so you can assist or otherwise take the pressure off when they are busy/gone. lots of work is much easier with an extra pair of hands, even if they aren't experienced.
specialization works in highly complex/stratified societies, but a small group aiming for sufficiency is going to need generalists.
edit: a cool part about the ones I've mentioned is that they are helpful even before you're off to Xanadu or whatever.
It is said that for settlers traveling to Oregon (yes, I know), teachers were put in the "useful professions" category along with farmers, as opposed to less useful ones like bankers.
- Carpentry has already been said.
- Gardening/farming has already been said.
- There are lots of auxiliary skills/practices to horticulture itself. Seed saving, composting/soil amendments, landscape design, [conservation-minded] forestry, the list goes on.
- Food preparation and preservation. Someone's going to have to be able to cook the food that's grown, and probably without relying on the grid. It's way more efficient when you have one dedicated person doing it rather than assuming everyone will just process their own.
- Masonry would be just as useful as carpentry. This might lean towards cob/adobe masonry as it can be done anywhere. Buildings are going to need foundations, and many of them (especially "up north") will probably need masonry heaters to do the job of a furnace.
- Weaving. Fabric will be needed, probably in massive quantities. There's no doubt about that.
- Graywater systems and/or aquaponics are great things to have.
- Electrical wiring, biodiesel and wood gasification, metalworking, and small engine repair will all make the difference between living in the equivalent of the 20th century vs. the 18th or 19th. Solar installation and maintenance probably fits in this category too.
- Distilling alcohol is actually very important. By 30% you have hooch, by 50% you have a solvent that's good for making extracts, by 70% you have a rather good sanitizer, by 85% you have fuel.
Again, don't forget that we need social skillsets just as much as physical skillsets. Prioritizing material technology over social technology is a large part of what got us into this pickle in the first place. If I was laying down the principles for a commune, one of them would be that everybody has to pursue a material skill AND a social skill. But social skills are probably another effortpost.
I forgot to add glass-making to that list. Not just drinking vessels, but lenses and window panes and measuring equipment... without glass, we are certainly stuck in the 17th century.
The Precious Plastic project is a fun thing to check out. I'm not sure if being able to recycle and locally mold or extrude or 3D-print plastic will be super pivotal, but it's an important waste stream to consider.
Open Source Ecology has a list of all the machines that would be required to re-create Industrial Civilization. :a-guy:
I don't think focusing on bringing back the whole range of tech right off the bat is a good thing, so I gravitate to resources like Low Tech Magazine and the stuff the good people at Auroville put out.
This is an amazing resource, these look like great mags, I appreciate it
Oooh I have been a chef and restaurant worker previously (did 5 years before switching to teaching)
I want to eventually get a homestead/commune going, due to covid reasons. I basically can't go back into society, I have to stay isolated.
I wanted to do this even before covid too, but it seems to be quickly becoming my only path forward.
I teach first grade, so it’s vital in the current society but depending on the state of climate change, that society may not exiat much longer. So I want to learn more skills to help build, make food, etc to help my community
While it may be boring and I don't know the extent of your education, teachers are vitally important, so expanding what you are good at teaching would be very valuable. Otherwise farming can be pretty good to read about. A lot of it is hands on but there is still quite a bit of book-work that you can put in.
I mean 1st grade seems like it's still a pretty important age to be learning post collapse. But check out carpentry! Pretty easy to get into
Look up what kind of work people did on pre-industrial farms and get good at it. Learn how to farm the crops you plan on growing, learn some carpentry/woodworking, learn to repair all kinds of stuff.
Where is everyone going to poop? Where does the poop go? How does it get broken down? Waste management would an unpleasant reality to stay ahead of for any growing community.
We're going to poop in 5-gallon buckets, and cover it with sawdust from the carpenters. Composting toilets are surprisingly sanitary and convenient, and don't require the extensive plumbing logistics that plumbing does. If you're anything like me, once you use a good composting toilet you won't want to go back.
Providing such a facility for 100+ people would be a bit of a challenge, but nowhere near the difficulty of requiring specialized schooling to do. If I had a bunch of shovels and pickaxes and access to trees and limestone, and I didn't have to worry about food, I would feel confident in being able to build a 2-chamber, 6-month-rotation shitter for 100 people.
