I find it amazing that finance, sales, etc are held in such high regard when it's science and technology that advance society.
I mention farming below. Plumbing, well depends on population. We can shit in the field like we did for millennia. It's just fertilizer.
Also a Cholera breeding ground. Which is why for centuries more people died in cities than were born, despite having no access to contraception.
That's where the science and technology comes in.
Also, isn't plumbing a technology? Or does it have to be in the Civ VI Technology tree to be recognised as one? I know Agriculture and Animal Husbandry is
Depends on population level. Don't need plumbing until towns get to the size that outhouses don't work. Just need soap to wash our hands.
Most scientific and engineering skills would also be useless if civilization collapses. For example, I am a scientific software developer. Most of my work has been for medical research, which is something people tend to respect. However, I wouldn't be able to do anything useful with numerical modelling in a survival situation. My limited skills as an amateur home renovator would be far more relevant.
I agree with the rebuilding civilization from scratch part, but it's still what advances society.
*In this case, what will advance society is farming equipment. Machining science.
It's a bit like Maslows hierarchy of needs. First we need food and water and plumbing. When we are secure in those needs, society can take the next step. But the basis of security must be there before advancement
I would say we need hygiene, which is different than plumbing. Plumbing comes into play when we have cities large enough that we can't rely on outhouses.
To be fair, most professions that would be needed to survive in an apocalypse or rebuild society, aren't things that an already functioning modern society can support everyone doing anyway. We need farmers and carpenters and such, but we don't need so many as to have openings for a majority of the population to be them, these days.
Yes, but then it doesn't seem fair to pick on the executive international sales and marketing analyst.
As a software engineer I often think about how laughably useless my skillset would be in any kind of survival or societal reset sort of situation.
At least you can analyze problems logically and break down complex procedures into small, manageable steps.
SharePoint admins are really fucked.
Anyone building a system that's similar to what they're used to, in a post-apocalyptic society, would be laughed at, then shot.
You're a software engineer. You at least know the very basics of digital electronics, and can probably work your way backward to rudimentary power supplies.
You are far from fucked.
Mathematicians though? Oof I worry about them, if they did anything too practical they'd be physicists.
That's where you're wrong bucko!
I'm a software engineer skilled in devops, Linux and web applications! I spent much of today making Jira tickets and drawing diagrams!
I'm so fucked
You know I can't remember for the life of me if the CS students at my college had to take Digital Electronics or Microcontrollers.
I was in computer engineering, so those classes were required.
We did microcontrollers in college. But it was like understanding advanced algebra, where I studied enough to pass the test. So it's real far back in my brain.
If you put a piece of green carpet and a microcontroller in front of me, there's a 50/50 chance I won't know the difference.
Guys I've figured out the solution to our food problem! First, assume the pantry is full...
But if you were isekaied at the start of the apocalypse, which, let's be honest, is more likely than you surviving until post-apocalypse, you could become a monster magician!
On the other hand, if the apocalypse were Skynet...
Yeah, and in my case I can't even claim to be particularly good at math, logic, or problem solving (except in the narrow domain of technical problems). All my skills are geared at turning the handle at the bullshit machine. But without that machine I don't have a whole lot going on....
Which is quite sad when you think of it. I wish I could contribute meaningfully to my larger community while also supporting my family financially.
Yeah I guess? Is that your only skillset though cause I do tech work, but I also do a lot cheap large batch cooking, grow my own produce and can provide immediate first aid and medical care, all of which, I think, makes me pretty useful.
Plus a minor hobby in botany specifically poisonous plants makes me somewhat useful for what not to eat.
You are more than just your work.
you would just be able to repurpose the way you think logically into something else. I'd say you would be more ahead than a lot of others in a catastrophic scenario!
"Honey, the water is about to shut off. Can you file a JIRA ticket to fill out bathtubs? I should be able to get to it next sprint"
Oh it was not a mistake, trust me.
One once tried showing me a slideshow on what it is they actually do, because the sauna we had for that evening was from their company.
Guy couldn't fuckin read the room though and actually went through with his PowerPoint presentation. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how someone could ignore so many social cues from us, the people who had nothing to do with his work, his company, or any work at all. Purely recreational night and dude starts it with that.
Yuck yuck yuck
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There are two types of scrum masters. Those who are true believers in agility, and those who think it's just a fancy bullshit name for "project manager". The latter tend to be the the fucking worst, unfortunately they're the most common breed.
Truth is, a real "scrum master" (or "agile coach" for SAFe 6 people) is at best a part time job, and has only two purposes. With experience and knowledge, help the team towards making their job easier/faster/more interesting/more predictable/more serene through continuous improvement using agile methods as a toolbox (and NOT a fucking dogma), and tell idiotic managers who can't fucking anticipate a fucking deadline more than 3 days in advance to fuck off and stop being fucking morons teach managers to respect agile principles and have a clear short- and medium-term vision so their needs can comfortably fit the team's backlog without jeopardizing the team, other priorities or the deadlines.
The other breed are fucking corporate yes-men who shove work over capacity onto the team and play make-believe-scrum by focusing exclusively on bullshit rituals that serve no actual fucking purpose.
I think that's probably a good joke, but I haven't had to suffer corporate culture enough in recent years to understand that.
Or maybe I'm just too high to be able to
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Part of me misses having a job I could do baked out of my gord.
Most of me is extremely happy that I have a job where I don't feel the need to be.
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Sorry to disappoint, but landlording as a profession is the likeliest to thrive in a post apocalyptic medium.
I don't believe the pre-apocalypse landlords ownership of land will be respected or matter.
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It won't. The new landlords however will get to make their own rules about how to handle their unregulated ownership.
Yes but what is most likely to happen is that some violent mofos will take over large territories and make up their own rules and (...)
Which is what happened the last time there was a societal collapse.
You don't think indigenous people fought their own battles for their land? That they also fought to keep that land?
Do you seriously think every nation was magically given to people without warfare deciding who kept it?
First thing to happen on any revolution or collapse is to burn the debt records and redistribute the land. If some people object they'll be burned and/or redistributed too.
The collapse of modern civilization would open exciting opportunities to own labor and not just capital.
I just found out that my landlord doesn’t have a job besides the income from properties. Fucking parasite still won’t fix basic shit
A few competent project managers would probably help things quite a bit, actually.
Having a single point of contact for several disparate teams of people doing real work so that they can actually do that work, instead of spending extra time in endless meetings arguing over the best way to implement something that requires multiple people's input is a valuable tool to have.
Think of them like a tank in an RPG, taking all the meeting hits that would otherwise decimate the effectiveness of people actually putting the real work in.
Valid. Competent is the key word. I'm lucky, in that most of the ones I work with are actually really good, but the ones my colleagues work with (in the same company, different division) might as well have gotten their PMMP certificate out of a cereal box.
Oh yeah, Project management is one of those roles that is especially vulnerable to the Peter Principal.
In order to be a good one, you need to be part therapist and part hostage negotiator while also being one of those weirdos that enjoys meetings
Do you want our species to die from a disease spread from telephone receivers? Because that's how you get our species to die from a disease spread from telephone receivers.
Think about it: What's the last thing everyone dying from a civilization-ending disease will do? Grab the phone and try to call emergency services.
All those phones need to be sanitized, or the virus will just spread again.
What? You won't pay me to be impatient? That's bullshit.
Just get more people working on it and it will get done on time, I'm sure the resources are there, just look at the chart, we cannot afford to delay schedule!
Disagree. I've worked on some projects that would absolutely fall apart without our PMs. They are vital.
Of course they can't find them.
They all shipped out on the (ever-important) Golgafrinchan Ark Fleet Ship B.
The USA has a bs mythology that it was founded by 'pioneers' and that a wild wild west existed.
The untold history of the USA is really the story of finance. Those that financed, the joint stock companies that helped to bring immigrants over. The land speculators, and recruiters that brought over Irish and other immigrants over in the 19th century, through money provided by rail and steam companies.
These type of post-apocalyptic memes perpetuate the stereotype of a self-made country. When in reality financiers from England were offshoring labor to a country with fewer regulations and no copyright/patent laws.
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A very USA-centric comment. While it is true that countries that were former colonies have their roots tied to those imperialist projects which definitely involved finance, this is not the case for countries that didn't start as colonies. The sweat of the subsistence farmer or the feudal peasant/slave was what built the foundations of most countries.
In a truly post-apocalyptic setting there definitely would not be any need for finance of any sort. Job titles such as the one in the meme above are bullshit jobs that only exist to serve modern consumer capitalism. That is to say, they are not necessary. That's what this meme is about in my opinion.
The Renaissance in Italy was paid for by the emerging banking industry, the Medici family is a good example of what happened. If you want large public works, and people like Leonardo da Vinci, then you also get families like the Medici. You can't separate the two. So not just USA-centric.
"sweat of the subsistence farmer or the feudal peasant/slave was what built the foundations of most countries", it was also access to different resources. Mining for silver in some areas, sheep and wool production in others, forestry in others ... already by the 13th century the Hanseatic League had a large trade network in most of Europe (from the Mediterranean in N. Italy through Germany into the sea and along the coasts of the North sea and the Baltic sea to Norway Sweden Finland and Russia.
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Ok sorry for the snide in that other comment. I think we’re talking slightly past one another. A society without banking or finance is a primitive one, but a society nonetheless. Now, all modern countries are advanced societies, but only current and former colonies started out that way.
I suppose the question comes down to whether the meme is talking about rebuilding complex society, or just society in general. You seem to be talking of the former, while I speak of the latter. I also think the meme was referring to the latter.
I’ll end by saying that while historical precedent is a very solid basis for how societies operate, I think it lacks imagination. Who knows what other ways there could be to build complex societies? I think that this is a powerful part of why people are fascinated with post-apocalyptic stories.
One of the ways I try to sell my trade to students, is telling them how important it is for the world. Machining, welding, plumbing, carpentry and so on. All of it would be primus motor to get society back.
Yes! The importance of craftsmen is hard to overstate😀 Along with a few others, of course!
Step one is likely to be making one of those concrete lathes and use it to make other machine tools. Might have to use human power to run it, though.
I think, that I might find a better alternative. Like scrap, granite and cast iron.
In a pinch, make a bow drill style lathe using a branch and a rope.
The thing about concrete in a situation like that, though, is it is relatively easy to make new material for construction. That lathe was designed specifically for people to make when they've got nothing else and get some actual decent accuracy.
Also, flip it on its end and you have a drill press to put that scrap together with.
No Social Media Coordinators? No regional PR reps? No "local small business" for them to inherit?
I've told all the children in the family, Learn how to make a living at least two ways, one with your mind, one with your hands/back. You'll always have food on the table.
[shakes head]
Writers (both storytelling and informative) have a set of skills that is very useful but also entirely redundant unless in a well-developed society.
Humanity will always share information because d'uh. And we will always tell stories and make art, because that is just part of the human experience. But without the overload of information and media AND overspecialisation of labour that comes with an industrial society --
-- We'd just revert to the olden ways where information spreads from person to person organically (there is a lot less of it to go around, after all) and stories/art are just made up by whomever.
Before television and radio, before most people were able to read, people would make up stories to amuse themselves and their friends while doing work. Tall tales around the campfire. Spooky stories while churning butter. These were all things people did in pre-industrial times.
But there would be no need for someone who is 'just' a teller of stories or a sharer of information. So I'd either drop dead or, more realistically, get my ass down with doing manual labour (hey, I might not know how to grow plants, but the amount of time I spend at the gym has gotta be good for something in post-apocalyptia) and save my creative skills to amuse my community during downtime. ¯_(ツ)_/¯