Survival Skills
Apr. 15th, 2026 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithSkills That Survived Every Economic Collapse in History
Every economic collapse in recorded history — from Weimar Germany to Argentina's default to Venezuela's currency crisis — followed the same brutal pattern: institutions failed, credentials evaporated, and the most "educated" people were often the first to starve. Doctors drove taxis. Engineers washed cars. PhDs traded cigarettes for potatoes.
So which skills actually survived? Not the ones you'd expect.
This video is an economic autopsy of seven major collapses across a century of data — drawing on NBER labor forensics, Bureau of Labor Statistics projections, World Bank research, and the real stories of Argentine mechanics, Cuban physicians, Russian dacha farmers, and Lebanese currency brokers — to identify the four structural categories of skills that have demonstrated resilience in every single collapse environment ever studied.
So let's take a look at what these are and how to use them...
1) Repair skills. These have two values: if you can repair your own things, you don't need to find someone else to do that; and if you can repair other people's things, you have a marketable skill. This is a good option for people with mechanical, kinesthetic, and/or logical-mathematical intelligences.
What are some valuable repair skills? Sewing clothes, mending hand tools, keeping a vehicle running, basic home repairs. As long as computer technology is important, its repair is also important. HVAC (heating, ventilation, and cooling) will be critical as climate change progresses. The awesome thing about repair skills is how modular they are -- there are repair skills for every field, and you can always learn new ones. This is a good way to cope with climate anxiety, because the more time you can fill with productive actions, the less time you have to panic in.
In order to maximize repair potential, prefer products that are designed to be repaired. Reduce or eliminate those that are difficult or impossible to repair. Support the right to own and right to repair. Ifixit has thousands of repair guides.
Also, think about alternatives. You can use a hand beater, whisk, or spoon for many recipes instead of a mixer. If the furnace or stove dies, know how to build a fire and cook with that. The job needs to get done, but doesn't necessarily rely on a single tool or method.
Finally, repair jobs are resilient because they cannot be outsourced or automated. Someone must diagnose what is wrong with the sink and then cause it to work again, which cannot be done by AI or someone in another country. Every town needs to have access to a plumber, an electrician, a car mechanic, etc. That means those jobs are also extremely portable if your former town becomes undesirable or uninhabitable.
2) Monetary translation skill. This is the ability to follow two or more systems of value in real time and exchange from one to another. It is primarily valuable in times of economic collapse. However, it builds on other skills which are valuable even before a collapse happens. You need a lot of math skill, and speed. If you can't do that in your head, make sure you're fluent with a hand calculator, not just computer programs. An abacus is another good option for this. You need an understanding of economics to grasp how value can be encoded and travel. You also need good enough people skills to find customers and ensure that they trust you to handle the currencies fairly. It's a good choice for folks with logical-mathematical, emotional, or interpersonal intelligences.
I will add another option here which is closely related but not identical. When the old currency collapses, something must replace it, which may be another extant currency or something else. If no extant option rises, then the person who can create those alternatives becomes extremely important. If you know how to barter and set up a barter network, if you know how to work an hour exchange, if you know enough about currency to create a local one, those are all supremely valuable.
3) Food. All humans need food every day in order to survive, preferably healthy food. Therefore, the knowledge and skills of growing, harvesting, preserving, and cooking food are always valuable and become essential in any crisis that breaks down supply lines. I will add knowledge of foraging wild foods, medicines, or other materials and knowledge of nutrition as useful expansions. Knowing how to grow and use other things such as fiber for cordage and clothes, dyes, medicines, craft materials, etc. is also helpful -- anything useful you can produce will expand what you can do and trade. This relies primarily on naturalistic intelligence, but kinesthetic intelligence helps.
Most of these are skills that most people could learn a bit at a time. Even a little bit of practice is better than nothing. With a garden, though, the biggest value is already having one before you need it. Prefer landrace and open-pollinated crops so you don't rely wholly on seed catalogs. Include perennials so you don't have to replant. Favor native crops or at least those well adapted to your locale. These are things you can't get easily after the shit hits the fan.
Another thing that everyone needs every day is clean water. Know how to produce water -- how to get it from the ground or the air. Know how to purify available but questionable water through various methods. These skills keep people alive. Anything that keeps people alive is valuable.
4) Skills that scale when institutions collapse. Mostly this focuses on medicine, because people always need health care, but it touches on others too. A point here is that when institutions collapse, the credentials they backed become as worthless as paper currency when an economy or government collapses. But the video tends to conflate profession with skills and knowledge. You credential may collapse, but not the knowledge and skills you use to do work. What changes is you how turn the resources you have into a way of obtaining other resources you need.
"A medical degree requires a functioning hospital." No, it benefits from one, and the video goes on to describe how some doctors used their knowledge to find other means of providing care with minimal supplies and equipment. For anyone interested in health care as a survival skill, I recommend a wilderness first aid course which does not assume a hospital is 5 minutes away. Take a basic course first, but a wilderness course is a great expansion. Herbal health care is also a prudent choice, and one that can save you a lot of money treating minor complaints. This one relies on naturalistic and interpersonal intelligences.
"A law degree requires functioning courts." For its original approach, sure. But a lawyer also understands how conflict works and how to deal with people in conflict, and what are some ways that societies resolve conflicts. Throw in a course on negotiation and mediation, which some but not all law schools require, and you have someone who can keep a community from tearing itself apart, and construct agreements between communities. This one is primarily about interpersonal intelligence, but logical-mathematical intelligence definitely helps.
"An accounting credential requires functioning businesses with books to balance." But it's based on math, which is always useful. An accountant could easily turn to currency exchange as mentioned above, or just as well keep the books for an hour exchange or local currency. If you are good at math, I also recommend learning applied math -- how to calculate how much paint to cover a wall, how much manure to spread on a field, how much food to serve a group, etc. These are easy for a math maven to do but very hard for most people. This one is mostly about logical-mathematical intelligence.
The most important thing in this section is the ability to pivot. When the standard application of your skill becomes unavailable, know some other ways you can use it to secure your survival or help other people. People who cling to a collapsing system are as doomed as people who stay inside a collapsing building. The more versatile your skillset, the better you can address survival needs, and the more adaptable you are in chaos, the higher your chances of survival.
Be aware of basic survival needs. For survival, humans require breathable air, potable water, nutritious food, physical safety, health care, restful sleep, and a comfortable environment which in most parts of the world means clothes and shelter appropriate to local conditions. If you can provide these needs for people, you will always have marketable valuables.
Note that a lot of this relies on knowledge rather than just physical ability to do things. Even if you are disabled, you can tell someone else the steps to fix a flat tire, grow a garden, or calculate an answer. If there is no library or computer, you can be the library.
Another useful approach is just to collect a library of survival books. Guides to repairs, gardening, food use, first aid, science, basic machines, etc. are helpful in ordinary times and priceless in mayhem. For an example, see "The Seeds of Civilization" and its notes. Anyone can stock up a shelf or a bookcase of such titles. Library sales and used bookstores often have good titles cheap.
Every economic collapse in recorded history — from Weimar Germany to Argentina's default to Venezuela's currency crisis — followed the same brutal pattern: institutions failed, credentials evaporated, and the most "educated" people were often the first to starve. Doctors drove taxis. Engineers washed cars. PhDs traded cigarettes for potatoes.
So which skills actually survived? Not the ones you'd expect.
This video is an economic autopsy of seven major collapses across a century of data — drawing on NBER labor forensics, Bureau of Labor Statistics projections, World Bank research, and the real stories of Argentine mechanics, Cuban physicians, Russian dacha farmers, and Lebanese currency brokers — to identify the four structural categories of skills that have demonstrated resilience in every single collapse environment ever studied.
So let's take a look at what these are and how to use them...
1) Repair skills. These have two values: if you can repair your own things, you don't need to find someone else to do that; and if you can repair other people's things, you have a marketable skill. This is a good option for people with mechanical, kinesthetic, and/or logical-mathematical intelligences.
What are some valuable repair skills? Sewing clothes, mending hand tools, keeping a vehicle running, basic home repairs. As long as computer technology is important, its repair is also important. HVAC (heating, ventilation, and cooling) will be critical as climate change progresses. The awesome thing about repair skills is how modular they are -- there are repair skills for every field, and you can always learn new ones. This is a good way to cope with climate anxiety, because the more time you can fill with productive actions, the less time you have to panic in.
In order to maximize repair potential, prefer products that are designed to be repaired. Reduce or eliminate those that are difficult or impossible to repair. Support the right to own and right to repair. Ifixit has thousands of repair guides.
Also, think about alternatives. You can use a hand beater, whisk, or spoon for many recipes instead of a mixer. If the furnace or stove dies, know how to build a fire and cook with that. The job needs to get done, but doesn't necessarily rely on a single tool or method.
Finally, repair jobs are resilient because they cannot be outsourced or automated. Someone must diagnose what is wrong with the sink and then cause it to work again, which cannot be done by AI or someone in another country. Every town needs to have access to a plumber, an electrician, a car mechanic, etc. That means those jobs are also extremely portable if your former town becomes undesirable or uninhabitable.
2) Monetary translation skill. This is the ability to follow two or more systems of value in real time and exchange from one to another. It is primarily valuable in times of economic collapse. However, it builds on other skills which are valuable even before a collapse happens. You need a lot of math skill, and speed. If you can't do that in your head, make sure you're fluent with a hand calculator, not just computer programs. An abacus is another good option for this. You need an understanding of economics to grasp how value can be encoded and travel. You also need good enough people skills to find customers and ensure that they trust you to handle the currencies fairly. It's a good choice for folks with logical-mathematical, emotional, or interpersonal intelligences.
I will add another option here which is closely related but not identical. When the old currency collapses, something must replace it, which may be another extant currency or something else. If no extant option rises, then the person who can create those alternatives becomes extremely important. If you know how to barter and set up a barter network, if you know how to work an hour exchange, if you know enough about currency to create a local one, those are all supremely valuable.
3) Food. All humans need food every day in order to survive, preferably healthy food. Therefore, the knowledge and skills of growing, harvesting, preserving, and cooking food are always valuable and become essential in any crisis that breaks down supply lines. I will add knowledge of foraging wild foods, medicines, or other materials and knowledge of nutrition as useful expansions. Knowing how to grow and use other things such as fiber for cordage and clothes, dyes, medicines, craft materials, etc. is also helpful -- anything useful you can produce will expand what you can do and trade. This relies primarily on naturalistic intelligence, but kinesthetic intelligence helps.
Most of these are skills that most people could learn a bit at a time. Even a little bit of practice is better than nothing. With a garden, though, the biggest value is already having one before you need it. Prefer landrace and open-pollinated crops so you don't rely wholly on seed catalogs. Include perennials so you don't have to replant. Favor native crops or at least those well adapted to your locale. These are things you can't get easily after the shit hits the fan.
Another thing that everyone needs every day is clean water. Know how to produce water -- how to get it from the ground or the air. Know how to purify available but questionable water through various methods. These skills keep people alive. Anything that keeps people alive is valuable.
4) Skills that scale when institutions collapse. Mostly this focuses on medicine, because people always need health care, but it touches on others too. A point here is that when institutions collapse, the credentials they backed become as worthless as paper currency when an economy or government collapses. But the video tends to conflate profession with skills and knowledge. You credential may collapse, but not the knowledge and skills you use to do work. What changes is you how turn the resources you have into a way of obtaining other resources you need.
"A medical degree requires a functioning hospital." No, it benefits from one, and the video goes on to describe how some doctors used their knowledge to find other means of providing care with minimal supplies and equipment. For anyone interested in health care as a survival skill, I recommend a wilderness first aid course which does not assume a hospital is 5 minutes away. Take a basic course first, but a wilderness course is a great expansion. Herbal health care is also a prudent choice, and one that can save you a lot of money treating minor complaints. This one relies on naturalistic and interpersonal intelligences.
"A law degree requires functioning courts." For its original approach, sure. But a lawyer also understands how conflict works and how to deal with people in conflict, and what are some ways that societies resolve conflicts. Throw in a course on negotiation and mediation, which some but not all law schools require, and you have someone who can keep a community from tearing itself apart, and construct agreements between communities. This one is primarily about interpersonal intelligence, but logical-mathematical intelligence definitely helps.
"An accounting credential requires functioning businesses with books to balance." But it's based on math, which is always useful. An accountant could easily turn to currency exchange as mentioned above, or just as well keep the books for an hour exchange or local currency. If you are good at math, I also recommend learning applied math -- how to calculate how much paint to cover a wall, how much manure to spread on a field, how much food to serve a group, etc. These are easy for a math maven to do but very hard for most people. This one is mostly about logical-mathematical intelligence.
The most important thing in this section is the ability to pivot. When the standard application of your skill becomes unavailable, know some other ways you can use it to secure your survival or help other people. People who cling to a collapsing system are as doomed as people who stay inside a collapsing building. The more versatile your skillset, the better you can address survival needs, and the more adaptable you are in chaos, the higher your chances of survival.
Be aware of basic survival needs. For survival, humans require breathable air, potable water, nutritious food, physical safety, health care, restful sleep, and a comfortable environment which in most parts of the world means clothes and shelter appropriate to local conditions. If you can provide these needs for people, you will always have marketable valuables.
Note that a lot of this relies on knowledge rather than just physical ability to do things. Even if you are disabled, you can tell someone else the steps to fix a flat tire, grow a garden, or calculate an answer. If there is no library or computer, you can be the library.
Another useful approach is just to collect a library of survival books. Guides to repairs, gardening, food use, first aid, science, basic machines, etc. are helpful in ordinary times and priceless in mayhem. For an example, see "The Seeds of Civilization" and its notes. Anyone can stock up a shelf or a bookcase of such titles. Library sales and used bookstores often have good titles cheap.
