Rank your important PA careers

Ideally, I'd say that "respected authority figures" should also have expertise in some of the other areas that you list as important. There's no reason that a leader can't help out in another way, as well.

Also, it might be nice to have some educators around. You know - just to make sure that the current generation of people with technical skills and such doesn't turn out to be the last.

 

I think the importance of armed protection is underestimated, often people who have become leaderless and have little left to live for, can become bandits (just like the Raiders). Every town in such a changed world would probably have to fight to maintain peace within the settlement, but most importantly from the outsiders.

As an answer to the original question:

1 - Food collectors (agriculture, but also hunters, people who get water, etc.)
2 - Engineers & builders (including the people who get building materials)
3 - Guards or soldiers
4 - Small scale industry (you need chairs, tables, etc.)
5 - A leader

I left out doctors since I think that a settlement would pay more attention to the development of the town since anyone can treat a small wound. If something like an epidemic would occur, a doctor would not have the materials to counter it anyway.

 

It really depends on whats going on and where you are.

A diverse group of skills and abilities is better than listing out 5 or so types.

Engineers really aren't necessary unless your building large projects. Which you won't.

So, lets give out a scenario for this little apocalypse, shall we?

 

It's relatively easy to make a mental connection between a PA future and the first colonists. You don't really need soldiers, as such - violence is the nature of man and it's the easiest thing to do. People tend to learn the things they need to survive really quickly, so the most important career would that of the doctor, for his is the only knowledge that cannot be reinvented easily from scratch for a few generations. Engineers? Most modern people are intelligent enough to figure out how things work, after reassembling them and there will always be people with a knack for technical stuff.

 

Soldiers would depend on where you live. Here in utah, I doubt there would be much need. The culture here would be more of helping people around you than, take what you need to survive. Also most people here have stores of food and supplies. You'd still need a police force but they'd be there more as a deterrent than protection.

I regret to say it but places like Oregon, California, would have a greater problem with people looting and raiding because they don't have a cohesive culture and they don't generally have supplies already stored.

Unless a great majority of the population has a common culture and supplies stored. There will be violence, raiding and looting.

 

I think it would be important to have entertainers of sort too, to keep the people away from giving into madness and insanity, to keep the morale high.

Probably a hardcore psychiatrist, too. What good are a bunch of tough-as-nails combatants and engineers, if all they do is think about all that's lost, and weighting on if they should just end their misery. I would imagine the end of the world is a tough thing to swallow, even the hardest men could break mentally.

Ideally, there would be some kind of community-wide events, like theatrical plays and such.

Of course, none of the mentioned above is a first priority. Shelter, food, protection and health care are definitely above that. But later on, when the dust has settled, and the community is getting on their feet, in my opinion they would prove very important (still, it depends on how wide-spread the apocalypse would be, and what kind of a society are we talking about).

 

"OK, mister Super-Duper-Mutant, I understand you're having problems with your sex life and an uncontrollable urge to destroy everything, but your proneness to use that plasma rifle and hold it close to you may be because it reminds you of your father's penis"

Psychiatrist was critically hit for 263 damage, but he is too busy feeling the rush on his brain to notice death approaching. Psychiatrist was killed.

Sorry, I just had to.

 

I'd say having at least a few trained soldiers to serve as the core of a militia are essential. Sure anyone can learn to shoot, but tactics require study and chances are there are going to be people out there that think banding together and preying on others beats digging their hands in the dirt.

Medical professionals are an obvious pick.

Engineers may come in handy, but short term won't be essential for survival. Depending on the form of apoc there may very well be plenty of intact structures lying around. Eventually you'll need someone who can design some basic defensive structures as well as additional housing as needed. If we had a factory nearby, however, I'd want all I could get and start converting it to making something useful.

There are too many what ifs though to answer this properly. Farmers are essential for food, but what if there is a large farming establishment nearby or your land simply isn't suitable to raise crops. You may need to rely on trade for the majority of food.

I'd say leadership is pretty essential, especially at the beginning. People will be completely at a loss and unprepared. Someone that can think on their feet and is a good planner/organizer will mean the difference between a community forming and a ragtag group of scattered survivors looking out for themselves.

If I had to rank them in order of importance I'd vote:
1. Leadership
2. trained soldiers
3/4. Engineers/Farmers *ranking dependant on locale
5. Medical professionals (depending on the what's happened with the world these will not be as useful as they are now. Limited access to medicine and technology will make only the basic treatments possible)

 

1. Leaders - nothing can be done without one
2. Doctors - first you gotta treat the wounded and make sure no one gets sick
3. farmers - so that food can be grown, somewhere underground with the help of
4. engineers - who can build stuff for farmers to work with
5. prostitutes - for the brave men from 1 to 4...

 

Top 10 Most Important Jobs in the Post Apoc

What do you guys personally think the ten most important jobs would be in the Post Apocalyptic world?

1. Surgeon
2. Doctor/Medic (General Practitioner)
3. Teacher
4. Engineer
5. Builder
6. Soldier
7. Electrical Engineer
8. Mechanic
9. Gunsmith
10. Metallurgist

 

I imagine someone with knowledge on how to grow crops would be pretty high on the list.

 

Sorry didn't know, and thanks.

 

Farmers would be necessary for long-term survival, but you could live off preserved food for a long time, if you were near a grocery store or something. Still, eventually, you would have to either start growing food, or try to find another source of food.

Engineers/Scientists/Programmers would be pretty high up on the list, as they could get a lot of the advanced pre-war tech to work, so you might be able to do something like in Gecko, and get a nuclear power plant up and running. Also would provide you with a major tactical advantage against the looters/raiders that would inevitably crop up after an apocalypse scenario.

Doctors would be very useful if you wanted to expand your group, settle down, and build a town, but if it's only a few people and you're trying to find a safe place to stay, then all you'd need would be a first aid kit for minor wounds.

Leaders(politicians, mayors, etc) would be almost completely useless, as they would have no necessary skills, and any group large enough to need a mayor would most likely have someone in it already that would be good for that job.

Teachers would be necessary eventually, when civilization began to appear again, but otherwise, it would be the people with useful skills' job to transfer those skills to the next generation.

I don't think they would teach advanced tactics to grunts. They would know more about them than the average person, but not by much. They would be kind of useful, but in a town, there would always be the risk that they might take control, as they would be the only people who knew how to use the guns.

Entertainers would help keep morale up, but all you'd need to do the same thing would be plenty of books and holovids.

 

given a post-industrial society going p.a., id say a lot of doctors would have to adapt a LOT to be worth their money. i myself cant imagine to do even minor surgery without the equipment and the environment. if you have a doc at hand who did some "medicines sans frontieres" work, well thats another story. i learned a lot from one guy who did that in cape town in south africa (using foley catheters for nearly everything, e.g.)

otoh, learning to do minor to major everyday surgery and internal medicine is quite easily learned, since there are at maximum 50 diagnosises to work on.

so id say, its all about adaptation. especially surgery is much more craftmanship than science, so id wager everybody with talented hands given correct lecturing and practice can do the job.

alsoplustoo, when you are down on numbers, people will "accumulate" jobs; the "leader" figure might be a surgeon who was, in his earlier life, a mechanic in his spare time, and so on.

interesting fred.