150 Survival Skills We'll Need After The Collapse

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Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

150 Survival Skills We'll Need After The Collapse

When a society collapses, access to basic comforts and resources collapse with it. Stores aren’t open and even when they are, the shelves are bare and prices are out of control. There’s a long history of societal collapse due to wars, plagues, and catastrophic natural disasters.

Most of the population finds themselves in desperate straits, struggling to satisfy the most basic needs. Those who survive typically have the skills and experience to improvise solutions. Here’s a list of many of those skills. Each offers a link to a book or article expanding on the subject.

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Basic Home Repair Skills

It may be difficult if not impossible to find, let alone hire, someone to do many of the home repairs we often encounter. Having the tools and skills to keep things working around the house is a skill that everyone will eventually need.

Plumbing Repairs

Electrical Repairs

Home Structural Repairs

Pioneer Construction and Domestic Skills

Our pioneer ancestors honed the skills to build everything they needed. Their tools were basic and hand or foot powered. More importantly, they knew how to use the tools and materials to build just about anything from log cabins to the brooms that kept them clean.

Auto and Engine Repair

Being able to do basic repairs on your vehicle may become very important as supplies and services become limited. Just as important is the ability to do small engine repairs for chainsaws and other gas powered tools.

Electricity Generation

At a time when electric power may become undependable or simply unavailable it helps to know how to generate your own power.

Gardening

Gardening and the ability to do all of the things associated with it is a critical skill for anyone anywhere. Even people who live in apartments without a yard can raise their own vegetables through hydroponics or bucket gardening.

Livestock

If you have some land, you can consider livestock. But even on a small plot of land you can raise chickens, rabbits, and even a few pigs. There are many skills associated with animal husbandry from the care and feeding of the animals to butchering, tanning, and shearing.

Into The Wild

Even if you live in the city you can wild forage edible plants. And if need be, you can hunt, fish, and even trap wild game. Wilderness areas offer the most opportunities but don’t assume that the city and suburbs aren’t without foraging and at least fishing potential.

Food Preservation

For thousands of years we’ve developed, refined and improvised solutions for preserving food. This is another fundamental skill that will continue to be critical at a time when electricity and refrigeration are unreliable.

Water

It’s projected that by the year 2035, 1.8 billion people around the world won’t have access to drinkable water. Knowing how to collect, filter, purify, and store water may be one of the most critical skills to master and should be at the top of your skills list.

Pioneer Cooking

Knowing how to cook without electricity may seem easy for the weekend barbecue chef, but if you have to do all of your cooking without power all of the time, you might want to look at some of the ways the pioneers made the best of things when an open fire was their only source of heat.

Refrigeration

There are ways to keep foods cold without power, from root cellars to some improvised solutions like a cold box or even a metal box in a cold spring creek.

Lighting

It’s back to the kerosene lamps, but what happens when the kerosene runs out? Here are some ideas for how to make lighting sources for use both inside and outside when the lights are out.

Candle making
Alternative traditional lighting (Crisco and bacon fat candles)
Solar lighting
Torches

Clothing

When you can’t buy it new or at a time when no one can find clothes in their size or at a price they can afford, it’s time to literally take things into your own hands.

Heating and Air-Conditioning

If you live in an area with weather extremes, your immediate challenge will be heat in winter and for those living in southern latitudes – some way to keep cool in summer. There are some good pioneer solutions and even some ancient technologies and ideas that were surprisingly effective and in some ways ingenious.

First Aid

When hospitals are overrun, doctors and dentists are unavailable, and calls to 911 go unanswered, it’s wise to the have the supplies, equipment, and knowledge to take care of medical emergencies affecting you and your family.

Sanitation

If you have a bucket of water, you can still flush a toilet even if the water taps are dry. But there’s more to sanitation than flushing a toilet. Here are some basic ideas to keep things clean.

Defense

It’s quite likely that law and order will be overwhelmed at a time of societal collapse. Home security and self-defense are common sense solutions you should understand and be prepared to implement. Here are some of the basic considerations:

Communication

The Internet may still work, and the same is true for cell phones. Then again, service may be intermittent or simply unavailable in some areas. Here are some basic ideas for how to not only stay in touch with family and friends but stay informed as events unfold.

Orientation

We’ve become spoiled by GPS and any number of things could compromise the ability of GPS systems to continue to function. It’s time to relearn those map reading skills and learn a few others things about how to figure things out without electronics.

Knowledge Banks

There are a number of articles that offer links to books that cover many of the skills we’ve mentioned and some obscure ones you may actually need to know. Here are the links to those articles, and the lists will take you to the specific books and titles for each subject.

Did We Miss Anything?

Probably. If you think of a skill that should be on this list, please add a comment below. Even if a collapse never occurs or is not as severe as some fear, these skills are invaluable.

Thanks for reading! If you're new here, I highly recommend reading this article which explains why civilization is going to collapse. If you're skeptical of climate change, read this article about why I reluctantly changed my mind.

If you want to start preparing, check out our list of free books and manuals and our list of recommended supplies. If you're feeling anxious about collapse, please visit the support page for tips on how to manage your emotions, places where you can get help, and lists of articles and videos on coping with collapse anxiety.

150 Survival Skills We’ll Need After The Collapse