150 Survival Skills We’ll Need After The Collapse

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

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 

1. Plumbing 101
2. Whole house plumbing
3. Faucets and spigots
4. Home flood prevention
5. The plumber’s toolkit

Electrical Repairs 

6. Basic wiring
7. Understanding electricity
8. Electrician’s tools
9. Electrical trouble shooting

Home Structural Repairs

10. Home repairs 101
11. Basic construction and home repairs
12. Roofs
13. Walls
14. Windows and doors
15. Flooring
16. Guide to construction tools

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. 

17. Choosing pioneer tools
18. Using pioneer tools
19. Log cabin construction
20. Timber frame construction
21. Choosing the right tools
22. Emergency shelters
23. Log splitting
24. Rail splitting
25. Woodworking 
26. Timber cutting
27. Blacksmithing
28. Pioneer survival skills
29. Rustic furniture making
30. Off-grid lighting solutions
31. Knot tying
32. Building a fence
33. Welding
34. Carpentry 101
35. Rope and net making
36. How to make charcoal
37. Restoring vintage pioneer tools
38. Basket making
39. Pottery
40. Broom making

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. 

41. Auto maintenance and mechanic skills
42. Basic small engine repair

Electricity Generation

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

43. Solar
44. Wind power
45. Water power
46. Powering your house with a gas generator

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. 

47. Garden planning
48. Harvesting seeds
49. Starting seeds indoors
50. The milk jug greenhouse
51. Propagating plants
52. Growing, pruning and grafting trees
53. Building a greenhouse
54. Permaculture
55. Composting
56. Vermiculture
57. Farm and garden tools
58. Hydroponics
59. 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. 

60. Animal husbandry
61. Building barns, sheds and outbuildings
62. Breeding and birthing livestock
63. Raising chickens
64. Raising rabbits
65. Growing your own animal feed
66. Butchering livestock 
67. Sheering sheep and processing wool
68. Veterinary skills
69. Tanning hides
70. Beekeeping 

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. 

71. Wild foraging 
72. Foraging in the city
73. Hunting
74. Fishing 
75. Trapping

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. 

76. Canning fruits and vegetables
77. Pressure canning meats and seafood
78. Root cellaring
79. Dehydrating
80. Drying
81. Fermentation
82. Smoking

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.

83. Water collection from natural sources
84. Collecting rainwater
85. Water filtering and purification
86. Water storage 

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.

87. Pioneer cooking equipment
88. Pioneer cooking skills
89. Woodstove cooking
90. Cooking with cast iron
91. Maintaining cast iron
92. Starting a fire without matches
93. Scratch cooking
94. Rendering lard
95. Milling grains
96. Baking
97. How to make apple cider vinegar
98. Tapping maple trees for maple syrup
99. How to make cheese
100. Home brewing
101. Distilling
102. Stocking a pantry, keeping an inventory and meal planning

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. 

103. Root cellaring
104. Refrigeration without power
105. Making a cold box

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. 

106. Candle making
107. Alternative traditional lighting (Crisco and bacon fat candles)
108. Solar lighting 
109. 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. 

110. Sewing, knitting and weaving
111. Spinning wool
112. Mending and basic clothing repair
113. Washing clothes by hand
114. Leather crafting
115. Cobbling 

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. 

116. Woodstove 101
117. Off-grid heating solutions
118. Solar water heating solutions
119. Emergency heaters
120. The passive solar house
121. Ancient solutions to staying cool

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. 

122. Basic first aid
123. Minor surgery
124. The Merck Manual Home Edition
125. The OTC medicine chest
126. Making medicinal herbal tinctures
127. Dental first aid
128. Natural cures
129. Pet first aid

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. 

130. Outhouse 101
131. Soap making
132. Making beauty and skincare products
133. Making cleaning supplies
134. Natural dental hygiene
135. How to make toilet paper

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:

136. Home security
137. Off-grid perimeter alarms
138. Self-defense
139. Non-lethal weapons
140. Firearms 101
141. Gunsmithing
142. Reloading ammunition

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. 

143. Emergency communication options
144. Family communication
145. Signaling
146. HAM radio 

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. 

147. Navigation
148. Telling time
149. Without a compass
150. Predicting the weather

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. 

151. Assembling a survival library
152. Free survival books
153. Urban survival books
154. Top 10 books on survival
155. Survival supplies

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.

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