Here are mine, in priority. Change order. Offer some or all of your own if you dare. Serious as well as humorous items invited.

1. Local citizens (not necessarily official only) working to keep areas secure.

2. Finding and transporting potable water (depends on area); wood (depends on area), etc. That is, securing an area's most critical resource for raw survival.

3. Hunting food.

4. Growing food.

5. Traveling and stationery "bazaars" for bartering goods. Ladies with flea-market skills will make out like bandits.

6. Home doctoring, nursing, midwifery.

7. Making pollyannas feel bad. Oops. No, hams and traveling story-tellers receiving/passing news to keep communities aware.

8. Scavenging from rusted but working pre-Y2K stuff and cobbling together to do neat technical things that enhance ability for community to make it.

9. Locally delegated citizens negotiating with their counterparts in other localities to exchange broader services and goods, determine rules for engagement together.

10. Sharing survival skills for longer-term development (ie., improvised community "classes" sans diploma).

This is NOT a post-TEOTWAWKI scenario, though it fits with that. Many of these will come into play, if only briefly, should intense turmoil last even a month or two.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 22, 1999

Answers

teaching and entertaining all those children!!!

-- Libby Alexander (libbyalex@aol.com), January 22, 1999.

11. Child care for all those kids that aren't in school and who aren't old enough to do some of the above.

12. "Managers" to coordinate the activities of people performing the above. (On the block level? neighborhood, town level?)

13."Communications Navigators" - people with shortwave/Ham radios who can get and diseminate information from the rest of the world.

14. "Listeners" to help people who are freaking out.

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), January 22, 1999.

11. Child care for all those kids that aren't in school and who aren't old enough to do some of the above.

12. "Managers" to coordinate the activities of people performing the above. (On the block level? neighborhood, town level?)

13."Communications Navigators" - people with shortwave/Ham radios who can get and diseminate information from the rest of the world.

14. "Therapists" to help people who are freaking out.

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), January 22, 1999.

Oooops. I changed one word and thought I stopped it in time...

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), January 22, 1999.

ArcAngel --- know most of yours are "humorous" (?) but sparked a thought in me that post-Y2K may resurface a simpler set of "archtypal" careers-roles that were a staple of pre-industrial or early industrial West. Got to mull over that, seems important to me in envisioning how to make it and maybe even flourish.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 22, 1999.

11. Samurai

12. War Lord

Shall I continue.

Matt

-- Matt (Butenam1@aol.com), January 22, 1999.

Bounty hunter - looking for hoarders

-- ... (littledog@...), January 22, 1999.

there's some funny ones at this site:

http://www.homestead.com/PLANET5/NERDS1.html

-- z (z@z.z), January 22, 1999.

I bags dictator ;)

-- Leo (lchampion@ozemail.com.au), January 22, 1999.

On a more serious note, since I lack any sense of humor:

I think important professions will fall along the lines of handyman, seamstress, clerk/bookkeeper, medic, gardner, and geek. Most of these are worth putting some time into; it won't likely be wasted.

Of course, if Infomagic is right, the biggies will be cannibal, scavenger, gang member, and sawbones.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 22, 1999.

Also check out this recent thread...

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000Kuj

"What will you do for a living?"

-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), January 22, 1999.

I bags gigolo ;)

Brewer.

Pot grower.

Movie theatre owner (showing a video on a projection TV with a generator...)

Uh, that's all.

Andy the doonbrooder :)

"We're doomed I tell ye, doomed!"

Private Frazer, Dad's Army, Walmington-On-Sea Home Guard, 1939 (Undertaker)

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 23, 1999.

Y'all forgot one, and this applies to Mr. Yourdon, et.ux.:

Expert witness

Big bux in them thar hills.

-- Loud Bass (fu@bar.com), January 23, 1999.