For some reason, I enjoy daydreaming of end-of-the-world scenarios. This propensity seems pretty common, what with all the zombie and post-apocalypse books and movies. In my reverie, I’ve often thought that when y2k comes and society collapses, people will likely band together in small groups of families or tribes. When that happens, I’ll be looking for people with complementary skills to join my tribe. Here are a few skills for which I’ll be recruiting, in order of descending importance.

1. Agronomy. I’ll need a person with combined academic study and practical knowledge of growing plants. We’ll not only need plants for food, but also for clothing and perhaps fuel.
2. Electrical Engineering. Engineers are generally tinkerers and inventors. Having somebody to come up with and build devices to improve our tribe’s productivity would be useful. At a minimum, having an electrical engineer would be useful for communications.
3. Trauma Medicine. The loss of a life would not only be a great emotional loss, but a notable economic loss for the tribe. A trauma medic would help us treat people with injuries from accidents and conflict. I don’t think preventative medicine would be a necessary skill, other than the common sense held by members of the tribe.
4. Biotechnical Engineering. If I was taught correctly in high school (and I likely wasn’t), gene splicing bacteria doesn’t require too much equipment, just a little know-how. If that truly is the case, I’m hoping that a biotechnical engineer would be able to create bacteria for synthesizing insulin, and that he might also be able to manufacture penicillin. Those would likely be very valuable items in trading with other tribes.
5. Mechanical Engineering. This skill might overlap too much with electronic engineering, but, based on my understanding of engineering disciplines, mechanical engineers would be more involved with larger machines than would be electrical engineers. A mechanical engineer would likely be able to maintain work machinery, and possibly build new machinery for us.
6. Martial Arts. Many desperate tribes would likely be wandering the region, so each individual in my tribe would need to be able to defend himself or herself.
7. Military Tactics. Since our tribe would be self-sufficient, our military strategy would simply be to defend our assets. However, having someone to implement that strategy with tactics might be useful
8. Cryptanalysis. Having somebody that could encrypt our communications and decode communications of potential enemies might come in handy.

Do you have any other suggestions? Would you like to enlist?

Here’s the first blog entry that I’ve ever written.

I’ve been quietly critical of blogs, mainly because I thought that they gave people an over-inflated sense of self importance (that sounds awfully jaded; I didn’t really spend that much energy being critical of bloggers–I was just a little condescending toward them).  However, since I wisely kept my blog criticism internal (until now), I can join the blog ranks without considering myself too much of a hypocrite.  Here are a few reasons that I decided to make a blog, ranked in descending order of importance.

1. To improve my writing. I feel that the ability to write well is a fine skill to have, and to become a good writer, one must practice. I don’t pretend to be a great writer now, but I would like to improve my writing. To that end, if readers have any criticism of grammar, I invite them to post their recommendations. While I welcome criticism on grammar, I’ll likely be less open to criticisms on content. I’m just sayin’.
2. To leave a more accurate record of myself. This is where I manifest my over-inflated sense of self importance. I feel that journals, books of remembrance, etc. often don’t paint a comprehensive picture of an individual because they are focused on narrative or spiritual matters. I’d like to leave something that gives a little more of my personality, so I’ll try to write lots of blog entries that reflect my personality.
3. Because I’m jealous of others’ blogs. I envy that bloggers get so much attention for their mundane ramblings. This is probably a more reprehensible reason than my over-inflated sense self importance.
4. To be a reference. This is very likely a pipe dream, but if I discover something fascinating and record it here, maybe it will show up on a Google search at some point and be of use to somebody.

If anybody out there decides to read my blog, I hope that my entries are entertaining, at a minimum.  Perhaps they’ll even be insightful or educational too. If you are an experienced blogger, a critical observer of blogs, or a person that has some other insight into blogging, feel free to post any blog advice as comments to this entry.