Prepping – Skills Tree

Everyone who wants to survive upcoming emergencies (long or short) needs to have a skills tree. This is a list of skills that are in your household, as well as any that are overlapped. All good prepper families have lots of overlap, because we know that if one person succumbs (to a virus, to a gunshot wound, to dropping a tree on themselves…), someone else has to take up the slack. When you make your skills tree, be sure to list EVERYTHING that people can do, because you never know what’s going to be needed. If you find holes, you need to figure out a way to fill them. That means bringing someone into your plans, training yourself or someone else up in the missing skill, or figuring out ways to not need it. But plans need to be made.

Basic Skills

These are skills everyone should know. If someone in your group doesn’t know these, educate them, and fast.

• cooking over a fire
• gardening (basic, ie you can identify a pea and know how to operate a watering can, etc)
• sewing (basic, ie you can sew on a button or patch something roughly)
• triage (everyone should know how to tell how serious an injury is, even if they can’t treat it)
• shelter building
• filtering water to make it potable
• building a fire
• basic first aid (specifically, treating gunshot wounds, burns, and breaks, because they’re the most likely injuries you’ll encounter)
• self defence (pick your weapon)
• basic strategy
• how to wash clothes with no power
• where to find basic vitamins (ie you can drink pine needle tea to get Vitamin C)
• how to find dry firewood
• how to go to the bathroom when you have no indoor plumbing
• how to care for a newborn and its mother
• how to read maps (both standard ones and topographical)
• how to use a compass
• general problem solving/logic skills
• record keeping (write down what you do and how it’s done, for future generations)

Intermediate Skills

These skills should be familiar to most people, but not everyone will have them. Many might be able to fake it.

• gardening (intermediate, ie you know how to plant something if people tell you where it goes, same for harvesting, and you can weed on your own)
• first aid (you know basic first aid and can take care of emergent problems as they occur, as well as triage efficiently)
• sewing (intermediate, ie you can fix a blown seam, do basic cutting down of an item to a smaller size, basic tailoring)
• animal husbandry (you know how to raise, breed, feed, care for, and slaughter domestic animals)
• hunting (you know how to hunt/trap, kill, and process wild animals for eating)
• foraging (you know how to find food in the wild, be it herbs, roots, berries, mushrooms, etc.)
• permanent shelter building (you can make a building with walls and doors that is reasonably stable and safe)
• bullet making/reloading
• fishing (you know how to use a fishing pole, how to use bait, which bait to use, how to clean and process fish when it has been caught)
• root cellar preparation (you know the basics of pickling, brining, salting, dehydrating, and canning)
• homesteader food skills (make cheese, butter, ice cream, seed oils, vinegar, etc.)
• bake bread (you know how to make bread from stores, as well as how to forage or find some materials)
• render fats (this really should be under basic, but I don’t think most people know how it’s done)
• candle making (how to make candles from foraged wax as well as beeswax, both dip and pour)
• soap making (how to mix the ingredients and safely produce your own soap, both hard and soft)
• net making (how to make fine and large nets for hunting, gathering, and trapping)
• how to make/gather wild yeast
• how to find water
• building primitive furniture (ie beds, chairs, etc. for making life that much easier)
• how to make a safe fire ring or pit, as well as how to know which rocks are safe to use
• making fire with flint and steel
• how to make charcloth
• knot tying
• how to build semi-permanent jakes
• communication skills (ham radio or CB)

Advanced Skills

These skills require either a measure of formal training or a lot of experience. You can learn them on your own, but you should check in with experts to make sure you’re doing them right. You really need people to know these things BEFORE the emergency happens, because you’re not going to have time to learn it afterward.

• gardening (you know about companion planting, how to save seeds, how to deal with common pests, how to make safe insecticides, etc.)
• nurse/basic doctor (you can deal with most injuries and ailments, know how to prescribe medicines and herbal remedies, etc.)
• animal tracking (you know what walked where, and which direction it was going in)
• complex trapping methods and/or bow hunting
• how to make blackpowder for old firearms
• how to make lye for soap and other uses
• how to make alcohol (various types, both for fun and for medical use)
• expert level fire making (bow drill, other friction fires, magnifying glass, etc.)
• how to make a Lakota fire hole
• how to use pine sap (ie as glue, to make a torch, etc.)
• midwifery (this is separate from doctoring, and is vitally important)
• knitting/crocheting/naalbinding/finger loop braiding
• how to draft clothing patterns and sew real clothes
• spinning wool into yarn
• weaving yarn into cloth
• how to gather wheat and local grasses, winnow it, and prepare it for storage and/or grinding into flour
• how to make shoes
• general leather working
• how to make hats and baskets
• how to whittle cups, plates, etc.
• how to make natural clay into pots and plates
• ropemaking from natural materials
• how to make a semi-permanent rocket stove and/or cobb oven
• how to make oilcloth for tents and rain gear
• how to build houses from scratch
• how to make a safe fireplace indoors

Master Skills

As implied, these are the skills that can’t be faked. You can’t just do them; you have to have learned them either by taking classes or working under another master. Passing them along is a lifetime of work, and one we need to be investing in.

• blacksmithing (you can make nails, tools, shoe horses, etc.)
• lumberjack (you can safely fell and process large trees into usable lumber)
• steam engines (how to make, repair, and keep working safely)
• solar power, harnessing (for many things like heating water, running electronic books, etc.)
• wind power, harnessing (for grinding wheat, and running simple machines)
• simple engineering (so we can make simple machines and keep them running)
• barrel making
• how to build a perimeter
• how to create useful IEDs and other stealth safety items
• surgery (how to deal with major health issues that require cutting open humans and/or animals)

Obviously this isn’t a complete list. There are zillions of things I didn’t think of when I was writing this. I will tell you that we have people in our group who can do about 99% of the above things. Most of them can be done by at least two people, with one person being the expert. Right now we’re lacking in a surgeon and a doctor or nurse, though I know some advanced first aid. We lack a barrel maker, though I think at least one member understands the basics of it. Our group is well rounded and relatively well trained. We could be better trained. We don’t always work as well together as we should.

It’s a lot to think about, when you contemplate what happens if our current world is decimated. It doesn’t matter if it’s zombies, a virus or bacterial agent, enemies of the state, a meteor, tsunamis, or anything else. The “what” isn’t as important as covering as many bases as you can. We cannot predict what is going to happen in the future, therefore we have to do our best to be prepared for just about anything that happens.

There are some things we just don’t need to prep for. If aliens come to subjugate us, we’ll either fight them off, or die trying. If someone blows up the world, we’re all dead so it’s moot. But most scenarios aren’t that morose. We try to imagine pockets of resistance or survival, because if we don’t, we may as well just give up right now. So we work the problems we can.

Are there any really important things that I haven’t listed? I’m going to see if I can get Chris to pin these “list” posts and I’ll keep adding to them as we find new stuff or make updates.