Your Profession And Prepping

What is your profession, and how does it help you to be prepared? I am a vet tech, which is teaching me medical skills that can be used on pets and humans alike. I have been a shadetree mechanic, helped me to learn about cars and mechanical design in general, and for three years i managed housekeeping at a major hospital, which helped me to learn about disease, sanitation and gave me real-world experience in handling containment situations, including designing, building and running an Ebola ward.

 

Great skills! I have done a lot of maintenance as well, and that sort of work pays a lot of dividends! I ahve made a lot of useful things and learned how to hide or disguise many others, aa well as just make my wife happy with home improvements from time to time lol. Kudos on the electrical knowledge - i never could get the hang od that or much plumbing!

 

Retired Alaska Professional Hunter (Registered Alaskan Hunting Guide and Outfitter) and also retired Commercial Pilot, flying Super Cubs, in bush Alaska.

 

I started my working life in the electrical trades then many years in security, a few years in hospitality, lots a driving and many years farming.
As to useful skills three decades of comp pistols, rifles and shotgunning most of it in mastergrade and much hunting and camping and a lifelong study and practice of survivalism
I am comfortable in most environments

Currently counting down to retirement driving Hotmix trucks at night

 

I have spent most of my working life in the land of the cubicle people. First half in Operations mostly in a manufacturing environment. Second half in Sales, which oddly enough, was what got me into prepping. Long before it was popular, and give credit where credit is due, an over protective wife, I started putting together car survival kits. I was driving in a Sales territory, and could routinely be several hundred miles from home living out of the car and hotels. My wife encouraged me to keep emergency supplies in the car just in case. It was good advice, and I started with a 72 hour bag. I could still live in my car comfortably for 72 hours., and that bag and my car kit are much more substantial.

In my area we had the Iben Browning earthquake scare. The New Madrid fault was going to be TEOTWAWKI; Y2K; Mayan 2012. All spreading fear and destruction, but some legitimate reasons to prep. More realistically, how could you watch Hurricane Karina or Hurricane Sandy; live through an ice storm where power was out anywhere from 6 weeks to 3 months; watch Joplin get leveled by a F-5 tornedo; watch another tornedo pass 200 yards from your house; come within an eyelash of having to evacuate for a flood and NOT be a prepper. To one and all, and I was never a Boy Scout, BE PREPARED. I have seen it happen to friends, and it has happened to me personally, your life can be turned upside down in a heartbeat. People have no idea how quickly SHTF. You have to be prepared or you will be fortunate or lucky to survive.

 

I'm a retired aerospace engineer/manager, and have also been a schoolteacher and a music teacher/musician, none of which are necessarily precursors to a 'career' in prepping/survival. I did spend some time as a systems engineer in a photovoltaics factory, designing and installing PV and hybrid power systems for remote/rural locations in the US, Central America, the Arabian Peninsula, and Africa. I tend to think skeptically and in a structured way, which has its good and bad points.

 

Retired jack of all trades master of several. Was self-employed repair tech. I can build or repair most anything...

 

Retired army paratrooper and medic. Retired from a post army career in health care and medical operations. Doing some other things on the side that I don’t want to talk about for opsec (not necessarily all that exciting). But none of this ads up to 1/4 of what I learned from my parents from birth on being self sufficient, being frugal, farming, raising or hunting for subsistence, and critical thinking.