15,000 or so, I’m the first to volunteer for the important, uh, hospitality committee, and I’d still have free time?
You know what we haven’t got yet? A plumber. What’re we going to do when the drains clog up? Or we need to build new houses?
The first problem would be getting all of us in one place. Also…how are we defining “members?” Do we count banned posters? How about those who left when we went pay? Guests?
I don’t know the OP is very far fetched. How about we are all flown to a giant Doper Meeting free of charge and so we are all gathered; all current members and their families. Then the mysterious ex-machina act occurs and no one else survives. This will allow all of our overseas dopers to also be gathered with us.
Let’s assume the location will be Chicago therefore.
So maybe we should look for a prime location within easy migration of Chicago.
I hate giving up an Ocean but lets go with this scenario as at least it makes a tiny bit of sense.
I can do some plumbing, especially clearing drains. I am sure we must have some others than can. I can sweat a copper pipe and PVC is easy. I can train others.
Jim
As a well-trained, well-seasoned specialist in Internal Medicine, attempting to work in the absence of both an adequate supply of medicines and any diagnostic tests whatsoever, I would most certainly be of great value as a … farmhand, or maybe a sheppard (or even a barber!).
I recently got out of the broadcasting business after twenty years. Ten in radio and ten in TV. What do you do, Ivylass? I was a producer, so I guess I could produce the newscasts that you can read. We can train some of the others as a studio crew pretty quickly.
Er…why Chicago? I would really prefer to be near an ocean, and it kinda seems like you picked Chicago out of the blue? Why not NYC or San Francisco?
Lessee.
I already know a little about spinning, crocheting, and knitting, so I can help Aangelica learn/teach the fiber arts to others. Sewing makes me nuts, though. And I’m a technical writer, I can explain things in small words if you can give me the specs, but that won’t help too much in the Brave New World.
I can help with the animal tending and cooking if you give me directions, I learn reasonably well. I’d have to be one of the warm ablebodied folks in general. Hospitality committee might be fun, though.
I’m with **Anaamika ** on the why question – the Fertile Crescent was near India, after all.
Ooo! I can sew too. And of course cook. And I know I’d be a great mom, once I got down to it - just not willing to do it IRL.
Chicago is the home base of the Straight Dope. “Chicago Reader” host the boards. I wouldn’t choose Chicago either, I was just trying to determine where we would all meet.
If I was writing the scenario, I would have the Doper convention be in NYC. I am sure everyone would have a different choice. I would be happy to go with NYC.
We should easily be able to get to many good sites from there.
I think saying Chicago because that where the Reader is fit the expansion of the scenario and removes debates. We could each name a favored area. Let go with one nobody will like so we will be forced to move south and maybe east. 
Jim
Sounds like you could take up being a GP or Vet in a pinch and with a lot of books. We’ll need plenty of both with dwindling supplies of Medicines.
Jim
I actually don’t think NYC would work either - no farmland. I still maintain the Tennessee Valley if it has to be the States, but I see no reason why it should be. I’d really prefer it to be a warmer country so one major problem is gone - surviving the winters. And with lots and lots of farmland.
I know this is hard to believe but a large part of NJ is very fertile farmland.
But lets start in Chicago and have to load up trucks and buses for Tennessee and its TVA hydro power.
Jim
I’m pretty good at bearing children and birthing them with little outside help. Prolly I could offer some kind of assistance to other women in birth.
I’m also pretty good at tending the little critters singly and in bunches. And as far as lactating goes, I could probably provide the whole colony with all the wet nurse services necessary (for the babies you perverts!)
I don’t mind doing monotonous tasks that must be repeated over and over, like cleaing up the dishes and doing the laundry.
I can sing OK and know parts of many songs.
As a passionate yard sale and thrift store hound, I think my true calling after the apocalypse would be scavenging. mmmm…sifting through other people’s random stuff…bliss!
oh yeah, I should add that I’ve done a bit of electrical and plumbing work, but am in no way a professional. Add that to the roads and bridges and I know what I’ll be doing. Who wants to come work on my road crew?
As a programmer, I’d make a great farmer
No, like others have mentioned, I do pick up easily on things intellectual, so wouldn’t do very bad in many things engineering or mechanical. I’m just glad plumbing’s already been taken. And bootstrap societys run on jury-rigged stuff, which programmers naturally excel at (remind me to tell you sometime about how I used a tennis racket to help change a car tire).
In my spare time between patching Aunt Mae’s house for the 14th time and weeding the garden I could be a bureaucrat. I’m good at achieving a rules compromise if people genuinely desire one. I mean, I’m a programmer, programmers are gamers, games have rules, and rules have loopholes. I can design rules that people can live with yet close the most egregious loopholes. Plus, I’ve never been accused of being impartial. (Now, if people decide to break the rules, hey, that’s not my problem ;))
I’d volunteer to babysit as well, but I can’t handle more than 3 children, and that only if it’s exactly two girls and a boy. Two boys or three girls causes excessive rowdiness.
I lived in the Chesapeake Bay area for ten years and never heard a thing about hurricanes. A couple of states south, maybe.
FWIW, we had tornado drills in elementary school, and the teachers would tell us about some tornado that came through decades ago or something. Other than that, I don’t think Maryland is much at risk for natural disasters. The land is fertile, and there’s lots of tobacco, so we can even head off nicotine cravings.
I’m a Chemistry student. I haven’t even started any of my major classes, so my valuable skills would be somewhere around zero. I have some physical problems, too. I make friends easily, so maybe I’d have some use in government or diplomacy. I used to be in the Boy Scouts; I don’t remember much of anything I learned there, but I’d bet I have enough basic concepts to keep a couple of people from doing stupid things in the wilderness. Being young and virile, I could also help with the reproduction.
California is proven farmland, and assuming that it’s only the humans that don’t die off, we’ve got LOTS AND LOTS of cows and facilities for same. Lots of other resources, too; it’s oft-cited that if California were its own country its economy would rank in the top five or ten. Now, granted, the entertainment industry is a big chunk of that, but we also build communications satellites, weapons, etc. and farm lots of vegetables and meat-carriers.
Oh yeah, and we’ve got some of them nukes too.
I spent many years in the oil patch, so I can keep an oil well and gas lines running.
Er, I know how to make glass.
That’s about it.
It’s also murderously cold four months a year. I think what was being suggested was finding a place that’s good farmland AND isn’t freezing in winter. Parts of India would fit the bill, as would many places in Africa.
[evil grins]
I’m thinking the rule with signigant other is:
Doper guys can bring their wives or SO .
Doper women?? eh, first we have to see if we are in ample supply of women or not. If there happens to be a shortage of women? Sorry but your hubby is SO comming down with the plague… 