# What event would make your profession obsolete?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [May 15, 2013, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450 "2013-05-15T21:16:03Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/1 "2013-05-15T21:16:03Z")
I’m an attorney. If anything were to happen to cause civil society to collapse, I would be completely useless.
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### Author:  [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/2 "2013-05-15T21:23:33Z")
Artificially intelligent machines with the capacity to design, manipulate and/or create imagery/polygons according to the whims of the client/director.
For the first time, I’d feel earnest pity for a machine.
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### Author:  [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/3 "2013-05-15T21:25:28Z")
An apocolyptic zombie virus.
An LTE meteor collision.
Pretty much anything that would end humanity.
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/4 "2013-05-15T21:28:33Z")
Downloadable knowledge/implanted skills. The invention of the classic SF “learning machine.”
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/5 "2013-05-15T21:38:05Z")
If we were able to totally do away with defects in ICs.
We’re pretty safe.
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### Author:  [@Lakai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lakai)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/6 "2013-05-15T21:39:28Z")
Tell me your profession! :mad:
This thread won’t be fun if we don’t know what your profession is.
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### Author:  [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/7 "2013-05-15T21:48:34Z")
Long-term total economic collapse or the technological singularity. Other than that I’m good.
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### Author:  [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/8 "2013-05-15T21:49:54Z")
> [@Lakai](#):
>
> Tell me your profession! :mad:
_Haa-OOH! Haa-OOH! Haa-OOH!_
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/9 "2013-05-15T21:56:51Z")
Hell, my profession would evaporate pretty quickly if the niche database application FileMaker Pro ceased to occupy its niche. Could happen easily enough and there are plenty of IT dept heads who consider it a tinkertoy (i.e., not a SQL system) or otherwise an application that doesn’t belong in the enterprise environment (e.g., not a Microsoft product). There have been 2-3 year stretches in the period since 1998 where it looked like FileMaker was going to go the way of Panorama and 4D and Lotus Approach and there’d be no market for skilled FileMaker developers. Hasn’t happened so far though.
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### Author:  [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/10 "2013-05-15T21:57:21Z")
> [@cmyk](#):
>
> Artificially intelligent machines…
Same here. I do technical business analysis – that is, turning business processes into something coherent and unambiguous that can then be built as software.
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### Author:  [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/11 "2013-05-15T22:04:19Z")
I’m a computer security guy. I do forensics and investigations when there is a data breach. If computers are ever made impregnable and administrators become infallible, or if humans ever stop wanting to steal things, I’m screwed.
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### Author:  [@Septima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Septima)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/12 "2013-05-15T22:11:09Z")
I’m a teacher and a metalworker. I don’t do obsolete.
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### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/13 "2013-05-15T22:15:28Z")
> [@Bayard](#):
>
> I’m a computer security guy. I do forensics and investigations when there is a data breach. If computers are ever made impregnable and administrators become infallible, or if humans ever stop wanting to steal things, I’m screwed.
In other words, when people stop being stupid and evil.
You’re even safer than I am.
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### Author:  [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/14 "2013-05-15T22:18:25Z")
> [@Lakai](#):
>
> I’m an attorney. If anything were to happen to cause civil society to collapse, I would be completely useless.
Thats an interesting part of the _(really pretty good)_ zombie novel ‘World War Z’, after the _(inevitable)_ zombie apocalypse social status and utility has changed markedly, many formerly respectable professions are now obsolete and others gain prominence, in one scene a woman is heard objecting to having to take orders from her former cleaning maid.
> [@Bayard](#):
>
> I’m a computer security guy. I do forensics and investigations when there is a data breach. If computers are ever made impregnable and administrators become infallible, or if humans ever stop wanting to steal things, I’m screwed.
I wouldn’t get too worried about it. 😉
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### Author:  [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/15 "2013-05-15T22:33:24Z")
I work in cloud software, so I suppose the day that companies stop selling things.
I guess that would mean when the teabaggers fears are realized and the jackbooted socialists finally take power.
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### Author:  [@Rhiannon8404](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhiannon8404)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/16 "2013-05-15T22:39:01Z")
If everyone were to spay/neuter their pets and take care of them responsibly, ever lose their home and have to move, and all the puppy mills and backyard breeders were put out of business, well, at the very least, I would have a lot less to do.
Dog rescue is not so much a profession, but a vocation, but it’s what I do.
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### Author:  [@Cub\_Mistress](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cub_Mistress)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/17 "2013-05-15T22:45:48Z")
I’m a nurse. Only the end of the world will make me obsolete.
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### Author:  [@eltro102](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eltro102)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/18 "2013-05-15T23:07:33Z")
Not even the end of the world will make me obsolete, I’m unemployed
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### Author:  [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/19 "2013-05-15T23:12:25Z")
> [@Cub\_Mistress](#):
>
> I’m a nurse. Only the end of the world will make me obsolete.
I was a pharmacist. Technically, I still am, because I’m still licensed, but my bachelor’s degree is worse than useless because not only does it identify me as experienced (i.e. graduated prior to the late 1990s, when most schools switched over to the Pharm.D. degree) but it also prevents me from getting a job doing anything else. So, now I have a home-based business.
And honestly, it’s no longer the profession I trained for and I don’t want to do it any more. The support I’ve received from professional colleagues has been universal. :eek:
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### Author:  [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)
#### Post date: [May 15, 2013, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-event-would-make-your-profession-obsolete/658450/20 "2013-05-15T23:15:16Z")
If people just throw up their hands and say, “If the environment is just going to get worse and worse, what’s the point in doing anything about it? Fuck the Clean Water Act! Let’s party!” then I’d be totally screwed.
Sadly, given the current political climate of my state, this may very well happen.
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