If the tech world ended, what would you do?

I was talking to a friend the other day and he was telling me about how he would like to start doing some leatherworking. No, not the stuff in World of Warcraft but the real type of leatherworking. I mentioned to him that I have a box of leatherworking tools somewhere in my garage and he’s more than welcome to them as I don’t really see myself doing anything with them anytime soon.

This, along with some recent events in the technology world got me to thinking. What would happen if we lost all of our high tech gadgets and technology? Now I know what you’re thinking, “Oh jeez, another one of these survivalist nuts.” but hold on, I’m not really one of those guys, I do think its good to have some skills and things to fall back on but seriously, what would todays world do if we lost our internet, computers, TV and other things?

Not to long ago our local Wal*Mart had a major failure in it’s point of sale system. They were unable to process any purchases for well over 2 hours. Now you old timers would simply say to just take cash and finish the sale, well that’s easier said than done. They weren’t even able to get into the registers not to mention most of the cashiers probably didn’t know how to count or make change. Not really their fault but today’s technology has virtually eliminated this skill.

As some of you may already know, one of my hobbies is woodworking. I’m mostly focused on learning hand tools and joinery. Nothing wrong with power tools but thousands of years ago they didn’t have power tools and all that really beautiful old furniture or buildings had to be made somehow. This could be something I could fall back on if all of today’s technology was lost.

So what “old world” skill do you have? Have you participated in it lately? Are you teaching younger members of your family your skill?