My old design office had a saying: "after the blast." It described the days where society has crumbled and designers were no longer valued for their newly irrelevant skills. We all had to have new jobs, after the blast.

My supervisor was crafty. She could sew—and not just with a machine, she'd sew frontier style. In fact, one of her weekend hobbies was "rendezvousing". Alright, I don't actually know the verb for it. She'd go to mass get-togethers where participants camped without modern technology. It was like a Renaissance Faire, but without the dorky falderal. Or survivalists, without the spooky lust for automatic weapons.

I asked the illustrator what he would do if one morning he woke up and robots could do his job. His reply was, "I guess I'd fight robots." After some more thought he decided that a life of tending to tomatoes was more his speed; he would be a gardener "after the blast". He was a good enough illustrator (and a mite skeptical of them new fangled computers) that he probably could have made a fine hunk of money drawing wanted signs or whatever else we'll need in the future.

This left the senior web designer and me scratching our heads. With no marketable skills that did not involve an internet connection, let alone electricity, we'd be stuck doing dishes we figured. I can play drums, but my office said that musicians would probably be even more worthless in the future than now. If only I believed in any one religion, I think I'd be a fine preacher—and heaven knows that the future needs those.

Seeing "Children of Men" again last weekend made me realize that I have nothing to fear. Post-apocalypses hardly ever happen in the U.S. "Children of Men" = England. "V for Vendetta" = England. "1984" = England. "Mad Max" = Australia. "Tank Girl" = Australia. The only two post-apocalypse movie franchises that take place here are "The Postman" (not the one that won an Oscar) and the "Escape from New York" series (skipping the novelization and going straight for the pizza chain). Okay, technically "Planet of the Apes" took place here... but it also had humankind enslaved to apes. Not a good resource for "after the blast" career paths.

Leaving the theater and using the high-tech urinals that sense when you're finished and automatically flush themselves, I realized that we're pretty much doomed if we lose power now. We couldn't even flush our urinals. Perhaps I can find work as a garcon de pisse.

I'm off to South by Southwest next week, to frolic amongst the other interactive designers/bloggers/coders/etc. I'll ask them what their "after the blast" plans are.