but I'd rather have the skill<br><br>Generalists hang around while specialists die off. <br><br>What I've noticed about the people whose ingenuity haved awed me is that while they have a specialized skill set that gets them payed, they are always in school, or reading and learning other things on their own time. I've viewed skills such as improvisation (sp?) as the ability to recognize options. Some might have this as a natural gift, or some might have educated themselves to such a point, but in my (limited) experience, a jack-of-all-trades knowledge base is a more valuable asset in such situations than a PhD in something specifc.<br>

Improvisation involves adapting whatever resources one has available to solve an unanticipated problem. Being a jack of all trades may be very personally useful, but it does not seem to pay well. Developing highly skilled but uncommon abilities to respond to important & highly demanded needs is remunerative. In the process of developing the latter, one also can develop skills which can carry over into diverse fields, but to make them truly usable & useful, one needs exposure to a broad variety of problems and solutions. In the process of highly developing those narrow skills, one can develop a very sound foundation upon which to base the more generalized, diverse skills & knowledge which are necessary to develop an adaptive, problem-solving mentality.<br><br>Thus, studying survival situations, & developing the material & human resources necessary to meet them is useful when survival problems do occur even though they may differ from the ones previously considered. The human mind & body are wonderfully versatile. People will try to respond to new problems using old, adapted, or new approaches depending on what they deem most appropriate. Some will succeed. The more knowledge, skill, ability, & material resources they have available, the greater the chance of success. <br><br>In short, what we are doing is worthwhile. But it would probably also be valuable to explore different scenarios.<br><br>Do we need a another (3rd) forum to explore diverse survival problems?<br><br>John

It is when a topic like this is presented --with insightful answers as these, that I pound my fist wishing we had a immediate response or "chat" capability. I have so many questions, and then follow-ups that it would be wonderful to be able to do that. I recognize the difficulties and limitations. I am just whining, and maybe planting a seed for future reference. <br><br>Robb

Maybe I've been doing it too long- I remember when no one I talked to (in person) knew what the "internet" (usenet, arpanet, darpanet) was, when it was green letters glowing on a dark screen, when I typed "AT" commands directly to a modem on a dumb terminal- but I've never really gotten used to "real time" chat mode. It's certainly faster... but it also seems to impose some time pressure on a conversation that's not there with e-mail or postings... and I doubt that a large number of people here would be available to chat at the same time. It would be unfortunate to exclude people from the conversation just because their schedules don't match up.<br>