10 Hot Jobs in the Coming Apocalypse

The world may have not ended end in 2012 when the Mayan Calendar expired. The world may come crashing down when global warming pushes average global temperatures past the tipping point, or global cooling makes us all very very chilly.

Pick your poison: we're all gonna witness the end of the world as we know it. We may not feel as fine about it as Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Bill Berry, but most of us will need to find new jobs.

Job searches by city will become problematic when the coming apocalypse erases logical boundaries. You might be able to log on to Monster.com, but don't bother filtering your search results by "New York" because, as we all know, major cities are always the first places devastated by apocalyptic escapades.

Here are 10 Hot Jobs in the Coming Apocalypse:

1. Ointment Spreader: radiation burns as well as traditional cuts and abrasions will cause major skin problems in much of the surviving population.
   
2. Videographer: someone will have to record the attempts to rebuild civilization.
3. iPod Repair: those things are always breaking.
4. Summer Camp Counselor: we'll need some place to send the kids while we rebuild civilization.
5. HubPages Forums Editor: we'll need to keep the conservatives in check.
6. Spikey Shoulder Pad and Leather Vest Repair: Apocalyptic denizens always struggle with their outfits.
7. Tivo Tech Support: Rebuilding civilization often requires us to miss our favorite shows.
8. Telephone Sanitizer: no one wants to survive the apocalypse and then die from a virulent telephone.
9. White Castle Counter Staff: Those places are open 24 hours a day and people are always calling in sick on Monday mornings; imagine the attrition rate after an apocalypse.
10. Valet for Hal Licino: Regardless of rampant pestilence and overwhelming hopelessness, Mr Licino will be taking his coffee on the lanai.
    

Use our 10 Hot Jobs in the Coming Apocalypse as a guide for employment opportunities following the end of modern civilization. Here are additional helpful tips for landing that dream job:

• Don't be upset if an employment agency doesn't return your calls. These folks will be just as busy defending their gasoline and water supplies from roving bands of spikey-shouldered scavengers are you are.
• Be prepared to relocate. It's hard to secure gainful employment if your city of residence is a smoking crater.
• The IT field is always growing, but few government grants may be available immediately after society collapses upon itself.
• Print your resume on fire-proof paper, but avoid pastel colors and garish stationary. Professionalism is the order of the day.
  
• Be creative when filling in gaps in your employment history. If you saved your enclave from Mad Max wannabes, use that as a selling point to emphasize your organizational skills and aggressiveness.
  

Once you've landed that apocalyptic employment, work hard to hang on to it. Attrition will be a huge problem: zombies, sinkholes, and rampant cable TV outages will cause many well-meaning people to miss work.

Follow these few yet simple suggestions to empower your employment. Impress your boss and your boss' boss and the security guard at the main entrance.

• Buy a speed pass. You can't depend on the toll booths to be open. No one wants to sit in line interminably until a single harried attendant can attend to all the lines.
• Plan your route in advance. Roads may be there one day and gone the next as quarreling bands of roving murderous survival gangs wrest control from one-another. Leave early so you don't miss that big meeting.
  
  
• Continuously retrain yourself. Specialists will always be in demand, but generalists will be more in demand. Your cubicle mates may suddenly vanish or succumb to zombie fever or simply set out for the rumored neutral zone where toilet paper is supposedly in good supply. You just might find yourself covering for the IT guy or the corporate nurse.
  
  
• Keep your taxes up to date. IRS computers will not crash, regardless of how persistent the apocalypse might get. Hold on to every scrap of paper, every receipt, and every 1099. Donating to Goodwill will still be a great tax write-off, but you may be hard-pressed to get duplicates of your receipts when that part of town becomes a smoking crater.