Opinion In case of apocalypse, find the nearest 4-H club

Senior Photo Assignment Editor, Opinions
August 21, 2023 at 6:45 a.m. EDT
Equestrian 4-H’ers wait outside of an arena ahead of competing at the Knox County Fair in Mount Vernon, Ohio, on June 22. These photos were created on an iPhone using a filter. (Chloe Coleman/The Washington Post)
5 min

Raising and training animals. Growing food. Fishing. Archery. Sewing clothes. Making preserves. These are some of the skills that humanity is going to need if one of the many fictional post-apocalypse narratives ends up coming true.

Growing up in rural Ohio, I developed some of those skills by participating in 4-H, the network of youth development organizations whose roots (in Ohio, coincidentally) date to 1902. Recently, I paid a nostalgic visit to my childhood county fair, and it was while strolling the various barns occupied by 4-H and FFA (Future Farmers of America) projects that my brain connected this wholesome form of learning to grim scenes from “The Last of Us.”