Ask HN: Whats your SWE career plan B?

I got fired, so I've been enjoying my other hobbies. :)

1. Electronics repairs (Soldering, replacing caps, mosfets etc, lots of fun debugging things) 2. Old timer car repairs (love working on Volkswagen and Saabs) 3. Electrician (hate the dust, but love drawing plans, cabling, home automation) 4. CNC shop: rebuild parts, 3D CAD work etc

There isn't just one specific "plan B", but I have a few things in mind for potential ways to make money if I lose access to my current career. Unfortunately reality collides with some of the possibilities... I am a certified Firefighter II and Firefighter Instructor II, with teaching qualifications for Firefighter I/II certification and LP Gas Firefighting. So you might think "become a firefighter" would be an option. But age (53) and health (heart issues) make that implausible. OTOH, I did a couple of years of welding in high-school. I could go take some welding classes at the local community college and probably get into that. But, again, age. Can my body hold up to doing physically demanding work for several more years at this point? IDK. Same for the possibility of becoming an electrician. I'm sure I could pass the classes and learn the stuff, but I don't know about having the physical wherewithal for something like that.

So I've been spending a lot of time on my existing hobby of doing electronic repairs and stuff, and have started investing in some camera equipment and stuff for filming videos for Youtube. I figure doing repairs and making videos might bring in a dollar or two. Not enough to live on probably, but a lot of things will factor into that: when / if the cyberpunk dystopia sets in, existing savings, the exact direction society evolves, etc. etc.

And in the future dystopia (or the current one as far as that goes) there will probably be ways to make money if you know how to repair / build / mod various bits of electronic stuff. And similar to @AppAttestationz, I've been messing with CNC stuff (bought a small desktop CNC mill a while back), 3D printing, etc. Not just because of worries about job loss mind you. These are all things I was already interested in. But now I'm thinking "in the future to come, along with repairing/building/modding electronics, there will probably be a place for people who can repair/fabricate/mod all sorts of physical items as well."

I've also been stocking up on chemistry books and spending some time studying chemistry (which was also a pre-existing, albeit lightly explored, interest anyway). I figure in a pinch there will be a market for various chemical substances and if one can synthesize them in a home lab... (yes this is all illegal AF. I'm considering the possibility of a society collapse to the extent that concerns like "legal" and "illegal" become moot).