On the nosie! Not that it's changed all that much since I was a kid. 2nd stepfather was a Southern Baptist minister, and expected Armageddon any minute now. Trained my little brother and I to be his little private army. Did not train us to be able to make or fix things, though. I got into metalworking on my own, with support from my dad, and grandpa, both of whom were make it/fix it guys. Parents divorced when I was 4, so wasn't around dad all the time, nor grandpa, but my GI Joes had hand-forged swords, bows & spears with hand-forge points, and later I got into other forms of metalworking. High school machine shop class, and the day I met SWMBO, we were both attending our first Society for Creative Anachronism event. Learned a bit about making armour and fighting in it. Fun stuff! Also a bit of jewelry work, and Uncle Sam trained me as a mechanic and electronics tech, among other things. I'm still a lousy carpenter, and need a lot more experience machining to be able to call myself a machinist (wish I'd been smart enough to ask the USAF to train me for that!).
If anything happens that is survivable, I've got a core of stuff that will allow me to fix and build stuff needed to generate power, store power, and manipulate power. I'm 68 now, so the odds of being able to re-start civilization on my own are pretty low, but I might be worth keeping alive after the stuff happens. SCA folks might be worth having around then, too. And a good bunch of gun nuts.
And I know enough to be able to put together a basic kit of tools from scavenged materials to start from scratch, if needed. Lay hands on a story called What can you say about a chocolate covered manhole cover? by Larry Niven to get the idea.
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