Guns, ammo, food, water etc. will become valuable commodities. Natural bartering will lead to money again.
It's probably not realistic to see a humanities degree as a meal ticket, but it can be an excellent foundation for the "real world". Getting the degree teaches you to research and to learn. Those are marketable skills you can apply to many jobs. Unless you want a career in academia, in many cases the humanities degrees aren't likely going to lead you to a job in your field of study, but they will prepare you. You just need to figure out where to apply your skills.
I never really cared about languages before programming, but after learning it, then logic, semantics, ontology I think about other human languages a lot. I'm curious about your point of view coming from the opposite direction.
With the economy in the state that it is, it's a lot harder to beat the odds. Just getting an interview with a not-directly-applicable major seems to be flat out impossible.
After many years of watching people dear to me struggle, I'm starting to feel bad telling them that they just need to market themselves better, find a way to bypass the recruitment process and think outside the box. I've come to realize that they really got the raw end of the deal, and instead of any sympathy, they get told that they just need to try harder.
