Without on-going training programs - people lose their edge and their abilities. I would expect that these groups have to be active *now* in order to maintain that edge, otherwise, time erodes skills, training and any critical thinking abilites those individuals once possesed.
I fail to see, with with I just wrote in mind, how a big benefit can be made of a black-out sitution; my beleif is that these people inhrently would make themselves visible by persuing any form of training program, therefore, *if* they are actually here in numbers (someting I do not subscibe to) their skills have got to be growing awfully rusty from non-use and zero training ...