Post Apocalyptic Trading System

If everything collapsed including the money system how would you approach the post apocalyptic world?
Imagine that a small community of survivors was all that was left.
Now an agreed upon way to trade goods is the only way to keep the peace,
what system would you set in place?

 

I think working for your food is a pretty good system. Anything you need, you work or trade something you can get for. That way, anyone can get the basic necessities. Getting the goods yourself and then becoming the person people come to trade for, can also be hugely beneficial. If you're the main supplier of food in a community, and people come to you for food, you can basically get any other thing you want with minimal effort. You can get them to do any job, or trade you anything you want. (Such as water, toilet paper, beds) Really, anything you could want.

 

what types of things would you consider good for bartering?
there are many things of value but what defines something as valuable.
I know that some people store up gold and silver, which might be good for an economic collapse but what good would it have in SHTF? do you think people would still value it enough to trade their things for? or would it be useless because it has no survival benefit (ie. you can't eat it or stay warm with it). what other things would be valuable to trade here is a small list of things I could think of
antibiotics
medications
medical supplies
alcohol
tobacco
any type of fire starter
any camping supplies
food
clean water/means to clean it
warm clothes (dependent on environment)
fuel (gasoline, diesel, lamp oil, propane heating oil, seasoned firewood)

I have purposely excluded knives, guns, and ammunition because I think that handing someone the tools to cause you harm is not a good idea. what are your thoughts on this?

barter would be a good way to get something that you need or want when you don't have it and could be a mutually beneficial arrangement. it does, however, carry with it the risk that the people you are trading with will then know what you have and might want to take it from you. not everyone can buy and store everything they night need for every disaster so I think that the ability to trade with those around you may be beneficial in some cases. one must always ask if the pros outweigh the cons

 

My skills and knowledge would be a tradeable commodity! i would only trade for goods or knowledge i did not have !

 

I agree ! once things settle down and the rifraf is subdued the rebuilding and trading can start!

 

Survival First and Foremost - That includes security of yourself and others in your "tribe".
I agree that trading would be something that would develop in the future after an apocolytic event.
I live in a rural agricultural community and we already have a loose-knit "tribe" of like believers and prepareres. We also have some basic plans for a "militia" to protect ourselves.
Once things settle down, then I would concentrate on marketable skills of mine, recharging batteries via solar power, and bartering various "extras" I have included in my supplies.

 

"Russia and China Raid Gold Amid Basel III Scramble"

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2021-10-10/russia-and-china-raid-gold-amid-basel-iii-scramble

"As the scramble to unwind allocated positions ahead of Basel III continues, Andrew Maguire reveals that Russia and China are seizing the opportunity to grow their already substantial physical gold reserves.

"With Options Expiry price-capping playing out exactly as predicted, the long-time wholesaler explains why he believes gold is coiled to break through crucial resistance and silver is extremely structurally bullish."
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If there is a trading system then on my scale it likely hasn't reached apocalyptic . I prepare so that I don't have to depend on someone else's resources . However my preparations are for the level of apocalyptic and infinity . --- If someone is truly prepared , I see no reason they would show up wanting to trade with some individual that failed to adequately prepare . Only a bunch of desperate and unprepared individuals would likely show up wanting to trade to hopefully fill their inadequate preparation void . --- I certainly wouldn't want to show up at location to hear all the pleading and begging from the desperate people that might actually show up for such an event . Next those desperate people would be at your house banging on your door pleading for your generosity .

 

Without any medical people, a broken femur = death. Appendicitis = death. And if there are only a few pockets of people, among those people will be some seriously desperate, MEAN people, so you'd better have a repeating firearm and plenty of ammo. It's easier to plunder than do for yourself -- at least that's true in the minds of aggressive people. Looting has become a recreational sport in America. It's the new Redistribution.

 

--- This is what a post apocalyptic trade meet would look like

 

There will be a lot of people left after the fall Lonewolf. The cities and places with a lot of people and almost no available food sources will experience an almost total wipe out. the people that live in the more rural places that live close to the land will suffer a lot of losses but not a total die off.There are 8 billion people on this planet even if 99% die there will still be millions of people left.

A lot of it depends heavily on which of the many possible worldwide disasters hit us. Something that caused a total systemic collapse like some sort of blast from the sun that wiped out everything electrical would leave the people in the cities having to walk out so if you are a long way from those big cities you might not have the swarms. The same might be true of some sort of virulent plague.

A social collapse where the city services were just cut off might send hords of the people leaving the cities but I honestly think that the vast majority will just sit and wait for help to come to them until it is too late. Rolling out into the rural places may not be all that easy. Small towns can’t handle a lot of people and WILL block of the roads and exits forcing the people to move on down the road. I saw this actually happen with one of the big hurricanes.

The sad thing is that most of the city people won’t know what to do with food that is on the hoof and will waste most of the meat AND get shot and killed by the owner of that beast. It will get horrifically ugly…for a little while. Once the idiots either starve to death or get killed the survivors will be a different sort of person.

People that look to others for support will die. Sadly, those that can’t defend their place because they won’t kill a trespasser will die. I like the signs that say, “Trespassers will be shot…Survivors will be shot again! There will be no place among those that survive for softness. Starving people are vicious animals and will kill you without pause for what little you have.

 

Tens, even hundreds, of millions of people will survive in the Southern Hemisphere. Many millions of poor people around the globe have no electricity, grow their own food, and use well water. Add to this how isolated some of these people are. Some do not see people from the outside world for months or years.

Unless the Northern Hemisphere goes full nuclear war, lots of people living in agricultural areas will get by one way or another. Mexico pumps its own oil and refines it. Rebuilding coal-fired electrical generating plants is not high tech. Poor folk will live through the weeks / months of blackout.

South Africa may not do well because of their overpopulation and their getting rid of white farmers who are the only ones using tractors and modern farming techniques. One can always put a point-type distributor and regular carburetor on a truck or tractor. I once had an old truck and had its computer-controlled system replaced with a regular carburetor and ignition system. I was working for a major international electronics concern and I wanted a truck that would keep on trucking through an EMP-rich environment -- the Cold War was still very alive back then. The company I was working for was right in the middle of that affair. Plus, we had little kids and I wanted them to make it through very bad times. We could have very easily had the balloons go up.

As for the sun being flatulent, Quebec 1989:
https://awakeandaware.ca/march-13-1989-a-cme-wiped-out-quebecs-entire-power-grid/

The Russians continued to use tubes in their aircraft well into the 1980s, maybe longer yet. The reason was to survive and fight during a nuclear war. Our military aircraft have triple-redundant computers and multi-nested Faraday cages. Military equipment has to run even during a nuclear war or during a really bad solar flare event. Same is true in factories -- you can't have your electronic equipment drop dead Fred just because someone is TIG or MIG welding right next to your control devices. All modern factories would be dead by week's end if they didn't protect against radiated and conducted electromagnetic radiation.
.

 

In any electrical grid shutdown for a few weeks, the urbanites are goners. This is especially true of those who live inside the gargantuan urban sprawls. Example, the urban corridor/cancer that spreads from Washington D.C. to Boston -- these folk are totally dependent on electricity and food from America's Heartland.

Many will panic an predate. This will NOT be received well in surrounding areas. Violent conflict is certain to occur.

 

Without power the water stops. Imagine HYC or LA without water. Among the other problems also while you are at it remember that no water means the toilets don't flush. Almost immediately the situation is going to get "crappy"! Yes, unfortunately Thomas Crappers great innovation the modern flush toilet will become a fond memory. Within a matter of a few days EVERY possible water source will be polluted and diseases like typhoid will raise their ugly heads.

People generally don’t understand the REAL ecology of a major city. Most of its infrastructure is underground, unseen and forgotten. When it starts of break down it will drop like a house of cards in a tornado. One day it is there and then the next it is GONE and a place like NYC or LA will become an uninhabitable city of the dead. Smaller cities will last a little longer mostly because they don’t have the HUGE high rise apartment buildings that allow the population per square mile/kilometer to skyrocket.

If you think that you will be able to drive out you will either be among the few that left FAST and early or one of the millions that will die stuck in a world last and largest traffic jam EVER. There will be the quick and the dead!! I’ve actually seen this in a couple of hurricane evacuations. People pile up and the traffic slows to a stop and then the idiots sit there with thir cars running to keep the all important AC running until their car over heats and dies or they run out of gas. At that point the 6 lanes of highway became an almost permanent parking lot from hell filled with hot angry people that thought that supplies for evacuation were a bag of chips a candy bar and a soda. They fot THIRSTY fast and it got ugly.

Those people survived because the problem was localized and people from places unaffected came to help. Eventually there were wrecker trucks from all over show up to help untangle the mess. UNDERSTAND in a total systemic collapse like we are talking about, not only will there be no help coming but rapidly the locals are going to become VERY unfriendly. I’ve seen that too.

For one thing cell phones don’t work well in situations like this. The nearest tower gets overloaded. They told everyone to stop calling and talking and ONLY text. Without modern communications and transportations you suddenly are in a much bigger world. I live in the country outside of a tiny town. For me it is a 50 mile round trip to go to a Walmart, Doctor, Pharmacy….whatever! That isn’t a big deal now but would be impossible on foot. Bicycles will be priceless.

We have horses here but it is something like one horse per several hundred people and we have a lot of horses compared to lots of places. We actually have apartment complexes that also have connected stables, arenas and riding trails. There is a church near me that has a PRCA rodeo arena attached to it and they have events after church. I have seen people on horses in line at restaurants for take out. We will be better off than most places but it will take a long time to ever again reach the level of the old west where everyone has a horse, mule or oxen. Working the land and transporting things with only human power is brutal.

We have become totally and absolutely dependent on a very specific level of technology that even a small drop will most likely created a total fall. REAL fast the life expectancy of a child born will drop to about 35 years of age. Lots of kids die young, lots of women die from issues connected to child birth and little things that now we fix with a pill or a quick surgery and a couple days in the hospital will again be TERMINAL.

Things that we don’t have to think about now will return. Burying your dead may well be beyond your ability. There was a reason that many cultures burned their dead on a funeral pyre. In places in the East they do this along the side of the river and then push the ashes and whatever didn’t burn into the river for the fish. THINK about it because things like this will become REAL in a world just possibly around the corner.

There are so many things that just happen FOR us without thought. We take them for granted but for most of history they were not a given.

We could very well end up like the Mayans. They had a hiccup and just fell to nothing. They lascked a couple of major things. The wheel and large animals of burden. I suspect that they had a drought and had no ability to transport large quantities of food over the longer distances that it suddenly took due to the drought. You have to dig DEEP to find mention of it but you know how they took people up on their pyramids and cut their heart out as offerings to their gods? Well after that they most likely fed the bodies to their starving people. When you find LOTS of human bones with knife marks like you find on a butchered animal it is a sure sign and there is a lot of that around sone of the Mayan and even Aztec deserted cities. When people are starving, they will eat anything that they can get.

I see a lot of our future in the past of the South American Civilizations.

LOL, Being on Dialysis gives me a lot of time to read and write...