Trade Stock

You buy stuff today. Do you really think that will change tomorrow? People have always traded. Today we trade with currency. In the past we have traded with money, goods, or labor.

 

Looking at a couple of serious prepper groups in my area , I can't forsee them wanting to trade for anything , even forty years after teotwawki . The rest of the less prepared will be dead . Perhaps short term within the first year I might could see a limited amount of trade . However I agree with Lonewolf . Why not just buy now what you think you might want to trade for ? I can see why some are just focusing on surviving for just a few weeks . Hoping the big event will just envolve traffic problems or getting sick and not having a doctor or pharmacy to go to . The block party thing will be great for a few weeks , but after the food and water runs out the party will be over . People can live independent of society . We have seen this in the past and still exist in a few places today . In order to do this however it will take thoughtful and serious prepping .

 

There are thieves and murderers today as there have always been. In the most violent war zones trade exists. Where people can't wander out in daylight because of snipers, trade is necessary.

 

Good morning Poltiregist,

You clearly explained the best - and probably least-costly survival plan: gt a spot of land that is realistically reachable to get to.

Public lands are combination morgues and infection isolation wards.

The REAL cost of trading involves the cost of the acquired infection(s). Like the Walmart ad: "Do the math".

 

Good morning Caribou,

Yes, ALWAYS thieves, murderers, pirates, slavers, and et cetra.

Actually, hours of limited visibility can be more dangerous times than daylight.

In politically-disturbed areas with armed personnel, contact is limited to the point of NO contact.

 

Some prepare to survive and some prepare to live. I could survive huddling in a cave eating bugs and drinking only water. Personally, that isn't what I want to do so I also try to prepare for other more pleasant possibilities. You can always abandon your supplies and go live like an animal but it is a lot harder to move up the food chain to a more pleasant existence.

Some seem to believe that people will devolve permanently into a savage anti-technological existence but history doesn't indicate that this is how people chose to live for long. I prepare for as many possible future situations as possible. I assume that there will be things in the future that I either forgot, will run out of or maybe just decide that I want. If it is something that I can't make for myself then I will need to get it from someone that has it. My choices, in that case, are to either kill them and take it, try to simply steal it from them or try to buy it from then. I think buying will be safer and so need something that I can use as "money" to exchange for this item.

People CAN live without money that they earn. They can be beggers, thieves, mooches, or live in very primitive hermitages. Most people don't CHOOSE to live that way now. I will not choose those lifestyles in any possible future. I may be forced to live like that but it will not be my first choice. Wealth comes in many forms. Pure raw survival is an almost total lack of wealth and is a minimal existence.

To me not having some trade goods is a failure to prepare for one of the most likely possible future needs. It is like someone now that makes a good living but spends every penny every month and has no money saved for possible problems. As long as all goes well it isn't a problem but the first thing that goes wrong and they are in trouble. I saw a lot of this in the 80s when the economy took a nosedive. People went from upper-middle-class lifestyles to homeless in a matter of weeks!!! I had no full-time job for almost a year. My family survived because I had things to sell and trade for the things and money that I needed. We survived and continued to live in our own home instead of living in our car at a roadside park or moving in with family.

Try to prepare for ALL possible eventualities. Worse case for just survival you don't need much at all. Knowledge is free and with that and a few tools, supplies and a weapon and you can survive. Where I live I could survive with just the clothes on my back, a ferro rod and a knife. I plan to survive and also try to prepare to THRIVE. I can always abandon it all with my bugout bag and live in the woods in a small hut but then why would I want to do that if it wasn't necessary?

 

Good post TexDanm . I don't plan to abandon my survival retreat and live like an animal either . Those planning on bugging out with nothing but what they have in a back pack like they saw in a movie will not last long . Only the well planned prepper will survive long term .

 

Under normal conditions, not "SHTF".
(whatever that means, since there's no real definition)

 

Historical conditions are what we would consider SHTF today. Did you pick up my reference to currency and money? Don't trade if you don't want to, that's no skin off my nose. I plan on trade in my preps. Don't put me down for trading. Perhaps you perceive history differently, so be it.

 

Not when they were happening.
That was "normal" times for those who lived it.

It's your fantasy, so it can be anything you want it to be.

History has little to do with it, but not that long ago life expectancy was less than 50 years and over half died before the age of 5.

 

By its very nature, true prepping should try to prepare for all possibilities. In general, we tend to concentrate on a total collapse where things will be only slightly into the iron age. In this situation all technological devices are disabled and we are back to basically a hand to mouth existence with people preying on each other on an almost daily basis.

Some form of this is very possible for a short period of time. The thing is that if it lasts very long the death rate will be so high that after a few years there will be very few people left to worry about. The farms now are totally dependent on powered mechanical devices to work the soil, plant, cultivate, harvest, transport, process, and distribute the food. No power and no fuel means starvation on a MASSIVE scale. You can plant a garden BUT will you be able to protect it from masses of starving people. Many people even in rural places have no idea about how to raise preserve and store raw homegrown food. Most people don't have a clue about how to butcher a large animal. When everybody is living hand to mouth having a garden or livestock may make you a target.

Things of possible future value don't have to be big or expensive and will be of use to you even if you never trade them. Needles, thread and fish hooks are good examples. Seeds of nonhybrid food plants will be priceless. Asprin, I buy a bottle of them every time that I go to the Dollar store.

I personally have no use for gold. It is too precious and costly now and then I question how much will it be worth in a world where hunger is a motivating factor. An ounce of gold now is over $1500.00 today. Think of what that will buy you. Now in a world where people are starving to death how many chickens or eggs will it buy? I like silver better but even that is to be used in the early days while people might still think that money has value.

Amoxicillin is cheap right now but in a period where there are no doctors or hospitals what will a bottle with 100 500 mg antibiotics be worth? Before WW2 millions of people died of things that a simple dose of penicillin would have cured. Those days can return is a very short time if things collapse and the cities burn. Pain medications in small amounts will be valuable. Even one a day vitamins will be great and have value when people are not able to eat a balanced diet.

If nothing else if I had to break and run I will have a relatively small load of high-value trade goods and skills that might buy my way into a safe place.

To me, this is all just a part of being prepared. I don't know what the future will hold so I try to prepare as best I can t survive and hopefully thrive in any sort culture that has existed in the past. People do the same things over and over. Look to the past to different times and figure out how to live there if you were able to travel in time what would you want to take with you.

PS: A trading post is at least half a fort. The good ones were not one-man operations and taking one down required a small army. My place will have killing fields and armed people there to protect it. I won't be trading out of my home and following me back will just get you killed.

When trading you have a backup. My backups will be a special forces retired Seal with sniper training and a decorated army vet with several combat tours. Their weapons are as good as or better than anything that they used in the military. There will be three of us two that they will see and one they will never know is there until their heads start to blow up. You make your trades in an open field with your back up in a secure high place several hundred yards out. If things get bad I can hold up one hand and the number of fingers signals the action required.

 

I wouldn't want some one to hold their finger up when I was trying to trade . I think I will just stick to my plan to not to trade . Outright giving a neighbor a helping hand without compensation is just something I was taught as a child and what I would expect to continue doing after S.H.T.F. . Then that might be why I will die not a wealthy man . I may throw a few things in my stash for my neighbors but those would be no strings attached gifts not considered items expecting compensation . A thief on the other hand I would simply terminate and drop down our bottomless hole .

 

Good morning TexDanm,

I believe the better term is " REALISTIC possibilities".

Trading an envelope of Eagle Claw fish hooks with a stranger - the marks on his neck look to me like those typical typhus marks - might not be a good trade.

What would be the purpose of fish hooks ? The Chesapeake Bay, the world's largest estuary, reverts to a petri dish of lethal diseases. Guessing is not needed for the other places that once had edible seafood.

Aspirin, Amoxicillin - all the antibotics and painkillers - also the vitamins - have some value. More important is handling epidemics such as the current influenza matter. Are arrangements in place ? Mine are not.

Your colleague has much less experience with military sniper weapons. Lasers are replacing the 20th century rifles. Drone snipers do wonders. The newer stuff is on the web but not appropriate for here.

Post SHTF trading is the equivalent of visiting the area's hospital waiting room or Walmart on a crowded day.

......

Meanwhile, back to the oversalted kippers and ginger candy avec en espresso and a water.

 

Sorry TexDanm but your thread has been taken over by the nay sayers. We will never convince them and unfortunately they will continue to attack anyone trying to discuss plans different than theirs. Tex, PM me if anything worthwhile is posted in this thread, otherwise I'm through here.

 

Fish hooks... I don't live on the Chesapeake Bay. Where I live water isn't a polluted piss hole. I can easily feed my family fishing in private lakes and ponds. The Creeks and rivers here are full of fish. I fish most every Friday and usually catch enough to feed a large family. Fishing is an easy way and a rather safe way to get protein. I can put out lines and then come back later to run those lines. A 7-acre pond can feed a family year-round. The kind of fishing I can do is more like trapping than just plain fishing. When you live someplace that has a lot of good fishing waters hooks and line are like gold.

Flu isn't much of a problem when people are not moving all over the place. The Spanish Influenza epidemic was caused by having thousands of young men in tight quarters and then shipped all over the place because of WW1. If you are not traveling and meeting new people the chances of getting the flu is minimal to ZERO. Flu requires a mobile vector to spread. Wha you do have to worry about is infected wounds and things like pneumonia. Without antibiotics, pneumonia was a huge killer. It was a slow miserable death and even if you survived it took weeks to months to recover.

LASER sniper rifles??? ROTFLMAO. In Iraq and Afghanistan, they brought the M21 out of retirement. The M21 is a match grade M14 rifle shooting the 7.63 X54 round that has been further modified for sniper use. This was their moderate range rifle. Out to 1000 meters. The big gun is an M107. That is a huge semiauto made by Barrett that shoots a 50 BMG round that has kills out past 2k. it is great but too big for squad use and is used more in fixed position situations. I don't think that a laser is going to be a great choice for a post-apocalypse weapon.

Using drones for single kill low-value targets is not worthwhile and is mostly a propaganda thing. You don't waste a rocket on a single kill. You need to get to know some of the people that actually made several tours into the Middle East battlefields and study what the fireteams actually were issued and used. The M21 and the baseline m14s were pulled out of retirement because the 5.56 is ineffective at ranges that the more open battlefields of the middle east presented our troops with. It was fine in the Jungles but lacks in more open ranges. A lot of the guys that I have talked to that were over there talked about grabbing an AK because the 7.62 X 39 was a better round for that theater. The military is currently in the process of selecting a new battle rifle with better reach and power.

I guess that I am more optimistic about the future. I see a near-total collapse with the death rate in the 75% or up level. The difference is that I don't see the survivors acting like primitive savages and living in huts for very long once things settle down. We went from horse and wagon to the moon in the life span of ONE generation. My Dad rode a horse to school and was still fairly young when we went to the moon. The survivors are going to have a lot of stuff already available for the taking. Metal is everywhere. There will be no need to mine or smelt it. I can see a recovery in less than two decades and it will start small in local groups recovering and wanting to return to more civilized life. We KNOW about antibiotics. We won't have to reinvent them. We will just need to start making them again. The KNOWLEDGE will still be there. Hell, I have books that tell how to make penicillin.

If you are a young person you need to plan to be a part of the recovery or you will be a part of the people that won't make it. As people gather I can assure you that they are going to be clannish and that means if you are a stranger you are possibly better off dead. My preparations have to do with DECADES and not just months or years.

 

Good afternoon TexDanm,

Please take this in the best light and best tone that I can present on this new-fangled telegraph key.

I understand what you're saying in all 6 of the above paragraphs.

We are using different views.

It's somewhat difficult to shoot a M14, a Tavor or a Weatherby or anything with a mask on at night with phased-array laser beams bouncing around in a gas environment. The biggest thing studied near here is the PLA's new ZKZM "laser AK-47" (Our nickname; not their's).

Can you fish alone ? No mobility from Harris County/Houston of those fleeing to seek safety ?

The "problem" is people - and animals such as abandoned pets, livestock, wildlife, mosquitoes, bats,... - serving as vectors. If the situation was static, like, let us say today, I'd agree with you. I am saying the situation will be dynamic and magnified.

The Barett is authorized for purchase by some US military units with their own independent budgets not directly tied into the DOD budget. It,too, has drawbacks for the new environments.

NOT drones with rockets ! Drone with other suppressing features.

The military was placed "on hold" for their new rifle. It's minor in the scheme of things.

You really did address AND SUMMARIZE my overall view and why I wrote my above post this AM. The medicines, such as the antibiotics, are not strange RX substances to our knowledgeable citizenry. Again, the knowledge is present.

The needed RX pharma is cartel-controlled.

 

LOL, I can walk a couple hundred yards in several directions and catch some fish. When you live in ranching areas there are stock ponds all over the place. Then there are the many creeks, The Trinity River and until the dam goes from lack of maintenance a huge lake all near. You put out lines in the evening and then run them in the morning. I also know several ways that are illegal to gather fish in mass.

The people in Houston will mostly die in Houston. I have witnessed what happens when they try o evacuate. It is almost instant gridlock and once locked up that will be the end of it. The ones that have enough sense to get out early will not be the sort that will be a problem.

I really don't expect to have to deal with lasers or armed drones in the hands of civilians and they require power that is going to be hard to maintain. To me, that is a non-issue.

We have a very different world view AND live in places that are very different. Where I live almost EVERYONE is not just armed but are good with their weapons. We shoot like some places bowl. It is a family sport here. Both men AND women hunt here and our ladies are as armed as the men. The problem that other places will have with thugs and such just won't last long here. Let me tell you something when people carry guns as a habitual thing it is amazing how polite they are. There has not been a case yet of a legal concealed carry being used in a felony or a road rage incident. On the other hand thieves and thugs are regularly shot and killed. People evacuating Houston will need to be VERY careful. If they come in pushing they won't live long.

I think this is why I have a lot of optimism about the future after a collapse. Most crime is done by a few people doing it over and over with a few short visits to prison. the cops primary purpose in most states is to protect the criminals from citizens that are tired of being victims. We have thrown that aside here already. I seriously think that within a year or two of the fall Texas is going to become a VERY peaceful place. I am surrounded every day by people that carry guns and have ZERO fear of them. In a post apocalyptic Texas criminals will be fertilizer.

Commerce in the form of trade will be common. It actually already is. I took a lot of my pay in trade when I was in business. I fix your AC and you take care of my family's eyeglass and contact needs were one of my barters with an optometrist for decades. I did the same with a mechanic and even worked a deal with a Veterinarian. Small town Texas rural ways are very different from the urban North Eastern ways.

PS: Animals will be no problem. we already have to regularly kill off stray dogs. That is just part of living in the country. Urban idiots think that they can dump their unwanted dogs out in the country and they will go back to nature or something. They would die a miserable death if we didn't kill them pretty regularly. We can't afford to have a lot of stray dogs here because of rabies. Cats don't do well here. The coyotes eat them. The livestock is FOOD and we know how to handle them. We already have a hog problem that we are dealing with so that won't be anything new and you can eat them anyway. I don't mess with the bats but do have bat houses for them. they eat skeeters and so are my friend. I will have no problem eating the dogs so they won't be a problem either.

As I have said before, Survival is an art form and not a science. If we all try to find our personal way the odds are greatly improved that at least some of us will be successful. to each their own way. I have no desire to be a hermit and fully intend to be a builder and actively working to build a new world after this one is destroyed.

PPS: This is copyrighted Jan 2020...
https://www.military.com/daily-news...s-competition-more-powerful-combat-rifle.html

 

You won't convince anyone when you're not being realistic.
You can't even admit you're the one "attacking" those who don't agree with you.

If you want to live in an echo chamber, that's your choice.
As I said before, it's your fantasy and as such it can be whatever you want it to be.

 

You learn a lot more from people that disagree with you than from people that agree with you as long as they offer a reasoned disagreement. What may or will work in one place may be nearly impossible in another place. texas is unique, even in the US, in its rather aggressive outlook on some things. I think that this is because of our history. America was mostly settled by people from other countries that left their home country for a new life in a savage land. The filtered them. The meek or the more gentle people stayed at home. Over and over the US has taken in the adventurous and the aggressive. Also, like Australia it got a lot of the criminal element from Great Brittian. Some of my ancestors probably entered the US via the New Georga penal colony.

Where the other British colonies stayed under the rule of the Crown the Americans were nothing but trouble and eventually, Great Brittian gave up civilizing us. We tossed them out and then fought with them for a long time. When Texas was settled by the Europeans while it was still a part of Mexico it followed the exact same pattern as the US. We took in the Adventurers and threw the Mexican rule out. Our founding fathers and heroes were not born here. Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, and Jim Bowie were one and all adventurers with a rather colorful past that came to Texas.

Their legacy is still alive and well here. We are the progeny of our Fathers. We are more aggressive than most and tend to be a lot less likely to do what a government wants just because they are the government. My ancestors threw out the British Crown, Tossed out the Mexican government and even revolted against the repressive efforts of the first republican American president to overthrow the union and recreate it as a Republic ruled by an Aristocracy. We lost that war but didn't lose the cause. the Union stands still. Lincoln died and was replaced by a Unionist. We stand ready to do it again if it is forced on us.

LOL... USA...the Undefeated Southerners of America still live on...

 

The point was that because of our very different backgrounds and history that our various situations can and will be VERY different. I was trying to explain why something that might be good for me could just as easily NOT be so good for you.

I seriously believe that because of our more personally aggressive natures and the fact that we are massively well-armed that things here are going to settle out a lot faster and so return to a more reasonable state where trade will be important as we re-establish civilization.

Where you live the thugs and criminals that couldn't care less about gun and weapon laws are going to actually be the ones best prepared to survive in a violent post-apocalyptic period. Here they will be quickly EXTERMINATED. There they will take what they want and there will not be much other than hide that you can do about it. THAT is what the post had to do with trade.

 

Looks like we are going to have to go to barter BEFORE it hits the fan. The biden socialist regime is wanting your bank to NARC on you. Buying an evil firearm? Big Brother wants to know. Buying survival supplies. Big Brother sez, "You are part of the collective! Your stores of food must be assimilated! It is for the good of the masses. Submit!"

"Biden Administration Pushes Congress to Require Banks to Turn Account Info Over to IRS"

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2...quire-banks-to-turn-account-info-over-to-irs/

"The Biden administration is pressuring lawmakers to enact a controversial plan requiring banks to turn over to the Internal Revenue Service detailed information about inflows and outflows of almost all American bank accounts.

"Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig sent letters to lawmakers this week asking Congress to include in tax hike legislation a requirement that banks report annual transaction data on accounts with $600 or more or that have $600 worth of transaction over the year, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"The result would be the collection of detailed data about the bank transactions of tens of millions of everyday Americans."