Best currency for the comming superstorm

Charlie Mike

Charlie Mike

Sober since 1-7-14 (still a Paranoid Nutjob)
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Nov 1, 2000
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End of the world type stuff. Besides cigarettes, illegal drugs, ammo, and gold... what is the best way to pay for things when society breaks down?
 
Johnny Apple Dog said:
gas, grass or ass
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The first one and last one are real hard to store up!

cigarettes, illegal drugs, ammo, and gold
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That's a good start. Add food (that doesn't spoil, like oatmeal, rice, beans, sugar, salt).
And booze.
And silver, which is probably better than gold, especially since it's easy to come by in small denominations (pre-1964 US coins).
And meds. Any kind is worth something. Cholesterol pills. Vicoden. Viagra. Any of them are important to somebody.
 
Johny, thats funny but true. I would also add food, weapons, first aid, pain killers and anti biotics, and think about what it would be like to have no running water and no toilet paper. All of the above will be worth it weight in gold.
 
Learn a skill that will be useful after the storm and barter your work for things you need.
 
Good question:

Ammo might even trump gold. After all, you can trade your ammo for gold, even if the guy with the gold doesn't want to. :-)

Seriously, the ability to make moonshine, ferment wine, or brew beer would be worth a lot. Seeds and homegrown vegetables. A few captured bunnies that you allow to turn into dozens and use for food, or sell as breeding stock. Whatever is traded has to have some immediate or future utility, or people have to believe that it will hold value for future trading. I can't imagine accepting diamonds, jewels, or even gold in exchange for some of my meager food stocks or for my labor if there is no ready market for those things.
 
Skillz...Seriously. If this impending doom brings with it mass injuries and casualties, you will prove to be a valuable resource if you can patch people up. Since standard currency will probably be useless for a while, ammunition would be another valuable commodity.

Ps...I am too lazy to do it right now, but search the sub-forum, somewhere is a discussion on the survival value of gold. I think it got locked, but I can't remember.
 
sleeping bags, blankets, tarps, rope, cord, water containers, pots, ammo, first aid, knives, tools, guns, Yes some stuff you may not want to trade because well then they could kill you with it.


RickJ
 
Right now, at this very minute, if you want something to eat in Zimbabwe you need either gold nuggets or some kind of foreign currency. It takes over a billion Zimbabwean dollars to buy a soda, and that's IF you can find a vendor that's willing to take the currency (because his suppliers certainly won't). Hyperinflation is a reality and it CAN happen here. With gold over a grand right now it's not realistic for joe sixpack to aquire any. Ammo is a good option as it will never be worth less than what you pay for it (unless it's some off-the-wall caliber that nobody needs) Popular stuff includes 9mm, 45acp, 223rem, 22lr bricks, large pistol primers, etc... Stay with the mainstream and pick up a few boxes whenever you breeze thru Walmart. It adds up.

Cigarettes aren't a good investment as they go stale and/or draw moisture. Not a good currency medium. Canned food is a decent investment as it serves both to feed your face and barter with in a SHTF scenario. It also keeps good. Four year shelf life. MREs have a better shelf life but represent a much larger initial investment. Green beans routinely go on sale. MREs have never been much of a deal that I've ever seen.

Whatever you end up buying, be damn sure you've got a secure place to store it. When the currency goes bad, crime is going to skyrocket. Having 1000 flats of green beans ain't gonna do you much good if someone burns down your garage and hauls it away in a stolen horse trailer.

We're all gonna end up wishing we'd have bought gold back when it was 300. What were we thinking??
 
Paranoia: It's portable, easily stockpiled, and you can make it yourself. It can be traded in-person or online (if the Internet still works!), and one's reserves are not depleted in the act of trading - indeed, they may be enhanced!

Seriously, though - in a real emergency, I would want to be in a position to trade skills and services, as opposed to something that I had to stash and protect.

Best,

- Mike
 
- plastic sheeting, plastic tarps, duct tape , rope, cord, nails, tools, bicycle tires/tubes/patchkits/chains/etc, coffee, salt, sugar, Vit C, multivitamins, flour, tea, hard liqour, fishing hooks, fishing line,
 
Good social skills is probably the best thing. For something more tangible (sp?), the most important thing would be ice. Buy an ice machine and a generator and you're king.;)
 
quietmike said:
Learn a skill that will be useful after the storm and barter your work for things you need.
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Thats very true. I've listened to stories my mother told me about how my Grandfather was a skilled butcher during the Great Depression and used to slaughter hogs and goats for the neighbors for a share of the meat. Sometimes the only meat they ever got.
 
dental floss, toothpaste, toothbrushes, those little plastic toothpicks they sell in packs of 100, oil of clove and gauze to deaden tooth pain. (are you sensing a theme here?)
 
I'm just curious....

Would gold really be a good bartering medium if the S really HTF? Aside from relatively modern technological uses does gold have any actual usable value besides being pretty to look at? It's valuable for the same reason that dollar is valuable. Because there is a collective agreement among groups of people to use it for trade. I would think things like food, water, weapons/ammo, meds and fuel would actually be essential to survival and therefor hold greater value if the clock really got reset, so to speak.
 
The only thing precious metals are good for in that type of situation is to purchase passage and other forms of safety from the authorities, this is how it is used in military/intelligence community E&E Kits. You have to be able to have several ounces now because the reward on the head of people trying to escape or purchase other things like Rx medications on the black market, you have to be able to top the reward on your head.

Booze, food, construction materials as someone above pointed out like nails, cheap Chinese hammers, tarps, things like that so people can eat, get plastered and forget they are in a bad way to go and build their own shanty.

I know what I am talking about when it comes to precious metals being used for survival purposes. When I suggested to someone at arfdotcom that they should not purchase anything but K-Rands and Credit Suisse, Pamp Suisse and Engelhard bars, a brownaround came in and told me I was paranoid when I said bullion coming out of the Orient should not be trusted and could be counterfeit. A week or so later, they had a load coming out of China and/or India that had tungsten in them.
 
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Stock things you need, which is a lot less hypothetical. IMO silver is more negotiable than gold, but getting a set of tires on sale or some chains, putting a spare battery on the truck, or a spare gas tank..hard to call 'em stupid. Tools, that leverage your labor into a more valuable result, make sense. Cherry picked pawnshop or yard or estate sale findings, haunt craigslist, look at the ad papers. Paying 110% of precious metals price to have instant delivery in hand maybe isn't as sensible as a 100$ rototiller, or spare pair of boots.

That said, coffee, tobacco, FANCY booze, chocolate, silver ounces, fancy meat, honey, maple syrup, can all be expected to win friends and influence people if you do it right. Homemade beer can be useful, if it's good enough, and even if there's no rule of law, high value crops are a vulnerability and hard to secure. I'm personal spooked of illegal drugs, about like swapping gold or ammo, extreme vulnerabilities attached. ymmv..
 
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Gold's value is in the fact that someone else is ALWAYS gonna want to buy it, it is easily transported and stored, and it is a rare commodity. Those three factors make it a better currency medium than cigarettes (easily damaged), ammo (heavy and bulky), canned food (bulky, limited shelf life). Also, you don't need to find a specialized buyer to take this stuff in trade. EVERYONE is interested. It's not like trying to trade a bale of raw sheep wool for a flat of Spagetti-O's. You have to find someone that WANTS sheep wool and HAS Spagetti-O's. With gold, half the battle has already been fought. The dude you're dealing with WANTS the gold, desire for gold is so natural it's like a bodily function or something. Back in the Roman times a Roman soldier earned a troy oz of gold per month. He lived on that. Fast forward to today. One troy oz sells for around 1100 bucks. A fellow can live (the lifestyle of a Roman soldier) on that for a month. The actual VALUE of one troy ounce hasn't changed. It's still worth one month of (realistic) living expenses.

Gold fits every trait for a currency medium to a tee. In the event of a total collapse, you'd still have the option of cutting Krugs in 1/8 pieces just like they did back in the colonial days with those spanish silver coins. So don't let anyone tell you that gold isn't easy to split up. It is, warts and all, the perfect SHTF currency.

I'll say it again. Before this is all over, we're all gonna wish we had aquired a metric ton of this stuff back when it was affordable. Now we're sitting here wondering why we didn't buy any and we have none rat-holed away. Not only is this stuff beyond reality pricewise right now, it's also getting harder to find. Go to your local pawnshop. Check online. When there IS any for sale it's way above melt price. And for those looking to buy those 1 gram bars of yesteryear. Good luck finding them, at ANY price.

Supply and demand baby! :rolleyes:
 
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