I wish cigarettes didn't go bad b/c i'd stock them up too.
You can stock up on tobacco, either in tins, which pretty much won't go bad, or in bulk and buy rolling papers (make sure you get the right kind of tobacco to roll as cigs, pipe tobacco doesn't go over well), or buy cigars or cigarellos (cigarette size cigars, but unlike cigarettes are made 100% from tobacco, like a cigar) and store them in a humidore. All you need is distilled water to keep them from drying out, and the tobacco gets better as it ages.
personally i think "things" will go further then money, jewelry,ect. yeah I might have some misc woman offer me her diamond ring for a few cups of rice but wtf is someone going to do w/ a diamond ring? LATER it might pay off, but living for later in that situation maybe just make it so you don't survive b/c you're worried about coming out on top when it's over.
Actually, right off the bat is when gold and jewelry will work. You have to use it before people give up hope of a swift return of the convienence economy. After that, Booze, smokes, TP and tampons will probably top the list, with coffee, tea and chocolate not far behind. Once people get used to living without luxuries, then staple items become important.
Most forums don't like to talk about it, but Jeff seems to be pretty cool about it, so here goes:
Sometimes you have to do bad things to bad people to survive. There's no way around it and most people the world over understand this. We're quite soft in this country and our system is so f-ed up it paints the criminal as the victim. But when I was hobo-ing for a while, I always made sure that if I was staying in an area for any period of time, that word got around to the homebums that I was a nice guy, and if I had something extra that they needed, it was theirs for the asking. But if you stole something I needed, but wouldn't die without, I'd mess you up -- as in not die, but you'd probably need a trip to the ER bad. If you took something that endangered my life -- say my sleeping bag in February -- if I found you, I'd kill you.
I quickly earned the reputation as the guy who could scrounge most anything (I might be destined to be a black market kingpin
), the guy who'd give it if he could, but also the guy not to mess with.
Survival isn't fun, it isn't pretty, and I really hate it when discussion board commandos (no one here, yet) act like they wish it would happen, so they can go and run their own little world. They don't realize that they are far more likely to be the little fish than the shark.
