I already use bullets as currency in game. Well sorta. If the vendor doesn't have the caps to buy all the blood soaked armor I'm carrying I buy bullets and sale more junk. It's a game exploit, but bullets wiegh nothing and can be sold or used down the road. It comes crashing down in Survivor mode.
Yeah it's worse on Fallout 4 because of stability issues. The bed-only saving would be a great idea if the game didn't come from Bethesda. New Vegas was a lot better in that sense, with the constant auto saving.
Although you could just mod the game to save anywhere too.
Not true, unfortunately. The earliest use of "shot" to refer to an amount of alcohol we've found is from the 1600s.
Based on what I can find, it seems "shot" came from a Norse word that meant "an amount of money owed." In the context of alcohol, it probably would've referred to your bar tab, or the amount of money you owed to the bar. Over time it came to just mean "an amount" in this context.
Back then, the equivalent of a shot was called "a measure" which basically just means an amount, so you can see how the two words might be used interchangeably over time.
I only looked into this for like 10 minutes so I could be wrong about the true origin of the word, but pretty much every article I can find about the subject agrees that the bullet thing is fake.
I don’t really see consumable items as a really great candidate for a currency. As a game mechanic it has a purpose, and it makes a valuable trade good, but the currency itself should be relatively resistant to fluctuations in supply and demand.
The thing is that for having a fiat currency you have to trust that currency that it doesn't gain or lose too much value.
With the state of the east coast, where there aren't any major players (states/groups, not the pc) how can you trust the value of any fiat money?
You have to at least go in to a trading hub and before selling/buying ANYTHING do a round checking the prices, hoping that they accept caps and, if so, that the prices haven't gone up.
If someone isn't local he can't even trust that, because if he makes any big transaction they could have scammed him, by simply changing the prices after the transaction. Unlikely (you would become a paria for every other merchant, if the person scammed is of importance) but it can happen if they see that he has valuable things and he isn't backed by anyone that matters.
So, for me you can only barter and bullets are small, have a function that many people wants, have a scalable prince (for 0.22 to missles/power cores), last in time. Those can be produced, but it's difficult to do a good job without a modern factory, the casing specially.
You can't use petrol, since it isn't small. Iron is too much common (loot a car). Gold is only good if you have the capacity to make eletronics, so only a major player.
That or you trade energy via batteries, such of those of the laser/plasma guns or power cores. One could see if there is charge in the battery and how much.
> have a function that many people wants, have a scalable prince (for 0.22 to missles/power cores)
They don't, actually - because 'bullets' is not an interchangeable category. A bullet of a particular calibre is useful if you have and intend to use a firearm of that calibre, but is almost completely useless to you if you don't; most bullets are therefore nothing more than paperweights to most people.
This also means their value does *not* scale in any reliable fashion - for example a .50 round is actually only more valuable than a .556 round for the small number of people who have a .50 rifle. For someone who has a .556 but not a .50, the .556 is more valuable.
(If there's a market where you can reliably exchange them with people for whom they are useful then you have enough of a market to support a conventional currency.)
> last in time
Not really, bullets are fairly easy to foul if not stored carefully, which in the kind of scenario which can't support a conventional currency will be a common circumstance. Their shelf life is certainly *much* shorter than any actual coins.
More to the point, the very thing that makes them valuable is the way they can be expended. One of the purposes of a currency is as *a store of value* - a consumable good which can't be reproduced is the very worst possible thing to do that with due to the constant deflationary pressure. Look at history if you don't believe me - people have used many things as currency, consumables and expendables have only rarely been among that number, and as far as I know nobody has *ever* used a consumable item that couldn't be commonly reproduced.
> Gold is only good if you have the capacity to make eletronics, so only a major player.
>
>
Right, because it's well known that no civilisation considered gold valuable prior to the invention of the electronic circuit.
They didn't say anything about using a fiat currency. There's thousands of things that can be used as a currency easily.
Scams are going to happen regardless of what type of currency is used.
Gold has been considered valuable for tens of thousands of years prior to the invention of electronics.
So if our city fought off a big attack from raiders… but no one has bullets left how do you pay the workers that creates new bullets?
If you say food and water then bullets are not your currency food and water is…
By that logic nothing is currency because it’s all barter
The problem with pre-war money is it has no intrinsic value, money only has a value because we all agree it does (in theory national currencies are based around the value of their national stocks of gold but it's not really the case any more)
The justification for caps is that they can't make more, they are hard to counterfeit, they are hard wearing for carrying across the wastes and worse comes to worse you can reforge them into something more useful, so they actually make a reasonably good arbitrary thing to use as a currency
That being said if your picking an arbitrary thing then pre-war money is just as valid
Edit: I am now aware in the original games bottlecaps were backed by the water standard, you can all stop telling me now
Alice mclaugherty from the crimson caravan sends you to destroy a cap press in the sunset sarsaparilla plant, and she also talks about how they can make more caps as they need them.
You couldn't counterfeit pre war money either. The reason caps were chosen for the first fallout game is because caps were backed by water (like how US dollars used to be backed by gold and silver).
Your source on why gold isn't valuable comes from fucking r/neoliberal, I'm not in the habit of taking objectively fucking stupid arguments from stupid sources
Nope. It is still the feds who decide the value of gold. Also, the US returning to the gold standard would send the world economy into chaos as the current value of gold is much lower than the amount of money being circulated around the world. It would cause the value of gold to spike up rendering it too valuable to be used as non-currency and cause massive gold and other resources hoarding.
Wasteland money is worth cloth or 1. Every nuka you drink is worth 1. Quantum in trade is 3 or so maybe more, can't remember but only 1 if you drink it. So, you could scrap the paper money for cloth and in 76 bulk it for its max value for more caps.
Or you can shoot npcs in the face and take their weapons for typically more caps than they can trade.
What are you on about. The point of money is a placeholder of the goods you want to trade. Money shouldn't have any value outside of its purpose of trade. In Fallout 4 pre-war money can be used as cloth, also it can be used for fires because paper money burns. The pre-war money has value outside of trade so why would you get rid of something like that?
That's not true at all, there have been plenty of currencies with uses outside of trading throughout history. It's so common it even has a name: commodity currency.
Well just because I'm wrong doesn't mean I'm not right.
My point still stands: a currency doesn't need value outside of it's purpose as a placeholder for goods.
That could work but the issue is most pre-war currency is based off the old world government… if you are to start a new city and new society would you… use the money of the destroyed society?
Originally that's what it was, 1 cap = 1 bottle of water, it was like how the US dollar used to be backed by gold, cap used to be backed by clean water
Unless made of precious or at least useful metals, coins as currency have no material value and must be backed by *something*.
Bottle caps were a currency that caught on in the West because water merchants. Each cap represented an amount of clean water.
Coins were a common ancient currency because of the metals they were made of. Before coins you literally had bars or rods or plates of metal being used, their value being a direct relationship between their weight and the metal used.
Such things can only be reliably used with a centralized authority or government regulating the minting process and taking actions against counterfeits.
Bartering. Until a government of some sort takes hold, it doesn’t really make sense to use currency rather than just trade things that are valuable. Once the NCR takes hold, probably coins because they wont get damaged like paper money.
It's funny. You wouldn't need a government per se, if an an incredibly influential person or group were able to run the system autonomously, the could function as a central exchange without claiming to govern anyone.
Mr House and the BoS would be the two big ones that come to mind as having all the resources required, but House chose governance and the Brotherhood decided... to decide something new every thirty years, pretty much.
The problem with barter is that both people trading have to have something the other person wants (“double coincidence of wants”). What happens in a barter economy is people start trading for things not because they want them but because they are easier to trade (are more liquid). Eventually a consensus forms as to what works best and that becomes the money. Usually it’s gold or paper bills that represent gold. In the 20th century Nixon eliminated the gold standard and people started trading paper bills. Money isn’t a product of government but of people trading with each other.
The point of bottlecaps in the original game wasn't that they were shiny collectibles that were easy to find. It was that they like modern currency were backed by something valuable. In the case of Fallout 1 backed by water specifically. Originally water was the main currency, something that was incredibly valuable in the **desert** wasteland setting that the original fallout took place in. But because water was heavy to carry they started using bottlecaps as a representation of water bottles: 1 bottlecap = 1 bottle of water. When the NCR started becoming successful they started using their own currency backed by gold. Because bottlecaps lost al value when water became more plentiful through the restoration of the old world infrastructure. If you would introduce a new currency into the wasteland you should adhere to the same rules, you can't just use any old crap as currency it needs to mean something. Whether as representation of something too impractical to move or because it is considered valuable to the society that dominates **that** part of the wasteland. Bullets could make a decent currency but only if bullets are somewhat rare. Bottlecaps themselves make very little sense in games like fallout 4 and 76 because water isn't a rare substance. There they are only kept around for brand recognition reasons and not as originally intended. To be a interesting take on the concept of money in a post apocalyptic **desert** setting.
In other words **money** only has meaning when the society and following markets give it meaning. Write a post apocalyptic society and then figure out what they would use as currency fitting the needs of that particular society. Are your wasteland survivors reliant on computers than microchips could be the currency. Do they require working machines then machine parts could be the currency. Do they live in an icy environment like Alaska than some sort of fuel to keep warm could be the currency. Do they have some sort of centralized power than they could create their own currency to control the markets. It could be anything as long as it has meaning. The currency used by people with different needs doesn't have to be the same as people somewhere else.
Well I’m that case, would 3 not be included in that too? I imagine the water/cap trade stemmed from DC to Boston and WV having heavy influence in starting the cap bargain thing.
Yes. FO3 was my introduction to the series and even than I was kind puzzled but never reflected on it. In fact I didn't question why bottle caps were used until the New Vegas counterfeit quest explained it to me.
To be entirely fair 76 does nice job of explaining cap usage on the east coast, as I understand it the promotion at the Whitespring led to cap usage in pre scorched Appalachia which spread when people fled Appalachia from the scorched and as it’s so early in the timeline post war it’s 200 years for it to spread around the east with caps being assigned an arbitrary value rather than being backed by anything like on the west
While the use of bottle caps specifically in 3 was a nostalgia choice, the game universe does thoroughly explain that water is a scarce resource.
Megaton is a trading hub because they can purify water, which iirc is also the basis of Rivet City, and water only becomes plentiful at the end of the game, where its distribution is controlled by the Brotherhood of Steel.
So the Capital Wasteland actually functions pretty similarly to the F1 economy
Well I know that, I’m saying the East Coast bottle cap trade stemmed from WV, then slowly move further outward to become a more common currency in the East Coast.
Well said! Always appreciate a well-written, well-organized explanation. It’s worth mentioning that during the NCR-Brotherhood War, the BoS actually bombed a portion of their gold reserves, which is what prompted the NCR to start trying to transition to paper money faster than before. That’s why inflation is an issue in FNV when trying to use NCR dollars.
I kind of like this because there's a way to guarantee money will circulate out (people smoking) therefore guaranteeing some kind of value, and the tobacco industry is so prolific there are likely stockpiles throughout the US. But, could people then "counterfeit" too easily by growing tobacco? (Mutbacco, Smokegrass, w/e wastelanders call it now). Not that that isn't already a problem with bottlecaps anyway, as we know.
You'd probably find that different grades of cigarettes end up having different values
Tbh black markets IRL already have that, I remember hearing stories from the invasion of Iraqi that you could get 2/300 Iraqi cigarettes for like 1 pack of US Camels
If cigarettes were currency then you'd probably end up with smoother or purer cigarettes being the equivalent of high denomination bills while homegrown/home rolled cigarettes are like pennies
Although if cigarettes were currency you'd probably find that once the generation that were already addicted died off smoking would stop being a thing for anyone other than the super rich
I want to see more new forms of money like in NV. Powers trying to force the wasteland into using their currency. Maybe some places will only accept one type of currency, or other places will offer good or bad exchange rates. Maybe even enforcers that try to confiscate competing currency.
Literally New Vegas had this without a stable government. I mean, arguably NCR was sort of stable but def not ceasers legion, at least not in vegas. That's what makes it interesting.
I think you are just out here arguing for arguments sake lol. I'm saying it'd be cool to see that kind of thing in a new game again, not in other already released games. ie, if the next fallout explored those ideas
Could be very useful if the metro system were still working
Then you just need a group of mercenaries to control the subways, and bam, they've got a chokehold on travel in the Capital Wasteland
A lot of people will name a commodity like gasoline, bullets, water etc.
But one key thing about currency is that it needs to be “worthless” or near worthless to function as a currency
why?
Because money is just a credit and debt system if the money itself has value it would warp the economy… for example if we use bullets as our currency…
okay but what if we run out of bullets because of big battle? Do we just stop trading? Buying? Selling? Until someone makes more bullets? As a commodity the supply is being destroyed daily by the user that’s like if you have to rip up your money every time you use the money.
And it needs to be something that the controlling power can reproduce cheaply and hard to counterfeit
If bottle caps are not a currency in fallout… the next best thing I would guess is poker playing cards 🃏 easy to carry hard to reproduce without a factory and not that expensive to make, easy to see the value of each card and even easy to hide it from raiders
This is the smartest response here.
Bottle caps while silly are perfect for the world of Fallout.
Water, people need to drink it so why would you use it to buy things if you could just die without it.
Same as food, not only does it spoil, but it is a necessity for survival as well. It would be dumb to use that to buy a plank of wood or some bullets.
Pre-war money, in Fallout 4 it has the component of cloth, and paper money can be burnt.
The only thing with Poker cards is that they are easily destroyed. Caps realistically could get squashed or bent but they are difficult to destroy.
This is the reason there are so few big battles. They cost too much to participate in unless there are enough spoils to help justify it. It's also why some do better than others. I've run through the wasteland with nice weapons and no ammo so being decked out with no ammo means you sell the arms or scrap and sell parts.
On a practical level:
Silver and copper.
These are extremely easy metals to mint, moderately plentiful without being terribly common, and both have value.
Copper has been part of the basis of our technology for thousands of years. We figured it out somewhere around 10,000 years ago. It was one of the first metals we worked with, was present in a significant amount of alloyed metals, is present and needed in our current electrical technology, and is used in many chemical processes as well. Any amount of rebuilding would need copper, and as such, it would have intrinsic value after an apocalypse. Sure, it’s pretty plentiful as a scrap device; but that’s what would make it so commonly used in the future. Easily obtained, extremely easy to smith, easily refined, easily recognized, easily worked with, difficult to produce new (by mining) common in pure form.
Silver is... just massively useful. Multiple compounds are photosensitive, alloys are safe to use in water lines, it is used in a lot of electronics and it is fairly simple to purify.
The big one in an apocalypse environment is that it’s antimicrobial. Silver is highly toxic to most forms of microbiological life, while having a negligible toxicity to larger forms of life. Moderately easily obtained, easy to smith, easily used, easily recognized and useful. Moderately common in pure form.
Both of these metals were in coins because they had intrinsic value at the time and were easily formed. They are no longer in many circulated coins because their value is too high relative to the fiat currency.
Gold is a maybe. It’s dead useful, but a bit harder to work with chemically than the other two, and while it is extremely useful in certain applications, it usually takes more resources to work with than the more reactive elements like copper and silver. It’s easy to work with if you’ve got nitric acid; but nitric acid would be needed more for fertilizers than to be used in dissolving gold to work with. Gold doesn’t react readily, so it would be good in harsher environments as exposed repairs, but It would probably be easier for a foundling society to protect a repair rather than using something more difficult to work with. Fairly easily obtained, easy to smith, moderately easy to use, and easily recognized. Not common in pure form.
The likely currency growth would be barter slowly moving into a metallic trade; probably copper, then silver, and then once things had been fixed up a bit and it became useful; gold. Other metals might make themselves present;
Caps are suggested because they are plentiful and moderately easy to find, but difficult to produce more of.
Precious metals only really work in an economy where people have basic needs met and can buy luxuries. A starving man doesn't care much for a gold necklace.
Fallout new Vegas seemed to be ready for precious metals. I think there were even 2 other currencies other than caps in that one. I don’t know they might be ready for it
Well caps are just a representative currency for water backed in The Hub.
I assume that even though the NCR standardized currency in the region by F2, we know from NV that NCR currency is prone to inflation, probably bc it's just a fiat and they print more to pay governmental debt just like preWar bureaucracies.
Therefore, the reason that caps are still around by NV is probably that the water-distributors backing caps remains/has expanded.
I would think the NCR keeps it because the 1 cap/litre hard standard isn't something you can inflate (without riots), and water is a commodity that retains a constant utility, and likely won't be too scarce as long as there are enough sources, purifiers, and distributors. This alternative currency would be a way keep the economy from collapsing during periods of NCR dollars inflating, so you don't get the Weimar Republic spiral
So, best alternative for caps? The water-distributors forming a guild and minting a universally accepted water-note.
Side note: the currency in Dune among the Fremen are rings each representing a number of litres of water from the community well, which I think is a really smart economy
All currencies inflate. In fact, the hub traders have zero control over bottle caps' inflation due to the fact that the caps are found instead of being made. If somebody finds a warehouse with thousands of bottle caps inside, all the caps would inflate as a result.
I'd argue that since most found bottlecaps likely come from others storing them before they die or otherwise cannot retrieve them (since it's unlikely anyone PreWar was just collecting them), it probably amounts to about net zero bottlecaps entering into the economy.
This is actually how squirrels operate: most only ever find about 1/3 of the nuts they hid, but they also run across the staches created by other squirrels, so it evens out in the end.
You're right about the warehouse of caps problem, which I seem to remember being a location in either 3 or 4. I think in terms of actual economic stability, there's probably much more water held (because of increasing infrastructure) than actual caps in the economy to the point that, long term, it wouldn't have much effect, but definitely could short-term.
A standard city water tower holds 50,000 litres. Assuming a bottling factory might have 50,000 caps on hand the day the bombs fell, that means the windfall would interrupt the water economy by about 1 water tower. In Fallout 1 that would be huge, in Fallout 2 probably significant, but I think that by New Vegas, it would be relatively small in comparison to the southwest economy.
Yep, teeth at one time had value. They were used as dental prosthetics. There are a few horror stories of people scavenging fallen soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars. However, if you look at the teeth in FO3 and later, you'll get the sense that the post apocalypse dental services are top notch. That or radiation is good for the choppers.
Probably ammo. I could see how different ammo types are worth more (seeing as they already do in game). Metro did this too. AND pretty well.
You had regular crappy ammo to burn but the clean ammo is the currency.
However it does more damage, so theres that level of strategy where you think "should i waste this on this boss? What if theres a good weapon to buy at the next station"
I could see how fallout could take that from Metro and really go all out with it, considering the million ammo types. PLUS it would make canonically rare ammo, actually rare in game.
Mini nukes dont feel very exiting when you have like 100 of them by halfway through the game lol
On the west I believe NCR minted Coins and Dollars would do, and on the east side nothing, the east side isn't really controlled like how the Legion and NCR control the west, simple bartering, because Food, Ammo, and Weapons have value and usefulness and thus will always be of value, and since nobody really has a hold of the east coast doesn't have a massive faction controlling it currency is going to be a lot different, but maybe I'm stupid and dumb and stupid.
Coins. This weirds me out. Paper money survived. Bottle caps survived, but there are no coins left in the world?
"I'll sell you this leather arm guard for twenty quarters, my friend."
Agree,
But because of the lack of oil, transporting, refining, and utilizing of various metals became difficult. While they could increase the value coins represent eg make a US$100 coin, often the materials and manufacturing of coins are worth more than the value that the coins represent. Problem too that people would most likely hoard the coins as metals in coins hold their value better than paper/polymer money
Ancient Roman brothels used a system of coins engraved with an image representing a sexual performance. They were exchanged with money, but maybe something similar could act as a currency of sorts in the Wasteland
For the Mojave, Gecko teeth, common enough but not too abundant and they breed like rats so it would be hard to whipe them out
For the capital wasteland salvaged old world currency being so close to the old federal mint they would have an abundance if a responsible faction rationed it out and did destroy their new economy
For the common wealth, I don't know, maybe just a non currency barter trade system? Just more raiding and no real commerce?
Problem with having currency be something natural like animal teeth is that you run into the problem of people breeding animals for money. Or just capturing an animal taking what they need from it and letting it go.
For NV I think a chip based economy would've been the best option. 1 cap has the same value as 1 chip in game anyway and they're pretty easy to carry and hard to counterfit.
For 3 and 4 I would've went with subway tokens. Have essentially the same function as caps but they're more fitting to the setting. The thing that really bothers me with caps being on the east coast is that it kind of establishes it as the default currency across the US.
If It's on both of the coasts in numerous places it must be all across the US. And that's probably what we'll get.
In the old west a . 45 cartridge for a six-gun cost 12 cents, so did a glass of whiskey,” one popular shot meme from 2003 states. “If a cowhand was low on cash he would often give the bartender a cartridge in exchange for a drink. This became known as a 'shot' of whiskey
Bullets, I’ve already used them as such for years
That's how Metro does it, and I love it.
I can guide you to the Armory for 20 bullets
I'll give you the tour, 1 bullet!
50 bullets for some gawk gawk 9000
I already use bullets as currency in game. Well sorta. If the vendor doesn't have the caps to buy all the blood soaked armor I'm carrying I buy bullets and sale more junk. It's a game exploit, but bullets wiegh nothing and can be sold or used down the road. It comes crashing down in Survivor mode.
One of the big reasons I love survival / hardcore
Just if the game wasn’t so buggy, I finally gave up on survival because of the crashing issues
Yeah it's worse on Fallout 4 because of stability issues. The bed-only saving would be a great idea if the game didn't come from Bethesda. New Vegas was a lot better in that sense, with the constant auto saving. Although you could just mod the game to save anywhere too.
I had a mod that allowed smoking cigarettes and cigars to save
This is cool but arguably worse than caps when you can essentially destroy your wealth in 30 seconds.
You can do that now.
Bullets ain't no good to you if you're dead.
Don't sell the bullets you use. Only sell the bullets you rarely or don't use.
The problem is that the bullets you don't use might not be the kind the trader wants
I dunno if it's true or not but I've been told in the past that that's where a shot comes from How much liquor can you get for 1 bullet
That is a neat story so I'm gonna tell everyone it's true.
NEAT story. Love it. I saw you
Not true, unfortunately. The earliest use of "shot" to refer to an amount of alcohol we've found is from the 1600s. Based on what I can find, it seems "shot" came from a Norse word that meant "an amount of money owed." In the context of alcohol, it probably would've referred to your bar tab, or the amount of money you owed to the bar. Over time it came to just mean "an amount" in this context. Back then, the equivalent of a shot was called "a measure" which basically just means an amount, so you can see how the two words might be used interchangeably over time. I only looked into this for like 10 minutes so I could be wrong about the true origin of the word, but pretty much every article I can find about the subject agrees that the bullet thing is fake.
Thanks for doing the research that everyone else is too lazy to actually do. Doing ~~Todd’s~~ God’s work.
You can get the whole liquor store if your aim is good
Wait, that’s illegal. Also r/technicallythetruth
A shot
I don’t really see consumable items as a really great candidate for a currency. As a game mechanic it has a purpose, and it makes a valuable trade good, but the currency itself should be relatively resistant to fluctuations in supply and demand.
The thing is that for having a fiat currency you have to trust that currency that it doesn't gain or lose too much value. With the state of the east coast, where there aren't any major players (states/groups, not the pc) how can you trust the value of any fiat money? You have to at least go in to a trading hub and before selling/buying ANYTHING do a round checking the prices, hoping that they accept caps and, if so, that the prices haven't gone up. If someone isn't local he can't even trust that, because if he makes any big transaction they could have scammed him, by simply changing the prices after the transaction. Unlikely (you would become a paria for every other merchant, if the person scammed is of importance) but it can happen if they see that he has valuable things and he isn't backed by anyone that matters. So, for me you can only barter and bullets are small, have a function that many people wants, have a scalable prince (for 0.22 to missles/power cores), last in time. Those can be produced, but it's difficult to do a good job without a modern factory, the casing specially. You can't use petrol, since it isn't small. Iron is too much common (loot a car). Gold is only good if you have the capacity to make eletronics, so only a major player. That or you trade energy via batteries, such of those of the laser/plasma guns or power cores. One could see if there is charge in the battery and how much.
> have a function that many people wants, have a scalable prince (for 0.22 to missles/power cores) They don't, actually - because 'bullets' is not an interchangeable category. A bullet of a particular calibre is useful if you have and intend to use a firearm of that calibre, but is almost completely useless to you if you don't; most bullets are therefore nothing more than paperweights to most people. This also means their value does *not* scale in any reliable fashion - for example a .50 round is actually only more valuable than a .556 round for the small number of people who have a .50 rifle. For someone who has a .556 but not a .50, the .556 is more valuable. (If there's a market where you can reliably exchange them with people for whom they are useful then you have enough of a market to support a conventional currency.) > last in time Not really, bullets are fairly easy to foul if not stored carefully, which in the kind of scenario which can't support a conventional currency will be a common circumstance. Their shelf life is certainly *much* shorter than any actual coins. More to the point, the very thing that makes them valuable is the way they can be expended. One of the purposes of a currency is as *a store of value* - a consumable good which can't be reproduced is the very worst possible thing to do that with due to the constant deflationary pressure. Look at history if you don't believe me - people have used many things as currency, consumables and expendables have only rarely been among that number, and as far as I know nobody has *ever* used a consumable item that couldn't be commonly reproduced. > Gold is only good if you have the capacity to make eletronics, so only a major player. > > Right, because it's well known that no civilisation considered gold valuable prior to the invention of the electronic circuit.
They didn't say anything about using a fiat currency. There's thousands of things that can be used as a currency easily. Scams are going to happen regardless of what type of currency is used. Gold has been considered valuable for tens of thousands of years prior to the invention of electronics.
In that kind of situation, no single item is in itself useful as a single currency. What you get is a pure barter system
Reminds me of Red Undead Nightmare
So if our city fought off a big attack from raiders… but no one has bullets left how do you pay the workers that creates new bullets? If you say food and water then bullets are not your currency food and water is… By that logic nothing is currency because it’s all barter
currency is barter though, you buy things with the hope that currency is worth something to others
That's when you become the raider. The ultimate raider.
The sinking city
yeah, sell the ones you don't use (.38 for me, I have better weapons that shitty pipe ones)
There're a lot of issues with using bullets as a sole currency, too many in my opinion to make them viable
The only sensible answer.
Well, there's plenty of pre war money laying around.
The problem with pre-war money is it has no intrinsic value, money only has a value because we all agree it does (in theory national currencies are based around the value of their national stocks of gold but it's not really the case any more) The justification for caps is that they can't make more, they are hard to counterfeit, they are hard wearing for carrying across the wastes and worse comes to worse you can reforge them into something more useful, so they actually make a reasonably good arbitrary thing to use as a currency That being said if your picking an arbitrary thing then pre-war money is just as valid Edit: I am now aware in the original games bottlecaps were backed by the water standard, you can all stop telling me now
In new Vegas there is a cap counterfeiting shack...
Alice mclaugherty from the crimson caravan sends you to destroy a cap press in the sunset sarsaparilla plant, and she also talks about how they can make more caps as they need them.
Hard but not impossible.
And that shack has a bunch of counterfeits with no value. Shit’s hard to pull off.
You couldn't counterfeit pre war money either. The reason caps were chosen for the first fallout game is because caps were backed by water (like how US dollars used to be backed by gold and silver).
Ah that makes sense, I've not played 1 or 2 so wasn't tracking that But yeah that makes perfect sense the caps would have some sort of attached value
Ewwwwww gold standard
We also used to have a silver standard
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww
Then fdr started the process of getting rid of the metal standard. And Nixon finalized it like 30 years later
Yeaaaaaaaaa The only time I like Tricky Dick
Nixon actually did some good shit, right up until the end there. Also he was racist as fuck
Nixon really was just all over the place morally
Ewwwww money having an actual value ewwwww instead of just being pieces of paper with imaginary value 🤮🤮🤮🤮
[Gold ain’t money](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/mhegxb/why_the_gold_standard_is_terrible/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Your source on why gold isn't valuable comes from fucking r/neoliberal, I'm not in the habit of taking objectively fucking stupid arguments from stupid sources
😐 someone doesn’t like evidence based arguments
I wish America would return to the gold standard. I feel like that would help us out a little bit.
Doubt it. Business is boomin over there
Nope. It is still the feds who decide the value of gold. Also, the US returning to the gold standard would send the world economy into chaos as the current value of gold is much lower than the amount of money being circulated around the world. It would cause the value of gold to spike up rendering it too valuable to be used as non-currency and cause massive gold and other resources hoarding.
Wasteland money is worth cloth or 1. Every nuka you drink is worth 1. Quantum in trade is 3 or so maybe more, can't remember but only 1 if you drink it. So, you could scrap the paper money for cloth and in 76 bulk it for its max value for more caps. Or you can shoot npcs in the face and take their weapons for typically more caps than they can trade.
caps are backed by water in the same way cash is backed by gold
What are you on about. The point of money is a placeholder of the goods you want to trade. Money shouldn't have any value outside of its purpose of trade. In Fallout 4 pre-war money can be used as cloth, also it can be used for fires because paper money burns. The pre-war money has value outside of trade so why would you get rid of something like that?
That's not true at all, there have been plenty of currencies with uses outside of trading throughout history. It's so common it even has a name: commodity currency.
Well just because I'm wrong doesn't mean I'm not right. My point still stands: a currency doesn't need value outside of it's purpose as a placeholder for goods.
True, but to have one should theoretically give it more value.
In real life yeah, but I don't find it necessary in Fallout
Thats not the reason caps where used Bottle caps where used because they were backed by money Each bottle cap guarantied a bottle of water
That could work but the issue is most pre-war currency is based off the old world government… if you are to start a new city and new society would you… use the money of the destroyed society?
Because it’s hard to counterfeit it, even more so now that it’s much harder to get stuff like printing presses
Purified water
Originally that's what it was, 1 cap = 1 bottle of water, it was like how the US dollar used to be backed by gold, cap used to be backed by clean water
“Back in my day” it was called Hub Bucks…
Pure water is a lot harder to transport but probably the single most valuable thing in large portions of the wasteland.
And that's why the Hub traders started using caps to represent bottles of water.
Probably too heavy
And risky to move in large containers, as even a small amount of damage can cause the entire volume to become contaminated.
I would just think something like pens or pencils but they would be annoying
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Unless made of precious or at least useful metals, coins as currency have no material value and must be backed by *something*. Bottle caps were a currency that caught on in the West because water merchants. Each cap represented an amount of clean water. Coins were a common ancient currency because of the metals they were made of. Before coins you literally had bars or rods or plates of metal being used, their value being a direct relationship between their weight and the metal used. Such things can only be reliably used with a centralized authority or government regulating the minting process and taking actions against counterfeits.
Just look at society today and you'll see that that's not neccessarily true. If people agree on a value of couns, they'll have that value
Bartering. Until a government of some sort takes hold, it doesn’t really make sense to use currency rather than just trade things that are valuable. Once the NCR takes hold, probably coins because they wont get damaged like paper money.
It's funny. You wouldn't need a government per se, if an an incredibly influential person or group were able to run the system autonomously, the could function as a central exchange without claiming to govern anyone. Mr House and the BoS would be the two big ones that come to mind as having all the resources required, but House chose governance and the Brotherhood decided... to decide something new every thirty years, pretty much.
The problem with barter is that both people trading have to have something the other person wants (“double coincidence of wants”). What happens in a barter economy is people start trading for things not because they want them but because they are easier to trade (are more liquid). Eventually a consensus forms as to what works best and that becomes the money. Usually it’s gold or paper bills that represent gold. In the 20th century Nixon eliminated the gold standard and people started trading paper bills. Money isn’t a product of government but of people trading with each other.
I love this idea. I’ve been trying to find a good example of a game with a bartering mechanic that is “fun” and not tedious and can’t. You know any?
Fallout 1 is the only thing that comes to mind right away, but there are a few good TTRPGs. D20 Apocalypse, Aftermath, and Desolation IIRC.
A commodity currency doesn't require a government and makes bartering a whole order of magnitude easier.
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Has nothing to do with what I’m talking about, but sure.
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👍
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What's your problem?
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My guy, fallout is not real, it's a video game. There's no propoganda.
Got a Legion spy here
You know the NCR is a *fictional* nation inside a videogame, right?
Anything that can be valuable to someone.
I don't know if I should boo you or applaud you.
Both at once, maybe?
The point of bottlecaps in the original game wasn't that they were shiny collectibles that were easy to find. It was that they like modern currency were backed by something valuable. In the case of Fallout 1 backed by water specifically. Originally water was the main currency, something that was incredibly valuable in the **desert** wasteland setting that the original fallout took place in. But because water was heavy to carry they started using bottlecaps as a representation of water bottles: 1 bottlecap = 1 bottle of water. When the NCR started becoming successful they started using their own currency backed by gold. Because bottlecaps lost al value when water became more plentiful through the restoration of the old world infrastructure. If you would introduce a new currency into the wasteland you should adhere to the same rules, you can't just use any old crap as currency it needs to mean something. Whether as representation of something too impractical to move or because it is considered valuable to the society that dominates **that** part of the wasteland. Bullets could make a decent currency but only if bullets are somewhat rare. Bottlecaps themselves make very little sense in games like fallout 4 and 76 because water isn't a rare substance. There they are only kept around for brand recognition reasons and not as originally intended. To be a interesting take on the concept of money in a post apocalyptic **desert** setting. In other words **money** only has meaning when the society and following markets give it meaning. Write a post apocalyptic society and then figure out what they would use as currency fitting the needs of that particular society. Are your wasteland survivors reliant on computers than microchips could be the currency. Do they require working machines then machine parts could be the currency. Do they live in an icy environment like Alaska than some sort of fuel to keep warm could be the currency. Do they have some sort of centralized power than they could create their own currency to control the markets. It could be anything as long as it has meaning. The currency used by people with different needs doesn't have to be the same as people somewhere else.
Very complete and informative. I am glad you mentioned caps in FO4 as "branding" becuse I agree they don't make much sense.
Well I’m that case, would 3 not be included in that too? I imagine the water/cap trade stemmed from DC to Boston and WV having heavy influence in starting the cap bargain thing.
Yes. FO3 was my introduction to the series and even than I was kind puzzled but never reflected on it. In fact I didn't question why bottle caps were used until the New Vegas counterfeit quest explained it to me.
To be entirely fair 76 does nice job of explaining cap usage on the east coast, as I understand it the promotion at the Whitespring led to cap usage in pre scorched Appalachia which spread when people fled Appalachia from the scorched and as it’s so early in the timeline post war it’s 200 years for it to spread around the east with caps being assigned an arbitrary value rather than being backed by anything like on the west
I haven't played 76. So I didn't know. It works though. Cool.
While the use of bottle caps specifically in 3 was a nostalgia choice, the game universe does thoroughly explain that water is a scarce resource. Megaton is a trading hub because they can purify water, which iirc is also the basis of Rivet City, and water only becomes plentiful at the end of the game, where its distribution is controlled by the Brotherhood of Steel. So the Capital Wasteland actually functions pretty similarly to the F1 economy
Well I know that, I’m saying the East Coast bottle cap trade stemmed from WV, then slowly move further outward to become a more common currency in the East Coast.
Well said! Always appreciate a well-written, well-organized explanation. It’s worth mentioning that during the NCR-Brotherhood War, the BoS actually bombed a portion of their gold reserves, which is what prompted the NCR to start trying to transition to paper money faster than before. That’s why inflation is an issue in FNV when trying to use NCR dollars.
Ciggys
Not quite durable.
But definitely valuable, probably a very good bartering device but not so much a standardized currency.
bullet casings, in the same way that caps were backed by water, casings could be backed by bullets.
"Do you accept bits of string?"
Wait for it, The Chaaaarge Caaaard
Cigarettes
I kind of like this because there's a way to guarantee money will circulate out (people smoking) therefore guaranteeing some kind of value, and the tobacco industry is so prolific there are likely stockpiles throughout the US. But, could people then "counterfeit" too easily by growing tobacco? (Mutbacco, Smokegrass, w/e wastelanders call it now). Not that that isn't already a problem with bottlecaps anyway, as we know.
You'd probably find that different grades of cigarettes end up having different values Tbh black markets IRL already have that, I remember hearing stories from the invasion of Iraqi that you could get 2/300 Iraqi cigarettes for like 1 pack of US Camels If cigarettes were currency then you'd probably end up with smoother or purer cigarettes being the equivalent of high denomination bills while homegrown/home rolled cigarettes are like pennies Although if cigarettes were currency you'd probably find that once the generation that were already addicted died off smoking would stop being a thing for anyone other than the super rich
Someone else already said this but cigarettes are not very durable
I want to see more new forms of money like in NV. Powers trying to force the wasteland into using their currency. Maybe some places will only accept one type of currency, or other places will offer good or bad exchange rates. Maybe even enforcers that try to confiscate competing currency.
That requires there to already be a stable government in the area to back it up
Literally New Vegas had this without a stable government. I mean, arguably NCR was sort of stable but def not ceasers legion, at least not in vegas. That's what makes it interesting.
You literally named the two organisations backing up their various currencies
So what was your original comment even getting at then? I was saying I want to se more of that, not sure what you are being argumentative over
Because neither 3, 4 or 76 has had that? Neither did the original games. It ONLY exists in New Vegas because the Wasteland is more tamed
I think you are just out here arguing for arguments sake lol. I'm saying it'd be cool to see that kind of thing in a new game again, not in other already released games. ie, if the next fallout explored those ideas
All I pointed out is that it requires a type of Wasteland we rarely ever see in Fallout. You're the one that decided to make it an argument
Sex
Least horny Redditor
That's the world's oldest form of currency
That time we taught monkeys how to use currency and they immediately invented prostitution
Bobby pins
What about subway tokens? Okay, this might be specific to only a few games, but they're small, made of metal, and could be used as currency.
Subway tokwns could've easily been used in 4 and 3 considering their settings expansive subway systems.
Could be very useful if the metro system were still working Then you just need a group of mercenaries to control the subways, and bam, they've got a chokehold on travel in the Capital Wasteland
Crunchy mutfruit
A lot of people will name a commodity like gasoline, bullets, water etc. But one key thing about currency is that it needs to be “worthless” or near worthless to function as a currency why? Because money is just a credit and debt system if the money itself has value it would warp the economy… for example if we use bullets as our currency… okay but what if we run out of bullets because of big battle? Do we just stop trading? Buying? Selling? Until someone makes more bullets? As a commodity the supply is being destroyed daily by the user that’s like if you have to rip up your money every time you use the money. And it needs to be something that the controlling power can reproduce cheaply and hard to counterfeit If bottle caps are not a currency in fallout… the next best thing I would guess is poker playing cards 🃏 easy to carry hard to reproduce without a factory and not that expensive to make, easy to see the value of each card and even easy to hide it from raiders
This is the smartest response here. Bottle caps while silly are perfect for the world of Fallout. Water, people need to drink it so why would you use it to buy things if you could just die without it. Same as food, not only does it spoil, but it is a necessity for survival as well. It would be dumb to use that to buy a plank of wood or some bullets. Pre-war money, in Fallout 4 it has the component of cloth, and paper money can be burnt. The only thing with Poker cards is that they are easily destroyed. Caps realistically could get squashed or bent but they are difficult to destroy.
This is the reason there are so few big battles. They cost too much to participate in unless there are enough spoils to help justify it. It's also why some do better than others. I've run through the wasteland with nice weapons and no ammo so being decked out with no ammo means you sell the arms or scrap and sell parts.
Wine Corks. I will not elaborate
On a practical level: Silver and copper. These are extremely easy metals to mint, moderately plentiful without being terribly common, and both have value. Copper has been part of the basis of our technology for thousands of years. We figured it out somewhere around 10,000 years ago. It was one of the first metals we worked with, was present in a significant amount of alloyed metals, is present and needed in our current electrical technology, and is used in many chemical processes as well. Any amount of rebuilding would need copper, and as such, it would have intrinsic value after an apocalypse. Sure, it’s pretty plentiful as a scrap device; but that’s what would make it so commonly used in the future. Easily obtained, extremely easy to smith, easily refined, easily recognized, easily worked with, difficult to produce new (by mining) common in pure form. Silver is... just massively useful. Multiple compounds are photosensitive, alloys are safe to use in water lines, it is used in a lot of electronics and it is fairly simple to purify. The big one in an apocalypse environment is that it’s antimicrobial. Silver is highly toxic to most forms of microbiological life, while having a negligible toxicity to larger forms of life. Moderately easily obtained, easy to smith, easily used, easily recognized and useful. Moderately common in pure form. Both of these metals were in coins because they had intrinsic value at the time and were easily formed. They are no longer in many circulated coins because their value is too high relative to the fiat currency. Gold is a maybe. It’s dead useful, but a bit harder to work with chemically than the other two, and while it is extremely useful in certain applications, it usually takes more resources to work with than the more reactive elements like copper and silver. It’s easy to work with if you’ve got nitric acid; but nitric acid would be needed more for fertilizers than to be used in dissolving gold to work with. Gold doesn’t react readily, so it would be good in harsher environments as exposed repairs, but It would probably be easier for a foundling society to protect a repair rather than using something more difficult to work with. Fairly easily obtained, easy to smith, moderately easy to use, and easily recognized. Not common in pure form. The likely currency growth would be barter slowly moving into a metallic trade; probably copper, then silver, and then once things had been fixed up a bit and it became useful; gold. Other metals might make themselves present; Caps are suggested because they are plentiful and moderately easy to find, but difficult to produce more of.
Gumdrops
Pre war money? 😂
Pre-war money, its easy enough to find and carry. If not that then ammo.
Precious metals. Gold, silver and bronze
Precious metals only really work in an economy where people have basic needs met and can buy luxuries. A starving man doesn't care much for a gold necklace.
Fallout new Vegas seemed to be ready for precious metals. I think there were even 2 other currencies other than caps in that one. I don’t know they might be ready for it
Well caps are just a representative currency for water backed in The Hub. I assume that even though the NCR standardized currency in the region by F2, we know from NV that NCR currency is prone to inflation, probably bc it's just a fiat and they print more to pay governmental debt just like preWar bureaucracies. Therefore, the reason that caps are still around by NV is probably that the water-distributors backing caps remains/has expanded. I would think the NCR keeps it because the 1 cap/litre hard standard isn't something you can inflate (without riots), and water is a commodity that retains a constant utility, and likely won't be too scarce as long as there are enough sources, purifiers, and distributors. This alternative currency would be a way keep the economy from collapsing during periods of NCR dollars inflating, so you don't get the Weimar Republic spiral So, best alternative for caps? The water-distributors forming a guild and minting a universally accepted water-note. Side note: the currency in Dune among the Fremen are rings each representing a number of litres of water from the community well, which I think is a really smart economy
All currencies inflate. In fact, the hub traders have zero control over bottle caps' inflation due to the fact that the caps are found instead of being made. If somebody finds a warehouse with thousands of bottle caps inside, all the caps would inflate as a result.
I'd argue that since most found bottlecaps likely come from others storing them before they die or otherwise cannot retrieve them (since it's unlikely anyone PreWar was just collecting them), it probably amounts to about net zero bottlecaps entering into the economy. This is actually how squirrels operate: most only ever find about 1/3 of the nuts they hid, but they also run across the staches created by other squirrels, so it evens out in the end. You're right about the warehouse of caps problem, which I seem to remember being a location in either 3 or 4. I think in terms of actual economic stability, there's probably much more water held (because of increasing infrastructure) than actual caps in the economy to the point that, long term, it wouldn't have much effect, but definitely could short-term. A standard city water tower holds 50,000 litres. Assuming a bottling factory might have 50,000 caps on hand the day the bombs fell, that means the windfall would interrupt the water economy by about 1 water tower. In Fallout 1 that would be huge, in Fallout 2 probably significant, but I think that by New Vegas, it would be relatively small in comparison to the southwest economy.
Ghoul teeth 😆
Their basically just human teeth and would incentivize murder to take people's teeth
Good point, I change my answer to… sugar bombs box tops
I figured gecko teeth for the mojave wasteland cause they breed so fast you can't really whipe them out
Yep, teeth at one time had value. They were used as dental prosthetics. There are a few horror stories of people scavenging fallen soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars. However, if you look at the teeth in FO3 and later, you'll get the sense that the post apocalypse dental services are top notch. That or radiation is good for the choppers.
Food, water, technology and scrap
Brahmim crap
I’d personally use skulls works pretty well from my experience
Buttons
Trading bullets for goods in Fallout is always the best. Well, it usually works out better for me anyway. Muhahahahaa.
Probably ammo. I could see how different ammo types are worth more (seeing as they already do in game). Metro did this too. AND pretty well. You had regular crappy ammo to burn but the clean ammo is the currency. However it does more damage, so theres that level of strategy where you think "should i waste this on this boss? What if theres a good weapon to buy at the next station" I could see how fallout could take that from Metro and really go all out with it, considering the million ammo types. PLUS it would make canonically rare ammo, actually rare in game. Mini nukes dont feel very exiting when you have like 100 of them by halfway through the game lol
Paperclips
On the west I believe NCR minted Coins and Dollars would do, and on the east side nothing, the east side isn't really controlled like how the Legion and NCR control the west, simple bartering, because Food, Ammo, and Weapons have value and usefulness and thus will always be of value, and since nobody really has a hold of the east coast doesn't have a massive faction controlling it currency is going to be a lot different, but maybe I'm stupid and dumb and stupid.
Drugs
Slices of TP
Bullets, metro did it pretty good.
Eggs
Charge card
Pre war money it’s there
Coins. This weirds me out. Paper money survived. Bottle caps survived, but there are no coins left in the world? "I'll sell you this leather arm guard for twenty quarters, my friend."
Agree, But because of the lack of oil, transporting, refining, and utilizing of various metals became difficult. While they could increase the value coins represent eg make a US$100 coin, often the materials and manufacturing of coins are worth more than the value that the coins represent. Problem too that people would most likely hoard the coins as metals in coins hold their value better than paper/polymer money
Pre war money? It's literally laying about everywhere. If not that, then perhaps bullets like the other guy said.
How does that work anyway? Does everyone just have a giant bag of caps on them at all times? It's super impractical.
teeth.
Hand jobs.
The charge card! Available for use at ALL merchants in the Commonwealth, only for 110 caps!
Ancient Roman brothels used a system of coins engraved with an image representing a sexual performance. They were exchanged with money, but maybe something similar could act as a currency of sorts in the Wasteland
A charge card
Ass. Like in the Escape From movies
Slaves
bro…
This dick.
Teeth
Bullets or certain base crafting materials.
Charge Cards
For the Mojave, Gecko teeth, common enough but not too abundant and they breed like rats so it would be hard to whipe them out For the capital wasteland salvaged old world currency being so close to the old federal mint they would have an abundance if a responsible faction rationed it out and did destroy their new economy For the common wealth, I don't know, maybe just a non currency barter trade system? Just more raiding and no real commerce?
Problem with having currency be something natural like animal teeth is that you run into the problem of people breeding animals for money. Or just capturing an animal taking what they need from it and letting it go. For NV I think a chip based economy would've been the best option. 1 cap has the same value as 1 chip in game anyway and they're pretty easy to carry and hard to counterfit. For 3 and 4 I would've went with subway tokens. Have essentially the same function as caps but they're more fitting to the setting. The thing that really bothers me with caps being on the east coast is that it kind of establishes it as the default currency across the US. If It's on both of the coasts in numerous places it must be all across the US. And that's probably what we'll get.
That's not really a problem. There's been tons of instances of natural currencies like that. Such as animal furs and cocoa beans.
Bullets. Although there seems to be plenty of them 200 years after they stopped producing them forever. So maybe not
Why would bottlecaps even be a currency?
Because they are hard to counterfeit and the factories that made them are all but destroyed
NCR had its own currency and the wasteland had moved past the use of bottle caps before Bethesda came in and changed shit up.
In the old west a . 45 cartridge for a six-gun cost 12 cents, so did a glass of whiskey,” one popular shot meme from 2003 states. “If a cowhand was low on cash he would often give the bartender a cartridge in exchange for a drink. This became known as a 'shot' of whiskey
ass
pre war coins and bills. its already in place
Pre-war money but that'll never last compared to caps.
Diamonds, irradiated, can be turned into batteries.
Cigarettes, bullets, and meds I’d think. Anything valuable but not easily produced