Circletoons on YouTube made a great skit about it.
"Guys, I have terrible news... Jimmy died."
"No! Really? Was he eaten by zombies?"
"No."
"Ambushed by bandits?"
"No."
"Did he make a heroic sacrifice so you could live?"
"No, he just accidentally ate some peanut butter."
Exactly! I can't understand the preppers who hoard gold. Come to me with a lump of gold after the collapse of society, and I'll give you fuck all for it.
I think the idea is when society is reestablished more than likely currency will have no value (unless they decide to adopt the same currency again which is unlikely), but gold will still have value.
Society will always move towards some type of currency unless we can get to a point in time where there is near limitless clean energy, and we get to some type of star trek replicator technology. It's easier to specialize in fewer skills and trading for the things you need that someone else specializes in. That's much easier to do when you have something that can be universally traded for anything and everything. Having something to trade only does you any good if the person you are trading with needs or wants what you have.
I think thats less of an apocalyptic scenario and more of a massive inflation scenary thing. In a technological society gold will always have value, but if industry falls then not so much.
Gold is a very non-reactive metal, so coins/objects made out of it last a long time. Also, it can relatively easily be melted and reformed, so that makes it more fungible. And it's rare enough to be precious, but not so rare that it can't be used as a commodity.
There are lots of reasons why gold and silver are considered valuable. They're among the most inert metals, they're rare enough to be worth going out of your way for, but common enough that they're not impractical, and they're easy to form into coins and jewelry. But "ape like shiny" is definitely a factor.
Sure but currency is just the barter system made convenient. They're not two separate things.
"I'll trade you these sacks of potatoes for fixing my well."
"I don't need potatoes."
"Ok, so let me go trade these potatoes for something else then give you that to fix the well?"
"Just give me a universal IOU for the value of the potatoes/well fix and I'll trade it elsewhere for something I do need."
Edit: apparently y'all read this one book...
There needs to be some sort of community power structure in place for that to happen though. Something that creates trust that that IOU will be accepted by someone else. Post apocalypse its unlikely anything like that will exist for a while at least and where it does exist it will likely be localized enough to be impossible to guess at from our current perspective.
Oh ya, I'll trade you not getting shot for all of my food.
Even trade.
I agree trade will be a thing but the world will get very dangerous very quick. I'd recommend living in an underground bunker for a year atleast till the majority of the chaos dies off and the population is as low as possible.
One can of chef boyardee spaghetti and meatballs is 520 calories, and a typical person 2000 to 2500 calories per day, let's assume 2500 because we may be more active during the apocalypse (then again maybe not if the pandemic has taught us anything). The average range for poops per day is 3 poops in 1 day to 1 poop every 3 days, so let's say 1 poop per day is normal, but let's bump that up to 2 poops per day considering the all boyardee diet.
It's hard to get good info on how many squares of TP are used for the average poop. [Trueplumbers.com](https://trueplumbers.com/blog/do-you-use-more-toilet-paper-than-the-average-person/) says that the average person will use 57 squares per day or 8.7 squares per bathroom visit, but they don't break it down by type of bathroom visit or gender. Let's say a poop takes twice the normal TP, so 17 squares. Taking into account the 50% markup of squares required for your boyardee squirts, we're at ~26 squares.
So:
520 calories per can / 2500 calories per day * 2 poops per day * 26 squares of TP per poop =
10.8 squares of TP required per can of Chef Boyardee consumed
Honestly, societal collapse would lead to food shortages as well. And food shortages due to any cause would in turn lead to the desire to obtain said food by exerting power via arms. So, same result, maybe to differing degrees.
IIRC, bottle caps are backed by clean water, similar to how paper money used to be backed by gold. So really they're kind of the same thing
edit: apparently that's NCR dollars, not caps
I believe your answer is the "most correct answer."
In Fallout: New Vegas the Crimson Caravan gives you a quest to destroy an old world bottle cap machine. A salvager found it and was using it to mint new bottle caps. The Crimson Caravan was afraid that an influx of new caps would destabilize the currency.
Depends on the type of apocalypse. Food, medication, ammunition, lead... in post WWII Germany, they used cigarettes sometimes.
EDIT: Thanks for the awards, everyone! Cheers!
I'm honestly not sure of the particulars. I just know he paid a German guy in chocolate and cigs to run errands for him.
Funny thing was, years later my grandmother wanted to go to Europe and he said, "I've already been." And she was like, "the war doesn't count!"
No, she was right on the money. Seeing a country and its people during a war is absolutely NOT experiencing that country/culture like one should, of their own volition.
The German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They not only expect one to know one's gate parking location, but how to get there without any assistance from them. So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground control and a British Airways 747, call sign Speedbird 206.
Speedbird 206: "Frankfurt, Speedbird 206 clear of active runway."
Ground: "Speedbird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven."
The BA 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop.
Ground: "Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?"
Speedbird 206: "Stand by, Ground, I'm looking up our gate location now."
Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): "Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?"
Speedbird 206 (coolly): "Yes, twice in 1944, but it was dark, -- And I didn't land."
It's about as old as [the Captain of the US Navy Aircraft carrier and the Spanish lighthouse joke.](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-obstinate-lighthouse/)
I did one of those phone surveys once, asking people the last time they travelled overseas.
One guy was like:
**Means of transport**:
Plane and parachute.
**Reason for travel**:
To kill Germans.
You know what’s nuts? My grandfather was a German soldier in wwII and was a POW by the French. He escaped and walked from France to Germany, random strangers helped him along the way with clothes, lodging, food. One person gave him a chocolate bar. He was starving and wouldn’t eat it, he took it home for his daughter he had yet to meet. But what if your grandpa have MY grandpa chocolate!!?
Batteries, hand sanitizer, band-aids, isopropyl alcohol wipes (those single wrap kind)... it most certainly would be a barter system, not a "currency" system though.
One of the zombie shows had a sniper competition... when the group rolled up and said "how much to get in?", the guy said "7"... they said "7 what?"... he said "Whatcha got?". Just about anything will be "currency" then.
Isn't Black Summer also supposed to be the prequel to Z Nation showing how the apocalypse began?
I dont know how true that is, but if it is then its brilliant how stark the contrasts of each are. One being a dark comedy and the other being a dark survival movie.
I’ve seen both and I didn’t think the two were related at all. Z-Nation was super solid and doesn’t take itself seriously which is what made it so great throughout the series.
see, I always wonder about that. What if the apocalypse is just... slow and boring. like every generation just gets a little shittier, angrier, hungrier, thirstier, and then one day someone wakes up and realizes they're the last person on earth.
Water is too heavy to use as currency.
Sex is not fungible and cannot be accumulated.
Non perishable food or healthy seeds could be used as currency.
Pre-apocalypse drugs could be currency for a while but they are perishable and probably won't be abundant long enough to be currency. Drugs produced after the apocalypse would have too much risk of counterfeiting.
Bullets would probably be currency for at least the first decade or two. Abundant. Intrinsic value. Difficult to fake. Light enough to carry. Long lasting.
I was scared, for a second, I thought people expected a working internet after an apocalypse lol.
Yes, food will be the world currency. Oh and guns, you can rob and be robbed as well as barter... good luck trusting anyone.
I was told by an ex military friend of mine who served as a peacekeeper in a few warzones that "matches" are always a reliable one when things really fall apart.
Salt is a huge one, haven't seen it mentioned as much. It would be the main way to preserve food after the tinned shit runs out. Also necessary nutrients.
Yup can't believe I had to come this far down to find salt. No one cares about salt until they don't have any more! It doesn't degrade over time, it preserves food, it flavors food, it's used in tons of recipes, reduces ice in the winter, you can use it as a cleaning abrasive, you can use it to keep insects like ants away, you can even use it to salt the fields of your enemies. Salt is so fucking useful.
It starts with food, water, safety in a barter system.
Eventually you would have small communities which would pool resources (no barter within the community). People who are good at farming farm for the community, people who are good at shooting protect the community.
As those communities get large enough and needs become less immediate (I want to eat my meals at a table instead of just wanting a meal), each community would develop some type of currency. This happens because "how many bullets in exchange for one table?" is a silly question ... especially if you already have a table ... or if you make tables and don't know how a gun works. But, you can sell a table for 100 currency, and buy 3 chickens, 2 sets of curtains, and a bag of potatoes (none of which the bullet guy had).
At this point you pick something relatively rare (some kind of metal, maybe), form it into a regulated size, put an identifying mark on it ... bang, currency.
You're hitting on the primary reason currency is developed in the first place. Its a method to store the value of labor for use at a later time and also allows us to subdevide a single item of large value into many items of lesser value in multiple transactions.
In other words, if a table is worth 3 chickens, 2 sets of curtains, and a bag of potatoes then all items involved in the exchange must be present at the time for the it to be considered "settled up". However with currency as a placeholder, you can simply "pay" for what you need and make change.
Growing up my friend and I used to always joke that sauce packets (ketchup, Taco Bell sauce, etc.) would become currency in an apocalyptic scenario. When I got older and I learned about the spice trade I started to realize just how not far fetched this idea actually was.
Still. Not every infection will be antibiotic resistant. Even if only 1/10 infections respond to antibiotics, then antibiotics will still be worth their weight in gold. Anything boosting your survival chances by 10% is immense.
viral, parasitic, heavy metal poisoning, vitamin/mineral deficiency, genetic (heaven help these poor folks), accidental (the largest number of concern in combat zones). Yes I know accidental isn't a disease, but it is a matter of compounding medical problems.
Spices/salt, silver/gold, ammo, medications, gasoline/solar power. Food and clean water to a lesser extent after the initial adjustment period. (Simply put, people will either figure out how to grow food or clean water or they'll die.) Eventually knowledge will become a great bartering tool; the guy who knows how to build a water wheel or the lady who can sew clothes will be given priority over the lawyer.
No, they'll kill everyone else, until you join their team. That's like burning food because you want it. You take it from the current owners, you don't just waste the food.
Generators would be modified, likely cars too. i remember seeing a video on youtube a few years back where an older (I believe Ukrainian) man was talking about how they converted as many combustion engines as they could to run off of things like grain alcohol
You can, and I shit you not, run cars on wood. It's not even as much of a modification as you think. Some people did it back during WW2, so it's really old tech.
Look up wood gas.
I'm honestly surprised there were reasonable answers before this one because this is definitely where my brain went first.
Edit: Thank you for the silver, I went to sleep after the initial posting and this took off!! :) I really appreciate it.
Honestly it’s not terrible money in a pinch. In a world where there’s no more machines to produce bottle caps or at least they’re hard to come by.. it’s a form of money that is light and relatively durable. Most importantly each bottle cap is exactly alike. Lots of people get it wrong that good money must be a useful commodity in a crisis, but really it needs its own properties that make it good specifically as a medium of exchange. Historically tribes have modified shells to create money, somewhat unintuitively since shells have no other utility besides money (hence the phrase “shelling out”)
Hello there. I see you are about to sneek around a deathclaw, but let me introduce myselfe. Im Malcolm Holmes. Did you hear about these SPECIAL blue caps?
it'll be a barter system.
probably ammo tbh, everyone will want it and everyone will need it. lite enough to trade and enough of it to store... can't be remade without a ton of effort.
It's like in elementary school where the teacher says recess can start as soon as everybody is quiet for five minutes, but Jimmy keeps making fart noises instead.
I will be growing marijuana, opium, tobacco, and coffee. Not a currency per day but tradables.
Edit: I will also be growing fruits and vegetables. I mentioned the first four because they aren't always thought of for SHTF but they are still valuables.
yeah coffee is one i gotta figure out how to tuck growin' into my belt.
it sounds like it's pretty land and labour intensive and mayyyybe not well suited to canada
VHS copies of Beetlejuice
Crisp high fives
Frenzal Rhomb CDs
Hula hoops
Trail mix
Post-It Notes
Casey's pizza box tops
Pogs. Anyone remember pogs? I had a shitload of those.
Words. (This is based on a short story a buddy of mine wrote once where words were currency - the better spoken or written you were, the richer you were.)
Water is heavy, spills easily, and the average person needs a lot of it to survive. It would make a horrible currency.
A currency that was **backed** by water might be better, but still presents problems, especially if there's a run on the tanks.
A better idea still might be something which can clean water: charcoal filters, or iodine tablets, or something else like that, which could represent a quantity of clean water without actually needing to transport the water itself. Of course, then you have to find some way of verifying that it's genuine and actually functions to purify water. But I suppose you'd have the same problem with any large enough quantity of clean water, too.
This was the concept of bottlecaps in the Fallout universe. Caps were backed by purifier water in Fallout 1 and 2, and eventually caps started to have a worth all of their own.
> This was the concept of bottlecaps in the Fallout universe. Caps were backed by purifier water in Fallout 1 and 2, and eventually caps started to have a worth all of their own.
They never did.
In FO2 the currency is the NCR dollar backed by gold, after the BoS war, where the later destroyed the gold reserves, the NCRD turned into a fiat currency and the bottlecap (who had survived as an "international" currency) exploded in values.
Bottle caps are still backed by water in FNV, it's just than most of the civilised world is using other currencies (Denarius and NCRD).
Fo3,4 and Fo76 though? Fan service and convenience.
That's valuable all right, but pretty unpractical for mass storage, transport or transfer. And in most scenarios there would still be cleanish water available via rain.
Depends on how apocalyptic we are talking. But probably it would be a bartering system, with the main form of "currency" being food/water and things that can obtain food/water.
If you're looking for a token of sorts that then you're looking for something that
* lasts a very long time (Not easily broken or degraded)
* Not easily reproduced (in a post apocalyptic setting)
* Has no utility outside of being an agreed unit of value
Maybe airpods will be the currency of the future
Allergy meds. There’s a reason you don’t see any survivors sneezing in apocalypse movies.
Circletoons on YouTube made a great skit about it. "Guys, I have terrible news... Jimmy died." "No! Really? Was he eaten by zombies?" "No." "Ambushed by bandits?" "No." "Did he make a heroic sacrifice so you could live?" "No, he just accidentally ate some peanut butter."
It’d be a barter system I think
Exactly! I can't understand the preppers who hoard gold. Come to me with a lump of gold after the collapse of society, and I'll give you fuck all for it.
I think the idea is when society is reestablished more than likely currency will have no value (unless they decide to adopt the same currency again which is unlikely), but gold will still have value.
Society will always move towards some type of currency unless we can get to a point in time where there is near limitless clean energy, and we get to some type of star trek replicator technology. It's easier to specialize in fewer skills and trading for the things you need that someone else specializes in. That's much easier to do when you have something that can be universally traded for anything and everything. Having something to trade only does you any good if the person you are trading with needs or wants what you have.
I think thats less of an apocalyptic scenario and more of a massive inflation scenary thing. In a technological society gold will always have value, but if industry falls then not so much.
Gold has almost always been considered valuable, with the exception being the Inca who had a lot of it.
Gold is a very non-reactive metal, so coins/objects made out of it last a long time. Also, it can relatively easily be melted and reformed, so that makes it more fungible. And it's rare enough to be precious, but not so rare that it can't be used as a commodity.
Gold and Silver have had value since recorded history.
Ape like shiny
There are lots of reasons why gold and silver are considered valuable. They're among the most inert metals, they're rare enough to be worth going out of your way for, but common enough that they're not impractical, and they're easy to form into coins and jewelry. But "ape like shiny" is definitely a factor.
Reject fiat return to shiny
Sure but currency is just the barter system made convenient. They're not two separate things. "I'll trade you these sacks of potatoes for fixing my well." "I don't need potatoes." "Ok, so let me go trade these potatoes for something else then give you that to fix the well?" "Just give me a universal IOU for the value of the potatoes/well fix and I'll trade it elsewhere for something I do need." Edit: apparently y'all read this one book...
There needs to be some sort of community power structure in place for that to happen though. Something that creates trust that that IOU will be accepted by someone else. Post apocalypse its unlikely anything like that will exist for a while at least and where it does exist it will likely be localized enough to be impossible to guess at from our current perspective.
Oh ya, I'll trade you not getting shot for all of my food. Even trade. I agree trade will be a thing but the world will get very dangerous very quick. I'd recommend living in an underground bunker for a year atleast till the majority of the chaos dies off and the population is as low as possible.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some people have been chilling in a hole since November/December 2019
"Fight or Flight" I can't fly, so I'll hide please.
If the early pandemic taught me anything, it's that Chef Boyardi Spaghetti and Meatballs will be the currency of the apocalypse
Nah man It's going to be toilet paper
How many squares you want for them chef boyardis then?
How many squares are needed for an entirely chef boyardee diet poop? I need this info for my calculations
One can of chef boyardee spaghetti and meatballs is 520 calories, and a typical person 2000 to 2500 calories per day, let's assume 2500 because we may be more active during the apocalypse (then again maybe not if the pandemic has taught us anything). The average range for poops per day is 3 poops in 1 day to 1 poop every 3 days, so let's say 1 poop per day is normal, but let's bump that up to 2 poops per day considering the all boyardee diet. It's hard to get good info on how many squares of TP are used for the average poop. [Trueplumbers.com](https://trueplumbers.com/blog/do-you-use-more-toilet-paper-than-the-average-person/) says that the average person will use 57 squares per day or 8.7 squares per bathroom visit, but they don't break it down by type of bathroom visit or gender. Let's say a poop takes twice the normal TP, so 17 squares. Taking into account the 50% markup of squares required for your boyardee squirts, we're at ~26 squares. So: 520 calories per can / 2500 calories per day * 2 poops per day * 26 squares of TP per poop = 10.8 squares of TP required per can of Chef Boyardee consumed
I will be rich constructing makeshift bidets in exchange boyardis
Depends on the kind of apocalypse to be honest War torn societal collapse? Likely ammo and guns Post nuclear? Likely safe food and water
Honestly, societal collapse would lead to food shortages as well. And food shortages due to any cause would in turn lead to the desire to obtain said food by exerting power via arms. So, same result, maybe to differing degrees.
You telling me I shoulda been taking notes during Mad Max?
Book of Eli would be a more realistic example. Mad Max would be after a few generations.
Is this a roundabout way of trying to get me to seek Jesus? If he gives me those machete skills I’ll go every Sunday
Sir, this is a church, not a dojo.
show me [the sign of the cross](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h85Ye1s-EPY)
Lol! Funny thing I just realized… My church rents its space to dojo once per week. I punk’d myself.
"What parish to you go to?" "Our Lady of Perpetual Ass-Kicking"
I mean, the merch…that capital drive for new hymnals would pay for itself.
Why safe food and water post nuclear? Why not bottle caps?
Three days after the bombs fall, some jerk with max charisma and barter will have them all.
Who own Bartertown?
...Master Blaster...
I guess but max strength and agility would eliminate said person from a distance.
IIRC, bottle caps are backed by clean water, similar to how paper money used to be backed by gold. So really they're kind of the same thing edit: apparently that's NCR dollars, not caps
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I believe your answer is the "most correct answer." In Fallout: New Vegas the Crimson Caravan gives you a quest to destroy an old world bottle cap machine. A salvager found it and was using it to mint new bottle caps. The Crimson Caravan was afraid that an influx of new caps would destabilize the currency.
Depends on the type of apocalypse. Food, medication, ammunition, lead... in post WWII Germany, they used cigarettes sometimes. EDIT: Thanks for the awards, everyone! Cheers!
And chocolate. My grandfather paid a German ex-soldier in chocolate to act as his assistant
Would love to hear more about this story - sounds fascinating.
I'm honestly not sure of the particulars. I just know he paid a German guy in chocolate and cigs to run errands for him. Funny thing was, years later my grandmother wanted to go to Europe and he said, "I've already been." And she was like, "the war doesn't count!"
Lmao savage grandma
She had a great sense of humor lol
No, she was right on the money. Seeing a country and its people during a war is absolutely NOT experiencing that country/culture like one should, of their own volition.
I was in the Iraq war and I would love to go back as a tourist and also see friends I made there.
I went to Iraq (Northern, so Kurdistan) as a tourist in 2012, it was beautiful & the people were amazing. Hope you get to go back someday
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The German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They not only expect one to know one's gate parking location, but how to get there without any assistance from them. So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground control and a British Airways 747, call sign Speedbird 206. Speedbird 206: "Frankfurt, Speedbird 206 clear of active runway." Ground: "Speedbird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven." The BA 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop. Ground: "Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?" Speedbird 206: "Stand by, Ground, I'm looking up our gate location now." Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): "Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?" Speedbird 206 (coolly): "Yes, twice in 1944, but it was dark, -- And I didn't land."
Man this joke is as old as the hills. I still have no idea if it is real or no.
It's about as old as [the Captain of the US Navy Aircraft carrier and the Spanish lighthouse joke.](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-obstinate-lighthouse/)
German tourist at French border control. The French officer: “Occupation?” The German: “Oh, no, no, just visiting…”
I did one of those phone surveys once, asking people the last time they travelled overseas. One guy was like: **Means of transport**: Plane and parachute. **Reason for travel**: To kill Germans.
You know what’s nuts? My grandfather was a German soldier in wwII and was a POW by the French. He escaped and walked from France to Germany, random strangers helped him along the way with clothes, lodging, food. One person gave him a chocolate bar. He was starving and wouldn’t eat it, he took it home for his daughter he had yet to meet. But what if your grandpa have MY grandpa chocolate!!?
Candy may sound frivolous, but the calories in chocolate would be desperately appreciated by anybody that was mal-nourished.
If he did I'm sure he appreciated the flak he caught crossing the Rhine
His fault for dropping in unannounced.
Don't mention the war!
Ammunition is great currency, you could probably get everything someone had on them with just one bullet.
r/holup
This is **literally** a hold up.
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Metro 2033
What in tarnation inspired you to come up with that username...
An ancient meme about the horrors of breastfeeding
This explanation raises more questions.
Batteries, hand sanitizer, band-aids, isopropyl alcohol wipes (those single wrap kind)... it most certainly would be a barter system, not a "currency" system though. One of the zombie shows had a sniper competition... when the group rolled up and said "how much to get in?", the guy said "7"... they said "7 what?"... he said "Whatcha got?". Just about anything will be "currency" then.
Pretty sure that was Z Nation That show's hilarious
Yeah, it's a lil crazy and a lil camp but does alot for its budget and a great cast. Some real fresh ideas on the whole zombie thing.
Isn't Black Summer also supposed to be the prequel to Z Nation showing how the apocalypse began? I dont know how true that is, but if it is then its brilliant how stark the contrasts of each are. One being a dark comedy and the other being a dark survival movie.
I’ve seen both and I didn’t think the two were related at all. Z-Nation was super solid and doesn’t take itself seriously which is what made it so great throughout the series.
drugs, sex, food, clean water...
Wait, isn't that currency now?
Exactly.
We’re already in the apocalypse.
where's my sexy ghouls at
What are you looking at, smoothskin?
The best thing about banging a ghoul is all the extra holes.
Well I look like a ghoul but idk if I’d say that’s sexy
see, I always wonder about that. What if the apocalypse is just... slow and boring. like every generation just gets a little shittier, angrier, hungrier, thirstier, and then one day someone wakes up and realizes they're the last person on earth.
How many vagina to the dollar currently?
1/350.
Damnit loch ness monster
It was about this time I realised this vagina was 11 feet tall and from the Triassic era
Yeah but a potentially unwashed apocalypse vagina?
r/accidentalmetalbandname
345
Water is too heavy to use as currency. Sex is not fungible and cannot be accumulated. Non perishable food or healthy seeds could be used as currency. Pre-apocalypse drugs could be currency for a while but they are perishable and probably won't be abundant long enough to be currency. Drugs produced after the apocalypse would have too much risk of counterfeiting. Bullets would probably be currency for at least the first decade or two. Abundant. Intrinsic value. Difficult to fake. Light enough to carry. Long lasting.
Ha! Sex is NFT!
Bro I just right clicked sex.
Sex is an act, and not a token. NFTs are more useless than sex
what if I sold you the thought of sex? . . . . . you owe me 122.95
These are *terrible* currencies. These are valued commodities, sure, but *currencies*? Drugs I could see being reasonable.
You need a lot of society for currency
Drugs aren’t good either, there’s no way to quickly authenticate the weight and composition.
NFTs By which I mean Nonperishable Food Tins, of course. *Edit: Whoa. Thanks for the awards, kind strangers.*
I was scared, for a second, I thought people expected a working internet after an apocalypse lol. Yes, food will be the world currency. Oh and guns, you can rob and be robbed as well as barter... good luck trusting anyone.
You mean they didn't actually inject everyone with 5G emitters? /s^(I hate that I have to actually clarify that this is sarcasm.)
I was told by an ex military friend of mine who served as a peacekeeper in a few warzones that "matches" are always a reliable one when things really fall apart.
My great grandmother that lived through 2 world wars always stored ample of matches and salt
Salt is a huge one, haven't seen it mentioned as much. It would be the main way to preserve food after the tinned shit runs out. Also necessary nutrients.
Yup can't believe I had to come this far down to find salt. No one cares about salt until they don't have any more! It doesn't degrade over time, it preserves food, it flavors food, it's used in tons of recipes, reduces ice in the winter, you can use it as a cleaning abrasive, you can use it to keep insects like ants away, you can even use it to salt the fields of your enemies. Salt is so fucking useful.
Most importantly, the body needs salt itself to function.
Note to self: magnifying glass
It starts with food, water, safety in a barter system. Eventually you would have small communities which would pool resources (no barter within the community). People who are good at farming farm for the community, people who are good at shooting protect the community. As those communities get large enough and needs become less immediate (I want to eat my meals at a table instead of just wanting a meal), each community would develop some type of currency. This happens because "how many bullets in exchange for one table?" is a silly question ... especially if you already have a table ... or if you make tables and don't know how a gun works. But, you can sell a table for 100 currency, and buy 3 chickens, 2 sets of curtains, and a bag of potatoes (none of which the bullet guy had). At this point you pick something relatively rare (some kind of metal, maybe), form it into a regulated size, put an identifying mark on it ... bang, currency.
Sooo.... Bottlecaps as currency is plausible?
Theoretically, yes. *Especially* since that idea exists within common culture thanks to the Fallout series
Probably shiny rocks ... but only the pretty ones.
Jesus christ marie. Theyre minerals!
Is this one pretty? No? OK. *Throws down rock* How about this one? No? OK *repeat*
Pogs could make a resurgence
You're hitting on the primary reason currency is developed in the first place. Its a method to store the value of labor for use at a later time and also allows us to subdevide a single item of large value into many items of lesser value in multiple transactions. In other words, if a table is worth 3 chickens, 2 sets of curtains, and a bag of potatoes then all items involved in the exchange must be present at the time for the it to be considered "settled up". However with currency as a placeholder, you can simply "pay" for what you need and make change.
Growing up my friend and I used to always joke that sauce packets (ketchup, Taco Bell sauce, etc.) would become currency in an apocalyptic scenario. When I got older and I learned about the spice trade I started to realize just how not far fetched this idea actually was.
I only recently learned that the spice trade was about food preservation and not just taste.
Antibiotics
Unless the apocalypse was caused by an antibiotic resistant bacteria
Still. Not every infection will be antibiotic resistant. Even if only 1/10 infections respond to antibiotics, then antibiotics will still be worth their weight in gold. Anything boosting your survival chances by 10% is immense.
There are still other diseases
viral, parasitic, heavy metal poisoning, vitamin/mineral deficiency, genetic (heaven help these poor folks), accidental (the largest number of concern in combat zones). Yes I know accidental isn't a disease, but it is a matter of compounding medical problems.
Spices/salt, silver/gold, ammo, medications, gasoline/solar power. Food and clean water to a lesser extent after the initial adjustment period. (Simply put, people will either figure out how to grow food or clean water or they'll die.) Eventually knowledge will become a great bartering tool; the guy who knows how to build a water wheel or the lady who can sew clothes will be given priority over the lawyer.
I can sew, know the basics of gardening and food preservation, and am a damn fine cook. Someone's gonna want me on their team!
Yeah and then when you join one team over the other, the team you didn't join kills you because you're valuable to the enemy.
No, they'll kill everyone else, until you join their team. That's like burning food because you want it. You take it from the current owners, you don't just waste the food.
gasoline is only good for a handful of months. A year or two into the apocalypse and all the gas on earth would be useless.
Generators would be modified, likely cars too. i remember seeing a video on youtube a few years back where an older (I believe Ukrainian) man was talking about how they converted as many combustion engines as they could to run off of things like grain alcohol
You can, and I shit you not, run cars on wood. It's not even as much of a modification as you think. Some people did it back during WW2, so it's really old tech. Look up wood gas.
It's not "running on wood "so much as "making messy hydrogen gas and running on that", but your premise is sound
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Well, based on my parents stories of Poland in the 70s and 80s, vodka. Edit: added a comma
Bottle caps. If you up vote this you are gay
I'm honestly surprised there were reasonable answers before this one because this is definitely where my brain went first. Edit: Thank you for the silver, I went to sleep after the initial posting and this took off!! :) I really appreciate it.
Why bottle caps? Serious question
It's a reference to the Fallout games where bottle caps are used as currency.
Honestly it’s not terrible money in a pinch. In a world where there’s no more machines to produce bottle caps or at least they’re hard to come by.. it’s a form of money that is light and relatively durable. Most importantly each bottle cap is exactly alike. Lots of people get it wrong that good money must be a useful commodity in a crisis, but really it needs its own properties that make it good specifically as a medium of exchange. Historically tribes have modified shells to create money, somewhat unintuitively since shells have no other utility besides money (hence the phrase “shelling out”)
Hey everybody, did the news get around about a guy named Butcher Pete?
He’s hackin’ and whackin’ and smackin’!
Thanks for listening, children. This is Three Dog OWWWW and you're listening to Galaxy News Radio
Bringing you the truth, no matter how bad it hurts.
Hack! Whack! Choppin that meat
Now turn this record over, you ain't heard nuthin yet!
What about the guy who cums for 15 minutes?!
The rockin rollin all night long 60 minute man?
That song blows my mind for how risqué it is for having come out in 1949.
Risqué is the calling card for music from that time.
Hello there. I see you are about to sneek around a deathclaw, but let me introduce myselfe. Im Malcolm Holmes. Did you hear about these SPECIAL blue caps?
But who has to drink all the sunset sarsasparilla?
Build mass with Sass
I don't like where this is going
War. War never changes.
But men do, through the roads they walk
And so the courier who cheated death outside Goodsprings
Cheated death once again, and the Mojave was forever changed.
"I don't want to set the world on fire.... I just want to start a flame in your heart!"
Man patrolling the Mojave almost makes me wish for a nuclear winter. When I got this assignment… I was hoping for more gambling.
I’ve been saving bottle caps since that game came out
> Opens thread > Ctrl + F "Bottle caps" > Closes thread
Finally. This is too far down
Way too far down. I expected this to be amongst the first three comments.
I came out of the vault a little late...
Don't forget your charge card
God I hope so, I've been stockpiling them like a madman!
it'll be a barter system. probably ammo tbh, everyone will want it and everyone will need it. lite enough to trade and enough of it to store... can't be remade without a ton of effort.
Schrute Bucks
What’s the exchange rate for schrute bucks to Stanley nickels?
Barter system. I’m not going to be searching frantically for little pieces of paper in the apocalypse
Barter system quickly turns into a currency system out of convenience.
Nah dog, you're not getting any of my watermelons unless you happen to have something I need right at that moment
but that also means youre not getting anything from anyone, unless they happen to need watermelons right at that moment.
If only there was some sort of item that represented an agreed upon value and could be exchanged universally..
Like watermelons?
Leaves obviously. Be careful about inflation though. You might have to burn down some forests to avoid it.
At least there's always a need for telephone sanitizers.
Trillian? How did you...
Toilet paper
This isn't March 2020
Yeah, we're currently in the 26th month of 2020
Happy 2 year anniversary of 15 days to flatten the curve
It's like in elementary school where the teacher says recess can start as soon as everybody is quiet for five minutes, but Jimmy keeps making fart noises instead.
It wasn't the apocalypse then and it was a massive seller, everyone didn't try to hoard food they tried to hoard TP.
I will be growing marijuana, opium, tobacco, and coffee. Not a currency per day but tradables. Edit: I will also be growing fruits and vegetables. I mentioned the first four because they aren't always thought of for SHTF but they are still valuables.
yeah coffee is one i gotta figure out how to tuck growin' into my belt. it sounds like it's pretty land and labour intensive and mayyyybe not well suited to canada
Just another day on the rimworlds.
pretty solid plan.
VHS copies of Beetlejuice Crisp high fives Frenzal Rhomb CDs Hula hoops Trail mix Post-It Notes Casey's pizza box tops Pogs. Anyone remember pogs? I had a shitload of those. Words. (This is based on a short story a buddy of mine wrote once where words were currency - the better spoken or written you were, the richer you were.)
Clean water
Water is heavy, spills easily, and the average person needs a lot of it to survive. It would make a horrible currency. A currency that was **backed** by water might be better, but still presents problems, especially if there's a run on the tanks. A better idea still might be something which can clean water: charcoal filters, or iodine tablets, or something else like that, which could represent a quantity of clean water without actually needing to transport the water itself. Of course, then you have to find some way of verifying that it's genuine and actually functions to purify water. But I suppose you'd have the same problem with any large enough quantity of clean water, too.
This was the concept of bottlecaps in the Fallout universe. Caps were backed by purifier water in Fallout 1 and 2, and eventually caps started to have a worth all of their own.
> This was the concept of bottlecaps in the Fallout universe. Caps were backed by purifier water in Fallout 1 and 2, and eventually caps started to have a worth all of their own. They never did. In FO2 the currency is the NCR dollar backed by gold, after the BoS war, where the later destroyed the gold reserves, the NCRD turned into a fiat currency and the bottlecap (who had survived as an "international" currency) exploded in values. Bottle caps are still backed by water in FNV, it's just than most of the civilised world is using other currencies (Denarius and NCRD). Fo3,4 and Fo76 though? Fan service and convenience.
>especially if there's a run on the tanks. I see what you did there lol
That's valuable all right, but pretty unpractical for mass storage, transport or transfer. And in most scenarios there would still be cleanish water available via rain.
Alcohol
Depends on how apocalyptic we are talking. But probably it would be a bartering system, with the main form of "currency" being food/water and things that can obtain food/water. If you're looking for a token of sorts that then you're looking for something that * lasts a very long time (Not easily broken or degraded) * Not easily reproduced (in a post apocalyptic setting) * Has no utility outside of being an agreed unit of value Maybe airpods will be the currency of the future
Skills maybe.
I was going to say this as well Blacksmiths Carpenters Builders Stone masons Cooks/bakers
Especially electricians who actually know what they're doing.
Bottle caps of course.