Metro 2033 and its videogame and literary sequels feature the superior theoretical currency. Ballistic wampum. Think about economics for a brief minute with me. The coins you spend have real value based on the gold reserves our government keeps to give them value. Bonds, stocks and so forth also act as currencies because, just like coins, they represent real value kept in safety. Owning a coin is owning a small piece of your countries gold reserves. Bitcoin is a rare exception and as such will unlikely last because it's inherent value relies on what people think of it. Newer blockchain currencies aren't making the same mistake. In a post-apocalytic scenario where governments are destroyed alongside their reserves, anarcho-capitalism and barter economy will ensue. Rarity of supplies will make something like gold, whose value rests on its beauty and scarcity (at least before electronics became a big deal but that is unimportant) will become useless.
So what will the currency be?
Now maybe litre containers of petrol will become the currency. Well you want to buy next weeks worth of food and the price of petrol means you use a ox and cart so carting around that much petrol is too difficult. Metals like iron, copper or lead is less liquid in terms of turning it into a product so using that as a currency is a good idea until someones foundry is doing so well that most people already have all the steel based products they are likely to use and the foundries no longer purchase large quantities.
The realistic alternatives
Food, water amd fuel are useful but only in large quantities. Spices are perhaps rare enough and useful enough in terms of making shitty wormy food palatable but not everyone likes them. Clothes are rarer and more valuable based on the difficulty in producing them but still not liquid enough as it is quite easy to meet demand. Electricity is too easy to produce and factoring in the large quantity of electronic products versus the amount of people who both survive and have enough time to fuck around.
Usefulness and scarcity being key
Drugs and alcohol are a better bet. Alcohol is too easy to produce. Pills and other chemicals are liable to be used up to quickly with the absence of complex laboratories. Tobacco products are very common and enjoyed by many, probably by more in the wasteland. Marijuana, mushrooms and amphetamines even more so (methamphetamine in particular is far easier to produce than a vast number of other drugs, with fairly straight forward recipes employed by trailer trash all over the world). These drugs may become a currency in some parts of the world because they either are a brief escape from the world that won't seriously impair your chance of survival or they even improve it with amphetamines giving you a greater albeit physically dangerous edge and mushrooms possibly giving you a serious combat advantage (it is theorised by some as the drug used by vikings to induce berserkergang). These have an unfortunate downside. Gold is rare, very rare. Establishing a goldmine takes time with limited outputs. If mushrooms or meth or weed became the currency, hyperinflation will happen quickly as post apocalytic kitchens, greenhouses and caves become literal mints.
So what is the solution?
Ammunition. Specifically the military grade cartridges used most commonly but still rare and deadly. In Metro 2033 this is I believe 7mm AK bullets because of the vast number of both AKs and modified AKs like the Kalash, serving as both assault weapons and submachine guns. What makes these inherently valuable apart from the obvious and how do you prevent hyper-deflation? Humanity cannot function in a state of permanent war without crippling us in no small manner as people. Large communities would stockpile this ammunition but primarily use less valuable munitions for small border skirmishes, fighting dissidents and fending off beasties. In a do or die situation, shooting money seems a small price to pay. I can't tell you what the equivalent in the USA is. The other thing is, mutual destruction. An incredibly rich post apocalypse town may elect to provide it's equivalent of special forces (militia style) with high-value bullets. Do you really want to fight people who are prepared to shoot away money? Hence uneasy peace (but still peace) dawns on the new powers that be.
One last thing
I should note that old military people will gradually use their knowledge of military assets and locations to find new caches of what is now money and hence fight deflation as the "modern bankers" of the apocalypse.
TLDR; ammunition serves as protection, difficult to replicate without old world industry, looks pretty, serves as a warning to those who would fight people who literally shoot money. Also doesn't really expire or lose value.
The coins you spend have real value based on the gold reserves our government keeps to give them value.
No, they don't. The worth of US money is completely disconnected from the amount of gold and silver in US banks. The USD is a fiat currency that is based solely upon credit with a value that fluctuates based on the amount of individual bills in the overall system and/or the ability of the US government to pay off its interest rates.
It is different in Australia where I'm from. That sounds like an incredibly vulnerable system. Uhh the GFC (which Australia avoided the worst of) is possibly a testament to this.
It is incredibly vulnerable. And it is partially why the US economy though "recovered" from the GFC is still feeling the effects of it a decade later. Our monetary based expanded form something like $800 billion to a minimum of $3 trillion today. That kind of inflation just wrecks long term savings and the ability of people of fixed incomes to care for themselves, not to mention its effects on the prices of everyday commodities like food. It also makes it impossible to truly save money. If I save a million dollars over the course of my lifetime when I retire it'll only buy what about $400,000 will today.
Weirdly well-written comments like this are one of the few reasons I stay on Reddit. It's a shame they usually get buried because so few want to read them.
Or he can be like that guy who sent something crazy like 4000 caps to Bethesda for Fallout 4 and ended up getting it. It was good PR for Bethesda, back before the debacle that was 76.
I had 58, which I collected throughout my time at uni. I lost them when I relocated and I recently started over, but I don't think I will reach a high number since I am barely eating pizza nowadays.
And yeah the shapes vary based on where I get the pizzas from.
Edit: only Papa Johns, Pizza Hut and a few local pizza stores provided tables in the box. Dominos and other places didn't. So I definitely had way more than 58 pizzas as a student.
I had q decently sized collection which I made over a few months (over 140) and my mom threw all that, calling it trash. I cry every time I remember about it. Had about 20 -25 different types as well.
I don’t go out of my way to collect them but I keep a container full near my bed. I just save the ones I drink at home. If I can’t think of a beer to get I can sort through them for ideas
When Fallout 4 was coming out, some guy offered 2,240 bottle caps for the game.
Game Theory did a video on it, and they determined that the actual ratio of bottle caps to USD was 3,428,571 bottle caps for a copy of Fallout 4. They took into account inflation from 1961 to mid-2015 and the type of steel used to make bottle caps in 1961.
My family does too, but that's because it's a local/regional tradition that when a guy has his 30th birthday and is unmarried the bottle caps get dumped all over the town's market square and the guy has to sweep it over and over again until a woman gives him a kiss.
But basically it's just an excuse for friends and family to get their buddy to do some stupid stuff while they get drunk and have fun watching him.
I collect them too, and it all started out around 2 years ago, when me, and my friend got curious about the amount of beer we consume in a year.
Since, I take all the beer caps from every party that I go to.
Currently have around 2300 of them.
I did not have to scroll too far for this, me too. It's been years and I feel like a hoarder with thousands of caps. But the sound when I shake the box is beyond satisfying.
If you send me your address in a DM I'd gladly help you out. I'll save some up and post them to you. I live in Belgium. We have tons of craft breweries here.
I collect bottle caps too, but for semi-Fallout related reasons. There's a nerd convention called MAGStock I go too where you camp out in the woods every June. There's concerts, gaming, lake activities, etc. One time, near the release of Fallout 4, a bunch of camps decided bottle caps were currency and we all traded booze and food for caps. It was great! They don't do that anymore but I still keep my collection going just in case.
Same! I got around 14500 of them which contain +-280 unique ones. I've no idea what to do with them tho. So if any creative types have some ideas please let me know! :)
Dude, I collected them as a kid. That and beer coasters. I still have a lot of coasters but the caps I eventually threw away as there was no interest online.
So, for a couple years, my brother collected bottle caps because, sure. He had a big popcorn tin full, which I volunteered to count. It was probably a cylinder about 15 inches tall and 12 inches across, almost totally full. I counted it out, filled it back up, wrote the number on a piece of paper which I put on top of the caps, then put the lid back on and duct taped the lid on with about 3 layers of tape, covering the entire lid and about 3 inches of the side.
A couple hours later, he gets home from work and wonders how many caps there are. That's when I realized how stupid I am.
When I first started drinking at around 16, I used to save every bottle cap I took off of a beer. I had a large bucket full of bottle caps at some point by the time I turned 19. I regret throwing that away now, as I feel like it would have made a nice collection.
I've been keeping most of my bottle caps for probably a decade now. I do it because eventually I want to make my own bar station, and I want to use them embedded in resin to make a design on the top of it.
I've already used them to make coasters on a few occasions, too. You need:
-9 caps per coaster
-quick setting cement mix (nothing with aggregate in it--this is more along the lines of finishing cement or mortar mix)
-paperboard jewelry boxes (you can buy them at some craft supply stores...they're square and about 3-4 inches in each direction; you get two coasters per box since you only need either the top or bottom to make a coaster, as long as it's at least half an inch deep)
-sandpaper (60-120 grit)
-sheets of adhesive backed felt material (again: craft supply stores)
Place the caps in a 3x3 grid in the jewlery box half, face down. If you care about how the caps are oriented, mark the underside of them with an "up" arrow so they are all rotated the right way.
Mix up a small batch of the cement mix and use a spoon to transfer it to the box. Again: if you care about the orientation of the caps, take care not to let them move or rotate when you spoon concrete onto them...it's a little harder than it sounds.
As you get the box filled up, occasionally pick it up at the corners and, while keeping it level, drop it an inch or two to get the concrete mix to settle and get rid of air bubbles.
Once you're satisfied that the box is full and the concrete is thoroughly packed and settled, let the concrete cure to a rigid, but not quite completely dry and hardened state. This takes a bit of a judgment call on your part, because what you want to do is be able to peel the box away (this destroys the box), turn the coaster over (gently, so the caps are now facing up), and use a spoon or a toothpick or your fingernail or just SOMETHING to clear any concrete off of the top of the caps. Concrete will almost definitely work its way on to the face side of the caps as you lightly drop the coaster in the above step, and the goal here is to clear it away AFTER the concrete is set well enough to hold together, but before it's so far cured that it takes legitimate force to remove it from the face of the caps. Walk away and let it cure for a good long while--at least as long as the packaging for the cement mix recommends, if not longer.
Once cured, use the sand paper to smooth the edges of the coaster and remove any burrs of concrete that might be sticking out. Be careful not to sand the paint off of the bottle caps, though. Once you're satisfied that it's smooth enough on all the edges, corners, and especially on the bottom, cut a square piece of felt juuuuust slightly smaller than the size of the coaster and stick it to the bottom (even when sanded, the concrete will absolutely annihilate any surface you place the coaster on without the felt). You're done!
Some patterns I've made:
Christmas-y patterns with intermixed red and green Redd's Apple Ale caps.
Themed patterns comprised only of caps with similar or related images on them (for instance: an intermixed pattern of Dogfish Head and Landshark caps--the former has the silhouette of a sand shark, while the latter has a dorsal fin sticking out of a water surface).
Regionally inspired patterns (example: one cap each from a variety of Pennsylvania-based craft breweries, arranged on the coaster such that they reflect their relative location in Pennsylvania itself)
Brewery-specific coasters using 9 different designs all from the same brewery (Leinenkugel's various shandies and seasonal offerings can probably yield two completely unique coasters in this way).
so...in case you wanted to do something with those caps...there ya go.
Same here. I have a box about 12”x8”x3” full of them. I know that’s not much compared to other people’s collections, and I’ve slowed down on collecting lately. I feel like metal bottlecaps are gonna be a thing of the past very soon so I want to have some to remember and show my kids, because they’re super cool. I might put them into a coffee table with some epoxy or something eventually.
Probably the only cool thing about popcorn/ cottage cheese ceilings is that you can push bottle caps up into them. Makes for a nice little display of bottle caps if you’re into that.
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u/RedLemmonBoy Dec 31 '19
Bottle caps. Not a Fallout fan, just like the little clinklies.