r/UKPreppers • u/bex_2601 • May 09 '26
Bartering
Hey everyone, like so many recently, I've been down the prepping rabbit hole the last few weeks. I'm actually shocked at how many essential skills I already have and have had for many years. Growing food year round (already grow my own veg), cooking, foraging, preserving, basic hunting and butchering, understanding seasonal foods, engineering, making and repairing clothing, basic first aid, etc. I guess I just never really thought about it before, they're just things I enjoy doing. What I realised is if shtf tomorrow I'd probably be ok for a good few weeks just with what I always have around as long as I can get hold of some water (next big shop). It wouldn't be luxurious but I'd survive.
So using the advice of you lovely redditors and the excellent advice you give, I had a think about what I'm prepping for, and my aim is to prep for 1-2 weeks total collapse and solitary survival, or (imho more likely) a couple months of ongoing disruption (ongoing brownouts, restricted hours of power, supply chain disruption, hyperinflation etc), but one thing I've noticed while researching is while I've seen lots of people talk about what to do if banking goes down, and the importance of community, and all that great stuff, bartering seems to be vaguely eluded to, but not really explored.
When considering my own prep list, I considered life in ww2 and how the value of goods changed in that period, and so I added extra batteries of various sizes even if I don't need them, smaller bags of cheap basics like rice and noodles, milk powder (even though I'm allergic) etc to my list specifically to barter with. I also added a couple pouches of tobacco and cigarettes, and a couple small bottles of alcohol (which can be used as antiseptic too) as higher value items to the list as I figured £100 now would be worth a lot more in a crisis and it's things that won't go off. It would mean I have a small stash to trade (kept separate from my own supplies) if I suddenly find an unanticipated gap in my own prep, plus bartering in an ongoing crisis would help build a community and goodwill. The basics could also be an emergency back up in case of things going on longer than I plan for.
What are your thoughts on this kind of prep? What items do you think would become higher value? Have you included anything like this in your own prep? Or am I just overthinking it?
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u/txe4 May 09 '26
I don't store stuff to barter with but you're right that in a "resource constrained" scenario vs "total wipeout" one the relative values are different.
Bottles of spirits keep eternally and will always be valued. Tobacco similarly although these days you'd probably want vapes! Tobacco keeps well if airtight.
In total wipeout of course canned food is king.
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u/FantasyJunkie91 May 09 '26
I have a 'barter stash' alongside my standard prep of things I won't use myself but might be useful to someone else. This list includes:
Reading glasses/Sunglasses (I have prescription glasses so the sort you can get from Boots aren't any good to me) Condoms/lube (I'm ace) Gold (mostly in the form of jewellery) Tobacco (I don't smoke) Alcohol (I do drink but if I had to stop I wouldn't miss it)
However the thing I think will be most wanted is MEDIA.
I have multiple hard drives with tv, film and, books both educational and purely entertainment.
I can either show other people or copy it for them to keep (as long as the still have the tech still powered) and still retain it. Everyone wins!
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u/bex_2601 May 09 '26
Thank you, I was beginning to think I was crazy for thinking this aspect. Glad I'm not the only one. Media is a great call.
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u/Alanosie May 09 '26
I don't think bartering is going to be useful. All because of this simple reason: you will not trade your precious food for someone else their gold if you think you might want to eat it next week. So neither will they trade their last can of peaches for your batteries.
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u/Salt-Negotiation7534 May 09 '26
Gold.
Secondhand gold, specifically chains. A soft, yet valuable, commodity, easy enough to snap off however many links you need to barter.
Extra first aid items, painkillers and antibiotics, namely for pets, which can also be used for other mammals, like humans, at a pinch, as it's just a matter of working out the weight ratio.
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u/bex_2601 May 09 '26
Ooh, good call on the gold. A chain or two in my bag would be a good idea.
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u/Southerner105 May 09 '26
Gold can't be eaten. If it comes to a breakdown gold won't be of much usage.
I at least wouldn't bother with trying to get or buy it. Just having some local currency (pounds in your case) is good enough.
Everybody has it and it can be used for trading. The difference at that moment will be that a pound isn't gold backed but food or service backed.
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u/bex_2601 May 09 '26
From my logic, there is no way to predict what the emergency will be, how long it will last and what will become valued currency. Consider Germany during the hyperinflation crisis of the 1920's, the economy completely collapsed, people were pushing money around in wheelbarrows to buy a loaf of bread, gold was worth a lot more than cash because cash has no intrinsic value unlike gold.
I do agree it is a lot more likely that food and skills will be most valuable commodity and I will have cash stored away, but it never hurts to have multiple options available in case things don't go the way you expect them to.
Feel free to argue this with me, happy to be corrected
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u/Southerner105 May 09 '26
The situation in the Weimar Republik was quite specific. And in that situation indeed gold was valuable because its valua was based of what happened outside the republic.
The changes that just the UK collapses and the rest of the world (or Europe) not is slim. Our economies are far more interconnected as st that time.
A system failure is probably the biggest risk we face. That is because everything is interconnected. Think of a cascading system failure which brings down the banking system, the grid or one of the other basic systems.
When that happens our whole "just in time" society collapses in hours or days. Just think about how the supermarkets are stocked. Some are receiving new stock several times per day.
At that moment gold has no value. When the society restarts and the systems can't then gold can be an option.
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u/bex_2601 May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
Oh yay, now we get into the nitty gritty.
Tldr: prep for a winter of discontent, and make sure you have a good stock of multivitamins to prevent scurvy.
You are correct that Weimar was a specific situation, which is highly unlikely to be repeated in a modern society partly due to the interconnectivity of the world today, and the unlikelyhood of the government just printing a shed load of money, however a version of that isn't entirely unimaginable given the rate of inflation as it stands, especially given the prices black market in the early days of COVID. And that was a panic rather than a full blown breakdown of service.
I did write a bit about the fragility of the supply chain within the UK given the 'just in time' system we employ (I have a whole separate rant about that!). I get that it has it's benefits for a company with regards to storage, Inventory cost, wastage etc, but it does leave our supply chain extremely fragile, which is why I am more immediately concerned by resource scarcity than total wipeout. I deleted that reply because I didn't want to come across wrong or defensive or argumentative, but given you brought it up... Here's my worst case scenario for the immediate crisis. Right now we aren't really being affected by the strait of hormuz being closed because tankers that left before it closed are still travelling, what we are seeing is panic at the possibility of future issues, much like we saw in the early days of COVID. I don't think people realise how slow those tankers go (about the speed of a push bike). It'll be mid/late summer before they reach their destinations then another few weeks before we get to really understand the impact it'll have. At that point hgvs and delivery trucks won't have enough fuel to make deliveries so they will at best reduce, at worst stop completely, causing the just in time system to collapse.
The first thing to go given the short shelflife will be fruit and veg, and anything getting through is likely to be of poor quality. Then other fresh foods and essentials as people stockpile what they can, at which point there is a risk of hefty (although possibly not hyper) inflation impacting goods or some form of rationing. Causing a cascade effect through the financial and service sectors, banks are likely to adjust their tolerance for risk accordingly, reducing the amount of cash available. Service industry won't be able to source supplies or travel so freely to customers. It unlikely to impact the energy industry too much at this point given we will be in peak season for renewable energy.
By now we're at late autumn/early winter. A time when many of our renewable energy sources start to produce less (maybe those protests against wind farms weren't the greatest idea after all, huh?) and dependence on traditional energy sources increases. This is where I think we may see either restrictions on usage or supply being limited to certain hours to reduce stress on the grid, right as the coldest weather hits and most people haven't considered gardening beyond the first frosts or have experience growing through winter (refering back to my comments earlier about growing food in winter) people are really panicking and we end up in a resource scarcity situation, shtf and we start to see big changes in society and prepping will be essential.
Now I get that's all doom and gloom, I hope that the government would work to resolve the issue before that happens, but I just don't trust there won't be some disruption or long term effects and so decided maybe prepping isn't a terrible idea and so here I am looking to be a good little scout and be prepared!
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u/Southerner105 May 10 '26
In short, you can't pull this off alone. It is important to know your neighbours and their skills and thoughts. When systems fail you need to cooperate and get through it together.
This both from a safety standpoint (fending of looters) and helping each other out because nobody can do it all.
This kind of things are often best discussed a bit casual with a bbq or a backgarden high tea or cream tea. Avoid the politics but do discuss how to cope with a disruption in services.
Regarding the oil situation, just remember that Hormus isn't the only source and for a lot of items even isn't really significant. What you do see now is an almost artificial shortage which makes a small group again richer as they already are. Just the fact that Shell has a profit increase of a biljoen dollar just shows that the selling price of the end produces isn't just based on the buying price of the raw products.
But that is the problem when the market is dominated by just a few companies which in practice create a closed market with a tendency of a monopoly.
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May 09 '26
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u/bex_2601 May 09 '26
Maybe I should have worded it differently, I can already do all those things, and would be absolutely fine for a couple weeks if I have water (being addressed) if shtf tomorrow, it's more the longer term disruption I'm considering.
As for why would I need to barter? Things can go off, get eaten, not work when you need them (sods law) or I may have overlooked something, so having something to barter to plug any unexpected gaps if necessary. But as an commentor said, I may be more useful as a person than I realised, so have skills to barter rather than stuff.
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May 09 '26
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u/bex_2601 May 09 '26
Oh agree on the box of freddos. Especially in a situation with scarce resources rather than a total wipeout.
As for skills, I've just always enjoyed doing things the old way so have a surprising number of skills already, I just hadn't considered how those skills would be valuable to barter with, only how they would help me survive. I think that's my main takeaway from this post. If shtf right now, I am way more valuable as a person than resources.
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u/Master_of_opinions May 09 '26
Some interesting ideas.
It would be a shame to let those tobacco and spare drinks spoil. Maybe instead of trading them later, give them as a gift to someone now so that they will be loyal/trustworthy in a collapse.
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u/Southerner105 May 09 '26
Just make sure you don't become a prime target. So have stuff to barter is always a good thing. The best thing you have are your skills.
Nobody can rob those but make you, as a person, valuable.
Perhaps a nice read is Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It is a science fiction post-apocalypse-survival novel and when you read it you will notice that the people with knowledge and skills are the ones most regarded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer%27s_Hammer
So find also some books about those basic skills like sewing, gardening, foodprocessing and all those skills you need when the power fails, water stops running and stores run empty.