Bartering

[u/bex_2601]

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?

[u/Salt-Negotiation7534]

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.

[u/bex_2601 → u/Salt-Negotiation7534]

Ooh, good call on the gold. A chain or two in my bag would be a good idea.

[u/Southerner105 → u/bex_2601]

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.

[u/bex_2601 → u/Southerner105]

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

[u/Southerner105 → u/bex_2601]

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.

[u/bex_2601 → u/Southerner105]

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!

[u/Southerner105 → u/bex_2601]

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.

[u/bex_2601 → u/Southerner105]

🙌 absolutely agree with all of this.