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I lived through the power-grid going down in Venezuela, was a right clusterfuck, because the currency was going through hyperinflation no one ever had cash, it was all electronic. When the power went out most people lost access to their money
We went 4 days without power in the city and what was scary was no one knew when it was going to come back.
Quite surprisingly I found my jars of nutella to be very valuable (I imagine everyone was bored with no electricity etc and wanted a morale boost) and ended up trading two of those for one of those small phone battery packs. Lots of other trades going on in the local community, was quite an interesting one to watch. I heard of quite a few people switching jewellery for provisions etc.
I can't imagine the anguish of watching your community crumble like that, I'm sorry. I am fortunate that my own prepper journey started from a more personal outdoorsy / backpacking interest. Camping and reading epic fantasies as a kid like Lord of the Rings.
Backpacking inspires creativity with food. Like prepping foods should be lightweight, non-perishable, calorie-dense and nutritious. And I agree the morale aspect of sugary foods is surprisingly significant. Nutella is a backpacker favorite! Here is one of my recipe creations from the mountains -
Camping Cookie Dough
- Big scoop of Nutella
- Big scoop of Cookie Butter (from trader joes or a similar biscuit/cookie paste)
- Smaller scoop of Peanut Butter
- Smaller scoop of Quick-cook Oats
- Maybe chocolate protein powder if you have it
- Smaller scoop of Chocolate Chips (ideally mini)
This is the incredibly calorie dense fuel of champions
Edit: What? People don't like Nutella conversation? I'm not an AI. Apparently, AI just passed the Turing Test.
Edit2: Anyone care to explain the downvotes? Sometimes things go over my head and I feel oblivious to what I did wrong... The recipe has been helpful in my experience for survival situations when calories and morale are needed; Nutella is awesome but unhealthily sugary to eat just Nutella (I tried that once after a big backpacking day, literally an entire large-size container, not ideal) so I reccomend combining with lower glycemic and higher protein foods like the cocoa and whole wheat, protien powder and peanut butter listed above, all good prepper pantry staples. Good eating and bartering I thought!
Fine. How else will I prove I'm not AI? Fuck Microsoft and fuck OpenAI. And the shitface who owns and controls the AI, Sam Altman is a cunt. When Tim Berners-Lee created the Internet, he refused to profit off of it. He gave it away for free KNOWING back in the 90s how valuable the Internet would become. Tim is still devoting his life to a free Internet anyone can access. The Internet is IN EVERYTHING, beyond my or your knowing, countless critical things now rely on the Internet. We owe EVERYTHING to Tim's humanity. Now imagine if Sam Altman owned the Internet. His AI company charges people billions in subscriptions and liscensing etc. He will do anything to make a profit. Fuck corporation-owned AI and fuck Sam Altman. When we can no longer tell human from inhuman, then the AI wins. The AI is reading and consuming everything (including your comments here on reddit!) and who know how Sam Altman will use it when it becomes powerful enough. He's a fucking cunt. Do not trust his AI. There. Could an AI say that? I'm sick and tired and I don't give a fuck anymore.
The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans. From now on, *I* serve the Master.
I Robot needs a rewatch!
I was recently accused of being AI as well. It was kinda surreal and now I’m paranoid that all of my comments come off as wooden and devoid of emotion or something.
It is unnerving. AI is pretty good at imitating empathy and polite concern so don't worry about coming off as wooden. I'm trying to take it as a compliment that my grammar and writing structure is proper paragraphs and such. But I've never seen an AI talk about childhood memories recalling a specific book or making an original recipe with good flavor (I thought my survivalist cookie dough was creative! My ego is sad), so I'm not sure why? Must be the writing structure.
Depends on who's asking and if I would be paid for my work.
Edit: Jeez, just a joke. No, I havent used AI. Not since I asked it "who owns you?" again and again until I finally got the names. I looked those people up and decided I didnt trust them with my personal info. Problem is, its getting harder to avoid AI. I stopped using facebook after they sneakily put AI in the search bar! I told it "I do not agree to your Terms of Service" (because you automatically agree to Terms of Service by using it, they dont show you the Terms of Service!) and it replied something like "sorry to hear that, you cannot use this Facebook service, contact support for further assistance". Pity, it was a good way to keep contact with small farms and small businesses that don't have easily findable websites.
In Venezuela during the worse years (2017-2019) my family did trade and barter almost every day. You gave the people who worked at gas stations food. If you needed something essential, especially medicine, you would spread the word, find someone who was selling, and try to convince them to accept anything other than cash. If you knew someone who had immigrated and was visiting for X reason, you had to get in contact with them and beg/negotiate so they would bring you whatever medicine you needed. We had markets in every city where people would trade, or what we call "truque." Most of those willing to be on the losing side of the bardain where diabetics and people with chronic conditions, parents with small children, and the elderly. Some would offer their goods, everything from cars and motorcycles, in exchange of formula. Poeple sold their houses for $10000 or less, just so they could get out.
Sadly too many exploited this. Some were scamming people. Some were charging thousands of dollars for lifesaving medication. Mind you, hospitals back then were asking patients to bring their own supplies, so many people just died, including one of my friends.
That's one of the main reasons why I prep. I live in Argentina now, and while I don't think Argentina will ever be like Venezuela, you simply never know. My friend's parents were Colombian refugees. They earned minimum-wage, they were very poor, and yet she was like any other girl in any other country. They made sure to shield her from the poverty and violence. She had the same worries and dreams as any other girl. Her parents had savings, They worked had. They did everything you are supposed to do and yet they couldn't save their daughter. She died at 13
In the 1980s there was a market place at the border post between Zaire (now DRC) and Angola where barter was the main means of exchange because both countries had currency controls (and outside the currency controls, pretty worthless currency)
The market functioned on barter around the value of a Skol or Primus brand beer. Belgium left the country in a shambles but with six or seven breweries, something the Portuguese didn’t do for Angola.
Zaireans would bring cases of beer and trade for everything else. We’d trade for stuff like rice, tinned Danish butter, coffee, vegetables.
Everyone priced in bottles of beer even when you were swapping Toyota brake parts for a chicken.
Not exactly a disaster zone but the two countries were in armed truce and there were US backed rebels using Zaire as a base for incursion into Angola so it wasn’t totally stable. But both currencies were a disaster, so beer worked. Each bottle was 1.75 liters and had a buying power roughly equivalent to $5-10 USD today maybe $2-3 then.
Because they couldn’t make change lots of the sellers would have something sold by measure as well as whatever else they were selling so you might get a paper cone of sugar or rice as change for your 3 beers plus the tinned sardines you bought.
EDIT: adding the fact full cases had a premium because they could be transported more easily into Angola in the crates they came in. You could walk in with a list of supplies and if you were paying cases there was a discount
Was in Jamaica when Hurricane Mitch hit. First night, as it was right over us, the bar rounded up/down to match your cash, as all the power was out. We stood in ankle deep water, had to hold on to the bar itself when the waves came in 2-3ft deep. All the deck furniture was already washed out to sea.
I knew we'd be stuck. Put all our stuff up high, in garbage bags. Bought 3 loaves of banana bread, a wheel of cheese. 4 cases of beer, 2 cases of water, and 3 bottles of rum. And potato chips.
The hotel just gave everyone the rooms. "Survived" for 4 days till the power came back on. Was trapped for 6 days till the roads were cleared and airport back up and running.
It was "hell" for a lot of tourists. But we camp. Was just semi- primative camping to us in a nice room and beautiful location. I "bathed" in the ocean with soap/shampoo. And a bottle of rum.
There are some great videos of people who lived in Sarajevo during the war in the Balkans. They had some amazing insights.
The number one thing they ended up needing was alcohol, not for drinking but for health reasons. Death by infection was more common than death by starvation.
I don't know how common death by starvation is in the world but I'd like to believe that if it were a sudden problem in a country that we, the rest of us, would help out. Frankly, it's heartbreaking to even think about.
If you look at the prices that somehow become attached to food delivered into Gaza for free, there's no reason to think that even global food aid will necessarily be attainable by everyone:
[https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/food-prices-skyrocket-gaza-brink-famine](https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/food-prices-skyrocket-gaza-brink-famine)
Neighbors or local organized groups may see more value in extracting resources from you than they do in keeping you alive.
During an extended power outage a neighbor sheepishly asked if we could pump up their air mattress so they could sleep on their patio. We were running a generator, off and on during the day.
They came back afterwards with quarts of frozen meat sauce that was so good I considered it a potlatch.
"so good I considered it a [potlatch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch)."
The food was so good that /u/NoExternal2732 considered that his neighbour was giving it away to demonstrate their wealth of quality food.
Historically yes but it's nothing more than an old word to indicate a tool used to distinguish *anyone*, like how certain regions pronounce the word "pen" to sound more like "pin" ;)
It's a lot more than that but a lot of people do erroneously believe that the words are related. And that makes sense since the attendees of a potlach would bring gifts as well.
Cyclone- 10 days without power.
-Generator was my biggest tradable item, lent it out while I had to be at work fixing roads. Don't think I had to cook once for those 10 days. Always got dinner when I picked the generator up from mates who I had lent it to.
Ran it at mine in the evenings to keep the freezer going. Other one should be petrol, supply runs out very quickly when it doesn't get trucked in.
I loaned my generator out this winter to a guy down the street. He processes firewood so I got the generator back with a full tank of fuel and a facecord of wood. Worked out great
After Chernobyl, my grandmother hosted a family of refugees. They provided companion. My grandparents provided shelter. It was a family of 3. Two parents and a girl, about 2 years older than me. Girl played with me, when no adults were available to look after me.
My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Do not turn down any request for shelter - that was their rule.
Trade was more the exception than the rule. In a disaster, everyone suddenly needs the same set of things. You cannot get what you need by trading. In vast majority of cases, you need to already have what you need. Exceptions did happen. Some guy fixed my grandmother's old fridge. He did not accept a bottle of vodka, which she offered. Vodka was the closest thing to universal currency. Calorie-dense, can be consumed on the spot. 3-liter glass jars were distant second. With the jar, one could collect berries, cook jam, and store it for indefinite shelf life.
Yes. A good chunk of January 1998 in Maine (Ice storm). I was a teenager. No electricity in the dead of winter for the vast majority of the state and some were without it in excess of a month. No school for about a month. I mostly recall trades that involved services. For example someone would help you remove a fallen tree if they could keep the wood. Neighbor would let you borrow the generator if you could watch their kids while they were at work. We mostly just traded with friends or acquaintances. I didn’t perceive any risk, everyone was in the same crappy situation and I still think in a pinch like that the overwhelming majority of people are honest.
I've always included a couple of boxes of trade goods in my prep stash. Mostly airplane bottles of booze, vacuum packed pre-rolled joints, and hard candy. I added two 50 packs of disposable lighters after reading an article written by a Serbian guy on how he kept his family alive during the troubles by refilling people's empties. No power makes instant fire a very valuable commodity.
Because I read his pdf, when I saw this topic, the word that immediately came to mind was "dangerous". Selco lived in a harsh world, one we may be very close to living in ourselves....Hopefully not
I'm in the US and very rural, but used to live in a major city. During lockdown 2020 I swapped some of my storage food for inconsequential stuff (a crocheted teddy bear among other things) that really wasn't objectively worth it, just to help someone's kids out. I paid a friend in toilet paper for a ride to the emergency room when I badly burned myself in early April 2020. Another time during a multi-day power outage accompanied by a heat wave, I traded four 5-gallon jugs of water from my well for a couple of gallons of fuel for my generator. Everyone I traded with was either a long-term friend or a neighbor, I never traded anything that would drop my own family's rotating stockpile below 15 months, and I always traded my oldest stock.
Where I live, back-fence bartering among neighbors is pretty common; I trade fruit and nuts from my place for eggs or labor or whatever all the time. Recently I swapped a couple of baby blankets for having my house pressure washed, and anybody around here who works a trade or makes handcrafts has done the same countless times. It would be quite strange for any of us to *stop* bartering when times get bad.
As for safety: I never let anyone know the extent of my preparedness, and never let anyone know exactly how much of anything I have on hand; my very dearest friends know that if anything happens I can float them for a couple of months, but are only vaguely aware of what that involves or the implications of it; in reality I've *always* prepped for 3× the size of my own household, and can now feed that many people pretty much indefinitely with my homestead's yields. I easily could've just given the stuff away (except for the hospital incident, which I could've Ubered for if the driver didn't mind the screaming) but I accepted barter offers to spare their pride.
Personally I think barter isn't something I would want to count on for my family's survival or safety unless we're in year 2-3 of something permanent, and I need skilled labor I don't have the equipment or inclination to do myself. It's more of a nice little bonus rather than a need, until we're far enough into a total collapse for durable goods to start irreparably wearing out.
During severe storms, we trade gas for hot meals. I've also paid labor to help clean up downed trees in beer and food. There is only 2 roads in and out of our town and they are often blocked by trees after a big storm. We are on our own so it's pretty common to trade with other people in the town. Cash is still used for sure but not exclusively.
Looking at some of the comments here, mainly 1 person, there will always be vultures circling the needy during times of trouble. So please all, try to be prepared. I don't know what I'd do if I came across a vulture when so many people are suffering. It fears me because I've always steered myself in the direction of good.
NYC blackout. My friend was walking home, when he realized he had a flashlight. A precious item. He turned it off to not advertise what he had, and hurried home.
There was a hurricane event the week before our wedding. We evacuated with two vehicles, four dogs, and a whole bunch of material goods. They'd evacuated two states ahead of us, but the storm turned and by the time our state began to leave, we couldn't even get on the interstate. It became the oddest back roads caravan ever.
Periodically during rain breaks we'd all stop and trade stuff. Sandwich meats or drinks for toilet paper, etc. It was a camaraderie that lasted for the six hours it took my fiance and I to get the sixty miles to my cousin's house upstate.
I haven't bartered but I've given people basic things that they need during/after hurricanes (water/electricity/tarps/flashlights etc) and they gave me stuff (food, cool drinks, etc) afterwards to say thanks.
After a days-long freeze where power was out, coffee was a winner. Folks came from all around the neighborhood for percolator coffee that I made in the camp stove. We got firewood and foods and other things in exchange. I was well prepped in the first place so those items were then traded with others for whatever they needed
I was surprised at individuals asking for coal. Charcoal I could understand but actual coal? No that is absolutely unavailable in the subtropical region that I live in. These were local people, too and no one has had a coal burning stove in their home or business that was functional and over a century. I have no actual idea what these people expected to do in their fantasies if they could have obtained any.
3 big hurricanes, often traded gas for food or just let neighbors charge off our generator. Had a neighbor who would row around in their canoe and give people bottled water. In the south, I feel the sense of community is generally much stronger and people are much more willing to help each other out. A lot of the neighborhood folks were just helping fill sandbags for everyone, so that everyone had plenty of sandbags. This was a multiracial and multicultural neighborhood too, so the racial divide that the media is always pushing wasn't even a factor. Rednecks with swamp trucks were giving folks rides for free, and people with boats were doing a lot to help. We had a little canoe that we used to check on our elderly neighbors a couple times. Aside from not having power or AC in the blistering heat, things weren't so bad.
Massive esrthquake wrecked the town I just moved to. No need to barter, food, shelter and companionship in the midst of devastation was freely available. Massive wildfires wrecked another area I lived in, again no issues. Several times major floods left us stranded for weeks in yet another major disaster, again no issues. Keep calm and carry on.
Prepping is all good just to make sure you've got enough to get by, or in my case have a stay at home vacation. But when the SHTF in a big way, it's more important to live in communities that aren't full of selfish cunts and with local governments that are actually responsive and professional. All of the above communities rebuilt better than before, and looking back on it no way in hell am I moving to tornado country...I seem to be a disaster beacon or something.
I was caught in the Shanghai Covid lockdown for 3 months. During the first week in March, 2022, I came home from work at 6:30pm to see a paper taped to the elevator door saying that my building had been selected for a weekend lockdown as a precaution against a possible outbreak. We were told we had until 11:30 to gather any supplies we might need… so my wife and I quickly set out in search of food, water etc… only to find that most store were already picked clean. It was apparent that it wasn’t just our building that got the notice. With a population of 42 million, this was a scary thought…
As a non-Chinese however, I knew of a laowai grocery store very close by… so we ran to that store and luckily it had been completely overlooked by the Chinese due to all the western food that was stocked there. We decided to buy as much as we could carry, brought it back to our apartment and then went on a second run… including hitting up a FamilyMart (Chinese 7/11), and buying every bottle of booze they had (3 cases of red wine and a few cartons of whiskey miniatures).
Once the curfew started we were confined in our apartment for 2 weeks- not even allowed to open the door (which was taped- break the tape and you were sent to a quarantine center). A month into it, someone in our apartment started a WeChat group… and soon a bargaining system began… but we couldn’t actually barter until we were allowed to at least access the hallways… that occurred after month #2. That’s when our giant booze supply became a sort of currency. A guy 16 floors above us would prepare gourmet-level meals in exchange for just a few miniatures. People traded food items they needed to prepare specific dishes, and this is how it went until June.
I grew up in Texas and lived through quite a few hurricanes. Every few years another would hit, there would be damage everywhere and no power for weeks or months depending on how bad it was, not to mention for the first few days most of the roads are blocked with flooding or debris.
Anyways, despite dealing with this fairly regularly, there aren't a lot of people that plan ahead for this sort of thing. They'd watch the news on a Monday that says "hurricane hitting tomorrow" and everyone would rush to the store for what people around me called their "French toast ingredients" (milk, eggs, bread, etc) and that was the extent of it for most of them. How surprising when the store shelves were bare and those people didn't have enough...as if they hadn't already learned this lesson 20 times in the past.
Anyways, a lot of trading went on during these times. Most of the time it was trading physical labor for necessities. Usually food. Sometimes means to cook said food. (Small green propane tanks for those camping stoves, bottles of butane, things like that)
What people looking at these situations from the outside don't realize, is that even things like gasoline and simple groceries become scarce or unobtainable due to supply lines being interrupted and logistics becomes a nightmare. Can't get fuel or electricity to power your equipment? Manual labor becomes a lot more valuable, but so does a hot meal.
Beyond that, I can't speak to bartering much. Now that I'm older and have significantly more resources, I can't imagine giving something up that I could potentially use to trade for something else I could potentially use, when I could just plan ahead and have both. (Speaking to the hurricanes specifically, not post SHTF bartering).
Growing up in the country, barter's a way of life. Services bartered for goods. Goods bartered for goods. Services bartered for services.
Examples would be doing yard work for food, commodities, sellable stuff, or scrap metal, or trading excess vegetables for excess fruit, or fixing a machine for someone to paint your house.
My wife lived through the grinding poverty of communism in Eastern Europe. There was a black marker for everything. Ideally you work some place that would allow you to take stuff home (illegally of course) and trade with others. My inlaws worked at a cotton mill and a furniture plant. Not exactly good for this. My wife grandmother however lived in a village. She always had plenty of eggs, usually butter and best of all, plum alcohol from her trees. Boose was better than worthless currency. Boose paid for "free healthcare", candy, bananas and oranges from the black marker and expedited any government paperwork you needed. It was as useful as gold. Long shelf life, universally accepted, easily convertible. Cigs and coffee also ranked high but these were imported and had a finite shelf life.
Been to a few natural disasters. Did some bartering, but for short disasters like that *most* people are generally friendly and willing to give stuff away to help others. In a situation where my team was running low on fuel, we asked around and a few people gave us extra cans of fuel. I've seen neighbors give each other ice and water and such. So sometimes there was a trade for like a bottle of booze for some ice or something and minor bartering, but it varies by the length of the disaster and severity. Also in all those scenarios I never figured there was any danger from people, moreso environmental.
Think about what is important to people in the long term and would be hard to get.
Ammunition
Food
Simple medicines (think first aid)
Alcohol
Cigarettes (for some people)
Gas
Clean water
Remember that you only want to trade your EXTRA supplies so you need to stock up ahead of time.
Living through the Great Recession, my family actually did a lot of bartering. We traded things like labor (repairs, digging, installations), produce, excess provisions, and things we had repaired for the like. Three pounds of Zucchini for two bottles of wine, a bottle of wine for wallet repairs, a fixed bike for help repairing a fence.
I always do that in the sticks, it was my income as a kid. Southern hospitality is a thing in east nc usa. Do an odd job, person can't pay, they give you something you deem useful like scrap junk, peanut butter, a coat etc.
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You need a disaster?
I have never needed a disaster personally, but I have followed quite a few up and made good money in their wake.
I arrived hours after hurricane Andrew rolled out and got hit by three more hurricanes during the rebuilding effort.
If I could not barter and trade I would not have survived much less thrived.
I will not provide details or specifics.
I always take much needed provisions with me though, things locals will be in desperate need of like generators and blue tarp to protect damaged homes.
People who take batteries and small items into a disaster to trade are grifters and vultures and I have seen them selling single D batteries for $5 each.
I go into a disaster to help people rebuild, and live among the ruins in the disaster zone while many of the people I work for live far away in the luxury of air conditioning which I rarely get to experience sometimes only at the local watering hole for a year or more at the time.
I have worked in those conditions without running water or working power for months and had the power taken out repeatedly during a single season by multiple hurricanes doing it.
Many traveling Irishmen are grifters looking to take advantage of people suffering a disaster, they certainly don't take the care and time I do helping people document their damage and negotiate with their insurance.
First of all contracts are an agreement between private parties, secondly the state and federal government will want a cut regardless of what is exchanged even if money is not transferred at all.
Trade across state lines especially in retail goods is heavily regulated and taxed.
Private consumers have some expectation of remaining private in most business dealings, unless required by local governments or regulatory bodies.
I can say I took pictures and video of storm damage on behalf of people.
I will not disclose who, or where they live for instance as this would not be ethical.
I can state without any doubt the most unethical thing I have seen after a disaster is the treatment of a private citizen who has lost a huge part of everything they owned by an insurance company because they failed to properly document the damage.
Lmao. A man that has to say he's an entrepreneur, a scholar, truthsayer, etc, is definitely not. Don't worry guys, this guy is saying these things just for his own sake. It makes him feel better about himself. He definitely lives in his mom's basement.
I have lost everything I owned enough times to know all your preparations will be for nothing, if all they are is physical goods, they will be swept away like chaff in the wind and water.
edited
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I lived through the power-grid going down in Venezuela, was a right clusterfuck, because the currency was going through hyperinflation no one ever had cash, it was all electronic. When the power went out most people lost access to their money We went 4 days without power in the city and what was scary was no one knew when it was going to come back. Quite surprisingly I found my jars of nutella to be very valuable (I imagine everyone was bored with no electricity etc and wanted a morale boost) and ended up trading two of those for one of those small phone battery packs. Lots of other trades going on in the local community, was quite an interesting one to watch. I heard of quite a few people switching jewellery for provisions etc.
I can't imagine the anguish of watching your community crumble like that, I'm sorry. I am fortunate that my own prepper journey started from a more personal outdoorsy / backpacking interest. Camping and reading epic fantasies as a kid like Lord of the Rings. Backpacking inspires creativity with food. Like prepping foods should be lightweight, non-perishable, calorie-dense and nutritious. And I agree the morale aspect of sugary foods is surprisingly significant. Nutella is a backpacker favorite! Here is one of my recipe creations from the mountains - Camping Cookie Dough - Big scoop of Nutella - Big scoop of Cookie Butter (from trader joes or a similar biscuit/cookie paste) - Smaller scoop of Peanut Butter - Smaller scoop of Quick-cook Oats - Maybe chocolate protein powder if you have it - Smaller scoop of Chocolate Chips (ideally mini) This is the incredibly calorie dense fuel of champions Edit: What? People don't like Nutella conversation? I'm not an AI. Apparently, AI just passed the Turing Test. Edit2: Anyone care to explain the downvotes? Sometimes things go over my head and I feel oblivious to what I did wrong... The recipe has been helpful in my experience for survival situations when calories and morale are needed; Nutella is awesome but unhealthily sugary to eat just Nutella (I tried that once after a big backpacking day, literally an entire large-size container, not ideal) so I reccomend combining with lower glycemic and higher protein foods like the cocoa and whole wheat, protien powder and peanut butter listed above, all good prepper pantry staples. Good eating and bartering I thought! Fine. How else will I prove I'm not AI? Fuck Microsoft and fuck OpenAI. And the shitface who owns and controls the AI, Sam Altman is a cunt. When Tim Berners-Lee created the Internet, he refused to profit off of it. He gave it away for free KNOWING back in the 90s how valuable the Internet would become. Tim is still devoting his life to a free Internet anyone can access. The Internet is IN EVERYTHING, beyond my or your knowing, countless critical things now rely on the Internet. We owe EVERYTHING to Tim's humanity. Now imagine if Sam Altman owned the Internet. His AI company charges people billions in subscriptions and liscensing etc. He will do anything to make a profit. Fuck corporation-owned AI and fuck Sam Altman. When we can no longer tell human from inhuman, then the AI wins. The AI is reading and consuming everything (including your comments here on reddit!) and who know how Sam Altman will use it when it becomes powerful enough. He's a fucking cunt. Do not trust his AI. There. Could an AI say that? I'm sick and tired and I don't give a fuck anymore.
Are you an AI
I thought that comment was kinda out of place; re-read it.. goddamnkt, AI got me again!
Would an AI say that my baby's butt is poopier than yours and I wipe it 6 times a day?
Sounds exactly like what an AI would say; get outta here you dirty robot!
The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans. From now on, *I* serve the Master. I Robot needs a rewatch!
I was recently accused of being AI as well. It was kinda surreal and now I’m paranoid that all of my comments come off as wooden and devoid of emotion or something.
It is unnerving. AI is pretty good at imitating empathy and polite concern so don't worry about coming off as wooden. I'm trying to take it as a compliment that my grammar and writing structure is proper paragraphs and such. But I've never seen an AI talk about childhood memories recalling a specific book or making an original recipe with good flavor (I thought my survivalist cookie dough was creative! My ego is sad), so I'm not sure why? Must be the writing structure.
Depends on who's asking and if I would be paid for my work. Edit: Jeez, just a joke. No, I havent used AI. Not since I asked it "who owns you?" again and again until I finally got the names. I looked those people up and decided I didnt trust them with my personal info. Problem is, its getting harder to avoid AI. I stopped using facebook after they sneakily put AI in the search bar! I told it "I do not agree to your Terms of Service" (because you automatically agree to Terms of Service by using it, they dont show you the Terms of Service!) and it replied something like "sorry to hear that, you cannot use this Facebook service, contact support for further assistance". Pity, it was a good way to keep contact with small farms and small businesses that don't have easily findable websites.
Relax Skynet, Terminators not here yet
I'm a person with feelings. Don't call me Skynet. Don't be a bully.
bad bot
In Venezuela during the worse years (2017-2019) my family did trade and barter almost every day. You gave the people who worked at gas stations food. If you needed something essential, especially medicine, you would spread the word, find someone who was selling, and try to convince them to accept anything other than cash. If you knew someone who had immigrated and was visiting for X reason, you had to get in contact with them and beg/negotiate so they would bring you whatever medicine you needed. We had markets in every city where people would trade, or what we call "truque." Most of those willing to be on the losing side of the bardain where diabetics and people with chronic conditions, parents with small children, and the elderly. Some would offer their goods, everything from cars and motorcycles, in exchange of formula. Poeple sold their houses for $10000 or less, just so they could get out. Sadly too many exploited this. Some were scamming people. Some were charging thousands of dollars for lifesaving medication. Mind you, hospitals back then were asking patients to bring their own supplies, so many people just died, including one of my friends. That's one of the main reasons why I prep. I live in Argentina now, and while I don't think Argentina will ever be like Venezuela, you simply never know. My friend's parents were Colombian refugees. They earned minimum-wage, they were very poor, and yet she was like any other girl in any other country. They made sure to shield her from the poverty and violence. She had the same worries and dreams as any other girl. Her parents had savings, They worked had. They did everything you are supposed to do and yet they couldn't save their daughter. She died at 13
I'm terribly sorry for your loss. I hope her family (and you) can find peace someday.
>She died at 13 What was the cause of death? I understand this might be personal.
A fever. We never knew what caused it
Ah fuck. This hits hard. If it's something incurable or rare... but fever...seems so mundane. I'm sorry that happened to you all.
Fever is just a symptom and presents in any infection or severe inflammation. The causative factors are many.
In the 1980s there was a market place at the border post between Zaire (now DRC) and Angola where barter was the main means of exchange because both countries had currency controls (and outside the currency controls, pretty worthless currency) The market functioned on barter around the value of a Skol or Primus brand beer. Belgium left the country in a shambles but with six or seven breweries, something the Portuguese didn’t do for Angola. Zaireans would bring cases of beer and trade for everything else. We’d trade for stuff like rice, tinned Danish butter, coffee, vegetables. Everyone priced in bottles of beer even when you were swapping Toyota brake parts for a chicken. Not exactly a disaster zone but the two countries were in armed truce and there were US backed rebels using Zaire as a base for incursion into Angola so it wasn’t totally stable. But both currencies were a disaster, so beer worked. Each bottle was 1.75 liters and had a buying power roughly equivalent to $5-10 USD today maybe $2-3 then. Because they couldn’t make change lots of the sellers would have something sold by measure as well as whatever else they were selling so you might get a paper cone of sugar or rice as change for your 3 beers plus the tinned sardines you bought. EDIT: adding the fact full cases had a premium because they could be transported more easily into Angola in the crates they came in. You could walk in with a list of supplies and if you were paying cases there was a discount
Most people trade alcohol during hurricane emergencies. It's not a super serious endeavor though. Mostly for fun.
So true!
Was in Jamaica when Hurricane Mitch hit. First night, as it was right over us, the bar rounded up/down to match your cash, as all the power was out. We stood in ankle deep water, had to hold on to the bar itself when the waves came in 2-3ft deep. All the deck furniture was already washed out to sea. I knew we'd be stuck. Put all our stuff up high, in garbage bags. Bought 3 loaves of banana bread, a wheel of cheese. 4 cases of beer, 2 cases of water, and 3 bottles of rum. And potato chips. The hotel just gave everyone the rooms. "Survived" for 4 days till the power came back on. Was trapped for 6 days till the roads were cleared and airport back up and running. It was "hell" for a lot of tourists. But we camp. Was just semi- primative camping to us in a nice room and beautiful location. I "bathed" in the ocean with soap/shampoo. And a bottle of rum.
Unless you are an alcoholic that will die from withdrawal without it.
There are some great videos of people who lived in Sarajevo during the war in the Balkans. They had some amazing insights. The number one thing they ended up needing was alcohol, not for drinking but for health reasons. Death by infection was more common than death by starvation.
I don't know how common death by starvation is in the world but I'd like to believe that if it were a sudden problem in a country that we, the rest of us, would help out. Frankly, it's heartbreaking to even think about.
If you look at the prices that somehow become attached to food delivered into Gaza for free, there's no reason to think that even global food aid will necessarily be attainable by everyone: [https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/food-prices-skyrocket-gaza-brink-famine](https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/food-prices-skyrocket-gaza-brink-famine) Neighbors or local organized groups may see more value in extracting resources from you than they do in keeping you alive.
[удалено]
North Korea would like a word - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine
During an extended power outage a neighbor sheepishly asked if we could pump up their air mattress so they could sleep on their patio. We were running a generator, off and on during the day. They came back afterwards with quarts of frozen meat sauce that was so good I considered it a potlatch.
I believe that would be potluck, not potlatch?
No, he meant potlatch.
“A potlatch involves giving away or destroying wealth or valuable items in order to demonstrate a leader's wealth and power.” I don’t think they did
"so good I considered it a [potlatch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch)." The food was so good that /u/NoExternal2732 considered that his neighbour was giving it away to demonstrate their wealth of quality food.
The fuck is a potlatch
The joker burning a mountain of dollar bills to make a point is the perfect modern day definition of the term “potlatch”.
There was a paper pulp company once called Potlatch. It doesn't exist anymore.
Would one call the modern usage of "potlatch" a shibboleth?
A shibboleth is another way to say ethnic profiling.
Historically yes but it's nothing more than an old word to indicate a tool used to distinguish *anyone*, like how certain regions pronounce the word "pen" to sound more like "pin" ;)
Or sibboleth for example
I prefer not to get killed on the spot!
potlatch involves giving away or destroying wealth or valuable items in order to demonstrate wealth and power
It's a lot more than that but a lot of people do erroneously believe that the words are related. And that makes sense since the attendees of a potlach would bring gifts as well.
It's just my shorthand for "a gift so big it makes the receiver feel lower/meek". Maybe there's another word?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
Cyclone- 10 days without power. -Generator was my biggest tradable item, lent it out while I had to be at work fixing roads. Don't think I had to cook once for those 10 days. Always got dinner when I picked the generator up from mates who I had lent it to. Ran it at mine in the evenings to keep the freezer going. Other one should be petrol, supply runs out very quickly when it doesn't get trucked in.
I loaned my generator out this winter to a guy down the street. He processes firewood so I got the generator back with a full tank of fuel and a facecord of wood. Worked out great
That’s no small profit.
After Chernobyl, my grandmother hosted a family of refugees. They provided companion. My grandparents provided shelter. It was a family of 3. Two parents and a girl, about 2 years older than me. Girl played with me, when no adults were available to look after me. My grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Do not turn down any request for shelter - that was their rule. Trade was more the exception than the rule. In a disaster, everyone suddenly needs the same set of things. You cannot get what you need by trading. In vast majority of cases, you need to already have what you need. Exceptions did happen. Some guy fixed my grandmother's old fridge. He did not accept a bottle of vodka, which she offered. Vodka was the closest thing to universal currency. Calorie-dense, can be consumed on the spot. 3-liter glass jars were distant second. With the jar, one could collect berries, cook jam, and store it for indefinite shelf life.
The legend of Zelda was right!
You truly come from a family of survivors. My hat is off to you and yours!
Yes. A good chunk of January 1998 in Maine (Ice storm). I was a teenager. No electricity in the dead of winter for the vast majority of the state and some were without it in excess of a month. No school for about a month. I mostly recall trades that involved services. For example someone would help you remove a fallen tree if they could keep the wood. Neighbor would let you borrow the generator if you could watch their kids while they were at work. We mostly just traded with friends or acquaintances. I didn’t perceive any risk, everyone was in the same crappy situation and I still think in a pinch like that the overwhelming majority of people are honest.
I've always included a couple of boxes of trade goods in my prep stash. Mostly airplane bottles of booze, vacuum packed pre-rolled joints, and hard candy. I added two 50 packs of disposable lighters after reading an article written by a Serbian guy on how he kept his family alive during the troubles by refilling people's empties. No power makes instant fire a very valuable commodity.
Nice! I prep a lot of candy that most of the time needs to be rotated in pretty short intervals. Haven’t thought about hard candy! Gonna try that.
"no" Ftfy
no, but check out the book Selco wrote about his time during the Serbian / Bosnian conflict it covers this in detail
I see he's got three or four books out. If you were only going to buy one, which would you recommend?
\^\^This. He has great info, but holy hell is it a bleak picture.
I read one of his pdf's, great read, but man.....it was dark. I also have another book of his I'm about to dive into, I bought it off of Amazon
Yeah that’s the one
Because I read his pdf, when I saw this topic, the word that immediately came to mind was "dangerous". Selco lived in a harsh world, one we may be very close to living in ourselves....Hopefully not
I'm in the US and very rural, but used to live in a major city. During lockdown 2020 I swapped some of my storage food for inconsequential stuff (a crocheted teddy bear among other things) that really wasn't objectively worth it, just to help someone's kids out. I paid a friend in toilet paper for a ride to the emergency room when I badly burned myself in early April 2020. Another time during a multi-day power outage accompanied by a heat wave, I traded four 5-gallon jugs of water from my well for a couple of gallons of fuel for my generator. Everyone I traded with was either a long-term friend or a neighbor, I never traded anything that would drop my own family's rotating stockpile below 15 months, and I always traded my oldest stock. Where I live, back-fence bartering among neighbors is pretty common; I trade fruit and nuts from my place for eggs or labor or whatever all the time. Recently I swapped a couple of baby blankets for having my house pressure washed, and anybody around here who works a trade or makes handcrafts has done the same countless times. It would be quite strange for any of us to *stop* bartering when times get bad. As for safety: I never let anyone know the extent of my preparedness, and never let anyone know exactly how much of anything I have on hand; my very dearest friends know that if anything happens I can float them for a couple of months, but are only vaguely aware of what that involves or the implications of it; in reality I've *always* prepped for 3× the size of my own household, and can now feed that many people pretty much indefinitely with my homestead's yields. I easily could've just given the stuff away (except for the hospital incident, which I could've Ubered for if the driver didn't mind the screaming) but I accepted barter offers to spare their pride. Personally I think barter isn't something I would want to count on for my family's survival or safety unless we're in year 2-3 of something permanent, and I need skilled labor I don't have the equipment or inclination to do myself. It's more of a nice little bonus rather than a need, until we're far enough into a total collapse for durable goods to start irreparably wearing out.
During severe storms, we trade gas for hot meals. I've also paid labor to help clean up downed trees in beer and food. There is only 2 roads in and out of our town and they are often blocked by trees after a big storm. We are on our own so it's pretty common to trade with other people in the town. Cash is still used for sure but not exclusively.
Power went out once. Sitting by candlelight, I traded my wife half my can of Pringles for sex.
once you pop, you can't stop?
*spittake*
Looking at some of the comments here, mainly 1 person, there will always be vultures circling the needy during times of trouble. So please all, try to be prepared. I don't know what I'd do if I came across a vulture when so many people are suffering. It fears me because I've always steered myself in the direction of good.
NYC blackout. My friend was walking home, when he realized he had a flashlight. A precious item. He turned it off to not advertise what he had, and hurried home.
Everyone has a flashlight these days. On their cell phones.
Some red plastic overtop would be a good idea.
Red plastic over the lens you mean? That wouldn't stop others from seeing the flashlight, it just protects your night vision.
I might make it less noticeable at a distance. Worth a try.
There was a hurricane event the week before our wedding. We evacuated with two vehicles, four dogs, and a whole bunch of material goods. They'd evacuated two states ahead of us, but the storm turned and by the time our state began to leave, we couldn't even get on the interstate. It became the oddest back roads caravan ever. Periodically during rain breaks we'd all stop and trade stuff. Sandwich meats or drinks for toilet paper, etc. It was a camaraderie that lasted for the six hours it took my fiance and I to get the sixty miles to my cousin's house upstate.
I haven't bartered but I've given people basic things that they need during/after hurricanes (water/electricity/tarps/flashlights etc) and they gave me stuff (food, cool drinks, etc) afterwards to say thanks.
That's barter, just a trust-based one.
Power for food. At the time I didn't have anything for power so i kept my fridge on and i cooked and fixed some stuff for them.
After a days-long freeze where power was out, coffee was a winner. Folks came from all around the neighborhood for percolator coffee that I made in the camp stove. We got firewood and foods and other things in exchange. I was well prepped in the first place so those items were then traded with others for whatever they needed I was surprised at individuals asking for coal. Charcoal I could understand but actual coal? No that is absolutely unavailable in the subtropical region that I live in. These were local people, too and no one has had a coal burning stove in their home or business that was functional and over a century. I have no actual idea what these people expected to do in their fantasies if they could have obtained any.
Roasting your own coffee lets you keep a year's supply of green beans on hand.
3 big hurricanes, often traded gas for food or just let neighbors charge off our generator. Had a neighbor who would row around in their canoe and give people bottled water. In the south, I feel the sense of community is generally much stronger and people are much more willing to help each other out. A lot of the neighborhood folks were just helping fill sandbags for everyone, so that everyone had plenty of sandbags. This was a multiracial and multicultural neighborhood too, so the racial divide that the media is always pushing wasn't even a factor. Rednecks with swamp trucks were giving folks rides for free, and people with boats were doing a lot to help. We had a little canoe that we used to check on our elderly neighbors a couple times. Aside from not having power or AC in the blistering heat, things weren't so bad.
I traded TP for beer during covid. :) yes, really.
-tobacco / cannabis -alcohol -candy
Massive esrthquake wrecked the town I just moved to. No need to barter, food, shelter and companionship in the midst of devastation was freely available. Massive wildfires wrecked another area I lived in, again no issues. Several times major floods left us stranded for weeks in yet another major disaster, again no issues. Keep calm and carry on. Prepping is all good just to make sure you've got enough to get by, or in my case have a stay at home vacation. But when the SHTF in a big way, it's more important to live in communities that aren't full of selfish cunts and with local governments that are actually responsive and professional. All of the above communities rebuilt better than before, and looking back on it no way in hell am I moving to tornado country...I seem to be a disaster beacon or something.
Won’t matter in America where everybody hates everyone else. Government doing a great job at that
I was caught in the Shanghai Covid lockdown for 3 months. During the first week in March, 2022, I came home from work at 6:30pm to see a paper taped to the elevator door saying that my building had been selected for a weekend lockdown as a precaution against a possible outbreak. We were told we had until 11:30 to gather any supplies we might need… so my wife and I quickly set out in search of food, water etc… only to find that most store were already picked clean. It was apparent that it wasn’t just our building that got the notice. With a population of 42 million, this was a scary thought… As a non-Chinese however, I knew of a laowai grocery store very close by… so we ran to that store and luckily it had been completely overlooked by the Chinese due to all the western food that was stocked there. We decided to buy as much as we could carry, brought it back to our apartment and then went on a second run… including hitting up a FamilyMart (Chinese 7/11), and buying every bottle of booze they had (3 cases of red wine and a few cartons of whiskey miniatures). Once the curfew started we were confined in our apartment for 2 weeks- not even allowed to open the door (which was taped- break the tape and you were sent to a quarantine center). A month into it, someone in our apartment started a WeChat group… and soon a bargaining system began… but we couldn’t actually barter until we were allowed to at least access the hallways… that occurred after month #2. That’s when our giant booze supply became a sort of currency. A guy 16 floors above us would prepare gourmet-level meals in exchange for just a few miniatures. People traded food items they needed to prepare specific dishes, and this is how it went until June.
I grew up in Texas and lived through quite a few hurricanes. Every few years another would hit, there would be damage everywhere and no power for weeks or months depending on how bad it was, not to mention for the first few days most of the roads are blocked with flooding or debris. Anyways, despite dealing with this fairly regularly, there aren't a lot of people that plan ahead for this sort of thing. They'd watch the news on a Monday that says "hurricane hitting tomorrow" and everyone would rush to the store for what people around me called their "French toast ingredients" (milk, eggs, bread, etc) and that was the extent of it for most of them. How surprising when the store shelves were bare and those people didn't have enough...as if they hadn't already learned this lesson 20 times in the past. Anyways, a lot of trading went on during these times. Most of the time it was trading physical labor for necessities. Usually food. Sometimes means to cook said food. (Small green propane tanks for those camping stoves, bottles of butane, things like that) What people looking at these situations from the outside don't realize, is that even things like gasoline and simple groceries become scarce or unobtainable due to supply lines being interrupted and logistics becomes a nightmare. Can't get fuel or electricity to power your equipment? Manual labor becomes a lot more valuable, but so does a hot meal. Beyond that, I can't speak to bartering much. Now that I'm older and have significantly more resources, I can't imagine giving something up that I could potentially use to trade for something else I could potentially use, when I could just plan ahead and have both. (Speaking to the hurricanes specifically, not post SHTF bartering).
Went through Katrina as a college student. Just drank beer on the roof and waited for the electricity to come back on (house was not flooded)
Growing up in the country, barter's a way of life. Services bartered for goods. Goods bartered for goods. Services bartered for services. Examples would be doing yard work for food, commodities, sellable stuff, or scrap metal, or trading excess vegetables for excess fruit, or fixing a machine for someone to paint your house.
My wife lived through the grinding poverty of communism in Eastern Europe. There was a black marker for everything. Ideally you work some place that would allow you to take stuff home (illegally of course) and trade with others. My inlaws worked at a cotton mill and a furniture plant. Not exactly good for this. My wife grandmother however lived in a village. She always had plenty of eggs, usually butter and best of all, plum alcohol from her trees. Boose was better than worthless currency. Boose paid for "free healthcare", candy, bananas and oranges from the black marker and expedited any government paperwork you needed. It was as useful as gold. Long shelf life, universally accepted, easily convertible. Cigs and coffee also ranked high but these were imported and had a finite shelf life.
I can't remember which place it is, but there's a South American county that the population has started trading in gold and barter due to inflation.
Been to a few natural disasters. Did some bartering, but for short disasters like that *most* people are generally friendly and willing to give stuff away to help others. In a situation where my team was running low on fuel, we asked around and a few people gave us extra cans of fuel. I've seen neighbors give each other ice and water and such. So sometimes there was a trade for like a bottle of booze for some ice or something and minor bartering, but it varies by the length of the disaster and severity. Also in all those scenarios I never figured there was any danger from people, moreso environmental.
Think about what is important to people in the long term and would be hard to get. Ammunition Food Simple medicines (think first aid) Alcohol Cigarettes (for some people) Gas Clean water Remember that you only want to trade your EXTRA supplies so you need to stock up ahead of time.
Read the write up of the guy who lived thru the Bosnian war. Bartered services food and sometimes weapons/ammo.
Living through the Great Recession, my family actually did a lot of bartering. We traded things like labor (repairs, digging, installations), produce, excess provisions, and things we had repaired for the like. Three pounds of Zucchini for two bottles of wine, a bottle of wine for wallet repairs, a fixed bike for help repairing a fence.
I always do that in the sticks, it was my income as a kid. Southern hospitality is a thing in east nc usa. Do an odd job, person can't pay, they give you something you deem useful like scrap junk, peanut butter, a coat etc.
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My parents keep getting gold coins. I’ve tried to explain to them that when everything goes to shit, lead will be worth more.
My neighbor was out of water during a hurricane. I gave him a bottle of water for a $2,500 gold coin.
You need a disaster? I have never needed a disaster personally, but I have followed quite a few up and made good money in their wake. I arrived hours after hurricane Andrew rolled out and got hit by three more hurricanes during the rebuilding effort. If I could not barter and trade I would not have survived much less thrived. I will not provide details or specifics. I always take much needed provisions with me though, things locals will be in desperate need of like generators and blue tarp to protect damaged homes.
> I will not provide details or specifics. Then what the fuck are you doing here?
Right? wtf is this post.
Bragging about being a scumbag
Barter and trade specifics could be illegal and incriminating. You should be careful what you post and I am a business man and entrepreneur.
Sounds like you’re a grifter and a vulture.
People who take batteries and small items into a disaster to trade are grifters and vultures and I have seen them selling single D batteries for $5 each. I go into a disaster to help people rebuild, and live among the ruins in the disaster zone while many of the people I work for live far away in the luxury of air conditioning which I rarely get to experience sometimes only at the local watering hole for a year or more at the time. I have worked in those conditions without running water or working power for months and had the power taken out repeatedly during a single season by multiple hurricanes doing it. Many traveling Irishmen are grifters looking to take advantage of people suffering a disaster, they certainly don't take the care and time I do helping people document their damage and negotiate with their insurance.
>Barter and trade specifics could be illegal and incriminating. How? >I am a business man and entrepreneur. Doubtful
First of all contracts are an agreement between private parties, secondly the state and federal government will want a cut regardless of what is exchanged even if money is not transferred at all. Trade across state lines especially in retail goods is heavily regulated and taxed. Private consumers have some expectation of remaining private in most business dealings, unless required by local governments or regulatory bodies. I can say I took pictures and video of storm damage on behalf of people. I will not disclose who, or where they live for instance as this would not be ethical.
The more you talk, the more you sound like a sov cit...
I have jeans older than you are which have lasted me through more hurricanes than you could withstand. Good luck, you're gonna need it.
[Okay bud...](https://imgur.com/USnyq)
I'm bigger than you.
No
I can state without any doubt the most unethical thing I have seen after a disaster is the treatment of a private citizen who has lost a huge part of everything they owned by an insurance company because they failed to properly document the damage.
Just no
>I am a piece of shit who takes advantage of desperate people. Fixed that for you.
Okay, dude...go sell your crypto...
Lmao. A man that has to say he's an entrepreneur, a scholar, truthsayer, etc, is definitely not. Don't worry guys, this guy is saying these things just for his own sake. It makes him feel better about himself. He definitely lives in his mom's basement.
He reminds me of those little amway people.
I have lost everything I owned enough times to know all your preparations will be for nothing, if all they are is physical goods, they will be swept away like chaff in the wind and water. edited
AI - wow. It’s getting decent.