This will come into play more in my later books, but I despise ret-conning, so I'd like to set the basics up now. In my story, ASCM (Apocalypse Springs City Management) starts as two dozen civilians under the leadership of four people. After the nation (and world) falls, money is essentially meaningless. I've considered what people would value, and concluded a rich person would have (in no particular order): Alcohol Cigarettes Weapons Ammo Medical supplies Clothing Food Most people would barter, and negotiate a price. If I've got 50 rounds of 9mm and you have 25 rounds of .45, I might be willing to make that trade. But I can also see the value in standardizing such things to avoid conflict. I thought of having a canteen at ASCM HQ, where items could be bought and sold. Say you really want that Colt 1911. It would be priced as "X number of bullets or X number of cigarettes or..." You get the idea. They'd sell and buy anything of value, based on what people trade. I figure consumable goods would be the most popular items bought and sold. Cigarettes, alcohol, ammo, and food. After that, medical supplies and clothing. The catch is, you can go out with a raiding party and probably find that stuff laying around, bring it back, and sell it to the canteen for what you really want. It seems like there's something about it that doesn't work, though. I'm not sure what. Thoughts?
My main confusion is why food is so low on the list. Edited to add: Oh. In no particular order. Got it. Edited again to add: However, one issue with food is that it's going to run out, probably very quickly. You can save alcohol and cigarettes; there's a minimum consumption for food.
It takes a good chunk of land and a good deal of skill to produce enough calories to feed even one person, so another thing that rich people would have, if they can defend it, is land.
Good point. Larger plots of land may come later. For the first book, they live mostly on the canned goods they can find or, more rarely, the food they can hunt.
My concern would be that unless the vast majority of people are dead, those canned goods would run out in a matter of days. If society started to fall down around me, I would immediately be planting potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes in every square foot of dirt I could get my hands on, and raiding stores not for canned goods, but for dry or pure-fat staples so that I'm not wasting weight and space on water. Rice, beans, sugar, stable fats like coconut oil.
On average it takes about 1 acre of land to feed provide enough food for one person for a year. Incidentally, this is also approximately how much land one person can reasonably tend using only rudimentary hand tools. Mind you, this is a very rough average. Some places can be fertile enough to feed up to 20 people per acre and some places may be sparse enough to need up to 10 acres or more per person. It all depends on where the story takes place. I'd be reluctant to use ammunition as a standard of currency if only because depending on the calibre, the ammunition could be potentially useless and you'd have to haggle anyway. Cigarettes are relatively useless to anyone that doesn't smoke and tobacco can be grown in a good part of North America, so supply wouldn't really be an issue without a central government limiting production. IMO, alcohol would probably be your best bet because it can be used as fuel, as a medical supply, as well as for having fun. That and it takes time and experience to produce in significant amounts and it's production is dependent on other crops, so it would be difficult to over supply at first.
The population goes from 1.2 million in the city to maybe 1,000 reasonably healthy survivors in two weeks. The rest are evacuated, killed, or infected. Dry goods are also a good idea. I hadn't thought of that. Thank you. There's a lot you mentioned I didn't know. Thank you. You're right that certain crops are fairly easy to grow, though processing tobacco for smoking takes some doing. It's certainly possible a person with resources could do it. Alcohol would probably be one of the more valuable consumables, if only because of the attributes you mentioned, and the fact I would think the end of the world as we know it would cause a significant spike in consumption. ETA: I've got some basic plans for the HQ building to convert it from a hardware warehouse store (like Home Depot) to a kind of castle. The problem is the construction creates a lot of noise, so the survivors are constantly having to work shifts either watching for trouble or helping with the conversion. The good news is they have plenty of room for storage and production. As their numbers grow, the work goes faster.
if you are looting military bases for weaponry you could also pick up a load of MRE - they aren't the nicest things but they'll keep you alive.
The problem with fixed prices is that many of those items listed are highly consumable and largely non-renewable. Clothes and weapons will last a while, and you can grow food, but even with modern farming methods, crop and livestock yields fluctuate quite a bit. Ammo values are going to rise, as reloading isn't something that's easy to do on a large scale, especially once the smokeless powder runs out, at which point the value of guns will drop like a stone. Antibiotics will be priceless, the odds of your 1/1000 survivors having the knowledge and equipment to produce medicine, especially a variety of medicines, is pretty low. I don't know the actual effective shelf lives of, well, anything, but it would be a good avenue to look into.
Some drugs like Aspirin can last up to a decade or more. Most antibiotics it kept under ideal conditions might last up to 5 years, though 2 is more likely, but if kept under high heat or high humidity you'd get maybe 4-6 months. Insulin can last about 3 months refrigerated and about 30 days unrefrigerated.
Manpower. Either slaves or workers, but all the ammo in the world is useless without people behind the guns.
I think these 3 have a good idea, and added my idea to it too. Don't think land would be a problem if most of the population would die out. Problem would be indeed to defend it once you've set up a feasible farm. With 1/1000th everything would be pretty scarce, farming is a skill too and I don't think anyone would be able to just do it straight away since it takes months of proper maintenance. Man power would be the number one valuable possession, if it's able to be maintained, but I don't think it would be for the rich. In fact I think being rich has nothing to do anymore as soon as this society would fall. Those with leadership or the ability to provide for other people would be able to attract more people to live together in harmony, the bigger it gets them more difficult it is to keep the harmony is something to think of too, imo. Currency wouldn't start until all of this is established, because I believe people would be more vicious and instead of trading they'd be taking. Within a group you either have it decided equally to those needed or decided in a hierarchy, but non the less no need for any currency. As soon as a society has been re-established trade would only start to be come more serious. And most likely would start off with gold again, jewerly and other shiny stuff; heavy and impracticable but something we see coming back after each other fall's.
books (non fiction manuals on how to do stuff) - with the internet dead people will need to learn how to farm, butcher, build,make etc the old fashioned way spare parts for machinery Drugs medicinal and recreational Slaves Animals - livestock, horses, working dogs
Meristem-cultured seed potatoes. I'm not actually sure if that terminology is right, but the general facts are: - Potatoes are incredibly productive per square foot, also easy to grow, have protein and carbs and vitamin C--they're the miracle crop. - Except they get sick and the viruses carry over in the seed potatoes, building up every generation. Every year, your crop will be smaller and smaller and smaller. - So you need to start over by doing a lab operation that results in disease-free tubers. Those tubers are propagated, and propagated again--one disease-free tuber can be multiplied for several generations before the diseases take over to the extent that you should really start over. A lab that produces those disease-free tubers is, in a post-apocalyptic world, essentially producing gold. That lab would be worth gasoline, generators, guards, everything that is needed to keep it running. So you could have an economy based on low-disease potato tubers.
That’s why I think slaves would be better. If resources start to dwindle, you could simply reduce the slave population by executing large numbers of them, or you could rapidly increase the population though forced breeding and lowering the age you put children to work. You only need a citizen population large enough to keep the slaves in check.
The issue of currency is interesting, and one I often wonder about when watching or reading post-apoc stuff. The lack of equivalence between goods and services is exactly what currency is for, and I do wonder whether that would actually change post-apoc. People still need to exchange goods, and who's to say whether a gun is worth the same as a bag of potatoes? Falling back on currency values would solve that problem, though of course with nobody enforcing or controlling it, it would be difficult to maintain their relative values according to the currency. There would of course be many more people bypassing currency altogether and just taking what they need by force, but those people aren't going to be bartering either. I think economics is probably the most interesting thing about post-apoc civilisation, or more likely the lack thereof.
Sugar and salt. You have no idea how addicted you are to that shit until you don't have it any more. The key thing about currency is that the reason it has value is because we know someone else will accept it. Cigarettes can be currency even if we don't smoke, as long as we're pretty certain we can trade those cigarettes with the guys over the hill. It'd be an interesting dynamic in post-apocalyptic scenarios because most currencies that exist today hold their value because someone somewhere knows they're going to need them at some point - dollars have value because about 300 million Americans will need to pay their taxes in dollars. Taxes have, historically, been what created currencies. When people know that at some point in the year they're going to need to deliver 5 crates of oranges to the revenue, oranges become an acceptable standard of exchange. In a post-apoc world, there are no taxes. There is no guaranteed demand. But you've also got a load of people who have grown up using some kind of currency and so will be looking for something that looks kinda currency-shaped to fill the hole when they're trying to trade. Point is - yes, I agree. The issue of currency is interesting
The trouble with slave armies is they tend to revolt ... hell the romans had a lot of trouble with slave revolts even without arming them I am spartacus no, I am spartacus etc
Good point. I recently read that in one of the US prison systems (don't remember which state), cigarettes have been banned and retort packs (what do they call those in the US? The foil-lined sealed plastic bags of food that replace canning?) of tuna have replaced smokes as the barter currency. Inmates aren't allowed to have money, just credit in their accounts, but the tuna packs cost a buck from the commissary, so it's a stable item with a known value that can be either traded on or put to its intended use.
To the idea of manpower I'd add the subtlety of expertise--brute strength is worth something, but medical or engineering or whatever other knowledge would be worth more.
When I was in jail (technically a holding facility) it was little packets of peanut butter that everyone wanted. You couldn't get rid of smokes because the minute the guards smelled one the whole place went on lock down for a couple of days. Aside from that, there was rarely anything anyone wanted that someone else already had. If that did happen, then they would barter with anything they had, including favours and labour, or it would get taken by force.
