Fuck, I am sick of survival sites wanking on about trading after the collapse, as if American capitalism is immortal or something, and like Adam Smith will be there in spirit to give head to all good libertarians.
It is obvious OpSec that in a total SHTF situation, lying as low as possible is necessary for any chance of survival. Going out, in the hope that someone has exactly the medication you need, is more likely to lead to lead: to immediate death, or later home invasion. Surely, the time to get your shit together is now, and to put away overwhelmingly vast quantities of the goodies one needs rather than chance it down the tack.
Why trade good whiskey, bullets or toilet paper, when you need unlimited quantities of these things, to drown one’s sorrows, shoot vermin and to wipe one’s eternally dirty anal hole?
The Great Train Wreck of the West
I agree. It will be hoards of cannibals spreading across the land. If they can't see you they can't eat you.
A tip I heard from another preparedness guy is that toilet paper has clay in it, falls apart and degrades. I don't know what's the best to get in this situation. I'm guessing the clay provides softness. Maybe best is to get a lot of those brown hand drying paper rolls like they have in towel dispensers and use that. Cheaper is better in this case because I'm guessing it will just be paper. I know I sure don't have enough to last for long.
I'm only a moderate "BEEE prepared" SHTF guy. I keep about 3 month's worth of basic food on the shelf (oatmeal, flour, oil, bacon), and vitamin pills to make up the deficiencies. I have a garden (which only works in the warm weather) and I can shoot, dress, and cook my own game (which wouldn't last long with hundreds of hungry men in the woods with guns). I have a spring for water, and lots of wood for heat.
It seems to me that "preppers" normally expect somehow to live the SAME sort of life that they lived before the poxeclipse, so they try to store the things that they have TODAY that would allow them to still have all the 21st century "stuff" that we've gotten used to. Not me.
The biggest problem, both actually and ethically, is going to be the "full lifeboat" problem. You've prepared; you have heat, some food, some water. You may be able to live through it.
But here comes your neighbor and their families. They DIDN'T prepare. They're starving, they're cold, and they see that YOU are not. The man who was your friend and golfing buddy in the Before times is going to kill you if he can, in order to get your stuff, to keep his own family, friends, tribe, whatever, from starving. You're in a lifeboat with 12 people in it, and the water is an inch from the gunwales - it can't take another 20 pounds. And here come 10 people desperately swimming up reaching for the sides.
Do you beat them off with the oars and watch them drown while you and yours survive, or do you let them try to climb into the boat and ALL of you drown?
Sorry, Larry, Denise - go the other way right now and find another place .... I said THE OTHER WAY! ... DAMMIT LARRY ...
I shake my head in sardonic, black humor when I see "survival" sites with all sorts of technology that people think they're going to keep alive through those kinds of times ....
@ LaMano:
Exactly. One man, no man. Mobbed up, or mopped up.