[COWBOYSURVIVAL]

Ideally I think bartering a trade or skill would be more critical. Take blacksmithing, or even basketmaking as examples. It is why I study hand crafts. When the lights go out these will become most valuable.

[Celticwarrior]

Yup, trust me. You are the one that has the only soap in the county, you become pretty popular. Or the ability to throw a pot or cup or bowl on the pottery wheel. Or make new candles. Or make clothes out of bolts of cloth (patterns are cheap, and so are thread and needles. Trust me...people will NEED that!), or taking broken bottles and blowing them into new glass cups or even bottles and jars. Reloading ammo. Working with wood. Fixing engines. Being a professional baker with a wood-fired brick oven. Having a decent grain mill. All of those things are "obsolete" skills today, since we can buy all those things new, or have someone ELSE do them for us. When things go bad, your skills and small amount of stocked supplies for that craft might be the reason a town lets you stay, or you have 'barter money' to get things like antibiotics or foods. It isn't just the extra boxes of ammo or fifths of booze that will be needed in a barter economy. It's the skills and products of a bygone era that will be needed once again, and if you know how to make them, and have the supplies to do so, you might be the richest person in the new economy in a very short time.

[tjwilhelm]

CW...you've reminded me of an old definition for the word "Power." TRUE Power is the ability to meet peoples' needs, whether those needs are real or just perceived. If you can meet people's needs, they will invest "power" in you, in exchange for getting their needs met.

This strikes me as a truism...and possibly an unfortunate one. I say this because the moral fiber and humility of the person in the power position will determine the civility and humanity of the local culture...or the total lack thereof.

Knowledge is power...skill is power...virtue is the only thing tempers the misuse of power.

My point is that while we are all building our knowledge and skills, it may be wise to also build our stores of compassion, generosity, humility, kindness...

Just a thought...

[TaintRight]

I'll can preserve the food without killing half the surviving population. Reckon they'll let me stay?

[Ron Fontaine]

Very interesting observations. Consumable supplies are finite and will run out, but your skills and gear can continue to produce for you.

One of the best items in my preparedness stocks is a high end hand operated grain mill with replacement parts. This little piece of equipment, long forgotten by the masses of people, will be worth 100 times its weight in gold should there be a collapse. It could even be the means to make a living when people lucky enough to find grains and other hard foods come to Survival Topics to have them processed.

[Celticwarrior]

Ron may well be the wealthiest man in his area with that little grain mill. Millers were, throughout history, the main landowner and usually the richest man in the community, because all of the farmers and landowners growing their own grain brought it to the mill to have it turned into flour, both for sale and their own families' use during the year. The miller would take either cash, barter items in trade, or a portion of the grain, so that they could either use it for themselves, or sell it for a profit to others who had no land in the country to grow their own. Because they were always in demand, they set their own prices which most people HAD to pay, since they didn't have a mill of their own, and they became fabulously wealthy in return. All because they had a fall or fast flowing river, a waterwheel and millstone. Gear and knowledge can put you into a position to be the 'go-to' person in your community in a way we can't imagine in our Wal-mart, multiple storefront and overpopulated service industry world. We expect there to always BE pre-made goods and people who are in competition with each other to provide us with their special crafts or abilities. One day that may not be the case, and like the blacksmith or miller of old, the person with the singular skill and the working equipment to made the items will be the one raking in the cash, barter items and respect in the post-TSHTF world.

[TaintRight]

Assuming anyone who survives knows how to grow the grain to put in it.

[Celticwarrior]

Wheat and triticale are both just grasses. Assuming even that farms lie fallow, because no one knows how to till and replant them, there are enough kernels that will have dropped from the previous year's harvest that there would be "volunteer crops" springing up in fields all over the place. While corn is too engineered to survive on it's own in unaided growth and reseeding cycles, wheat, triticale, barley, oats, buckwheat, spelt, and millet are all free-growing and will cycle over and over whether people are there or not. The more that grows and falls, the more that will be in that field the next year. Eventually, even the dumbest sheeple will figure out that there are fields of grain out there and harvest it. For them, and the people who continued to grow their own on purpose, a miller would be a valuable addition to the community.

[PreacherLWIC]

I have always heard that 22LR and 12G shells would be invaluable as they are the most common guns. But I must agree that a skill would be ALOT more valuable.

[cismifmus]

Do you live in the midwest? I'm from Iowa so you caught my eye when you said tractors.

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