Barter in a Post-SHTF Environment

I'll trade you a goat for 14 chickens and a box of 12-gauge shells.

Preparedness/prepper sites tend to have a lot of posts about barter in a future SHTF or TEOTWAWKI situation. Often they’re simply lists of useful things to stock up on to barter for other useful things (apparently other useful things that you didn’t have the foresight to stock up on). There’s no consensus about what those things are or how many there are (12, 16, 20, 25,30, 72, and 101 are are among the numbers proposed according to a Google search). SHTF and TEOTWAWKI tend to be use interchangeably but I think that it’s better to see SHTF as more restricted in scale and time and TEOTWAWKI as more widespread and enduring. Perhaps another way to look at it is in terms of Venn diagrams, a TEOTWAWKI situation is always an SHTF situation but an SHTF situation may or may not be a TEOTWAWKI situation, much as all Scotch is whisky but not all whisky is Scotch (whisky/whiskey is a topic for another day).

A few items seem to be on almost every list (sometimes with caveats): alcohol, ammunition, bleach, canning supplies, cigarettes, food, fuel, gold and silver, matches and lighters, salt, and toilet paper. Not every list has all of those 11, but all have most of them. FWIW, I think that all of these are a bit problematic and need to be thought out a bit more clearly:

Alcohol — People are always going to want to get schnockered, especially in high-stress situations. Quite a few of the the sites I looked at mention non-schnockerizing uses for alcohol such as sterilization and producing medicinal tinctures. Yeah, okay, I guess, but most would end up going down throats. Vodka and whiskey are widely thought to be your go-to boozes for bartering purposes.

Ammunition — This comes up again and again, but I think that it’s a terrible thing to barter away. Do you really want to barter away something that might be returned to you at high velocity? Stocking up on extra ammo for yourself makes a lot of sense, but I think it’s about the last thing I’d want to barter away and don’t understand why it shows up on so many lists. That said, I might be wrong about this. Joe Fox has a great YouTube video arguing that ammunition is an excellent barter item. Worth a look-see.

Bleach — This one’s pretty good. Bleach has many uses. Purifying water for drinking (8 drops of bleach per gallon, let it sit for an hour before drinking) and germ-killing gusto could come in handy. Make sure to get the generic regular kind rather than scented if you want to use it for purifying water for drinking. Bleach deteriorates quickly after the bottle has been opened so consider getting quart-sized bottles rather than gallon-sized.

Canning Supplies — Yes, but. Of no practical value in a short- to medium-term SHTF situation but of immense value in a TEOTWAWKI situation such as grid-down with the food distribution system crippled. But if things are that bad and you’re doing intensive homestead-gardening to save up enough canned food for the big, bad winter months, do you want to be trading away items critical to food storage? So these are probably stock for your own use rather that stock for bartering items. Jars and rings can generally be reused but most lids cannot, so consider getting some reusable lids.

Cigarettes — A lot of sites suggest this, but I’m not convinced. Sure, in an extended SHTF situation or a TEOTWAWKI one, they’d be in short supply and much in demand. But they’re quite expensive and have a relatively short shelf life. And nowadays there are many more drinkers than smokers, so your pool of potential bartering partners who are Jonesing for a fix would likely be larger with booze versus cigs.

Food — Well, duh. Most people keep relatively little on hand, so it would be in demand in an SHTF situation and very in demand in a TEOTWAWKI situation. But what would you be trading it for? Many sites suggest MRE’s as a barterable item, but I think that’s hard to justify on a cost-benefit basis. In a true survival situation, calories is the name of the game. An MRE typically has about 1,500 calories and costs about $7 in today’s world. Bought in bulk, it’s about $0.35 for a pound of white rice, which also has about 1,500 calories. But again, do you really want to be trading food away if things all around you are bad and getting worse?

Fuel — You’re going to boil that water that a mouse might have died in to purify it? You’re going to boil that rice for a minute and then simmer it for another 20? How exactly? Fuel probably won’t be a huge issue in an SHTF situation but could become critical in a TEOTWAWKI one. Charcoal, one-pound propane cylinders, and cured firewood would all be in demand. From an opsec point of view, smoke would be a giveaway, so a low-smoke, low-fuel option such as a rocket stove might be worth considering. All that said, a lot of people have camp stoves and since Coleman fuel has a fairly long shelf life, it might not be a bad idea to have some. Store some fuel in a locked shed rather than in an attached garage, your homeowner’s insurance will thank you.

Gold and Silver — These get mentioned a lot. I’m of two minds here. From an investing point of view, yes, I like them. They’re excellent hedges against inflation. I own a bit myself (with a bias toward silver). Historically, they have come in quite handy in periods of instability and war. That said, in an SHTF situation, plain old cash might come in more handy. ATM networks are down? Cash would be king, at least for a while. Ferfal's experience in the Argentinian collapse suggests that green dead Presidents would be useful to have. But, yes, precious metals have a long track record as a store of value and as a medium of exchange, the but you can’t eat gold argument notwithstanding.

Matches and Lighters — Probably not really a huge demand for these in an SHTF situation. In a TEOTWAWKI situation, a long-lasting source of fire such as ferrocerium firesteel would be better than expendable matches/lighters.

Salt — I can’t imagine that this would be in any great demand during a shortish duration SHTF scenario, but in a worst-case grid-down type of world the stuff would be very, very much in demand. Cheap as dirt now so, yes, stock up. Both the regular iodized kind and the coarser non-iodized kind used for canning.

Toilet Paper — This one comes up all the time. I get it, the yuck factor. If the zombies attack while you’re doing your business, you’ll want to bolt out of the outhouse with a clean bum. But stocking up for barter purposes? Don’t get me wrong, it’s fine to stock up, and the way that paper-product prices have been going nowhere but up lately, feel free to have several dozen rolls out in the garage. But if the SHTF (gratuitous pun intended), I’m not convinced that this would be a great barter item largely because, in a pinch, everything from old magazines to rags could be used in place of it, whereas for several of the other barterable items already mentioned, there are few if any alternatives. Granted, in a long-term TEOTWAWKI situation, sanitation, particularly the case of human waste, would be a major issue. For that though, lime, bucket toilet seats, and thick contractor bags might come in really handy.

image credit: Pixabay

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