by 3AD Scout, Survival Blog:
(Continued from Part 2. This concludes the article.)
Location, location, location
So you assemble enough barter goods to open a small general store, where, when and how do you trade these goods? Living in a rural area with lots of Mennonite, Amish, and Hutterite families, many of whom own and operate their own small businesses now each one of these small businesses is a potential location for commerce or barter. There is value in forming business relationships now and maintaining those relationships in a post-SHTF world. Being a familiar and trusted neighbor before the SHTF will put you in a better position to negotiate post-SHTF. Many people do not grasp that business is about relationships.
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Reverting to local trade
Packing a truck up and heading to the local flea market 20 miles away probably will not be a good business plan post-SHTF. Being able to trade within a 5 to 7 mile radius of your home is a good assumption. Humans are said to be “creatures of habit”. If a person goes to ABC grocery store before the SHTF they will try to go after SHTF too. We have all probably traveled through small towns where Main Street consist of a post office, pharmacy, hardware store, tavern and an antique shop. Will “Main Street” still be the center of commerce post-TEOTWAWKI? At some point, it will be.
Immediately after TEOTWAWKI most trade will be very localized like within a mile of your home or among your closest neighbors. Trips that require long distances maybe challenging due to lack of resources like fuel, limited numbers of vehicles that are able to operate, security issues and a general fear of going beyond one’s smaller neighborhood community. As time goes on and supplies are used up locally that area of trade will expand. People will start to figure out how to transport goods to markets, security will be re-established to deal with criminal elements that threaten trade and commerce.
Return of the Bulletin Board
We frequent many Amish-owned businesses and other businesses that have lots of Amish customers. What all these businesses have in common is a bulletin board. These boards are full of those offering “taxi” services to the Amish, livestock for sale, other services and items for sale, including firearms. One of the small towns with a large local Amish population even has a large (3’x8’) bulletin board on Main Street. Bulletin boards will fill that gap left by the sudden disappearance of the internet and social media platforms. Having paper and different writing utensils are indeed a prep worth storing. Tape, push-pins, staple gun, and laminate sheets will also be good items to help you “advertise” your services or wares.
Here’s your Sign
Besides bulletin boards, there will be a reemergence of roadside signs. Sure there are signs along our roads now but in a post-SHTF world neon/LED signs will not work and no one will be around to change out the signs on the large billboards. What will return are the smaller signs like the ones that dotted the countryside advertising “Burma Shave”. The signs might not be as witty as the “Burma Shave” signs but the signs will be everywhere advertising items and services.
Having some basic materials in your preps to make signs will be useful. Exterior paint, paint brushes, wood and stakes can help with your post-TEOTWAWKI trade. Let us not forget that one of the most iconic advertising campaigns was that of “MAIL POUCH” advertisements painted on barns across America. Farmers actually received one or two dollars a year for their barns being used as a billboard. The tobacco company would also paint 2 sides of the barn as part of the payment. This does not sound like a lot but when adjusted for inflation at one or two dollars would be like $50 today and the farmer also did not have to worry about painting the barn himself saving money in paint and time. So do not discount this old advertising method making a return.
Establishing Prices
One of the difficult tasks will probably be determining how to value and/or price your goods and services. One of the biggest factors in determining the value of your goods and/or services comes down to supply and demand. If you are the only person with 12 gauge shotgun shells in a twenty-mile radius you can pretty much “name your price”. That is until you need a course of antibiotics from the only guy who has them in a 100-mile radius. How will you know what the supply of items is in your area? Again, people will advertise, there will also be word of mouth but the other gauge is what was the availability of those items in your local area before TEOTWAWKI? This comes back to knowing your neighbors and community or what some people call an “area study”. For example, the nearest gas station near us is 6 miles away. However, being surrounded by farms there are a lot of fuel tanks. Most of them are filled with off-road diesel. Regular gasoline is not as plentiful as diesel. Hence, gasoline may well be worth more than diesel, locally.
Something else to ponder about how much your barter goods are worth is burn rate of those items and the availability to replace those items. After an EMP, candles will probably be widely used for light. Candles are something that many rural farm area will be able to replace either by making candles with beeswax or tallow. Candles will be in high demand but because they can be replenished even after SHTF, they will not be an extremely high-value item. However, take something like a .22 long rifle round, I am confident that 90% of the houses in a 20-mile radius of me have a box of .22 long rifle cartridges. But unlike candles, there is probably not a person in that 20-mile radius that reload or manufacture a .22 long rifle round. So we have, at the onset of TEOTWAWKI, high demand for .22 long rifle ammo but we also have a good supply (90% of homes have 50+ rounds). As people use their .22 ammo up for shooting small game, target practice and even self-defense it cannot be readily replaced. Thus we will have a high demand, low supply situation.
