Consider this scenario: During the Collapse, you need some antibiotics for your sick child and have some ammunition to trade. You need to do more than just have the ammunition on hand to trade – you need to know how to go to the post-Collapse trading post and get the deal done. Without getting killed.
People have been trading for things they need for thousands of years. Trading will certainly happen after the Collapse – in fact, trading will be huge because most of the “normal” stores won’t be operating. Count on it: You will be shopping at a trading post in the future.
So prepare for it now.
There are three levels of preparing for post-Collapse trading: getting stuff, being mentally prepared for the rough trading post, and then perhaps running a trading post of your own as a merchant or security contractor.
The first level is getting a bunch of stuff that people will want so you have things to trade. Here is a good article on 40 things that are cheap now but will be immensely valuable during the Collapse. Many of you have already done this, though. You have stuff to sell, but now you need to move up to the next level – which is how to shop without getting killed.
The second level is mentally preparing for shopping in a trading post which will probably look more like a backwoods logger bar than a shopping mall. You need to get mentally ready for how different it will be from your current peaceful world. You see, most of us don’t hang out with potentially dangerous people so we don’t know how to carry ourselves in these situations. I’m an exception to this. For the past 30 years or so, I have been lucky to go to tough-as-nails logger bars with the real Steve Briggs when I visit my home town. I understand how these places work. You don’t look at anyone else’s woman, you apologize when you bump into someone, and you ignore drunks who want to fight (unless they insult your woman – and you beat the shit out of them if they touch her). (This song illustrates the code of conduct I’m talking about.) A logger bar is how a trading post will be.
Only worse. You need to be mentally prepared for the fact that thieves will be killed – very brutally. There may be some unsavory things for sale. A great introduction to life at a post-Collapse trading post is from the TV show Jericho. Watch here at 14:53 – 17:00, 19:50 – 25:33, 28:47 – 32:33, and 34:52 – 35:40. Here’s my point: You need to confidently walk into that trading post, quietly do your business, and leave as fast as you can. There will be, especially at the beginning of the Collapse, lots of people who yell about “fair prices” or insist on paying with a credit card. Don’t be one of those people.
The third level, and the one most people haven’t thought about, is operating a trading post of your own. You might be the merchant or the security protecting the establishment. Lots of you reading this have tons of guns and some training. You’d make excellent security contractors. You’d be paid a portion of the sales, which is how you could feed your family. You could make sure the place operates honorably instead of like a giant garage sale of drugs and prostitution. (And you could kill anyone who tries to bring women or – God forbid, children – in for sale.) You’ll need to have sufficient firepower to fight off the gangs that will try to muscle in on your trading post. But start thinking about this now.
Before you have to.