Prepping on $40 a Week: Food Storage Week 3 & Barter Goods

Guys and gals, we're almost at the end of this series! Hold on tight.

So for the past couple weeks, we've put together a simple, low-cost food storage from rice, beans, and some assorted canned goods and shelf stable stuff. It's not glamorous, but it's a month of shelf stable food for $80. The rice and beans will provide the calories, carbs and protein you need, and with the addition of some oils and the assorted canned goods, you should have adequate fats, too.

Unfortunately, you'll be lacking in many other vitamins and nutrients. While it probably won't kill ya, we're going to add a multivitamin to the mix to alleviate any problems that might come from eating rice, beans and canned stuff for a month straight (aside from boredom).

The least expensive multivitamins that I have found come from Costco...the Kirkland brand. They come in big ol' bottles of 500 tablets. If you don't have a Costco membership, don't fear, you can buy 'em on Amazon for about $19. The price at Costco should be a few bucks less - around $15.50. That's dirt cheap for quality vitamins - the Wal-Mart brand is more than twice as expensive.

Of course, you probably won't need 500 multivitamins unless it's a really bad apocalypse, or if you're spreading 'em around a large family.  Don't worry, though, multivitamins can make good barter material.

Others will be eating much worse that you will, and vitamins will become pretty desireable things in an extended emergency, which is the kind where barter comes into play. If your teeth start falling out, you'd be willing to trade quite a bit for a handful of vitamins.

Certianly, multivitamins are not the end-all of barter goods, but we want to have 'em on hand anyways, so why buy in quantity.

So, the multivitamins will eat up $15-$20 of our budget this week.

The rest, we're going to roll into barter goods. The best kind of barter goods, in my opinion, meet the following criteria:

• Useful if you don't barter them away--something you will use/consume
• Inexpensive in normal times
• Hard/impossible to reproduce post-collapse
• Lightweight
• Long/indefinite shelf life
• Stuff that the average household won't have in quantity

There's no one "right" thing to stash for barter, and really, a lot of it will depend on your individual circumstances. You should diversify your barter stash, too--if you have 500 lighters but no one wants lighters, you're outta luck.

Here's a short list of ideas: lighters, matches, cheap candles, all kinds of medical supplies, vitamins (got 'em!), batteries, cheap knives, tarps, cordage of various kinds, heavy grade garbage bags, fishing hooks & line, rat traps, needles and thread, work gloves, small propane tanks, N95 masks, small candies, chocolates, spices, non-hybrid seeds and the old stand bys of alcohol, coffee and tobacco.

Food and ammo can work, too - but may not want your trade partner knowing that you have a surplus of either, and there's concerns about having bartered ammo used against you. Sugar, honey, and other sweet things would be in high demand.

One special mention item is calcium hypochlorite, which is usually sold as pool shock. It's shelf stable, and can be used to purify water in large quantities (like thousands of gallons). This EPA page has the how-to. If you can't find the right stuff in local stores, Amazon has 6 pounds for $27 shipped.

Here are a few barter item deals - feel free to share others in the comments section:

• 50 lighters for just over $14 shipped
• Boxes of matches from the local grocery store - get 'em in match books or smaller boxes for easier trading. Usually around $2-$4 for 500.
• My DIY survival candles
• 100-packs of tealights from Ikea - if you can survive the rest of the store
• Baby wipes from Costco - not just for the babies! Much more effective and multipurpose than ol' fashioned TP.
• Amazon has some decent, dirt-cheap knives that would make good trade bait or handouts - here and here for two examples that come with firesteels!

Also, keep in mind your skills and current equipment--ser. You should have a Sawyer water filter that will be good for a million gallons of water - properly set up, you could be filtering drinking water for several households, bottling for trade, etc. That's huge. If you're decent at sewing, you might want to make up some simple bags/packs (or have the knowhow and materials to do so). Got a smoker in the backyard? Make sure you've got extra wood, spices, etc. just in case. You get the picture.

Why do we care about barter? Well, you can't plan for everything, and there are some things you will forget, run out of or break and need to replace. You will probably also need help from others at some point--even if it's just for an exchange of information--and they might want some encouragement. Even if you have everything you could possible every need for the apocalypse, sometimes you just want to improve morale or make a new friend.

Got any favorite barter items? Disagree with something? Let us know in the comments sections.

Sawyer PointOne Squeeze Water Filteration System

A Sawyer PointOne Squeeze filter and 1L bag, ready to pack!

I've got to thank some of my readers for referring me to Sawyer's new line of water filters, which leverage revolutionary technology from dialysis machines to bring incredible water filtration capabilities. All of Sawyer's filters comes with a million gallon guarantee--at a gallon a day, that's 2739 YEARS worth of service. Essentially, these filters aren't going to wear out during your lifetime.

To top that off, these filters are MORE effective at removing bad stuff than almost anything else on the market - the PointOne filters are so named because they filter down to an absolute .1 microns--almost all other filters only do .2 microns--dramatically exceeding EPA requirements.

It's going to be very tough for competition products, especially considering the price point of Sawyer's products--the PointOne Squeeze, for example, is available for just over $50 on Amazon.

The Squeeze is the lightest weight version of Sawyer's PointOne filters, perfect for compact kits and lightweight get home units. Total weight with one of the included platypus-like filtration bags is 3 ounces. And, despite its small size, the Squeeze is still good for a guaranteed million gallons of service.

5 More TEOTWAWKI Professions

In last week's post, 5 TEOTWAWKI Professions, I went over 5 potential occupations for a post-collapse world. We got a great response from you guys on additional end-of-the-world jobs, and I promised to give you 5 more this week.

As a reminder, we're looking at professions that are largely skill/knowledge based, and will be things that the average survivor will struggle to do on their own. If they need tools or equipment, it should largely be portable and sustainable in a no-grid scenario. If it requires raw materials, they should be readily available--common natural resources or easily scavenged materials. We're also looking at a post-collapse, TEOTWAWKI-type scenario, where we're looking mainly at smaller communities and pockets of "safe" regions.

1. Blacksmith
The ability to work with metal is huge--making new tools, repairing others. A forge and anvil isn't exactly portable, but they can be built/improvised from common materials. Metal can be readily scavenged from a huge variety of sources--reebar, bed frames, leaf springs, on and on.

2.General Engineering
I've wrapped this under "engineering" instead of repair, because I think it will be just as important to fabricate and build new machines as it will be to repair them. Think Mythbuster's-esque ability to use creativity and a broad range of skills to improvise and solve problems. I'd go with jack-of-all-trades and versatility over a focus in a single area.

3. Power Generation
Electricity is pretty great, and having zero source of power will pose many problems--lighting, refrigeration, . A knowledgeable and inventive person with skills in this area would be hugely valued. I don't expect conventional fuel to be readily available, so knowledge of alternative methods for generating electricity--wind, solar, hydro, wood gas, steam and so on--would be important. Heck, just having some portable solar panels and the ability to charge portable electronics and batteries would be a valuable source of trade; you would just need to protect it!

4. Ammunition Reloader
Without outside supply, the only way to replace ammunition will be through reloading. A survival reloader would need to have the typical tools of the trade (press, scale, a collection of dies, etc.), and a supply of components, but also the ability to cast lead bullets in common sizes, as well as improvise primers or mix up black powder if things got desperate.

5. Gunsmith
The average gun owner barely knows how to take apart their own firearms for cleaning, and expertise in repairing, modifying and even building firearms would be close to priceless. Basic gunsmithing tools and a collection of common spare parts can fit within a normal-size toolbox. Knowledge, experience and ingenuity will be key.

Thoughts on the Free Market Post-Collapse

It will be the tendency of many post-collapse communities to revert to what essentially amounts to communism. We'll see things like:

• Seizure of private property and redistribution for the so called greater good
• Laws against hoarding, with stiff punishment for violations
• Spying by neighbors and reporting to community leaders
• Assignment of roles/responsibilities by the state

While such behavior may originate from good intentions of ensuring survival, it quickly devolves into tyranny, corruption and so on. Prepared individuals would fare exceptionally poorly, having their stockpiles confiscated or fighting it out with their neighbors and community members.

Of course, communism and central planning isn't the only way, and history has shown that it is far from the most efficient way. History has shown the free market to be the most efficient way to operate, and I believe that would hold true even in the harsh conditions that would exists in a TEOTWAWKI world.

Junk Silver

There's a lot of interest around investing in precious metals (PMs) these days. I've talked about the pros/cons of PMs in the past--you can check out some of my thoughts by following the precious metals tag. While I am not a PM fanatic like some in the survival community, they do have their place, and even if you're not interested in socking some funds away in silver or gold, it doesn't hurt to know about 'em.

Lessons from Alas, Babylon: Barter Goods

Days into the apocalypse, staples and basic items start to disappear. Gasoline, sewing needles, shaving razors, thread, coffee, alcohol, sugar, flour, matches, lighter flints, ammunition, and later on, salt. 

Several months in, the lack of salt turns desperate, with a salt starvation setting in amongst the population of Fort Repose.

"Since July, he had been unable to trade for salt anywhere. In Marines Park, a pound of salt would be worth 5 pounds of coffee, if anyone had coffee."

The lesson: stock up on these items while they are cheap and readily available.

Small, cheap, non perishable items are the easiest to stock up on. Bic Lighters, cartons of matches and packs of lighter flints are a buck or two at the grocery store. Sewing needles, thread, bottles of rubbing alcohol, cotton balls, petroleum jelly, hand sanitizer, N95 masks, razors, screws, nails, safety pins, etc. are similarly inexpensive. These items will not go bad, will be difficult/impossible to replace post-collapse, and are useful if things never goes south.

Bulk supplies of food stuffs should be kept for your family's use and generally not barter unless you have excess storage room. Salt is one exception--50 pounds of table salt is around $8-$10 at Costco, and boxes of Morton table salt are usually around $1 at the store. It lasts forever, and has a multitude of uses beyond simple seasoning--preserving meat, saline solutions, and more. People generally only have single box of salt at home, so it will be in high demand quickly post-collapse.

Don't go nuts stocking up barter supplies for a possible TEOTWAWKI survival scenario. Don't fill your home with useless crap. Don't waste money--buy things that you will use if the world doesn't end, buy things that are on sale, use coupons, hit the dollar store, and so on. But $10-$20 a month spent wisely on inexpensive, compact hard goods adds up quickly. After six months to a year, you will have a sizable cache of goods on hand, for use in good times and bad. 

Barter for Web Design website

Need a website and have an old chainsaw lying around?

Thought this was a pretty interested approach--looks like some Northern Idaho retreaters with web design skills are offering to do work on a barter basis. You send you guns, ammo, gold, or tools, they do your web work for you. I've seen people post similar offers on various forums, but haven't seen something like this--a pretty nicely designed website--to back it up!

Barter for Web >