Today I'm happy to be taking part in the blog tour for Jay Posey's Three. Down at the bottom of this post, you'll find everything you need to enter the tour giveaway, but first, I'm happy to welcome Mr. Posey himself to the blog! Jay has prepared a post for us today to help us survive the possible coming apocalypse. Take it away, Jay!
The Ultimate Post-Apocalyptic Currency
At some point long, long ago, someone figured out that if he had a spare pointy stick lying around, he might be able to trade it for someone else’s extra flinty rock, and a moment later some other someone became the first economist, because it was a whole lot easier to talk about the theory of pointy sticks and flinty rocks than it was to produce or procure either. And we’ve been trading things for other things ever since. Even after the total collapse of the world as we know it, it’s a safe bet that trade will continue to be an important aspect of whatever remains of our tattered society.
There are many different opinions out there about what you should horde ahead of time so that you’ll have something to exchange for the goods or services you need but can’t provide for yourself. Gold is popular in some circles, for example, with the thinking being that regardless of what happens with cash, everyone will still agree that precious metals are, you know, precious. But it turns out that you can’t eat or drink gold, and it’s not great for making tools or keeping warm, so in a truly post-apocalyptic situation, your gold might only be good for reminding yourself of the good old days when people actually had time to care about shiny things.
In other circles, some folks break it down into the Tangibles and Intangibles categories. Tangibles are, of course, physical goods that have immediate and obvious use in a crisis situation with a barter economy; clothing, blankets, alcohol, bullets, fishing gear, medical supplies, long-shelf-life foods, batteries, bottle caps, you get the idea. Intangibles are often listed as skills you can provide or experience you can leverage. You’re an EMT, you can provide emergency aid. You’re a general contractor, you can help repair or build shelters. Any number of skills might come in handy in a post-apocalyptic situation, like farming, hunting, construction, or radio operations. Some that are likely to be less in demand include novel writing and making snarky comments on Twitter.
But of all the many ideas and thoughts about post-apocalyptic currency, one that I think will be worth the most seems to be rarely mentioned. And that is trust.
It can be hard to think of trust as a currency, but in reality, we already use it as one in our everyday lives. When we’re looking for a mechanic, we ask people we trust for their opinions. We freely refer others to the dentist we’ve come to love. We’ll loan our neighbors our lawnmowers or our ladders because we trust they’ll take care of them and return them, and we also trust that sometime in the future they’ll be willing to help us in our hour of need. Building trust and transferring it amongst various parties is a healthy function of any resilient community.
The good news is, trust is something you can start hoarding right now by living a generous life and being a positive influence within your own community. And while it’s most certainly a good idea to be prepared with everything you need for the first 72 hours of a crisis (you can find many excellent lists for what you should have on hand for that very scenario), it’s worth thinking about how you can strengthen your own community so that when trouble does come, you’ll have a pocket of mutual security and safety and a built-in tribe you can trust.
Huge thanks to Jay for being here today and equally huge thanks to the folks over at Angry Robot for putting this tour together!
Now for the giveaway dets: The ladies over at My Shelf Confessions have put together a tour wide giveaway. Each stop on the tour has been assigned a unique question. Be sure to read the book excerpt, which can be found here on Angry Robot's Three page. Then head over to My Shelf Confessions to enter your answer in the rafflecopter widget. You can answer as many or as few as you like - each answered question gets you an extra entry! There's a full list of the tour links on the contest page.
Here's the questions for my stop:
Good luck!
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