Alcohol and liquor as barter

[Guest Lowbuster]

I was reading on one thread about how people had mixed feelings on keeping alcohol shtf. Remember there are alot of people out there in chronic pain that will not be able to fill scripts. They will need this to help with pain just as they did in the old days too. I think it would be a valuable commodity. I have food, guns, ammo, water etc. but I think I may stock a few cases. Thanks for all the good info on this site.

[UncleJak]

I keep trying to add whiskey to my preparations, but somehow it keeps getting drank....

[Mike.357]

I think it will be an excellent medium for barter.

I stockpile it for consumption though. Gotta look out for #1

[DaveS]

Korn Likker....drink it, dress wounds, sterilize knives, start fires....the list goes on and on....

[jgradyc]

Only serious drinkers are going to be trading for alcohol so you'd best stick with something most serious drinkers like. This is Tennessee, so that's whiskey... Jack Daniels would be my choice to stock. All non-liquor drinkers, which is a LOT of people, would be more interested in trading for rubbing alcohol. It's far more cost effective as a barter item. As you stock up on liquids, add a few bottles of unscented Clorox. It's a great water purifier and if public water is off, it would be in far higher demand than whiskey or rubbing alcohol.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Wonder if one were to store enough liquor to be truly useful as trade goods-- If you got accidentally raided, wrong address on a warrant-- Maybe state or fed revenoors would decide that you are a bootlegger and it would be very difficult to convince them otherwise?

Having lived a sheltered life I can't recall buying product from a bootlegger. But in my mispent youth some friends would buy pints of cherry vodka and other awful stuff from "urban bootleggers". The business model was apparently to buy numerous pints of legal tax-stamped whiskey at the liquor store, and then sell it at double markup after hours and on sunday. And apparently in some cases sell to rebellious teens, though perhaps some bootleggers had enough principles to only sell to adults.

Just wondering, if that underground business model works before the crash, then if you had a few hundred pint bottles of canadian mist or rotgut cherry vodka, it ought to sell at least as well after the end of the world? Even if a pre-crash drinker is too proud except to drink the most expensive scotch, then he might eagerly buy rotgut cherry vodka if that is the only thing available? I only mock cherry vodka because it seemed a favorite among my teen friends, though I don't recall buying or drinking it. Maybe it is delicious and I'm being unfair. Would just be apprehensive if ever got raided by accident, that a closet full of cheap pints might walk and quack too much like a duck and one could get erroneously charged with bootlegging?

The clorox seems an excellent idea and maybe it wouldn't look so odd to have a closet full of clorox. When I was a kid we had a house with a pool for a few years. Always wanted a pool until we got one and I had to spend hours every week adding chemicals and vacuuming the stupid pool. Spent more time maintaing the pool than swimming in it. But it was a good way to make friends with girls typically too classy to make friends with a goofy burr-headed nerd.

Anyway we had a big barrel of chlorine tablets for the pool. Some people would use bottles of clorox, but the tablets were more practical. So maybe it would make more sense to stock pool chlorine tablets rather than bottles of clorox, as trade goods? Maybe there is something wrong with that idea. Just throwing it out for what its worth.

[Mike.357]

There is still bootlegging as described above going on.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

There is still bootlegging as described above going on.

Thanks Mike

Got to thinking, a few months ago someone was describing the "candy lady" found in many urban neighborhoods. Hadn't heard of that before. Said that many neighborhoods there will be an old lady who goes to walmart and buys lots of candy then sells it out of her house so neighbors with a sweet tooth don't have to go out of the neighborhood to a store.

Was thinking, maybe the old grannie who is the candy lady, maybe her hubbie is the bootlegger? That would make it a one-stop shop!

I don't have a sweet tooth. Hardly ever eat anything sweet. I like spicy, greasy, salty, sour, bitter just fine, but not so much sweet. But there are lots of folks who are candy addicts. If you were gonna stock up on "luxury" trade goods, maybe a bunch of skittles, mars bars and little debbie cakes would work as good or better than anything?

[nightrunner]

If you were gonna stock up on "luxury" trade goods, maybe a bunch of skittles, mars bars and little debbie cakes would work as good or better than anything?

Only problem is those type things usually dont have a very long shelf life

[seez52]

I keep a few cases of adult beverages on hand for possible trade goods. If you remember the guy in New Orleans that was featured on a news story during Katrina who used booze to keep his porta potty cleaned, plus other stuff. Lots of folks will do things for a bottle of even cheap juice.

[Guest lostpass]

Wonder if one were to store enough liquor to be truly useful as trade goods-- If you got accidentally raided, wrong address on a warrant-- Maybe state or fed revenoors would decide that you are a bootlegger and it would be very difficult to convince them otherwise?

Having lived a sheltered life I can't recall buying product from a bootlegger. But in my mispent youth some friends would buy pints of cherry vodka and other awful stuff from "urban bootleggers". The business model was apparently to buy numerous pints of legal tax-stamped whiskey at the liquor store, and then sell it at double markup after hours and on sunday. And apparently in some cases sell to rebellious teens, though perhaps some bootleggers had enough principles to only sell to adults.

Just wondering, if that underground business model works before the crash, then if you had a few hundred pint bottles of canadian mist or rotgut cherry vodka, it ought to sell at least as well after the end of the world? Even if a pre-crash drinker is too proud except to drink the most expensive scotch, then he might eagerly buy rotgut cherry vodka if that is the only thing available? I only mock cherry vodka because it seemed a favorite among my teen friends, though I don't recall buying or drinking it. Maybe it is delicious and I'm being unfair. Would just be apprehensive if ever got raided by accident, that a closet full of cheap pints might walk and quack too much like a duck and one could get erroneously charged with bootlegging?

The clorox seems an excellent idea and maybe it wouldn't look so odd to have a closet full of clorox. When I was a kid we had a house with a pool for a few years. Always wanted a pool until we got one and I had to spend hours every week adding chemicals and vacuuming the stupid pool. Spent more time maintaing the pool than swimming in it. But it was a good way to make friends with girls typically too classy to make friends with a goofy burr-headed nerd.

Anyway we had a big barrel of chlorine tablets for the pool. Some people would use bottles of clorox, but the tablets were more practical. So maybe it would make more sense to stock pool chlorine tablets rather than bottles of clorox, as trade goods? Maybe there is something wrong with that idea. Just throwing it out for what its worth.

When I was younger there was a trailer outside Kansas City that people said was "mob owned" except I couldn't say that it really was. What I could say is that he sold liquor on Sundays (in MO you couldn't do that back then) and that there were no tax stamps on the stuff. And he sold it to underage folks.

I only mention all this because his biggest seller, according to him, was popov vodka (I think) that was cherry flavored. I you asked for fancy crap, and buy fancy I mean Crown Royal, he didn't have it. But the cheap stuff was available.

Weirder still, his prices were the same as a liquor store but rounded up a buck. So that fifth of vodka you would pay 5.50 for was only six bucks in his store.

Customer service was actually pretty good but the shopping experience left a lot to be desired. You couldn't see the bottles and you had to knock to get in.

Bartering liquor and beer will be huge after the nopocalypse happens. If you know how to make beer, grow hops and grain you'll be set. If folks really want to know what will go over look at the list of the worlds oldest companies that should tell you something.

Stocking up two years of food and water means you get to die two years later than everyone else. Having a sustainable plan means you get to thrive.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Only problem is those type things usually dont have a very long shelf life

Thanks nightrunner. That may be true. Perhaps skittles would have a longer shelf life than mars bars, but anything with that much sugar concentration might be immune to bacteria overgrowth even if after a few decades they might taste somewhat stale?

Urban legend has it that Little Debbies have sufficient additives to ensure a nearly infinite shelf life, but dunno if that is true. It has been claimed that if little debbies had been manufactured in the time of the pharoahs and buried in the pyramids along with the mummies, that the little cakes would remain edible to this day. Perhaps after the heat death of the universe, when the universe is a diffuse dark place of maximum entropy, there may still be a few surviving little debbie cakes floating in the void. As fresh as the day they were manufactured! Fortified with additives strong enough to inhibit proton decay!

When I was younger there was a trailer outside Kansas City that people said was "mob owned" except I couldn't say that it really was. What I could say is that he sold liquor on Sundays (in MO you couldn't do that back then) and that there were no tax stamps on the stuff. And he sold it to underage folks.

I only mention all this because his biggest seller, according to him, was popov vodka (I think) that was cherry flavored. I you asked for fancy crap, and buy fancy I mean Crown Royal, he didn't have it. But the cheap stuff was available.

Weirder still, his prices were the same as a liquor store but rounded up a buck. So that fifth of vodka you would pay 5.50 for was only six bucks in his store.

Customer service was actually pretty good but the shopping experience left a lot to be desired. You couldn't see the bottles and you had to knock to get in.

Bartering liquor and beer will be huge after the nopocalypse happens. If you know how to make beer, grow hops and grain you'll be set. If folks really want to know what will go over look at the list of the worlds oldest companies that should tell you something.

Stocking up two years of food and water means you get to die two years later than everyone else. Having a sustainable plan means you get to thrive.

Thanks lostpass. Perhaps after inflation gets out of hand, the new currency will be denominated in half-pints of cherry vodka? More stable in value than even gold or silver!

Maybe two years survival would be a longer duration than the likely sustainability of social security checks if the crash does not occur? Got to wean myself away from being so unrealistically optimistic!

Sounds like that KC trailer wasn't paying liquor tax, so maybe they had an inside connection? Going out the back door of some distributor with an accountant more creative than Salvado Dali, M.C. Escher and Bob Dylan all rolled into one?

Some claim that agriculture was invented because people needed to stay in the same spot to guard their fields in order to have a steady supply of beer. If it happened once, perhaps it could happen again?

[Mike.357]

After reading different books and fiction about end of days and shtf, if things will never bounce back i don't know if i want to continue on. None of it reads like they are very livable situations. Not without a lot of violence and death struggle to survive.

Any prepping i do is with a mindset to be able to ride out a few months in safety and seclusion. Hopefully some sort of economy and civilization will return.

I am not so sure any of us will be able to hold off roaming hords who would kill us over some bags of rice and cans of veggies.

At least with some hootch stocked up death will be less painful

Edited April 20, 2012 by Mike.357

[nightrunner]

Lester: i was thinking little debbies would go faster than candy bars. I know if you leave snack cakes on the kitchen counter after a couple weeks they dont taste too good to me. And taste is the whole point!

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Lester: i was thinking little debbies would go faster than candy bars. I know if you leave snack cakes on the kitchen counter after a couple weeks they dont taste too good to me. And taste is the whole point!

Hi nightrunner. Yer probably right. Was just joking. On the other hand, even if it doesn't taste good the high-sugar-concentration things might stay edible a long time? Dunno. Honey and many syrups have so much sugar that it destroys the cell walls of bacteria and bacteria can't grow. Strangely, dunno if it is true but read some medical doctors reporting that honey concoctions heal up bedridden folks bedsores as good or better than modern drugs, because the bacteria just can't make it in all that sugar. Even doctors can be nuts sometimes, so sometimes you can read about anything. I'm not a doctor.

[Mike.357]

Wasn't there something in Zombieland about how long Twinkies would last?

Myself, i prefer Hostess devils food iced Zingers. And they don't have an expiration date but rather a Best By date.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Mike.357

[seez52]

I've heard some people will crave Twinkies after a Zombie apocolypse, but that Snow Balls are a no-go, so you might want to be really careful about which variety of Little Debbies you hord.

Edited April 20, 2012 by seez52

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I've heard some people will crave Twinkies after a Zombie apocolypse, but that Snow Balls are a no-go, so you might want to be really careful about which variety of Little Debbies you hord.

Am not in the habit of eating sweets, but the peanut butter "nutty bars" seem the closest thing to an addictive drug. If I buy a box of them they don't last very long, so I never buy em.

[Timestepper]

Ever notice how "Little Debbie" is shown on the box only from the neck up? Ever wonder why that is? It's because, after all those delicious treats, from the neck down she's "BIG Debbie."

[Mason]

I make wine for a hobby and always have plenty stocked. My wife and I rarely drink so I just bottle and store until a friend stops in for a free bottle. I have considered it as a good trading implement.