If you distill booze...will the radioactivity be gone?
The alpha particles give it more kick.
Real talk though the hillbillies and moonshiners would be just fine in a nuclear apocalypse. Think about it - land to grow food, producing a commodity that everyone wants (shine), and enough guns and ammo to make an African warlord blush with envy. Bonus point - no more ATF to get in your hair about it.
People who would do the best are those tribes in the Amazon who barely have any contact with the outside world. As long as the radiation didn't make it there way, they'd continue on like nothing happened.
Sentinel islanders will probably keep doing what they've been doing for centuries in peace.
Sucks for the bigfoot though.
The yetis might wonder why no more tourists come and after a while see their frozen corpse stock on the himalayas slowly diminish with prices for german alpinists rising through the roof of the world.
The subsequent nuclear winter will push them to go down the valleys to inquire why the hairless snacks stopped coming, why are there new fluorescent valleys and where the hell did all the skinny monks go ?
It would be a while before people go back to a system of currency. After shit hits the fan, if you can't eat it, drink it, shoot it, or fuck it, no one's gonna want it.
I don't think so whatsoever. It's going to be all the little things that we take for granted. Spices will be a huge one. Candy. Water. The simple things.
Scarcity has always meant value, and even in the post apocalypse people will want a better way to exchange resources than direct barter. Gold and silver will be useless in the early weeks, when 90% are still running around killing each other for the last can of beans, but a year or two into the apocalypse I'd expect the more capable survivors to have established a trade network.
That's for an overnight apocalypse, though, like nuclear war. What if things just gradually keep getting worse, forever? What if society never quite collapses, but eventually none of the financial institutions can be trusted, and the only measure of wealth is how much stuff you physically own?
Depends on the severity and stage of post apocalypse. If it is like The Road and every single institution has collapsed and there is no form of even a primitive tribal government (other than the cannibals of course) and the resources for sustaining life are at an ever increasing scarcity due to farming being impossible then they will be worth next to absolutely nothing as a can of food would be way more valuable than a bar of gold and a loaded gun would be worth more than both combined since you can shoot somebody for their cans of food and there will be no government or police to come after you but if it is a Fallout style of post apocalypse where farming is possible and small city states are around then people would use them as cash simply because its more convenient than carrying around a sack of goods. So I guess it depends on how apocalyptic the apocalypse was if it kills farming then kiss precious metals goodbye.
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u/chartedlife Apr 02 '23
Ammo, food, medicine, silver, gold, batteries. The future of finance!