In a Cashless World, You'd Better Pray the Power Never Goes Out (mises.org)

schwit1 quotes the Mises Institue: When Hurricane Maria knocked out power in Puerto Rico, residents there realized they were going to need physical cash — and a lot of it. Bloomberg reported that the Fed was forced to fly a planeload of cash to the Island to help avert disaster. "William Dudley, the New York Fed president, put the word out within minutes, and ultimately a jet loaded with an undisclosed amount of cash landed on the stricken island. [Business executives in Puerto Rico] described corporate clients' urgent requests for hundreds of thousands in cash to meet payrolls, and the challenge of finding enough armored cars to satisfy endless demand at ATMs... As early as the day after the storm, the Fed began working to get money onto the island."

For a time, unless one had a hoard of cash stored up in ones home, it was impossible to get cash at all. 85 percent of Puerto Rico is still without power... Bloomberg continues: "When some generator-powered ATMs finally opened, lines stretched hours long, with people camping out in beach chairs and holding umbrellas against the sun." In an earlier article from September 25, Bloomberg noted how, without cash, necessities were simply unavailable:

"Cash only," said Abraham Lebron, the store manager standing guard at Supermax, a supermarket in San Juan's Plaza de las Armas. He was in a well-policed area, but admitted feeling like a sitting duck with so many bills on hand. "The system is down, so we can't process the cards. It's tough, but one finds a way to make it work."

Comments

Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[Khyber]

The second you lose power, you're fucked. This is why cash is king, always has been, always will be.

Re: Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[DontBeAMoran]

Not in Canada, it's not paper anymore.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[nomadic]

Have you tried buying anything at a store with gold?

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[PPH]

Tide

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[Fly Swatter]

Remember that said store is in the same situation as you. Cash is useless to them as well.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[ceoyoyo]

I come from a small town with somewhat unreliable power. All the merchants know that if the power goes out, you can take a credit card impression (with some carbon paper and a hard object to rub it, if necessary) and write down the transaction. Some even have cash registers that you can hand crank if necessary. You can also write out a cheque with a pen and any scrap of paper.

I find it hard to believe that in the US, which is thirty years late to the chip and PIN party, you can't use an impression in emergencies.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[jellomizer]

We still have the indents on the credit cards. You could have taken the credit card numbers then punched them in at a later time. There is even an device that take the indents of the card and with carbon paper creates a receipt with the card number on it.

Before the days of credit card, stores kept a Tab on their customers, so they can get goods and services even if they didn't have the cash on hand at the time.

 

Re: Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[mrmaster]

Wow. Think a littler bigger please. P.R. and many of us here in the Caribbean don't expect power for months. Still no reliable internet or phones. You going to wait 4 months to process those paper transactions? If you do I'd like to buy a car then and you can ship it to me on the same credit card. Pinky swear you get your money. I despise carrying cash but it totally makes sense that cash is king during emergency situations. Since Irma on 9/6 there are only a small handful taking credit cards on st thomas.

Re: Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[ceoyoyo]

What do you think happened before every corner store had an electronic terminal? Credit cards still existed. You put all your cash, credit slips and cheques in a bag and hotfooted them over to the bank. Someone at the bank looked through them, reconciled the accounts, and gave you a (paper) statement telling you if any of the cheques bounced. If someone blew their limit on their card, that's between them and their CC company.

Yeah, cash is pretty handy when there's no power. It's not the only option.

It's quite funny to see these dire stories about what happens when you lose power. As if credit cards and cheques didn't exist before electronic banking terminals in every store.

Re: Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[arth1]

The by far largest part of the value of gold is 'it looks nice, I want some!'

Brass looks nice too. For most people, it's hard to tell from gold. But gold is malleable and doesn't corrode and tarnish. Gold jewelry looks lovely even when you've grown old.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[Hognoxious]

There is even an device that take the indents of the card and with carbon paper creates a receipt with the card number on it.

Do you mean *is*, or *was*? I used to work in a restaurant when I was a teen and I've used those things with a sliding roller but I don't think I've even seen one in 20 years.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[DerekLyons]

The second you lose power, you're fucked. This is why cash is king

o.0 Seriously? Have you ever actually tried to buy anything when the power is out? Cash is just as useless as cards when the cash register has no power. And that's presuming the items have price stickers on them so you don't need the scanner to have power too.

Re: Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[Brockmire]

Melts.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[MangoCats]

Yeah, I withdrew about $500 in cash as the storms approached, but more importantly I secured supplies of water, gasoline, and non-perishable food.

Even though we could have driven out the morning after the storm (we were lucky, the 1/2 mile of old trees along our road didn't block us in), we didn't have to. Even though the gas stations were still pumping, we didn't need them. Even though we were able to run the generator to keep the freezer going for a month with the stockpiled gasoline, that wasn't really necessary because of the store of canned and boxed foods. We use propane from big tanks to cook all the time - the only thing that really changed after the storm was the lack of air-conditioning, but the generator was big enough to run a strong floor fan, so that was liveable. And we never lost 4G data, so I did hotspot into work from a laptop once or twice, just because I could.

Point being, if you're self-sufficient for a week or more (and not located on an isolated island, up the self-sufficiency requirement about 10x there...), then you don't really have to worry about cash, check, credit card or bitcoin. Even if you have the money, often times the stores will be stripped of goods, gas stations unable to pump due to lack of electricity, roads impassable or otherwise dangerous, etc.

Money is worth quite a bit less during storm-crisis situations, just have the goods you need on-hand and save the money for when it is back up to normal value. And... don't stockpile stuff that's not readily consumable as part of normal life after storm season passes - that 15 gallons of extra gas in the garage is going in the cars for normal use come November.

Re: Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[DontBeAMoran]

You don't want to breathe the fumes.

Re: Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[OYAHHH]

You are the idiot!

Gold is KING because it can be traded by men to gain the favor of women. Pure and simple. Gold is king because ultimately it means men get the opportunity to reproduce.

Trust me, if all the women are starving due to an apocalypse you can damn well bet they will look more favorably upon a man with gold coins than a useless IPhone.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[Gussington]

The second you lose power, you're fucked. This is why cash is king, always has been, always will be.

I've been through a few power outages in my time. Cash didn't help either...

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[mattwarden]

This is really a minor issue. Iâ(TM)m not sure why you are presenting it like a major roadblock.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[DerekLyons]

That would be because it is a major issue - a transaction requires two parties. It doesn't matter how much cash you have if the store can't accept the cash. (And calculate the tax.)

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[darth.hunterix]

Because when world goes down the shitter, it's the TAXES people are worried about.

Also - write down details of every transaction in a notebook, put everything in the cash register when power comes back. I've learnt it from my grandma when I was 5.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[b0bby]

We still have the indents on the credit cards.

Actually, only about half my cards now have the indents.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[bad-badtz-maru]

I signed up for an Amazon Rewards card so I can double up on some cash back when buying from Amazon. I was quite surprised when it arrived... it has nothing that an imprinter could capture. The card # is printer-printed on the back and isn't raised. It was slightly concerning to me, as I live in South Florida and we had to use an imprinter at Home Depot not even six weeks ago after Irma as their card system was offline.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[bad-badtz-maru]

Most non-rural areas aren't going to let you legally store a generator-month's worth of gasoline at your residence. Assuming a 5 gallon a day burn rate for the generator, you're storing 150 gallons on site?

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[CrimsonAvenger]

The second you lose power, you're fucked. This is why cash is king, always has been, always will be.

Of course, the definition of "cash" does change from time to time. Less than a century ago, "cash" meant gold or silver, not paper. At that time, paper money was considered a "banknote", and not at all the same as cash....

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[Lab Rat Jason]

Every new card I've had printed in the last year has been without the raised numbers... I don't think card impressions are a thing anymore.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[ceoyoyo]

Technically you don't need the actual impression. You can write down the numbers. It's a bit of a pain for the merchant is all.

Re: Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[Khyber]

"Gold is the ultimate metal for electronic connectors. It doesn't rust, corrode, or tarnish."

Hah, guess what? Au2O3 is fucking GOLD RUST. Shit it's even the same red-brown color like iron rust!

Hi, I do actual mining and mineral processing.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[Khyber]

"I come from a small town with somewhat unreliable power. All the merchants know that if the power goes out, you can take a credit card impression"

Good luck with that, my latest chipped card from my bank has no raised anything upon which to obtain an impression.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[Khyber]

Technically, yes you do need the impression. Most banks will decline CC transactions without the impression of the card demonstrating that the card was indeed physically present for the transaction. This is to cut down on CC fraud by unscrupulous vendors double-charging or skimming the numbers to sell to a friend later on.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[Khyber]

Were your cashiers totally incompetent idiots that couldn't do quick basic math?

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[ceoyoyo]

Only the numbers are required. The impression is just a convenient way to get them on paper.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[Gussington]

Were your cashiers totally incompetent idiots that couldn't do quick basic math?

I don't have cashiers, what are you talking about? Should I jump to the conclusion that you're an incompetent idiot that can't do basic English? I know this is the internet and getting angry and throwing insults at the first thing you don't understand is considered the norm, but Slashdot is trying to be a little different. You need to engage your brain if you want a decent response.

Re: Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[houghi]

The one about that from the CC is not completely true. In the pre-swipe period it was standard that each store had a limit. If you went over that limit, you needed to call in and ask for an OK. If you didn't, the store was responsible for any loss.
In those times a store would pay 5 to 7 percent of the transaction to the CC company (in Europe).
There where booklets of numbers of cards that where not to be used.
What we have now is that the transaction is verified directly. In the rest of the world the PIN is a standard and that means that now stores pay around 1.5% of the transaction (In Europe) for the transaction. Money is made from the credit, not the transactions

Going back to non-internet times where transactions are not verified immediately will increase the cost of it and I am not even talking about fraud or people abusing the fact that it won't check their limit. Because that cost would go on top of it and will be divided over all those that are paying.

People will buy so much that there is no way they will be ever able to pay any of it back.

So yes, these things existed before, but there was also an infrastructure behind it and that does not anymore.

Re:Another reason why bitcoin is garbage

[dcw3]

Companies have been doing away with the indents. My most recent MasterCard doesn't have any, and the numbers aren't even on the front anymore. These idiots make them small enough that I have to squint to read them now.

The more efficent the more brittle

[DarkOx]

The fact is that the more tightly integrated our society become the more brittle it gets. Specialization is more efficient but it also means "no man is an island."

Skipping intermediary exchange mechanisms like cash and doing direct transfers between accounts is faster but it also means you can't conduct exchanges when the machines that handle the accounting are not available. With cash, and even paper checks, you pay me now and I have some reasonable assurance that the money will be available for my use some time in the future.

Here is the thing though. If we have another 3-7 day blackout like the 2003 one, cash and checks will let everyone muddle thru. Where as all electronic payments being the only means would basically cause the economy to grind to a halt. If the mainland US experienced devastation like Puerto Rico just did and it was national not regional. I don't know super volcano, DPRK EMP delivery, some kind of freak mega storm, than nobody smart is going to be interested in cash!

Face it we would NOT come back from those events as a nation. No matter how big government gets there is no way a coordinated response could be manged on that scale, which means people would have to take matters entirely into their own hands. At that point its barter system at best and that is assuming local leadership/law enforcement can keep some kind of order. I actually think there is a possibility that would occur in a lot places. I suspect most sensible folks would realize that our survival is best served by at least regional cooperation. On the other hand I can see things going pretty mad max too.

Re:The more efficent the more brittle

[Anonymous Coward]

Cash and checks will still be useful in a breakup situation, though not as a nationally-recognized currency; things might get interesting in spots. The problem is - where is the cash? Banks and credit unions don't have vaults full any more - they depend on daily deliveries just like stores. And that's nothing new. Many years ago, I had a CD at a savings and loan that got swallowed a couple of times while its 5-year term (at a stupidly high interest rate) was running. When it matured, I wanted it elsewhere. The bank wanted to charge me $25 to write a check for closing the account. I said that I would take cash. Blubber blubber - it took them 1/2 hour raiding their vault and some of the teller stations to come up with it (and it wasn't an especially large amount - vaguely remember way less than $10K); essentially I got all their big bills and quite a few 10s and 20s. Which I took down the street to my credit union. They shoulda just cut the check ... but procedures.

The real story was about the Fed chartering a plane to haul truckloads of cash to PR, because without power that was the only way the economy might keep working even marginally. Local banks would work from local knowledge of people to decide whether to honor withdrawals and deposits. So another moral of the story: visit your bank or credit union branch often enough that they recognize you - don't be card, epay, and atm-only. And also: you need power for checks, too, since they are cleared electronically.

Re:The more efficent the more brittle

[GeekWithAKnife]

That is if things remain as they are...but with advancement come advanced means.

Tiny solar panels that can have your phone operate and transact anything is very realistic. A small foot drive generator to produce enough electricity for a minute woth of computing power is all you really need. Crude but in a situation in which electricity is out for weeks it's amazingly useful.

The more tightly society becomes the more likely we are to cross-specialise or know many shallow details from various fields.

When we use blcokchain technology of some kind to transact money, assets etc it won't matter if all the computers in the world crashed because as soon as a small network can run again we have all the recods of everything that ever happened on the blockchain.

Humanity will recover from far worse events, but it will take time. In that devices which are extremely power efficient, generators and SOLAR PANELS will eign supreme.

If we are speaking of a post-apocalyptic situation then computing as we know it will change, but it's still possible it;s just that you won't have an HD phone running Android 18 it will probably be some black and white prompt that has a CPU liek a 386 with single atom transistors that gets it's powere from electromagentic radiation. -just a thought.

In the post pocalyptic world cash and computers might actually be irrelevant. Knowledge will the most precious resource as all the vaules that contain it would possibly be lost. -why? because the scenerios in which society loses electricity permenantly are such that leave very little of anything.

Re:The more efficent the more brittle

[knorthern knight]

> Tiny solar panels that can have your phone operate and transact anything is very realistic.

Your phone, in turn, would need to connect to a cell tower... which will *NOT* run off of "tiny solar panels". And if it did, you're assuming that the phone network is up and running, and the computers at the banks are also connected, and up and running.

Re:The more efficent the more brittle

[doctorvo]

The fact is that the more tightly integrated our society become the more brittle it gets. Specialization is more efficient but it also means "no man is an island."

You can choose the degree to which you depend on others. If you like, you can live in a 700 sq ft studio on the 30th floor with a panoramic view of the city and eat in restaurants every day. You can also have a 10 ac rural property growing your own food, with your own solar and backup generators, amateur packet radio station, and commuting into work. Both of those are lifestyles highly specialized tech workers choose. So there is nothing inherently brittle about "our society".

Re:The more efficent the more brittle

[SuricouRaven]

"In the post pocalyptic world cash and computers might actually be irrelevant. Knowledge will the most precious resource as all the vaules that contain it would possibly be lost."

The past offers a solution here: Libraries. Knowledge is valuable enough that any reasonably sized settlement after the collapse would certainly want a school and/or library, which would include a few laptops and solar panels to run them, and people searching through the ruins would have no problem finding vast numbers of hard drives. Not only good for education and practical instruction in things like engineering and medicine, but also good for entertainment. School hall by day, cinema by evening - and no copyright law, just every DVD the scavengers and traders can lay their hands on.

Re:The more efficent the more brittle

[Bing Tsher E]

Duh. The cell tower runs off the larger solar panels attached to it.

Re:The more efficent the more brittle

[Bing Tsher E]

Entertainment will be throwing hatchets at blocks of wood. Fun, and a practical skill for the time, too.

You think people will want to sit around watching DVDs of 'The Matrix'??

Re:The more efficent the more brittle

[sjames]

Cash would outlast the government that printed it. Consider, the big whatever happened and you now find yourself making decisions for a local government. You need a currency. Why not just back the existing one everyone is familiar with until more pressing issues are settled?

Re:The more efficent the more brittle

[DarkOx]

Why not just back the existing one everyone is familiar with until more pressing issues are settled?

Precisely because everyone is familiar with it. It takes people a long time let go of their value perceptions tied to money. The situation would require a major re-valuing in dollar terms of every day basic items. A sealed bottle of bottled water for instance might be very valuable. Its treated, germ free, etc very valuable if you need an aseptic environment for treating injuries etc. If you demand the $200 that might be worth in that situation people will get angry about being gouged etc. The same people that might recognize the need for it and be willing to trade a several gallons of gas to get it, which would also suddenly be very pricey in dollar terms.

I think attempting to use the existing currency might prove to be more of a threat to order than a useful medium of exchange.

Re:The more efficent the more brittle

[SuricouRaven]

Probably things more relatable, but... yes. Even in our hypothetical post-apocolyptic future, people are still people. They will seek to escape their miserable lives, as people have always done, with pointless distractions and fantasy. Remembered past, imagined future. Even before the industrial revolution, people found the time for an occasional party, cities had theatres, and people could earn a (disreputable) living as travelling entertainers - and a cinema is a lot cheaper to run than a theatre. Staff, one.

Re:The more efficent the more brittle

[sjames]

It doesn't matter what currency it is, people will notice that suddenly clean water is more expensive than fine wine or caviar. If you try to trick them with new currency, you'll just convince them that the new currency is a trick and they'll use the old currency anyway. There are many places now where the official currency is junk and the grey market trades in someone else's stronger currency.

Meanwhile, it would be a shame if you did manage to hide the truth, since it's not actually that hard to purify water. The demand would quickly convince a number of people to get busy purifying massive amounts of water, thus bringing the price right back down.

Save coins.

[Z00L00K]

Since when you get to a situation where you don't have any choice anymore but cash then coins are the best alternative. It's tough to get change from the shop keepers if the power goes out.

But also realize that shops can't even do anything when the power goes out because everything has barcodes, a carton of milk and a loaf of bread will be impossible to buy.

Re:Save coins.

[Misagon]

Shops will still have price labels, if not on the goods themselves then at least on the shelves.
Electronic shelf labels with LCD's or e-paper run on batteries - not the grid - and battery lifetime is on the scale of five to ten years.

Re:Save coins.

[Z00L00K]

Won't help you at the checkout.

Re:Save coins.

[Kludge]

With cash and coins in circulation, it does not matter whether shopkeepers have coins or not, they can request them from their customers. Last week the guy ahead of me in line tried to pay with a 100 dollar bill, but the store keeper did not have change. I gave the guy 5 $20 bills and took the $100. He paid and left, as did I.

People have been selling milk and bread for thousands of years without barcodes or machines that read them. You just have to know the approximate price of the item, and take the money. It's not rocket science.

Re:Save coins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes it will. You give the person at the store the amount on the label in cash. It's worked like that for a very long time.

If you're concerned about your backend getting out of whack because you don't manually track every UPC during a natural disaster your priorities are fucked.

Re:Save coins.

[DontBeAMoran]

And those e-paper labels only need power to change the image being displayed.

Re:Save coins.

[DontBeAMoran]

It will, because the store will have the possibility of making hand-written price lists of every item in the store for all checkouts.

Hey, nobody said it would be easy or quick.

Re:Save coins.

[Anonymous Coward]

But also realize that shops can't even do anything when the power goes out because everything has barcodes, a carton of milk and a loaf of bread will be impossible to buy.

You can work around not having prices on each item. The really tricky thing is that most cashiers have no idea of how to make change. They wouldn't have their cash registers or even their calculators.

It happens to me all the time that cashiers look on me as such a genius for being able to hand them some coins along with the bills and have it work out that they give me nice even amounts in change. Sometimes when they object, I'll tell them just to put that amount into the cash register and are dumbstruck when it comes out to an even $5.00 or such.

It's just a matter of simple subtraction of each coin's value at a time from the total in order to reach a target threshold. It's not hard at all. Making change is just a matter of adding each coin or bill to reach the amount tendered. It's even easier to do.

Re:Save coins.

[Anonymous Coward]

Plot twist: you got stiffed with a counterfeit C note

Re:Save coins.

[snookiex]

Let's face it, this had to happen eventually: Millennial slashdotters. Wait until they discover that you can listen to music without internet.

Re:Save coins.

[dcollins117]

The power went out for a week in my area a few years back during a winter storm. I could only find one store open, a convenience store, where the guy was entering transactions in a notebook. I bought some very expensive D cell batteries (with cash) that day.

After sticking it out for a day I had to leave my home because I (normally) have electric heat. Luckily I had enough gas in my car. I'd be shit out of luck if I didn't because no gas stations were open. All the pumps now depend on electricity to operate.

So this isn't hypothetical, I know I can only last about a day without electricity.

Re:Save coins.

[spudnic]

Just wait until all of our cars are electric only. Can you imagine Florida after a hurricane or California after the next big earthquake? Are the California legislators going to allow exemptions to the electric only car mandate to government agencies?

Re:Save coins.

[DontBeAMoran]

I was listening to music before 8-bit home computers came out. Try again.

Think of what I said. Writing down, by hand, the price of EVERY item in a grocery store. Multiple times, as many as you have checkouts at the store. You'd have to shut down the store just to wait for those lists to be ready.

Then every single item people purchase would have to be checked on those long hand-written lists. It could take what, up to a minute to locate an item on the list? Average 15 items per customer, that's 15 minutes to checkout. Think of the waiting lines at the checkout.

The only way to speed this up would be to split the items lists to multiple people at each checkout, maybe by department or type of item so you could quickly know which person has the price list for the item, but then you increase the noise floor because everyone is shouting to get the items names and prices back and forth between the cashier and the price checkers.

And let's not even talk about the problem of hand-written anything. The only way to make sure the price list checkers could easily and quickly read the lists would be to write them down themselves, otherwise that's another delay in the whole setup.

Re:Save coins.

[Maxo-Texas]

My immediate thought was the same- that you may have been taken with counterfeit currency. At the least, don't do it for anything that doesn't look like a modern $100.

Re:Save coins.

[sconeu]

If you're as old as you claim, you remember the proper solution. Get a labeler and individually price items.

Re:Save coins.

[Bing Tsher E]

Get this: You can listen to music without electricity. You can even MAKE MUSIC YOURSELF!

Wow, cool, huh?

Re:Save coins.

[arth1]

Think of what I said. Writing down, by hand, the price of EVERY item in a grocery store. Multiple times, as many as you have checkouts at the store. You'd have to shut down the store just to wait for those lists to be ready.

How do you think stores worked before there were 24/7 self-serve supermarkets? These are not problems that people haven't already dealt with (or still do, in rural areas).

Re: Save coins.

[Brockmire]

Unless he's from a Country that has proper anti-counterfeit bills instead of ugly, green paper.

Re: Save coins.

[Brockmire]

You live in an extremely stupid area if cash register people think you're a genius for providing the change part. I've been asked if I had the change part all my life. This is pretty fucking common. Especially if the change amount is just a nickel, dime or quarter. Do you have a really bad grade 9 graduation rate? Fuck, I don't know how you live in a place as dumb as that.

Re:Save coins.

[Maxo-Texas]

I had not seen that. I'd have a talk with my bank if they did that to me. I'd make it a hassle for them.

Maybe $50's in 10 years but a $100 is known to have massive counterfeit issues.

You want to see a good watermark, security thread- and really you should carry one of those pens around.

Re:Save coins.

[techno-vampire]

Back when I was in high school, I worked in retail for my father. This was in the '60s, long before there were registers that told you how much change to give, so I had to learn how to do it myself. The way he taught me was, first use pennies to get to the nearest nickel, then nickels and dimes to get to the next quarter and from there to the next dollar, with obvious substitutions if you ran out of one kind of coin. (Pennies, of course, being the hardest to work around.) Once you're there, you use the same technique with singles, fives, tens and so on. It's not exactly rocket surgery, folks, it's just that most people never need to learn it and aren't good enough at mental arithmetic to work it out.

Re:Save coins.

[Maxo-Texas]

Actually... without electricity gasoline stations don't work either. In houston, after Ike, there were severe problems getting gasoline for over a week. People just stopped driving until the stations started working again because you didn't want to get stranded.

Re:Save coins.

[sjames]

Currently, that's a problem. A few years from now, it may be a blessing when more people have PV on the roof. Imagine knowing your car will be charged soon enough while absolutely zero gasoline shipments can be expected for the next two weeks or so.

Re:Save coins.

[LordKronos]

Yeah, because I'm sure the shop owners will just let the food rot on their shelves rather than figure out some way to sell you the merchandise for some price.

Re:Save coins.

[LordKronos]

You might find this amazing, but there are some stores I go to even today where they don't use UPCs, price stickers, or shelf tags to complete the sale. The cashiers have memorized the prices of hundreds of items and key in the price at the register.

Even at a store like target where everything is very strictly computer controlled, every now and then I get up to the register with an item that has no barcode on it, and they are unable to track it down. The store never says "sorry, I cant sell it to you". They either say "do you know what the price was" and then take me at my word, or they say "How about $x dollars?" .

Re:Save coins.

[houghi]

How do you know how much it will cost before you go to the checkout? Where I live there will be prices in that aisles. So the price is known. There are several ways to solve this and all will cost extra manpower.
1) You sticker rice everything
2) You write down a long list with all items and put that at each checkout
3) You do checkouts per isle and have people memorize and/or look up the prices.

I am sure there will be better methods, but it is possible. If a store is willing to do it will depend from store to store. I know Cloud 9 Stores will be open.

Re:Save coins.

[Alioth]

Why make these lists? Just put price labels on things like they did before barcodes were widespread. In some small stores, price labels are still used.

Re:Save coins.

[sconeu]

Look at the shelf when you put the label on.

Or fiber lines

[Jarik C-Bol]

Same situation applies to internet connectivity. I live in a smallish (6000) town, and about once a year, some knucklehead will dig without calling and cut the main fiber line, knocking at least half the county offline. At which point, all businesses become cash only, resulting in an embarrassing number of angry people blaming retailers for 'not having a backup' (to a main trunk line?). Hilariously, a few atm's in town won't even work in this situation, because the apparently phone home to confirm transactions. About a business day later, its fixed, but it sure is an uncomfortable reminder how dependent we've become on electronic money.

Re:Or fiber lines

[Wrath0fb0b]

I've found you can reliably run a low/moderate magstripe transaction flow (10 txn/minute) over even a 2G EDGE modem. Remember, these technologies were designed and deployed when everything was "trunked" via ISDN or even 14.4Kbps modem.

The statement that you can't run a credit or ATM transaction when the fiber is out is like saying you can't light a candle because you don't have a flamethrower and it would be ridiculous to have a "backup flamethrower".

Re:Or fiber lines

[umghhh]

It does not matter if this ATM of yours can do transaction over an old fashion land line if this line at some point goes into a fiber. Does it?

Re:Or fiber lines

[bugs2squash]

Get a satellite internet link, or have them write a check. And accept IOUs from customers you know and trust. In a town of 6000 odds are at least someone in the grocery store knows the customer.

Re:Or fiber lines

[Jarik C-Bol]

a few atm's in town won't even work in this situation, because the apparently phone home to confirm transactions.

Wow--you know of some ATM's that don't have to communicate with the bank before they dispense money? Where can I find one of those?

Really small local banks with on site atms

Re: Or fiber lines

[dargaud]

I don't know about the U.S., but in Europe an ATM or credit card transaction will phone home over 100â, but below 99 it won't. Once you know that you can make some purchases faster.

Re:Or fiber lines

[sjames]

And the cell towers are connected by....the fiber! Also the POTS lines.

Another reason why cash is garbage

[DontBeAMoran]

The second you lose power, you're fucked unless you already have cash on hand and until superinflation happens it which case it's only worth something as toilet paper. That's why gold doubloon is king, always has been, always will be.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

Try buying a loaf of bread with a gold Doubloon. What are you expecting in change, Reales and Maravedis?
There is a reason why Charlemagne took Europe off of the Gold Standard for ~500 years. Gold was, at best, a Currency Of Account and kept in vaults, and utterly impractical for normal trade.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[itsdapead]

That's why gold doubloon is king, always has been, always will be.

Nah. If you're planning for the collapse of civilisation - even temporary - bottled water, canned food, gasoline etc, are king. When the lights go out, gold will suffer just as much from superinflation as anything, but a can of beans will always be worth a day's food.

No point in planning for an apocalypse after which Walmart is still open, but only takes Krugerrand.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Greyfox]

And a well-preserved shotgun shell will let you defend your cans of beans, assuming you have a shotgun to shoot it out of.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[PopeRatzo]

Nah. If you're planning for the collapse of civilisation - even temporary - bottled water, canned food, gasoline etc, are king.

Here in the US, guns are king. Ammo is king. With 300,000,000 guns in private hands, if the power goes out for any extended period of time, the guy who runs the crematorium will be king.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Calydor]

"After stealing the world's biggest diamond, you flee into the desert to evade capture. Two days later, parched and about to die of thirst, you come upon a man who offers you a glass of water in exchange for the diamond you stole. What do you say?"

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

Make the trade, drink the water quickly, then attack the guy to get my diamond back.

If he was particularly smart, he would have waited for me to collapse and take the diamond. If he was particularly strong, he'd attack me and take it.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

That guy is a witness, he must die. I quickly shoot him with my gun, then take any good/water he had on him.

You're not very good at these questions.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Scarletdown]

That's why gold doubloon is king, always has been, always will be.

Nah. If you're planning for the collapse of civilisation - even temporary - bottled water, canned food, gasoline etc, are king. When the lights go out, gold will suffer just as much from superinflation as anything, but a can of beans will always be worth a day's food.

No point in planning for an apocalypse after which Walmart is still open, but only takes Krugerrand.

In states where it is legal for us to do our own growing; at that point weed will continue to be one of the big local currencies, as will physical labor and other favors (CGA is the order of the day, where C is cash, G is grass, and A is Ass (which can refer to other useful skills in trade in addition to giggity).

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Scarletdown]

And a well-preserved shotgun shell will let you defend your cans of beans, assuming you have a shotgun to shoot it out of.

Oops. No shotgun, but a P8 and a 7mm deer rifle would suffice as well. And on top of that, the rifle would be useful for acquiring fresh meat from the local deer if the situation ever got to the point where backup food sources need to be tapped into in spite of fish and game laws.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[sabri]

I'm going to flip this on its head. A credit card is fully usable without power.

No, I'm going to flip this on its head. In times of despair, the mathematician is king. Why? Because he can manually calculate and verify your beloved BTC transactions.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[TheMeuge]

Always found this to be an illogical and frankly dumb point of view, because somehow you think that in a world where the society has collapsed enough to worry about "someone with more guns and henchmen", you are somehow safer without a weapon. I think history pretty much says you're full of shit. I can't think of any chaotic time or circumstance when someone thought "I wish I were more defenseless."

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[nukenerd]

Try buying a loaf of bread with a gold Doubloon.

You can buy one from me, anytime.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[arth1]

Guns can, believe it or not, be used for hunting non-human animals.

Look at the areas of the world where there have been great humanitarian catastrophes. People with guns almost invariably use them against fellow man. It's far less work to use a gun to bully the food from someone else than it is to hunt.

And even if you use it to hunt, there will be someone else with a gun who goes for the far less work option. And because you have a gun too, they team up to outgun individuals like you.
If you have a gun, the real choice is between joining a militia that exploits people, or death. Few choose death.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[SuricouRaven]

I wouldn't be so sure on the water. It's not difficult to make. Boil and filter is usually good enough in a crisis, and if you really need pure you can use the same home-made still for making moonshine.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[bugs2squash]

Yeah, but guns best suited for shooting people are the best sellers. People talk the talk about shooting a buck or scaring off a home invasion but then buy an AR15 or a compact pistol. Overall the general ownership of handguns in particular has profoundly damaged public safety in the USA for everyone, gun owners and non-gun-owners. Sensible gun laws could do a lot to make us all safer without destroying hunting or the safety of people in their homes and make it easier for police to keep public spaces safe and be held to account for their own kills.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[arth1]

How will you stop me from taking your gold when I have a gun pointed at you?

The common way in literature is to convince the assailant that you're worth more alive than dead, due to skills or knowledge that would be lost with you.
The assailant, on the other hand, will always be a target because he has weapons, goods and enemies.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Bing Tsher E]

Who cares about the fools who live in the city? They made their life what it is. Here where I live I would need a small amount of electricity once in awhile to run the well pump, though it could probably replaced with something more practical (its not a 'modern' submersible pump, btw) and about anything else I can get myself. Lots of jackrabbits in the fields out behind the house. Coyotes and deer if we need to scale up to something bigger.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Bing Tsher E]

Do you even KNOW anybody who owns a gun?

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Bing Tsher E]

Before the electronic behemoths of the last half century, skilled mathematicians who manually do calculations quickly were known as computers. That was the title of their occupation.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Bing Tsher E]

Can't they just call the police on their hand-crank telephone? Won't the police be able to hook a horse up onto the police wagon and head on out to defend and protect him?

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Bing Tsher E]

Crematorium? Look into the situation right now with the ISIS fighters in the Middle East. It's the backhoe operator who will be king.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Bing Tsher E]

When there are food and clean water shortages, the munchies will have long been gone. The couch will have been used as fuel for heat, and there won't be electricity to watch the Twilight Zone and Star Trek reruns let along will they even be being broadcast. So weed consumption will be waaay waaay down.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Bing Tsher E]

Whoops. He had an enemy. Now he's just less one bullet.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[arth1]

Whoops. He had an enemy. Now he's just less one bullet.

You don't just eliminate enemies by killing them. You create enemies that way - the relatives, friends and sympathizers of the ones you kill.
There's a limit to how many you can kill before you become eliminated.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Scarletdown]

There will always be a demand for weed and alcohol no matter how bleak the situation becomes. That is the traditional way to give yourself a temporary respite from a shitty situation. Perhaps this little number can explain it better... :)

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[bondsbw]

You are showing your ignorance by claiming that the AR-15 platform doesn't include hunting capabilities. It has many configurations which are useful for hunting various game.

And it most certainly can scare off intruders. That is the reason many people are against it... it looks too scary.

I agree that sensible gun laws and mental health support would help. But banning the AR-15 in all configurations is not sensible... it is the result of fear of what people don't understand.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[itsdapead]

Can't they just call the police on their hand-crank telephone?

I think (if we're talking about the USA here) they count as one of the groups with "more guns and henchmen" and are certainly one of the cases where you're in more danger if you do have a gun when you meet them (when they come to put your gold/gas/water/beans under "police protection" as per government instruction).

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[CaptnCrud]

For real.

Same thing goes for pistols. A pistol is for fighting your way back to the rifle that you never should have laid down. If you're engaging a threat beyond 15 yds, you really should be using a rifle, as any pistol is poorly suited for the task.

Gun types can be disputed, but for SHTF territory at the very least look into a firearm with compatible ammo for the area you live in.

In the case of ammunition in America, especially in urban areas, it's going to be 9mm, .40 cal and .223 or 5.56, period.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Patent Lover]

Deer would be extinct in months. You're either going to have to eat humans or insects.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[MightyYar]

Who cares about the fools who live in the city?

You might, when they flee it.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[CaptnCrud]

Some brown bears actually bulk up for the winter on nothing but moth's, insects are an excellent food source, even for a global situation they will be plentiful and you can use them as bait (if you need to find large game).

I agree though, big game is going to be gone in months of even after a small SHTF scenario....I happen to live in BMF right next to a big rail freight depot with lots of warehouses. I figure at the very least, I should be able to get by with what I might be able to salvage at the depot for a few months...if not I always have the woods...

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Patent Lover]

Just curious. What is BMF? Google only comes up with Black Family Mafia.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[dgatwood]

Shotguns aren't great because then you have bits of lead all in your meat (yuck).

Well, there are always steel shotgun shells.

Wait, this isn't like the matrix sequels is it?

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[dgatwood]

Not to mention that in the absence of a functioning bullet manufacturing company (or at least a large supply of black powder, primer caps, and material to make new bullets), a gun is a very short-term tool for survival. It's smarter in the long run to buy a crossbow, materials to repair it when it breaks, and lots of reusable arrows. With that combination, you'll still be hunting decades after the guy with the gun ran out of bullets and died of starvation (unless he used the gun to steal your crossbow, of course).

But the better strategy, really, is to have a group of people who trust and help one another. That way, one of you has the gun just in case people with a gun come to try to steal your crossbows, and the rest of you have crossbows and can be out getting food. There's strength in diversity.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

"After stealing the world's biggest diamond, you flee into the desert to evade capture. Two days later, parched and about to die of thirst, you come upon a man who offers you a glass of water in exchange for the diamond you stole. What do you say?"

"It's gold...gold..."

"That's weird... that man offered me gold... as if it were... worth something."

"Didn't they used to use gold... as money?"

"I think they did, before they figured out how to manufacture it cheaply..."

~ That one episode of the Twilight Zone.

(Just substitute "diamond" for "gold".)

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[CaptnCrud]

Fatfinger, BFE.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Patent Lover]

Ah, that I recognize ;)

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Attila Dimedici]

You are clearly unaware of the fact that gun violence has been on a steady decline in the U.S. while the number of guns in private hands has been on the increase. So your idea that gun ownership has damaged public safety is not supported by the evidence.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[MangoCats]

Mad Max nailed it: gasoline is where it's at when the shit hits the fan. Without gasoline, you're on foot, and that just sucks for all kinds of reasons.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Ol Olsoc]

Try buying a loaf of bread with a gold Doubloon. What are you expecting in change, Reales and Maravedis? There is a reason why Charlemagne took Europe off of the Gold Standard for ~500 years. Gold was, at best, a Currency Of Account and kept in vaults, and utterly impractical for normal trade.

If the wheels fall off that badly, the only thing that will count as currency is a loader rifle and the little doodads in it. People will even give up there gold when the instrument of persuasion is presented to them

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Gussington]

Nah. If you're planning for the collapse of civilisation - even temporary - bottled water, canned food, gasoline etc, are king. When the lights go out, gold will suffer just as much from superinflation as anything, but a can of beans will always be worth a day's food.

Interestingly my teenage daughter just got back from a ski camp where the entire year were based at the top of a mountain for an entire week. Due to the unexpected isolation from the local mall, she said the most valued commodity on the whole trip was two noodles. Every wanted them and no-one could get them, so a 50c packet was trading for about $5.
I was pleasantly surprised that a ski trip turned into an economics lesson ;)

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Gussington]

And a well-preserved shotgun shell will let you defend your cans of beans, assuming you have a shotgun to shoot it out of.

Won't help when you're alseep. So you need a can of beans, a shotgun, shotgun shells, and a dog. But then the dog needs food, and worm tablets. And... let's face it. Surviving the apocalypse will require more than just one thing...

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[HiThere]

That said, it wouldn't be a bad thing if a few of the people you know and trust are proficient with guns that they own, and it would be an additional benefit if it included a fletcher and a boyer. Otherwise you're going to need to revert to the atlatl or some variant. And you're going to need a few people who learn to use the sling, in any case. You need to defend your crops against rabbits, etc. and small stones are cheap, and rabbits are food. So are birds that are too small to be worth an arrow.

Hunting won't be important for generations, but it *will* become important. Deer may largely disappear for awhile, but they won't go extinct, except locally. And pigs may become both numerous and threatening.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Gussington]

Always found this to be an illogical and frankly dumb point of view, because somehow you think that in a world where the society has collapsed enough to worry about "someone with more guns and henchmen", you are somehow safer without a weapon.

The weapon will make very little difference, because in a truly apocalypse this will only last until you run out of bullets. Ultimately you're going to need to join a gang or an army that has the structure to support many guns with lots of ammo to survive long term. In this instance you most valuable asset will be ability to make friends and get on with people in difficult circumstances, which let's face it, no-one in this forum has...

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[slashrio]

You forget the lighters and bullets.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[HiThere]

People don't seem to understand "dying of thirst", though I'm not sure two days would be enough unless it was a very hot desert.

When you're dying of thirst you're too weak to stand up, much less assault someone who isn't. And you don't recover immediately after drinking, either.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[HiThere]

Gasoline is extremely short term. Without electricity you can't pump it from the underground storage. It's dangerous to keep a lot of it around. And it's volatile. A sealed container becomes explosive, an unsealed container loses contents.

There are, relatively, only a few gas stations, and they depend on continual replenishment. And even when well maintained they lose gas through vaporization every day. To get the gas out you need to dig down and breach the storage tanks, and then the vaporization rate increases markedly, plus you will get garbage into the gas, so it will foul your engine. It is also hygroscopic (tends to accumulate water) and bacteria grow in it once the water gets in. Which also fouls your engine.

You don't realize the technology that goes on behind the scenes to keep gas working. If you'd said diesel you might have had a point. Diesel is less volatile and diesel engines are less subject to fouling from other organics in the fuel. But I'm not sure that applies to the high tech diesel engines that cars use these days.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[MarcusOutrageous]

"It's Friday night and Kendall and Kylie Jenner show up at your door wearing Agent Provocateur and carrying half a salt shaker of uncut Peruvian flake, a couple bottles of Caol Illa (for those of us with taste) and liter canister of medical grade nitrous (the ultimate complimentary drug, btw, goes with EVERYTHING).

You can do ANYTHING you want with both of them ALL WEEKEND...as long as you also do the exact same actions with Caitlin Jenner -- who pops in behind them. What do you say?"

(pre-preggers Kylie, unless you're into that)

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything, no legal consequences?

I pimp all three out and get something I actually want.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[swillden]

That's why gold doubloon is king, always has been, always will be.

Nah. If you're planning for the collapse of civilisation - even temporary - bottled water, canned food, gasoline etc, are king. When the lights go out, gold will suffer just as much from superinflation as anything, but a can of beans will always be worth a day's food.

In a temporary situation, one where people know that things will be back to normal quickly, having cash is useful for exactly the same reason money is useful in general: It's an all-purpose medium of exchange.

I try to stay fairly well-prepared for disasters. I have water, food, fuel (gasoline and diesel), solar panels on my camp trailer with batteries and a big inverter. I have a good-sized generator. I have tools that could be useful, including a chainsaw, an ATV, a tractor with a front end loader, etc. I have guns. And I have cash. Not a huge quantity, but a few thousand dollars in bills of various denominations, especially small ones.

Out of all of those things, I actually found cash among the most useful when my neighborhood was isolated by flood waters a few years ago (when I lived in Colorado). The grocery store nearby was unable to take delivery of new goods, and when the power was out was unable to accept credit card payments, but they were happy to take cash for whatever they had on the shelves. I mostly gave my cash to neighbors who didn't have the food storage that I did, but we bought a few things as well.

All in all, I'd say cash was the second most-useful thing I had in that situation. I had food, but if I hadn't had it, I could have gotten it with cash. The most useful thing I had was a gravity-fed water purification system. The city water supply was still functional in the sense that it delivered water, but it was unsafe to drink because some of the pipes had broken, allowing contaminants into the system. My purification system supplied clean water for my family and a dozen or so neighbors.

Now, I also have two 55-gallon drums full of water in addition to the purification system. Clean water is critical.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[swillden]

a gun is a very short-term tool for survival

Not if you reload. Anyone who reloads much ends up with supplies on hand for thousands of rounds of ammunition, just because that's the economical way to buy components. Primers come in boxes of 1000, typically, and powder in one-pound cans. And it's cheaper (per unit) to buy 10K primers and 10 pounds of powder.

Also, I teach rifle classes so it's not uncommon for me to go through a thousand rounds of .22LR in a weekend. For that reason, I tend to keep ~10K rounds in stock, buying in bulk whenever I can find a good price. 9mm for pistol classes is a similar story, though the on-hand supply is closer to 2K rounds. I typically only have a few hundred rounds for the hunting rifles... but could reload thousands.

So, assuming judicious use, my ammunition would easily last decades.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[bugs2squash]

Actually I'm not that fussed about banning rifles, it's handguns around town I find difficult to justify, but in response to a couple of points people have made...

1) The really popular rifles for adults, based on what I see around me and what I read on top 10 lists are the semi-automatics from various manufacturers, all looking strikingly similar. They are cheap and fun to fire (guess how I know). The ones I see around the range are usually chambered in .223/5.56 which is also inexpensive and the top selling rifle cartridge size. My point was that while no doubt one could be used to obliterate a moose they are not primarily medium/large game hunting focused weapons in that chamber and some states outlaw them for deer hunting, so I grow tired of hearing them defended disingenuously on that basis (and yes I'm aware they can be chambered for other cartridges, but that's just not so popular).

2) So gun crime stats go up a bit or down a bit as time goes by, big whoop. Call me on it when they get to be as low as they are in Germany or some other comparable country (yes, yes, Sudan, I know, heard it before). Tell me when the police are not as on edge as they are, when any cell phone can be a pistol so they fire, to be on the safe side (or for that matter when they can even tell us how many people they have killed this year). We don't properly recon the cost of gun ownership to ordinary Americans and the accommodations ordinary people must make for them, while an outspoken chorus is quick to talk up the "freedom" and "traditional values" angles.

It's not that these weapons don't have their place, it's just that they are too easy to inject into every crime, into everyday life where they just don't belong except in the eyes of the most virulent industry shill.

It appears to me that every time there's talk about banning something the image of the noble hunter is trotted out, or the scared home-owner at the end of a long country road, anything to distract from the real problem of guns in the hands of urban criminals. I'm just pointing out the mismatch between the rationales presented and the weapons being purchased (you never hear much talk of plinking for example)

If I'm wrong, and a significant justification is to be able to one-up the neighbors come the zombie apocalypse or to overthrow the US government, or to intimidate protesters or public servants then let's include that in the conversation, because they don't sound like such great rationale to me.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[houghi]

But the better strategy, really, is to have a group of people who trust and help one another.

Congratulations: you just invented countries (and politics).

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Barsteward]

yep and take that even further, once people run out of water in the hot and dry areas....

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[The123king]

I'll keep hoarding my copper pennies then tyvm

Resources will always be valuable, and even if a penny couldn't buy uou a spec of sawdust, the copper inside them will always be worth something. And in the case of hyperinflation, probably more than a wad of $100 bills

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[The123king]

As a Brit, i'll get to stockpiling rocks.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[MightyYar]

People in the cities have the numerical advantage... can't shoot 'em all! And a guy shooting people is going to attract a lot of attention. This is not good if the efforts of the city people are in any way coordinated.

A gun is definitely a good thing to have in societal collapse type scenarios - but only for warding off individual opportunists. Anyone who decides to band together is going to beat the rugged individualist, who can only shoot at one thing at a time.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Alioth]

A sealed container of petrol (gasoline) is not explosive if it is full or nearly so. The fuel/air mixture will be far too rich to combust. For a sealed container to be explosive, it would need to have a somewhere near 15:1 mixture of air to fuel. We generally don't store fuel like that, it would be very inefficient.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[cayenne8]

Do you even KNOW anybody who owns a gun?

Yes...lots of people, actually MOST of the people I know.

And it is gunS not "a" single gun....

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Bing Tsher E]

There's a limit to how many you can kill before you become eliminated.

True, but you can carry more than one clip of ammo.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Bing Tsher E]

A certain percentage of the ISIS fighters are just being left out for the desert dogs to eat.

That's such a righteous situation: Rabid Islamists being eaten by stray dogs.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Bing Tsher E]

The people in the city are wearing spiked heels and tasselated loafers. The heaviest outer clothing they own is a windbreaker. The roughest terrain they are used to traveling on is a small patch of bushes near the playground in the park.

When the electricity goes out they won't know which buttons to push to fix it.

And who says the people who live out in the countryside are 'rugged individualists'? We aren't alone. We probably have just as many friends.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Shirley Marquez]

Sure, you can hunt with members of the AR-15 family. But it's also too easy to convert them back into fully automatic military weapons. And there is no easy way to tell apart the military weapon and the hunting weapon by looking at it from a distance, as a police officer would be doing. That's bad, because if law enforcement sees you carrying something that looks like it could be a military weapon they are going to take you out with maximum force and without asking questions.

The only way to address that it to require that hunting rifles be visually distinct from military weapons. That would cost the hunters some extra money because they would no longer be able to piggyback on the volume production of weapons for other purposes. (The price of the military weapons might also go up a bit but those buyers aren't as price sensitive.) For the same reason, we should ban guns that are deliberately designed to look like other things such as cell phones.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[HiThere]

OK, but "full or nearly so" implies that you don't use it.

OTOH, I wasn't thinking of a combustion explosion, but rather a pressure explosion (still implies not full or nearly full). Admittedly a "reasonably strong" tank can hold against that kind of explosion, but that's not true of most things you could hack together.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I like my non-lethal shotgun. It has a magazine of 80 shots, and I can just break into the table salt at any restaurant to find another 80 shots.

https://bugasalt.com/

Aimed in the eyes, it causes temporary blindness. Aimed at a fly, it knocks them out of the sky so you can swat them.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Why would I spend the money on an AR 15, when a .22 riffle does the same job at 1/4th the price?

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[WrongMonkey]

All of those rounds, primers and powder have a shelf life of about 10 years under optimum storage conditions. That gives you a pretty good window for either civilization to be reestablished or to practice with a crossbow, but it is not an indefinite supply.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[slashdotwannabe]

Great, there's a couple hundred of you with guns? A couple thousand in the bigger country towns?

There are 13 *million* people in the Los Angeles Metro area, and a sizable number of them have guns. If they ever have to flee to the country your "no trespassing" signs and guns won't do shit except get you and your family dead. You'll probably take a few with you, but that's cold comfort.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Lab Rat Jason]

That's weird... it almost sounded like you were talking about a civilized society... something completely ruled out by a SHTF scenario.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Lab Rat Jason]

All of those rounds, primers and powder have a shelf life of about 10 years under optimum storage conditions. That gives you a pretty good window for either civilization to be reestablished or to practice with a crossbow, but it is not an indefinite supply.

*Citation Needed*

Under horrible storage conditions I would expect powder bullets and primers to last at least triple that, as long as the packaging is original.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Lab Rat Jason]

***Selection bias alert***

News outlets don't report on something so mundane as a hunter taking game with a rifle after some major catastrophe.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[chihowa]

.40 isn't a good bet, especially with the FBI moving to 9mm. 12ga buck is easy enough to find, even in cities, and there's always the ubiquitous .22lr (don't underestimate it: cheap, light, readily suppressible, and still lethal - if SHTF, you can actually hunt small game with it and still have something left to eat after you shoot it). But yeah, 9mm and 5.56/.223 are everywhere in the US.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[MightyYar]

They have numerical advantage by perhaps 50 to 1 - they could overcome you with rags tied around their feet.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[hai_Priesty]

Two days are more than enough, not only because of heat (which is very likely), but also because the subject in question is fleeing, which means he may be can get dehydrated faster than athletes on a 4 hour marathon.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[houghi]

My Grat Aunt said that when WWII came she did what she learned from WWI (The names where different) and get a lot of salt. Apparently that gets more expensiv, it lasts a long time, so you can still trade or sell it after a few years.
It was also cheap enough to buy a large amount of it without going bankrupt.

Canned food and water are things you will need for your own survival. In WWII people where starving in the last winter, so if you would have sold canned food and next you are starving would be double bad.

I never asked how much they bought. Now she is a little bit dead and opensourced her body.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[RockDoctor]

And when you run out of shotguns. Or shells?

I don't know about you, but my flint knapping is up to the task.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[dcw3]

Who cares about the fools who live in the city?

You might, when they flee it.

More fresh meat.

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[dcw3]

My prediction... When the shit hits the fan, communications will be much more limited. those relatives, friends and sympathizers might not even find out about it for days, and then it's more likely that they won't even have a suspect...who's going to be doing the investigations? You won't have cctv, or gopro video. We might have to go back to sketches on the post office wall. But sure there will be cases where the culprit is obvious, and we may even end up with new versions of Hatfields & McCoys.

Re:Another reason why cash is garbage

[cthulhu11]

Gasoline is good for what, 2 years maybe before it degrades?

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[jwhitener]

Correlation causation

Re: Another reason why cash is garbage

[Attila Dimedici]

I am sorry, but inverse correlation is pretty strong evidence AGAINST causation.

Generator-powered ATMs?

[DontBeAMoran]

When some generator-powered ATMs finally opened, lines stretched hours long, with people camping out in beach chairs and holding umbrellas against the sun.

So... they were connected to generator-powered networks?

Re:Generator-powered ATMs?

[LordKronos]

Uhhh, actually.......66.6% = .666, not 666

Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[wisnoskij]

Has nobody seen Home Alone 2? Using electricity to process a CC purchase is relatively new. This is a solved problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The problem is not with credit cards, but incompetent cashiers and owners who cannot handle changing situations.

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[whatever_01]

Strange that man would not even know what that machine is. Or Travelers Checks.

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[nomadic]

I'm not that old and I remember a time when credit cards were always processed by hand, with that little credit card mimeo machine. I still run into that every once in a long while when someplace's credit card scanner is down.

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[wisnoskij]

Paying employees is not even close to an issue. If you are a public facing business, you are still going to have one of the biggest cash reserves around. The problem is not your lack of cash, but everyone elses. People will still pay in cash (you will probably have a big discount for them doing so). And if you run an important business, that supplies the necessities of a post-electrical society you can pay them in said necessities.

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[Misagon]

The issue is not about credit cards - but about debit cards.
A debit card does not imply credit. You can have a debit card linked to your bank account without being eligible for credit.
But yes, people often say "credit card" when they refer to any kind of payment card in general.

Many countries have never had the manual slip system -- they have only ever used electronic transactions. Some cards are even chip-and-pin only, where the only type of card transaction available is a secure payment.

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[DogDude]

Those things are how merchants get ripped off. Use one of those for more than a few hours, and the thieves will be there with fake credit cards by the dozen.

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[iggymanz]

no problem. only do business with your known customers, all the cashiers at the stores I visit regulary recognize me, even the assistants at the hardware store. if you want to be a little more generous and risky, have unknown people show multiple ID, take down their address and drivers license number.

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[iggymanz]

actually, I've noticed more than half of customers don't pay with cash. and of course the business runs to the bank at night and deposits the day's revenue. so I'd expect not enough on hand to meet payroll. even so, checks and credit cards can be taken without power, just require ID and write down addresses, heck even write physical description of unknown person (most customers will be known regulars)

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[Saithe]

I don't know how it is where you live, but here, imprints can't fail no matter the amount on the account it tries to draw from. It's one of the fail-safes of doing business that way since it's not an immediate draw. It's on the buyer to keep enough cash on the account to not go over limit.

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not with credit cards, but incompetent cashiers and owners who cannot handle changing situations.

The raised letters on CC's are going away. About half my CC's have eliminated them.

Also, most retailers don't even HAVE those things anymore. Why would they? I've had a retailer use them exactly once in the past 20 years, and that's when the retailers CC processing went out.

Technology changes. Do you still have a modem around and an analog telephone "just in case" your internet goes out? Cars used to have "points" for ignition instead of electronics ignition. Should car retailers keep these in stock for the odd people that drive cars from the 70s that haven't converted to an electronic emission?

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[Sigma 7]

Under normal situations (power outages don't count), Visa and Mastercard rules prohibit asking for ID as part of credit card transactions. Such ID may only be required if it's required to complete the transaction itself, not because they use the card.

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[Scarletdown]

I don't know how it is where you live, but here, imprints can't fail no matter the amount on the account it tries to draw from. It's one of the fail-safes of doing business that way since it's not an immediate draw. It's on the buyer to keep enough cash on the account to not go over limit.

Judging by the new CC and debit cards I just got from one of my credit unions, imprints may go the way of the dodo soon. The numbers on them are just printed instead of raised, so the old style payulators (term learned in the Sniglets days for CC imprint devices) won't work then.

Granted, merchants can just write all that info down in a notebook for transcribing later when the system is back online; but that would make transactions drag out much longer and well, annoy all the other customers who have been waiting forever to check out.

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[Scarletdown]

The problem is not with credit cards, but incompetent cashiers and owners who cannot handle changing situations.

The raised letters on CC's are going away. About half my CC's have eliminated them.

Also, most retailers don't even HAVE those things anymore. Why would they? I've had a retailer use them exactly once in the past 20 years, and that's when the retailers CC processing went out.

And off I go to the Slow Typists' Corner(tm). ;)

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[93 Escort Wagon]

Using electricity to process a CC purchase is relatively new. This is a solved problem.

Kids today... using "Home Alone 2" to demonstrate "old" technology. There's probably at least one truly old movie where Ginger Rogers was working a store counter before Fred Astaire came strolling in (although, fun as they are, those do tend to blur together).

When I was in high school, I had a part time job in a music store. Not only did we use those mechanical credit card impresses - we had to call a phone number to verify that the person had enough room left on their credit line before approving the purchase. AND I think it was a different phone number depending on Visa (BankAmericard), Master Charge (now MasterCard), American Express, or some regional card.

So even then we were dependent on electricity. But fortunately POTS has its own power supply which is (or at least was) quite reliable - I don't remember ever losing phone service during a power outage.
 

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[Gussington]

The problem is not with credit cards, but incompetent cashiers and owners who cannot handle changing situations.

I used to work in retail IT. We had a DR plan for CC transactions using the manual click clack machine but it never got used. The training, accounting and reconciliation was considered too burdensome, it was easier to ride any any outages which tend to last minutes rather than hours or days and just absorb any loss
I know it's fun to discuss doomsday prepping, but the simple fact is that is simply not a skill that is worth wasting energy on.

Re:Credit Cards Existed Long Before CC Terminals

[swillden]

Has nobody seen Home Alone 2? Using electricity to process a CC purchase is relatively new. This is a solved problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... The problem is not with credit cards, but incompetent cashiers and owners who cannot handle changing situations.

Most retailers don't have those old zip zap machines any more... and many credit cards no longer have the embossing to make them work.

Far worse than electricity

[markdavis]

>"In a Cashless World, You'd Better Pray the Power Never Goes Out"

Or malware. Or a network problem. Or ID theft puts a freeze on your accounts. Or someone maliciously attacks your records. Or your device/card/whatever dies for some reason. Or you need to transact with someone who just doesn't have the necessary technology.

In a cashless world, you also give up every last bit of privacy left, because you can neither sell nor buy without the mark of the b..... I mean, without the tools and permission of the government and big business. Everything you buy and sell will be recorded and available for review immediately and any time in the future- revealing not only what you buy, but from whom, when, and where you have been. It also makes it easier for someone to tamper with those records to assist in framing you.

Don't be quick to give allow cash to disappear, you might regret it and there will be no going back.

Re:Far worse than electricity

[Stephen Battleware]

I tend to agree here. There' are several good reason to keep paper notes. And by using them you keep them relevant, so don't be afraid to swing by your favourite ATM and take out a few bill now and then.

Re:Far worse than electricity

[markdavis]

>"Don't be afraid to swing by your favourite ATM and take out a few bill now and then.

I am fascinated by young people who not only carry no cash at all, and often think cash is outdated and stupid, but also have absolutely no idea why that premise is potentially dangerous and why/how cash can be a good thing.

Re:Far worse than electricity

[bug1]

Network outages can cause unexpected problems;

Town i live had a fire at the telco exchange, which was also doing backhaul for 2 of the 3 mobile providers. It took almost a month to rebuild it.

ATM's, EFT stopped working so people could pay for things, like petrol, food etc... The town became a 'dead zone' for a few hours, you stop here you cant get going again.

Once everyone worked out one of the mobile providers was still working they sold out of 'starter packs' pretty much instantly and more had to delivered by courier.

But retails where prioritised and most where able to switch and accept payments within a day AFAIK.

Police flew some sort of emergency communications system down by helicopter.

A mobile ATM was also bought down (normally used for disaster zones) to take pressure of ATM's, might have been satellite based i dont know.

Banks where allowing people to withdraw money without checking their balance, some people abused it and got in big trouble later.

Re:Far worse than electricity

[stinerman]

I completely understand why someone would want to use cash and encourage them to do so if they so wish. I just think the convenience factor of using plastic is worth the tradeoff.

Re:Far worse than electricity

[riverat1]

>"In a Cashless World, You'd Better Pray the Power Never Goes Out"

Or malware. Or a network problem. Or ID theft puts a freeze on your accounts. Or someone maliciously attacks your records. Or your device/card/whatever dies for some reason. Or you need to transact with someone who just doesn't have the necessary technology.

In a cashless world, you also give up every last bit of privacy left, because you can neither sell nor buy without the mark of the b..... I mean, without the tools and permission of the government and big business. Everything you buy and sell will be recorded and available for review immediately and any time in the future- revealing not only what you buy, but from whom, when, and where you have been. It also makes it easier for someone to tamper with those records to assist in framing you.

Don't be quick to give allow cash to disappear, you might regret it and there will be no going back.

That's one of the reasons I use cash for nearly all of my smaller transactions. The only thing I use my cards for is to buy gas and for big ticket items (> $500).

Re:I pray the power never goes out PERIOD

[klingens]

The power plants, usually, have backup diesel generators, so do hospitals and the tap water cleaning plants. Your supermarket or corner store however do not.
So there, hopefully, is no problem with the puerto rican hospitals, and they don't have any nuclear power plants in the first place afaik

tl;dr: you are wrong.

You can't use cash with no power

[HalAtWork]

Cash registers need electricity, and cashiers won't do transactions if they're not working.

Maybe you could go to a yard sale or something?

Re:You can't use cash with no power

[mrbester]

You see the keyhole on the drawer? That opens it. No electricity needed, just a key. The rest is just adding and subtracting numbers.

Re:You can't use cash with no power

[iggymanz]

amazing news for all you young-un's, most credit cards can be used as payment with no power! when I was a kid that's the only way they were taken. number, security code on back, customer's signature...you're good to go and get your money from the payment processor

Re:You can't use cash with no power

[iggymanz]

kids today are amazing, aren't they? as in clueless. you can take cash, checks, credit card...all without power. of course, there is the problem of not being able to verify whether card or account is valid and can take the charge, but in a neighborhood busniess where you know most your customers that largely wouldn't be problem. and of course you could ask for ID and take down address

Re:You can't use cash with no power

[HalAtWork]

Yeah but they still won't do it, it doesn't keep an electronic record nor calculate any prices/fees. They just refuse, I've tried.

Re:You can't use cash with no power

[HalAtWork]

True, so cashless + no power could still work! But then they still won't let you if they can't get an official record for the good or calculate the proper price/tax. I can't remember the last time someone actually pulled out a binder with the appropriate info and did an on-paper tabulation with carbon copy. Lately I've just been refused and told to go to another outlet with power if that happens. Haven't seen it in 10 years, that's just anecdotal though, anyone else have any experiences they can share?

Re:You can't use cash with no power

[iggymanz]

their loss and the mom & pop shops gain. we still have small stores around me, like ethnic grocery stores. I did hve my credit card number taken manually a couple years ago by some store, can't remember why but it showed up in my bill, no problem

Re:You can't use cash with no power

[iggymanz]

I did have my credit card taken manually a couple years ago at a ethnic grocery store when computer system down, those chinese merchants aren't going to pass up chance to collect money. hey they even had little hardware and housewares section...might be useful to remember

Re:You can't use cash with no power

[Scarletdown]

So the ones who are willing to bring out the old school binders and pencils when the shit hits the fan will be the ones who survive and thrive during the emergency.

Re:You can't use cash with no power

[Bert64]

They do this to cover any extras (Room service etc), or damage that you might do to the room. And virtually all hotels do the same thing, as do car rental companies and many other places.
If you use a credit card instead of a debit card then it's not a problem as it's only a pre-auth it comes off your credit limit but is never actually billed so you don't have to pay it.
Many hotels actually warn you *not* to use a debit card because of this.
So always use a credit card in situations like this, it saves you a lot of hassle.

Re:You can't use cash with no power

[SuricouRaven]

A few posts further turn you say that "those chinese merchants aren't going to pass up chance to collect money." So, yes, you're a racist.

Re:You can't use cash with no power

[iggymanz]

nope you're confused, I said good and positive thing about chinese merchants, any merchant who *isn't* like them is an idiot losing business.

my comment about the indian immigrant hotel owners is probably racist, however. fuck 'em, they run fleabag hotels

Try to get change for a gold coin

[voss]

Silver coins have small enough value to be useful in small transactions. Heck pure copper coins might even be useful.

Re:Try to get change for a gold coin

[Anonymous Coward]

This, like the magical gold coins, have all been tried before and we ended up with paper "fiat" money anyway.

The problem with this: gold and silver can change their relative value to each other and that screws up
the exchange rate. This can lead to hoarding of the coins that are appreciating in value (Gresham's law).

Both are also not immune to counterfeiting and debasement (i.e. coin is supposed to 5 grams of gold; surprise, someone remade the coin to now have 3 grams of gold).

Re:Try to get change for a gold coin

[mattwarden]

> The problem with this: gold and silver can change their relative value to each other and that screws up
> the exchange rate. This can lead to hoarding of the coins that are appreciating in value (Gresham's law).

Who is going to tell this AC that all fiat currencies change their relative value to each other today/everyday and really blow his/her/xer mind?

Re:Try to get change for a gold coin

[Pinky's Brain]

You don't have to use multiple fiat currencies to make change.

Re:Try to get change for a gold coin

[mattwarden]

That wasnâ(TM)t his point

The point is this really is not a problem. You can have exchanges without problematic hoarding, even if the relative value is changin by the second in 24 hour/day currency markets. People will pay wth 500 silver coins and keep their gold coins when silver is in sort supply and valued too high relative to gold. This is called a healthy, self correcting market

Sometimes the gold humbugs are even sillier than the gold bugs they mock

Re:Try to get change for a gold coin

[Bing Tsher E]

Gold/Silver/Copper?

Are you at endgame yet? Wanna do a dungeon tonight?

Re:Try to get change for a gold coin

[JesseMcDonald]

This can lead to hoarding of the coins that are appreciating in value (Gresham's law).

Gresham's Law only applies when merchants are required to accept both kinds of coins at a fixed exchange rate. The solution is simple; don't do that. There is no risk of hoarding if the exchange rate is allowed to float to balance supply and demand.

In concrete terms, if the natural exchange rate is 20 silver to 1 gold but the law mandates that a good be sold for either 16 silver or 1 gold—the merchant isn't allowed to accept only one type of coin, or to set distinct prices—then customers are obviously going to want to pay for it with 16 silver rather than the gold equivalent of 20 silver, and vice-versa if the mandated rate is 24:1. This is the source of all the problems historically associated with bimetallism in the United States; both gold and silver were legal tender, at a fixed exchange ratio, and the natural ratio obviously varied over time. As a result it was always the case that either gold or silver was overvalued, and the other metal undervalued, with significant disruption whenever their roles reversed. However, if prices were to be set based on the natural exchange ratio then there would be no reason to prefer one over the other (in general) and no hoarding would take place.

Counterfeiting and debasement are bigger problems, though there are advanced anti-counterfeiting techniques for metal coins just as there are for paper notes, and ways to detect debasement. That's one of gold's advantages, actually; as a relatively heavy metal there aren't that many cheaper materials you can replace it with to reduce the gold content of the coin while maintaining the same volume and density. Tungsten is about the only practical option, depleted uranium not being so commonly available to the public, and even then it will differ in other properties (sound/resonance, x-ray florescence) which will reveal it as counterfeit to a careful observer.

Re:Try to get change for a gold coin

[slashdotwannabe]

There is roughly $80 trillion dollars of currency floating around in the world today. The value of all of the gold ever mined in the history of humanity is $7.8 trillion. There simply isn't enough gold to go to a gold standard. What's that you say? A healthy market will simply hike the price of gold ten times over so it roughly matches? Sure, you could do that, but then be prepared to pay a couple million bucks for your next smartphone, since electronics make extensive use of precious metals.

Anchoring a currency to a precious metal is stupid in a bunch of different ways, to say nothing of the fact that there is literally not enough of it to actually do it.

Re:Try to get change for a gold coin

[mattwarden]

You guys really have a tough time staying on topic

Re:I pray the power never goes out PERIOD

[Mr D from 63]

I'm sure glad we invented these things called portable generators.

Re: Yup, the Digital Panopticon again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Makes you wonder, in the USA if you carry more than a few hundred dollars in cash and a law enforcement life form sees it, the cash will be seized under the concept of civil forfeiture. The cash is presumed to be guilty of criminal activity, even if the person carrying it is presumed innocent. They are working to change the second part of that statement, but haven't succeeded, YET.

Re:I pray the power never goes out PERIOD

[mrbester]

Last I heard, Puerto Rico was part of US. Or do you just mean mainland?

Re: Yup, the Digital Panopticon again...

[Stephen Battleware]

One wonders who the real criminals are sometimes, eh? I've read it gets worse, as not only will they steal someone's cash, some of these police organizations will march same to a bank machine and have their victim clean out his/her accounts. So if you ever visit the US, don't take all your bank cards.

Amazon shut-ins

[DogDude]

What about the Amazon shut-ins? I've read plenty of people on this very website, who state that they hate interacting with other people, and they only order from Amazon. What are those malcontents going to do without power? They're certainly not going to a store.

Re:Amazon shut-ins

[chispito]

What about the Amazon shut-ins? I've read plenty of people on this very website, who state that they hate interacting with other people, and they only order from Amazon. What are those malcontents going to do without power? They're certainly not going to a store.

(emphasis mine)
Or the movie theaters, by all indications. I propose you amend the term to Amazon/Netflix shut-ins.

Re:I pray the power never goes out PERIOD

[stabiesoft]

Unfortunately many of the PR hospitals were non-operational. Even with backup generators, they had trouble getting fuel to run them. I am not sure if they are all back up yet. I suspect not since the island is still without power in most places and road access to deliver fuel is still spotty.

Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[DogDude]

Visa/Mastercard get 2.5% of the ENTIRE ECONOMY in a cashless world. People who don't use cash don't think about this and apparently don't care.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[hackertourist]

In a world that is creditcard-only, yes. In a country with saner financial regulation, I've got a debit card that costs a fixed amount per month (actually the bank account it's linked to has a fixed price for debit card+internet banking+all other features of the account) instead of having to pay a % per transaction.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[TheSunborn]

So US need better banks with reasonable prices. What else is new.

But when that it said, The cost of handling cash for a business is around 2% when you include handling, storage and security.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[Kohath]

No they don't. According to this Federal Reserve Survey, they get a lot less than that. And that fee is only on card transactions, which are a small fraction of the "entire economy".

Why are you lying to people about it? That's the more important question.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[thenitz]

They don't take 2.5% from you, they take it from the merchants where you buy things.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[DogDude]

Dude, that's just one debit fee. There are more fees on top of that one. Cards run as "credit" have an average 2.5% interchange base rate.

And those studies show that card usage is through the roof. I don't know what point you're trying to make here.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[Anonymous Coward]

In the late 1950's and early 1960's, when today's credit cards began their ascent, the business cost of handling cash typically was 0.5% to 0.7%. The "house card", a merchant-specific credit card (Marshall Field, Macy's, etc.), usually ran about 1%, and BankAmericard (direct predecessor of Visa) was around 2%. Processing a check was $0.12, independent of the face amount, although some banks would not pay checks written for less than $1.00.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[Kohath]

Dude, that's just one debit fee. There are more fees on top of that one. Cards run as "credit" have an average 2.5% interchange base rate.

Visa and MasterCard don’t get the other fees. And the fees don’t average 2.5% of the total of all card transactions.

And those studies show that card usage is through the roof.

"Through the roof" notwithstanding, card transactions remain a small fraction of the "entire economy".

I don't know what point you're trying to make here.

My main point is: stop lying to people.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[doctorvo]

In a country with saner financial regulation, I've got a debit card that costs a fixed amount per month

Your ignorant, naive nationalism would be charming if it didn't have such a sordid history.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[DogDude]

I'm looking at my merchant statements right now. You don't know what you're talking about.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[Solandri]

That's actually another problem caused by Visa/MC. They lobbied for and got laws passed which prohibited merchants from charging a fee for a credit card transaction. Ideally, prices would be cash, and you'd have to pay an extra fee equal to the processing charge if you used a credit card. Then it would be completely clear to customers exactly how much of their purchase price was being diverted to Visa/MC and the processor.

But because of the law, merchants are forced to offer the same price for CC and cash. Meaning customers have no clue what percentage of their payment is going to fees. (Actually, they can use a loophole in the law to offer a cash discount. But the additional step introduces enough complexity and expense to the system that most merchants bother. The ones who don't want to pay the CC processing fee simply don't accept credit cards.)

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[DogDude]

Dude, you're nuts. Go away.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[DogDude]

That is very true.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[Attila Dimedici]

Not quite true. Merchants are allowed to offer a discount for cash. There are still some gas stations near me which do so.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[caseih]

Here in Canada that was changed a long time ago. Retailers can charge extra fees for credit cards. Also, except for 9 states, the same is true of most parts of the United States.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[stinerman]

I do think about it. No, I don't care.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[hackertourist]

For debit card transactions in .nl, the banks don't take 2.5%, they take a flat fee per transaction that can be as low as E0.02.

Re:Visa/MC get 2.5% of the economy

[rhazz]

Not sure why you think credit cards are the only electronic option. I personally use debit for most transactions because I don't need 2% worth of it going into a CC points program at the expense of paying 2% more in the base price because the merchant needs to recoup that fee.

Forget Power...just wait until the computer crash

[sycodon]

Just one day ago my credit union suffered a comm outage of some kind (they are very secretive about it).

As a result, none of their cards would work (Debit or Credit). I had to leave a bunch of groceries at the check out stand and looked like an idiot.

I ended up getting cash from the local branch so I could get groceries.

But, the power was on!

Re: Yup, the Digital Panopticon again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, you're behind the times. Although the police do civil forfeiture from your cards at the road side because they can carry handheld bank terminals http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2016/06/17/oklahomas-use-card-readers-to-freeze-seize-funds-comes-under-fire.html

"The company that manufactures the devices is also promised 7.7 percent of all money forfeited using the machines, according to one contract obtained by Oklahoma Watch."

Naturally the police have promised they'll only do this to criminals, but since they do it before there's been any trial that's a blatant lie.

Re:Yup, the Digital Panopticon again...

[iggymanz]

the reason why "a cashless world" hasn't happened decades ago is that the U.S. government needs its global currency to be anonymous for the purposes of funding wars, insurrections, selling narcotics to fund operations that congress won't (CIA), etc.

Probably not all that different

[jenningsthecat]

Back before ATM's and the Internet, banks would run out of cash in times of unexpected demand. And in a disaster situation, people sure as hell aren't making bank deposits. The situation would have been a little better back then than it is now with 'electronic money', but probably not a lot. There still would have been a shortage of the means to exchange 'abstractions of value'.

Arguably, we COULD have it better today, with sufficient backup and redundancy - generators and batteries, radio data links, etc. - but haven't invested enough to make it happen. Then again, given a few massive EMP's, all bets are off.

Just Goes To Show

[Scarletdown]

It just goes to show that...

Cash is still king.
Grass is keen.
Ass is queen.

Re: I pray the power never goes out PERIOD

[Miamicanes]

Post-Irma, at least half of the GAS STATIONS in South Florida were closed for at least a few days. Why? No (working) backup power. By law, they're required to have generators, but apparently the state doesn't require them to test, maintain, and certify them as operational. So gas stations grudgingly installed generators after Hurricane Wilma, then didn't do jack shit to maintain them for the next 12 years. Irma came & went, and lots of those generators didn't work.

For Dade & Broward counties, Irma side-swiped us as a weak category 1 hurricane. Our power grid & stores were dysfunctional to some degree for a week. If we'd gotten directly hit by a *major* (cat-3 or above) hurricane, we'd be in AT LEAST as fucked as San Juan is now.

The REAL danger in future storms is going to be people who remember what happened to gas stations after Irma, and to make sure it doesn't happen to them again, go into the next storm with 20 5-gallon cans of gas in their garage. Guaranteed, we'll have at least one news story of a *horrific* fire caused by someone storing EGREGIOUSLY unsafe quantities of gas in an even MORE unsafe location.

As a matter of public safety, local governments need to MAKE SURE that gas will be abundantly and readily available at most 8 hours after the last hurricane-force winds, convince the public that gas WILL be readily available, and actually pull it off. Otherwise, people will do *really* unsafe things because it seems like a lesser evil compared to being unable to buy stuff they need.

So instead of building infrastructure

[rsilvergun]

and solving our power grid problems we air drop cash? Also, one of the first things you do after a disaster is restore power, and if you haven't even done that you shouldn't be talking about money. We should just be sending food, water and medicine, not cash. Then get the power back up and _then_ we can start talking about fixing up the economy.

At the risk of getting down modded into oblivion I'll say this: This is less a real problem and more a symptom of the current ruling party not providing aid to Puerto Rico (I'll leave the reasons up to everybody's imaginations).

Re:So instead of building infrastructure

[DaMattster]

Sending air drops of cash will cause nothing but massive fighting for a worthless resource. The situation in Puerto Rico resembles a post-apocalyptic world. In a post-apocalyptic world cash will have NO value other than being a fuel source for warmth. In a post-apocalyptic world, the ONLY things that will have real value will be the basic necessities: food, fuel, water, and shelter. We might add defensive weapons and ammunition as well because, in the absence of rule of law, the laws of nature prevail: kill or be killed, be a predator or be prey.

Re:So instead of building infrastructure

[Pinky's Brain]

Normalcy of economic interaction keeps law and order alive. You can't immediately switch the entire distribution system on the Island to being charity based.

It's a symptom of people still having some common sense ... so maybe it is a symptom of your current ruling party.

Re:So instead of building infrastructure

[SuricouRaven]

Puerto Rico is a US territory, but they don't get any representation in Congress or any vote in presidential elections. So they are politically a non-entity. Neither party has any reason to care about them in the slightest. If they don't like the party, they can't vote for the other one.

Re: Yup, the Digital Panopticon again...

[Stephen Battleware]

I don't think I do, definitely the US:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.youtube.com/result...

Puerto Rico

[DaMattster]

I feel very badly and have donated money and non-perishable goods. I am appalled that Puerto Ricans are being treated as a second class citizens. Donald Trump even believes that Puerto Rico is foreign country and does not deserve our help. Sadly, the situation in Puerto Rico is a glimpse into what society would look like in a post-apocalyptic world. This is our chance to do right by PR and develop plans to manage disasters. We still have not learned from Katrina, Rita, and even Sandy. The aftermath of Katrina and Rita turned thriving areas into scenes right out of disaster films. Our government is too busy fighting itself and this is evident in the utter callousness in which Donald Trump threw a roll of paper towels. I believe he truly thinks a few roles of Bounty will solve anything.

Re:Puerto Rico

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, since you believe the government is so negligent, perhaps you should step up and resolve the situation,
since you seem to think restoring infrastructure on a devastated island is trivial. If only you had been alive in WWII,
you could have skipped the Marshall Plan, and rebuilt Europe overnight.

Re:Puerto Rico

[Patent Lover]

"I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack, because we've spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico," Thanks for the pick me up Donald.

Re:Puerto Rico

[doctorvo]

You still haven't answered the question. As an American, I am not a citizen of Puerto Rico. Why do you think I am obligated to pay for the rebuilding of Puerto Rico?

Re:Puerto Rico

[bingoUV]

As an American, I am not a citizen of Puerto Rico. Why do you think I am obligated to pay for the rebuilding of Puerto Rico?

Most Americans are not citizens of Florida. Why does Floridans get central/union government aid in the event of a disaster ?

Re:Puerto Rico

[ScentCone]

Right, because reminding everyone in PR, where they've been bankrupting themselves for years and doing nothing to invest in the sort of infrastructure that would make them more resilient to huge storms that will predictably and regularly pummel their tropical island, that they are now expecting some guy paying his taxes in Ohio or Delaware or Arizona to buy them a the services they demand so they can keep living on that tropical island ... no, we wouldn't want to EVER characterize the situation as it actually is. We sure wouldn't want PR's people - who keep voting in the corruption that has left them in their vulnerable condition - to even hear a single comment that might remind them of the fact that they're demanding not just a huge expenditure of other people's money to deal with their immediate storm damage, but a years-long flood of other people's money to prop up their own unwillingness to operate like a first-world territory. Meanwhile, people like our favorite mayor there insist that the tens of thousands of relief workers there delivering an unprecedented stream of goods and services paid for by that hardworking soccer mom in Massachusetts, are actually on the island to commit genocide.

I get it, you're a partisan troll. But if you were an actually decent human being, you'd be scolding politicians like her, who are what's actually wrong with Puerto Rico and are the very reason that they're in such bad shape in the first place. It was a terrible storm. Its results were hugely magnified by local corruption, and incompetence. And the toxic, politically divisive atmosphere that the media is trying so hard to amplify because they still can't get over the fact that their preferred political candidate isn't president, is being magnified by people like you can't handle a single honest comment from the politician she lost to. I don't like Trump either, but your priorities are WAY wrong.

Re:Puerto Rico

[doctorvo]

Most Americans are not citizens of Florida. Why does Floridans get central/union government aid in the event of a disaster ?

I'm sorry, but you don't seem to understand the legal status of Puerto Rico; it is fundamentally different from that of Florida. You can become a "citizen of Florida" by moving there. You are a Puerto Rican citizen only by birth. Internationally, Puerto Rican citizenship is recognized as distinct from US citizenship.

Re:Puerto Rico

[bingoUV]

Yet, your statement is equally applicable to Florida. So tell me, "Most Americans are not citizens of Florida. Why does Floridans get central/union government aid in the event of a disaster ?"

Re:Puerto Rico

[Patent Lover]

That's great. But right now they want food, water, and medicine. They don't want a fat orange asshole throwing paper towels at them.

Re:Puerto Rico

[ScentCone]

That's great. But right now they want food, water, and medicine. They don't want a fat orange asshole throwing paper towels at them.

Wow, you really are actively, deliberately, desperately TRYING to experience an alternate reality, aren't you? That's fine, if that's what makes you feel better about yourself. Just don't do anything dangerous to other people based on your assertion of an alternate universe (like, say, voting).

Re:Puerto Rico

[Patent Lover]

I wish it were an alternate reality. In my actual reality my president is a fat orange asshole with no ability to empathize with the suffering of other human beings.

Re:Puerto Rico

[doctorvo]

Yet, your statement is equally applicable to Florida.

Which part of You can become a "citizen of Florida" by moving there. You are a Puerto Rican citizen only by birth. Internationally, Puerto Rican citizenship is recognized as distinct from US citizenship. did you not understand? The relationship of US tax payers to Puerto Rico is fundamentally different than their relationship to Florida.

Re:Puerto Rico

[bingoUV]

Ok, you seem to be under the impression that you said :

As an American, I am ^W cannot become a citizen of Puerto Rico by moving there. Why do you think I am obligated to pay for the rebuilding of Puerto Rico?

But you didn't say this. You said the following :

As an American, I am not a citizen of Puerto Rico. Why do you think I am obligated to pay for the rebuilding of Puerto Rico?

Which is perfectly valid when Puerto Rico is replaced by Florida.

Re:Puerto Rico

[doctorvo]

Which is perfectly valid when Puerto Rico is replaced by Florida.

No, it's not "perfectly valid", it's nonsensical: Florida is not a territory or a nation, hence you cannot be a "citizen" of it, at least not in the same sense that you can be a citizen of the US or of Puerto Rico. If you try to base an argument on using the term "citizen" this way in two different ways, then you are committing the fallacy of equivocation.

The fact remains that the relationship between Puerto Rico and the federal government is fundamentally different than the relationship between any US state and the federal government. Therefore, it is perfectly legitimate for the federal government to treat Puerto Rico differently from any state when it comes to disaster relief or rebuilding after a disaster. In particular, Puerto Rico, in many ways, is more like an independent nation and hence US tax payers might well choose to treat it that way.

Re:Puerto Rico

[bingoUV]

Florida is not a territory or a nation, hence you cannot be a "citizen" of it

So you don't know about state citizenship concept in the US ?

at least not in the same sense that you can be a citizen of the US or of Puerto Rico

You can't be a "citizen" of the United States in the same sense that you can be a citizen of Puerto Rico. Which is different from the sense one can be a citizen of the United Kingdom. Every citizenship is different - entailing different rights, duties and values.

If you try to base an argument on using the term "citizen" this way in two different ways, then you are committing the fallacy of equivocation.

Amazing! Pot, kettle, black ? Consider your words "As an American, I am not a citizen of Puerto Rico. "

American : Only the third definition is about a person and the nation United States. (Others are about the language and the persons+continents). This definition defines "American" also as "U. S. citizen". So put together, your statement becomes :

"As a U. S. citizen, I am not a citizen of Puerto Rico"

Which is the identical fallacy you named.

Re:Puerto Rico

[doctorvo]

Every citizenship is different - entailing different rights, duties and values.

And right there, you have the justification for why the federal government can treat Puerto Rico different from Florida: being "a citizen of Puerto Rico" entails different rights from being "a citizen of Florida". Glad you agree and stated it so clearly yourself.

Re:Puerto Rico

[bingoUV]

And right there, you have the justification for why the federal government can treat Puerto Rico different from Florida

Can you show where I said they "cannot" ? Does it imply anywhere that US citizens are "obligated" to rebuild Florida but not Puerto Rico, except in your putrid imagination ?

Your statement "As an American, I am not a citizen of Puerto Rico. Why do you think I am obligated to pay for the rebuilding of Puerto Rico?" still remains utter nonsense - as applicable to Florida as to Puerto Rico.

Re:Puerto Rico

[doctorvo]

We are discussing this statement:

I am appalled that Puerto Ricans are being treated as a second class citizens.

That implies some obligation on the part of Americans to rebuild Puerto Rico with US tax dollars. I asked for a justification for that obligation. You have given none so far.

Your statement "As an American, I am not a citizen of Puerto Rico. Why do you think I am obligated to pay for the rebuilding of Puerto Rico?" still remains utter nonsense - as applicable to Florida as to Puerto Rico.

Well, since my statement didn't convince you, I clarified:

The fact remains that the relationship between Puerto Rico and the federal government is fundamentally different than the relationship between any US state and the federal government. Therefore, it is perfectly legitimate for the federal government to treat Puerto Rico differently from any state when it comes to disaster relief or rebuilding after a disaster.

So: respond to the clarification instead of the original statement.

Re:Puerto Rico

[bingoUV]

Your statement : The fact remains that the relationship between Puerto Rico and the federal government is fundamentally different than the relationship between any US state and the federal government. Therefore, it is perfectly legitimate for the federal government to treat Puerto Rico differently from any state when it comes to disaster relief or rebuilding after a disaster.

My response : Can you show where I said they "cannot" ? Does it imply anywhere that US citizens are "obligated" to rebuild Florida but not Puerto Rico, except in your putrid imagination ?

Re:Puerto Rico

[doctorvo]

My response : Can you show where I said they "cannot" ? Does it imply anywhere that US citizens are "obligated" to rebuild Florida but not Puerto Rico, except in your putrid imagination ?

We are discussing DeMaster's statement: I am appalled that Puerto Ricans are being treated as a second class citizens.. That's what this thread is about.

Re:Puerto Rico

[bingoUV]

So? How does it imply that US citizens are "obligated" to rebuild Florida but not Puerto Rico ?

Re:Puerto Rico

[doctorvo]

I get it now: you are functionally illiterate.

Re:Puerto Rico

[bingoUV]

OK, so you realized your non-argument won't work ? Took you a while.

Lesson to be learned

[SCVonSteroids]

Next time to steal a diamond of such value, make sure you have an escape plan ;)

Not exactly

[rsilvergun]

the wealthy places in PR (mostly tourist spots and a few odds/ends neighborhoods of the rulers) have already recovered and have electricity, water, food, etc, etc. We're air dropping cash for those people. We took care of the well to do. We always do.

Re:Forget Power...just wait until the computer cra

[Bert64]

Which is why it pays to...

a, always have multiple cards from multiple suppliers (multiple banks as well as multiple types of card visa/amex/etc)
b, always carry enough cash for emergencies

Although the laws vary from place to place... If a place claims to accept cards, and then fails to do so through no fault of yours, who's liable?
What if you've already consumed the goods (eg in a restaurant, or already pumped some gas) and then their card machine is faulty?

Gun and Bullets

[Templer421]

Quickly becomes a small business opportunity.

Re:Forget Power...just wait until the computer cra

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as someone with a raging gun addiction who CAN always feed it, molon labe.

Cash Does not Even Work

[wisnoskij]

In my experience, Canada, when the power is out businesses cannot even sell you anything with cash as they cannot put a transaction through their system, scan the price, or calculate the total and tax without it.

Re:Cash Does not Even Work

[Cro Magnon]

The last time I had an outage, I could still buy crap at the Quick Trip as long as I used cash. But no gas, and the employee was getting ready to close the store because it was too hot in there without AC.

Here's a crazy idea

[rsilvergun]

why not stop tying basic survival to whether you've got cash on hand? Why don't we stop fighting among ourselves (while the rich and powerful take 50-60% of everything) and actually help people out when disaster strikes instead of blaming them? I know, I know, the answer is literally in the last sentence I wrote, but a man can dream can't he?

Who needs cash?

[slashmydots]

Last time my area was without power people wanted food, generators, inverters, and gasoline not cash. We knew cash wasn't dead and buried obviously, as it was a localized tornado, but nobody really was all that interested in paper money compared to things they immediately needed.

Re:Forget Power...just wait until the computer cra

[mysidia]

What if you've already consumed the goods (eg in a restaurant, or already pumped some gas) and then their card machine is faulty?

The Merchant agreement with the credit card companies that allows use of the Visa or Mastercard logo Requires the merchant to use backup methods such as: resort to calling in through the Voice Authorization Center or take a Card Imprint Using a manual credit card imprinting machine instead.

Re: LOL that's funny

[dunkelfalke]

You will probably be killed first by others like you to get rid of a potential competitor.

Re: Forget Power...just wait until the computer cr

[dougdonovan]

what do you think runs the power grid ? most of us call it a computer. what does it take to run a computer ? most of us call it power.

Re: Forget Power...just wait until the computer cr

[guruevi]

There are no laws surrounding credit cards, there are agreements with the card systems. They state you have to accept the cards and process them offline, you know, the way they did it âoeback thenâ with the sliding thing and the copy paper. You can call the 1800 number on a card to check for available balance.

A better solution with better accountability.

[will_die]

What we need to do in embed a digital device into person to uniquely identify them. Then allow that device to store your credit card and financial information.
Then for the readers at the store, allow a battery mode, and provide a standard solar panel for charging.
Then when the power is off stores can scan/photo you(hold your hand next to your face) and you can make limited purchases. When the power comes one and network is reestablished they upload. The store is protected since the device is embedded and they has your face the government will go after you for the stealing and with us requiring that embedded device to make purchases you would also be easy to track down.

Re:Forget Power...just wait until the computer cra

[sycodon]

Meh...Getting milk and dog food isn't really an emergency.

Re: LOL that's funny

[dunkelfalke]

Dead people literally don't give a shit.

Re:I pray the power never goes out PERIOD

[Faw]

Most hospitals are operational AFAIK, they have priority for getting electricity from the power company. Diesel supply is good now and the lines at gas stations are gone. I have been about 2 months without power, water comes and goes. Thank god I bought a military power generator years ago and it has been working flawlesly. Those things are awesome. I'm planning to buy a backup as soon as this mess gets better.

Escape From L.A. anyone?

[volodymyrbiryuk]

Snake Plissken is coming for your money.

Re: I pray the power never goes out PERIOD

[bad-badtz-maru]

The post-Irma issue wasn't that the generators didn't work, it was that the gas stations are only required to be wired for generator hookup. They don't have to have one on site, and none do. But even that doesn't matter, the real problem wasn't lack of power at the gas stations, it was lack of gas in the stations' tanks. This continued to be a serious issue for about 5 days after the storm had already passed. Stations would run through gas roughly 2 hours after delivery. People were following the tankers around. It was kind of insane.

Re: I pray the power never goes out PERIOD

[bad-badtz-maru]

A nuclear plant generally isn't powered by its own output, in case they have to take the turbines offline.

Re:I pray the power never goes out PERIOD

[stabiesoft]

I found http://status.pr/ and it shows 70 hospitals operational, 45 with power. So 25 are running on generators I guess. Still looks very bad with only 13% with power and about 1/2 the cell towers up. Water seems to be getting better though at 72%, but I am sure the 28% without water are pretty desperate. Unimaginable. Interesting the post office is almost fully operational.

Re:Forget Power...just wait until the computer cra

[Marxist Hacker 42]

As long as you don't mind your dogs killing you for food, that is.

Not nessarily...

[fish_in_the_c]

You discounting the number of people killed in riots, killed by other for various supplied, killed by disease , or broken bones, or just plain stupidity. Not to mention the fires that aren't put out etc. in case of a true global catastrophe that cuts the power there would be a dramatic decrease in human population especially around cities.

Re:LOL that's funny

[Marxist Hacker 42]

That depends on how you've landscaped your yard, I guess. I plant edibles. Which in addition to my canned and better yet, my vacuum extracted preserved foodstuffs, my low voltage back up energy system, and yes, my squirrel hunting (everybody else will go after the big game, I'll go for things I can take down with a 180 FPS air rifle, both less likely to be taken from and turned against me and much easier to find/manufacture ammo for) I think I'll be fine.

My neighbors, not so much, I'd think, despite the fact I live in a temperate rain forest where wild foods abound.

BTW- your Year 100 is off. Small isolated populations (which this would certainly turn into) leads to language *fracture* , not language extinction. Only large culturally imperial armies lead to language extinction. I suspect within 200 years, you'd see the number of languages explode.

Power Off, Cash Doesn't Work

[agrisea]

In July 2016, where I live had a 5.5 hour power outage, which turned us in to a ghost town. Naturally, you'd take cash to the store to buy things except no stores, fuel pumps, restaurants, hotels, coffee shops, internet services, had power. It is very easy to actually know who did have emergency generators: phone company, 911, hospital, & mill. Almost everyone here has electric appliances for their business, including restaurants and those that don't, most people pay with plastic or use an electronic register... IMHO, my town needs to have a serious discussion about this lack of services when the power goes out as this is not the first time this has happened nor will it be the last time.

No biggie...

[iq145]

Ever heard of a "back up"?