How To Survive The Apocalypse, Part 6: Bartering and Alternative Economies

Congratulations! You’ve made it this far into the apocalypse. The world has crumbled, the banks are long gone, and your credit score is now as meaningless as your old office job. Hope you weren’t planning to Venmo someone for supplies.

The good news? Economies don’t disappear—they just change. The bad news? If you don’t figure out how to trade effectively, you’ll either get ripped off or starve.

Welcome to the world of bartering and alternative economies, where survival is less about what’s in your wallet and more about what you can offer.

Understand What’s Actually Valuable

In a post-collapse world, not everything is worth trading—your collection of rare Funko Pops? Not useful. A working lighter? Now that’s gold.

The most valuable trade items will always be things that people need but can’t easily get anymore. Here’s a quick rundown:

• Fire & Fuel: Matches, lighters, fire starters, propane, alcohol stoves. If it helps people stay warm or cook food, it’s worth something.

• Water Purification: Filters, purification tablets, iodine, and even knowledge of how to find and purify water will make you a sought-after trader.

• Non-Perishable Food: Canned goods, dried meats, rice, beans. If it doesn’t rot and has calories, it’s currency.

• Medical Supplies: Antibiotics, painkillers, bandages, antiseptics. People will trade almost anything to avoid dying from an infected splinter.

• Tools & Repair Materials: Multi-tools, duct tape, sewing kits, nails, rope. The apocalypse is a never-ending DIY project, and supplies will run out fast.

• Vices & Comfort Items: Coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, chocolate—because the end of the world is stressful, and people will pay for a little escape.

• Clothing & Footwear: Warm gear, waterproof jackets, boots. If someone’s feet freeze off, they can’t go scavenging anymore.

• Knowledge & Skills: If you can fix things, grow food, hunt, or provide medical care, you don’t need to hoard supplies—people will trade to keep you around.

Learn the Art of the Trade

Now that you know what’s valuable, it’s time to barter like a pro.

The Rules of Bartering:

✔️ Start High, Settle Lower – If you open with, “I’ll trade you my entire first-aid kit for a single can of beans,” congratulations! You played yourself. Always ask for more than you actually want, then negotiate down.

✔️ Act Like You Don’t Need It – The more desperate you seem, the worse the deal gets. Even if you’re starving, pretend you’re just mildly peckish.

✔️ Trade Small Before You Trade Big – If you need antibiotics, don’t go offering your entire stockpile of food up front. Start with smaller trades first, then work your way to bigger ones when you trust the person.

✔️ Know When to Walk Away – If someone is trying to hustle you, don’t be afraid to leave. There will always be another trader with better terms.

✔️ Be Wary of Too-Good Deals – If someone offers you something way above its value, it probably is too good to be true. Walk away if your gut tells you to.

✔️ Trade Skills, Not Just Goods – If you can sew, fix engines, purify water, or provide medical aid, you are a valuable resource. Trade your expertise wisely.

Alternative Economies—Not Just Bartering

Money may be dead, but systems of value exchange always emerge. Here’s how people will likely trade when traditional cash is gone:

1. Reputation-Based Economies

Ever heard of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours”? In many post-collapse communities, trust and goodwill are worth more than gold. If people see you as a valuable, fair, and trustworthy person, they’ll help you without immediate payment—knowing you’ll return the favor.

• How to Thrive in a Reputation-Based Economy:

  • Be useful.

  • Don’t hoard—share when you can.

  • Show up for people in times of need.

  • Don’t betray trust, or you’ll become an outcast.

2. Work-for-Supplies Systems

Some communities will move beyond bartering and instead function on a work-based exchange. This means instead of trading goods, you trade labor:

• You repair someone’s tools in exchange for food.

• You provide security for a settlement in exchange for a place to sleep.

• You help build a shelter in return for medical treatment.

3. Resource-Based Micro-Currencies

If things stabilize a little, people will create their own currencies. These might be:

• Ammo-based economies – Bullets are both a currency and a survival tool.

• Cigarettes, booze, and coffee – Already used as currency in prisons, these will likely become high-value trade goods.

• Metal tokens or barter chips – Some groups may create a system where a certain material (silver, copper, or even bottle caps) acts as a standardized currency.

Trade Smart, Don’t Die

Surviving the post-apocalypse isn’t just about what you have—it’s about how well you trade.

• Learn what’s valuable.

• Negotiate like your life depends on it (because it might).

• Know when to barter, when to give, and when to walk away.

• And most importantly? Be useful. The more people need you, the less likely you are to end up on the wrong side of a bad deal.

Because in a world where money is worthless, being valuable is the real currency.

On Compassion

This first appeared as the foreward in The Glass Forest and Other Tales. Click here to learn more.

I have spent much of my adult life studying philosophy. I’ve read books (or sections of the books) written by professional and arm-chair philosophers, listened to philosophy-focused podcasts, and even watched a few online courses that run through various philosophical concepts. I took a couple philosophy classes in college, and though I did not excel at them, my love of thinking has overcome the over-intellectual, patronizing approach to philosophical ideas many writers take, and I am now able to approach the topics my own way.

In fact, one of the reasons I like fairy tales so much, is because they offer a rich playground for exploring deep philosophical questions. Whether we’re discussing the classics, like Cinderella or Little Red Riding Hood, or discovering new ones, like the tales that follow in this book, we each have the opportunity to experience the tale through our own lens, our own experiences—and as such, draw conclusions about life, love, and meaning.

But despite my love of philosophy, I have struggled greatly to overcome one issue in particular. And that is this:

What’s the point?

So much of philosophical discussion is based around “whys” and “whats” of metaphysical concepts. What is the meaning of life? What is love? Why are we here? What is art? What is morality? How do we define “good”?

I could go on.

The thing is, even if you come to a satisfactory (for you) answer to any of these questions, the question still remains: so what?

“The meaning of life is to be a good person.”

 So what? Were you planning on being a bad person before you came to this conclusion? In what way does this new belief change your behavior?

“Love is a chemical reaction between two living things that stimulates their brains into believing there is more to relationship than procreation.”

So what? Does that belief change the way you practice relationships? Does it change who you seek out to meet your needs, or the ways in which you maintain long-term friendships and partnerships?

“Beauty is a subjective quality that evokes a sense of pleasure or rightness in the mind of the viewer.”

So what? Are you going to run around telling everyone they’re ugly if their physical appearance doesn’t make you personally feel good? Are you going to burn paintings by artists you don’t like?

The answer to life, the universe, and everything might as well be 42.

Now, you know I’m being deliberately annoying here, and we could go back and forth about how believing in goodness should affect a person’s behavior, or believing in love as “just chemicals” vs “meaningful engagement” should change the way you interact with the people you care about.

But does it?

How many times have you completely altered your behavior because a fundamental belief about the world changed as a result of finding a satisfactory answer to a deep philosophical question?

I have. Exactly once. It was excruciatingly painful and I don’t recommend it.

Every other major change was either a reinforcement/validation of something I already believed, or the result of a specific IRL experience I had, not a philosophical debate.

So what? What is the point of exploring these ideas and concepts? Especially since there’s little chance of finding The One True Answer to any of them.

What are the practical applications for endlessly debating and discussing and dwelling on impossible questions with no answers?

For me, the answer is compassion.

If you ask a hundred people what love is, you’ll get a hundred answers. Perhaps some overlap in responses, sure. But the reason you get a hundred answers is that love is an experience. And we each experience the world in our own unique way. Probably.

And if we (probably) experience love in our own unique way, that means we probably also experience the rest of the world in our own unique way. That’s why some people scream when they see a spider, and some people keep spiders as pets.

That’s why some people hate going to the dentist, and other people become dentists.

That’s why some people are terrified of clowns, and other people invite them to their birthday party.

If we all have our own unique experience of the world, then it follows that there is no objectively correct experience of the world. In anything.

I know, I know, some other armchair philosopher is going to come along and argue with me about pedophilia and genocide. But I’m not talking about morality and ethics here. I’m talking simply about our experience of the world.

**********

A few years ago, I met a woman who believed in demons. She believed she’d met one. Believed it with her whole mind. She’d also been hugged by an angel (specifically a very non-angelic looking seraphim). She told Satan that god forgave him.

This woman believed in these experiences with every cell in her body, every figment of herself, every atom of her being. She was close to 80 years old, and extremely nervous to share her story because so many people had made fun of her over the years. She cried as she shared the details.

I’d already been studying philosophy for a while at the point I heard her story, and I was in therapy at the same time. I’d been sharing about my past with my therapist, and once asked, “What if this isn’t true? What if I’m remembering it wrong?”

She told me, “It doesn’t matter if it’s technically true or not. It only matters if you believe it’s true, because that’s what you hold in your body. I will always believe you.”

So as I was listening to this woman share her story about meeting a demon, I kept thinking to myself: How do I believe her story about demons and angels and Satan, when I don’t even believe in god?

And I realized I had to believe both things at once. I had to hold onto my own foundation of belief—agnosticism, which doesn’t allow for angels and demons to be real—but create a separate space for her in my mind, where it didn’t matter whether or not her story was true; it only mattered that she believed it.

So I made the choice to believe her. And all at once I was filled with compassion for this woman who was clearly traumatized by her experiences, had lived an extremely difficult life, and was still trying to come to terms with the awful things that had happened to her. It didn’t matter in the slightest whether she’d seen a real demon or not. It didn’t matter whether she’d been wrapped in the wings of a seraphim.

All that mattered was that she believed it.

All that mattered was that this woman was just as deserving of compassion as anyone else.

It wasn’t a sudden shift that happened in my mind, but internalizing the idea that “many things can be true at the same time” has come primarily from my study of philosophy. This concept is in sharp contrast to the idea that “there is only one truth,” that christianity is built upon, and which is the belief system I was raised in.

Accepting the existence of many truths has given me compassion for many people. It has given me the ability to suspend judgement. It has given me the ability to set aside my anger.

I don’t always have to believe a person is “good” or “moral” to believe that any one singular action or behavior does not define the wholeness of who they are. I don’t have to understand why they did something or chose something different than I would have chosen to believe that there could be a reason, and that I don’t know everything or have all the answers.

Many things can be true at the same time.

And this is why I will always continue to study philosophy. Because the more ideas I can hold within me at once, the more compassion I can have for the people around me.

On Navigating Changes

This first appeared as the author’s note in The Glass Forest and Other Tales. Click to learn more.

The last twelve months have been… complicated, for lack of a better word.

We moved from one state to another, built a rescue sanctuary (well, we started the process but it’s a long one), lost Rowan, our 20-year-old cat (among other creatures), and helped my sister and nephew move in with us. I worked an honest-to-dog, real-life, grown-up job for about 9 months (it was terrible; do not recommend), and Josh lost his job and found another.

We’ve had bad weather and good weather, bad health and good health, bad animals and good animals. Turbulent might describe this period of our lives, especially looking out beyond our immediate situation and into the world at large.

Just the other day, I was at the SPCA meeting two Maine Coon brothers who were surrendered from a loving home due to extenuating circumstances. I petted them and listened to their deep purring as it rumbled loudly enough I could feel it in my own chest.

And in that moment, I realized I was having an existential crisis. Was I really considering adopting two adult male Maine Coon cats when I had eight of my own cats back home? Even though we had just lost Rowan, our beautiful 20-year-old Norwegian Forest Cat mix, did I really need two more cats to fill the hole in my heart?

No. Because truthfully, there is no other animal who will fill the hole left by Rowan. She was a beautiful, wonderful cat who lived with us through so many adventures. Our current cats will live with us through new adventures. And if, at some point, we do get new cats, they will live with us through future adventures.

I realized I didn’t need to bring home two more cats—especially not these two, who were adopted by someone else within minutes after I left.

I was just sad. What I needed was to give myself time to grieve.

None of these stories are about grief and loss, particularly. But what they are about is navigating change. Sometimes the change is of their own making, and sometimes it comes from the outside world. But in every case, they must bear the weight of adapting to those changes, grieve the loss of life before, and look forward to the adventures that come.

And it turns out, that is what I needed, too.

Time to grieve: not just the loss of Rowan and all our other beloved creatures that left our lives in the last year of rescuing (Tornado the cat, Gretel the goat, Goatotiller the goat, Roxy the foster dog, four foster kittens, several ducks and chickens), but also our life before. The life we left in Pennsylvania, and in Baltimore, and our childhoods.

Time to accept the changes we chose and the changes in the world around me we have no control over.

Time to envision a new future filled with love and sorrow, joy and pain, and the effort of building something new.

New Book: The Glass Forest and Other Tales

Over the last year, my life has changed in more ways than I can count. We’ve moved, built the beginnings of an animal rescue, said goodbye to beloved pets, and tried to make sense of a chaotic world. In that time, I found myself writing stories about change—about the moment after the world shifts, when you're left standing in the wreckage and asked to begin again.

And of course, I process change and challenge through writing.

My newest collection of original fairy tales, The Glass Forest and Other Tales, is rooted in the idea that philosophy doesn’t always offer answers, but it can help us hold space for many truths at once. And in a world that often demands certainty, sometimes the most radical act is choosing compassion.

This is the fourth volume in my ongoing series of original fairy tales—stories written not just to entertain, but to explore what it means to be human. Like its predecessors, this collection is filled with mystery, magic, and meaning. These are tales about identity and kindness, about grief and belonging, about change and the strange shapes it takes.

You’ll meet:

• A woman who trades her soul to save her sister—and centuries later, journeys to reclaim it.

• A solitary woman whose life changes when she encounters the rarest creature in a glass forest.

• A ghost who finds unexpected friendship with a bard and a dulcimer under the light of the moon.

• A farmer who finds a fae baby in her barn and must choose between fear and love.

• A village that places its hopes on a mechanical man powered by a real human heart.

Each story is steeped in classic fairy tale elements, but takes a step into new terrain—where folklore meets philosophy, and where every choice reveals a deeper question.

Whether you’re here for the magic, the meaning, or just a good story—thank you for being here. I hope these tales meet you wherever you are in your journey.

How To Survive the Apocalypse, Part 5: Skills to Learn Before the Apocalypse (Because Google Won’t Be There to Help You)

Picture this: society has collapsed. You’re standing in the ruins of a once-thriving supermarket, holding a can of beans you can’t open because you never learned how to do it without a can opener. Your phone battery died weeks ago. The last person who claimed to know "bushcraft" set himself on fire trying to start one.

The realization hits: you are wildly unprepared for this.

That’s the thing about survival—you don’t get to Google your way out of it. The internet won’t be there to tell you which mushrooms are edible or how to stop bleeding when you inevitably do something dumb with a knife.

So if you don’t want to be a tragic cautionary tale in someone else’s post-apocalyptic legend, now’s the time to start training. Here are the top survival skills to master before the world ends.

Because when the WiFi is gone, all you’ll have left is whatever’s in your brain—and hopefully, a better plan for opening that can of beans.

1. How To Start A Fire

Fire isn’t just about staying warm—it’s about staying alive. It purifies water, cooks food, wards off predators (both the four-legged and desperate-human kind), and keeps you from spiraling into existential despair when the world around you is nothing but darkness.

The problem? Fire isn’t as easy as movies make it look.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Master at least three fire-starting methods. Lighters and waterproof matches are great, but if you don’t have a ferro rod (or at least a magnifying glass to focus sunlight), you’re playing on easy mode with no backup plan.

• Find dry tinder, even in wet conditions. Look for dry inner bark, pine needles, or even carry cotton balls soaked in petroleum jelly. Better yet, collect it when you see it and keep it in a waterproof bag. Then you’ll have it available no matter the weather.

• Build a sustainable fire. A tiny flicker of flame is cute, but a long-burning coal bed is what keeps you warm all night. This is especially important if you’re staying in one place for a while. It’s easier to keep the fire going than to restart it..

🔥 Practice Now: Try making a fire in bad weather. If you can get a flame going in rain or wind, you’re apocalypse-ready. If not, congratulations! You have died of dysentry. Better luck next time.

2. Finding Water

You can last weeks without food, but without water? Three days. Maybe less if the apocalypse has you running from… things. Zombies. Dinosaurs. ICE.

The problem? Water that looks clean probably isn’t. Even that picturesque mountain stream is full of things that want to kill you (bacteria, parasites, maybe the ghosts of less-prepared survivors).

How to Not Die of Thirst:

• Find water sources. Moving water (rivers, streams) is better than stagnant pools. Rain collection is a solid backup.

• Filter first, purify second. A survival straw or filter is great, but boiling is your best bet if you don’t want to gamble with dysentery. (And let’s be honest, you don’t.)

• Learn natural water indicators. Tracks leading to water sources, morning dew collection, and plants like cattails can all point you in the right direction.

💧 Practice Now: Go on a hike and try finding, filtering, and purifying water. Bonus points if you do it without a store-bought filter. Extra bonus points if you don’t get sick afterward.

3. Basic First Aid

If you trip and bust your knee open in the pre-apocalypse world, you get stitches and a bill from the ER. In the post-apocalypse? You get an infection, a fever, and maybe a starring role in your group’s first funeral.

Honestly, basic first aid is great to know even pre-apocalypse. Check with your local police or fire department. Many of them offer first aid classes. And if they don’t, you can probably request it.

Survival First Aid Must-Knows:

• Stop bleeding, or stop living. Learn how to apply pressure, pack a wound, and use a tourniquet correctly (as in, not as the first option).

• Prevent infection. If you don’t have antibiotics, then honey, salt, and even some plant extracts can help. (Note: learn which plants before you start smearing random leaves on your wounds.)

• Recognize shock and dehydration. If someone’s confused, clammy, or staring blankly while you yell at them, they might be going into shock. Elevate their legs, keep them warm, and get them water if possible.

🚑 Practice Now: Take a basic first aid course. If that’s too much commitment, at least learn how to stop bleeding. You’ll thank yourself when you inevitably cut your finger on a can of apocalypse beans.

Survival Isn’t Just About Luck—It’s About Skill

When the world goes sideways, you don’t want to be the person standing in the rubble, wondering why no one ever taught you how to make a fire or find clean water. Survival isn’t about just luck (though that may play a role)—it’s about knowing what to do before things fall apart.

The good news? You still have time to learn.

The bad news? If you wait too long, you might be the reason someone else gets a crash course in makeshift funerals.

So start now. Light a fire in the rain. Purify some sketchy water. Learn how to patch yourself up without a pharmacy. Because when the WiFi is gone and the world is burning, the only thing keeping you alive… is you.