AMMUNITION AS CURRENCY? Ammunition and gold share a lot of similar characteristics, but can ammo actually serve as a currency?
Let’s find out…
In (good) economics courses you are taught that money has come in all shapes and sizes throughout history. Some of those forms include salt, cattle, dolphin teeth, knives, wampum (beads) and even giant stones. At some point along the way, however society almost universally decided that gold, silver and other metals (copper, bronze) were a good material for currency.
Why?
Well, according to economists, currency must have three basic qualities
Medium of Exchange – people must be able to transact business and be accepted by others as payment. Unit of Account – a common unit of measurement that is the same across different holdings (an ounce of gold is an ounce of gold no matter where you are). Store of Value – the currency must hold its value over a reasonable period of time – precious metals do not rust or decay so they are constant store of value.
if you aren't already… start stockpiling ammo… you may need to "buy" your way out of some tough situations
Josiah Ortiz
Might be time to turn off PUBG and go outside for a while. That said - it could turn into a currency of sorts, but probably not in the short term of a collapse. It is not consumed fast enough to be of more value than lighters, paper products, food, tools, fuel etc. Ammo is plentiful and keeps nearly forever.
Eli White
(checked)
That's been well known among peppers for decades now. Stop for a second and think about what a transaction really is. You're giving someone something they want in exchange for something you want. Now try brainstorming for things people might want. Clean water, booze, cigarettes, a good book, nonperishable food, chocolate. Items with real world value are valuable and can be traded in absence of money under the right circumstances. Same goes with skills. Can you fix a car, treat a wound, deliver a baby? Just think about what you can do and how you can put that to use.
Kevin Hall
With bartering, anything is a currency.
Kevin Phillips
You own an Armalite. Your ammo stockpile consists of .223 Rem and 5.56 NATO. I own a Remington 700. My ammo stockpile is in 30-06. I have no use for your ammo, therefore I will not accept it as currency.
If you wanted a universal medium of exchange, it would have to be something everyone can make use of. For example, lead. It doesn't matter what cartridge you're reloading, because you're casting your own bullets anyway.
John Green
It can stand in as a short period bartering item yes. As money its lacking severely, considering the varying usability of each type, quality, and a host of other concerns.
Jayden Adams
But that's wrong. Throughout history gold and silver have been the staple currencies, what practical use has the average person for either? You don't need to have a weapon that can use the ammunition in order to accept it as currency, you only have to know that it will be accepted by everyone else. Would ammo make a good currency? No, because contrary to OP it shares virtually nothing in common with gold. Counterfeiting would be a massive problem, fit a primer to used shells, fill them with the correct weight of sand and press in a fake bullet. If you think anyone in a SHTF scenario is going to let you load up a weapon and take a "test shot" during a transaction, you're out of your fucking mind.
Jaxson Murphy
This statement: Is contradicted by the very next statement:
The value of a currency is that it's a universal medium of exchange. It's actually better if it has no intrinsic value, because then you won't be tempted to use it. Money is more important than a government – as long as some method is available to prevent (or just strongly discourage) counterfeiting, and no sudden cache of the shit will turn up and drive inflation, almost anything that doesn't rot will do the job.
Nolan Collins
You all are disappointingly retarded. Why, for any reason, would you ever give the guy that wants your shit the means to immediately take your shit? Ammo CAN be used in trade, but it's only a good idea with people you know or if the balance of power doesn't change with the exchange. Most of the time it will, because logically he is only going to want ammo for his specific weapons, not random ammo for merchant style trading down the line.
Obviously, this applies to prepper situations, not, say, if you traded some .30-06 to your farmer neighbor for a crate of eggs last week, but goddamn. Use your heads and don't stockpile random ammo with the intention of trading it, or else the same guy that bought it from you will shoot you with it and take the rest of it.
Alexander Bennett
we metro 2033 now
Jason Jones
Here is something for coastal anons to think about, assuming you don't already know. A good source of lead is boat ballasts (they often also have cast iron and some are entirely cast iron) and if you check Craigslist you can sometimes find old damaged sailboats for free, even at marinas some times also worth asking around at. Were one to say scrap out an old 24' sailboat with a standard lead ballast, you can easily get over 1,000 pounds of lead to make bullets with.
Lincoln Russell
honestly though you should have some ammo regardless
Jacob White
dont forget the weights on tires as was done in "I am a Hero"
Stock piling ammo and using it to barter during the Happening is a good idea, but using it as currency is terrible idea. Money is not wealth, not credit, not credit, not gold, not land. Money (currency) is a legal institution linked to the needs of the populations that uses it.
It's not a good idea to base currency on gold, or any other precious metal for that matter either. Fiat money is the only real form of money. Most of the arguments against fiat money stem from the fact that our is current system is based on debt, borrowed from the privately owned Federal Reserve. When a government issues it's own fiat money it is really backed by the labor and production of the country.
The gold standard allows less money into the system than is collectively owed to the banks, causing the assets of the working classes to be devoured by debt. (((Bankers))) are also able to buy up all the gold, and through fractional-reserve fuckery they can then multiply their own wealth several times over by "lending" it out. As an international system, foreigners will always have a way to infiltrate national politics through manipulating gold markets. The populist movement in the late 1800s was against the gold standard for these reasons. Coincidentally, rubs hands it was around this time America started it's pre-Neo-cohen globalism in the Pacific.
Basing currency on several precious metals helps (like the populists wanted to do), but it is no substitute for the government issuing debt free currency such as greenbacks. Aristotle understood this, Ben Franklin understood this and helped implemented it in colonial America before it was outlawed by the British the revolutionary war was actually about currency rather than simple taxation Jefferson understood this too late as he watched foreign banks creep into politics, Lincoln used this system to rebuild after the civil war, and Hitler used this to create the German Miracle.
That being said, during the happening, gold and other precious metal will be highly valued since they can used a barter system until we can get a non-kiked debt-free currency up and running.
Counterfeiting would be an issue but when you get found out you get dead fast. And you don't have to fire a round to test it, pliers exist, just remove the bullet and check that it's gunpowder. Gunpowder has a distinct smell and consistency. If you're really questioning the rounds then just rummage into them and pull a random set of five, pry off the bullets, pour the contents into your hand. If it's real it's obvious and the rounds can be reloaded, if it's fake then you throw the sand in their eyes and shoot them dead.
Hudson Ortiz
Checked Just reloaded 100 .308 178gr hornady match last night ARFuns are fun
Jace Ramirez
Lead is a poisonous metal, and should not be handled, let alone put into a gun or used as currency.
Christian Powell
see barter system. money can be a useful part of a healthy economy. however, it is not actually necessary especially in a SHTF type situation
Are you retarded? I hope your joking, otherwise go back to whatever brainlet creche you escaped from.
Sebastian Davis
Ammunition, being a complex manufactured good, does not have the innate resilience against forgery that Gold and other precious metals do. It would be too easy to make "counterfeit", as in non-functional, ammo and/or undermine the agreed upon value of a given cartridge type. The thing about firearm ammunition is that its value is determined by its performance which in itself is a combination of multiple factors but is also reliant on an enormous number of variables. Also, the only way to prove its value (which is based in performance) is destructive since you actually have to shoot it into something to get an accurate reading on how well it works.
I could go into more detail, but basically ammunition is highly valuable for bartering but does not have the fundamental characteristics to work as currency in a low-trust world.
Samuel Hill
Lead's been used in guns for centuries because it's cheap and dense
Primers would be a great thing to stockpile. Unlike ammunition, there are only a handful of different sizes (5 common ones and you can exhange pistol sprc primers for rifle ones in a desperate situation) which means any random person will almost always have at least one gun that could use whatever you've stockpiled.
That and primers are the hardest component of a complete centerfire cartridge to replicate without the machines and tooling found in mass production facilities. Even gunpowder is fairly easy to produce in a SHTf scenario as long as the cartridge you're trying to reload will deliver adequate performance with black powder (hint: buy something chambered in 45-70 just in case).
Which economists? You dont want a currency to have a store of value, you want an inflationary currency. Also divisibility/ accounting/ and trading should be fast/easy if you want your currency to be efficient at least.
Bullets would function more like a commodity than anything else. They would be a terrible currency. They have a function and get used up making it terrible for accounting. Bullets are heavy so paying for expensive things would be annoying to say the least.
gold is terrible as a currency. Just think about what makes currency useful in the first place.
Just make sure you're shooting the merchants and not shooting for the merchants.
Thomas Flores
...
Hunter Richardson
So is super-rare ammo like gyrojet rounds and H&K G11 blocks the equivalent of crypto in this system?
Asher Baker
No they're more worthless obscure currencies nobody gives a shit about
Lincoln Baker
Of course it can, men have literally prostituted their daughters and wives for a handful of bullets in times of strife.
Kayden Morales
They did a very good job for spreading the stds.
Wyatt Russell
No it isn't, you just don't understand what was written. That's exactly what was written. The point of asking what use gold and silver has to an individual is to highlight that an individual doesn't need to personally own a weapon capable of firing the ammunition he is using as currency, for that ammunition to be useful as currency. The second part about ammo being a poor currency is a separate point.
Ryder Johnson
:^)
Sebastian Rogers
Wow it's like REQs token burns, too
Xavier Parker
OP just stepped off the short bus. In SHTF people don't want to haul heavy useless glitter around, they want things that keep them alive. If you have all the gold, and the other guy has all the ammo - then the other guy has all the gold and all the ammo. sage for stating the obvious, and should be in /wrol/ anyway
That's why you stockpile common calibers and buy a Remington 700 in .308. The ballistics are not different enough from .30-06 to matter, the ammo costs half as much and it's used by numerous militaries including the US. Stockpile .223, .308, 9mm, and .22 and you'll be in good shape for bartering. Even .30-06 is going to have a decent market with all the surplus WWI rifles and hunting rifles that use it.
Eli Williams
In a SHTF scenario, a bunker with a reloading shop capable of handling common rifle and pistol calibers and the knowledge of how to make everything, from casting bullets to making powder to loading the cartridges, would be even more valuable than a large stockpile of ammo.
Benjamin Morgan
It's precisely because it keeps nearly forever that it could function as a currency. How come we used to use gold as a currency but not fruit? Fruit spoils, so it's not a good medium in which to save - you need to sell it and buy new stuff constantly. Gold is particularly special because, in its lack of rust, it could really last forever. But ammo might be okay as a medium-run alternative
Adam Price
This is one of the best macros I've seen on the chans. Definitely a lesson and an inspiration.
Julian Martin
/thread tbh
Robert Moore
This is cute and all, but I'd rather have silver slugs in different calibers that could be used as either silver payment or an actual bullet slug when making your own rounds. Double duty.
Guns and ammo are one of the best investments you can ever make. Not only are they inflation proof, but they are also one of the only social collapse proof investments.
Christopher Rivera
Absolutely true. We are the Vanguard of the times. Zig Forums will help guide the first time buyer. At the end of the day we may only have each other, so get friendly with family and neighbors.
Chase Jackson
And if anyone asks why you have silver bullets you can tell him it's for killing kikes
Jeremiah Reed
How can you be they were loaded with the right amount of grains of the right amount if powder?
Unless you have an accurate, portable,calibrated balance and a load data book, you're shit out of luck. It's not hard to cut 10-15% of the powder load out and still have a "working" cartridge, the overall performance will be significantly reduced but unless you have a ballistics test lab at your disposal you just got ripped off.
Even if you can confirm the load mass is right, there's no way to know what powder was used to load the cartridge. This can even be an honest mistake, look around and you'll find plenty of stories of gun owners who bought cheap reloads at a gun show or from a buddy, only for their rifle to explode because the reloader didn't clear all the pistol powder from their powder measure when switching between batches. Shotgun or pistol powder in a rifle cartridge = acatastrophic kaboom! Rifle powder in a pistol = no velocity and a hell of a fireball.
There's a million ways a cartridge can be reloaded poorly or even dangerohsly that happen even when the reloader is being honest. Insert a financial incentive to cut every possible corner and you're just asking to get screwed or hurt.
Charles Lee
No it would not. At that point you could just as well produce real ammo at virtually the same cost and with a sustainable reputation and business model. But there lies the real problem. Producing ammunition in mass quantities is real cheap and if demand increases your stock piled ammo will be devalued by inflation pretty much immediately. It's stupid to hoard something at a premium now that comes with a peace time price, when it can be produced that easily, even by the most underdeveloped economies or shops.
Kayden Rogers
Bullets getting used up is a valid argument. The supply of ammunition would be influenced by a bunch of factors (people using it, non-governmental parties making new ammunition, people finding military caches, etc.), vs. a government-mandated currency that would be centralized and only expanded when deemed beneficial. Ammunition is decentralized, and thus too volatile to be a stable currency. I mean, it would work, but expect price fluctuations depending on the circumstances.
Jace Gonzalez
its a good idea to keep ammunition as currency for the race war, you should have more than you need to shoot yourself, which will be a substantial amount, so you can trade it in exchange for clean water and food. problem is that you need to store it in a way to make it unfindable for mossad agents, which probably also means that you need to buy it untraceable.
It's a terrible idea that only sounds good in the mind of a manchild who just finished Metro. Just like every genius who played fallout suggests bottlecaps for use as currency. It would be entirely too easy to "counterfeit"; Use shitty powder (or no powder and use sand instead). Use empty primer cups with no primer compound inside. It's also easy to cast lead bullets. The other party would have to fire test rounds (and waste "money") to verify the ammo is real and non-shitty. Not to mention ammo quality can vary wildly between manufacturers/handloaders. Even milsurp stuff isn't equal depending on where it's sourced.
Jeremiah Cruz
You may not have personal use for the 5.56 rounds, but they still have inherent value. You may be less inclined to accept them, but in exchange for something perishable, like a leg of meat, you probably would because it lets you store the value for later.
Nathaniel Gutierrez
Do you really think that a guy who wants ammo is going to wait until he has absolutely no ammo before he goes looking for more? If he's going to shoot you, he's going to do it with the ammo he already has.
Isaac Sullivan
Ammunition makes shit currency. Water will be less scarce in a shtf scenario. Also why are you arming strangers? If some wandering nomad is willing to trade say medical supplies for ammo kill the ammo scarce faggot and take his shit. Instead of giving him ammunition to do the same to you and yours.
The top notch currency in a total collapse will be booze and cigarettes. Coffee too.
Zachary Rivera
shut the fuck up Fudd, stop trying to offload your overpriced blocks of 22lr you bought 4 years ago
Jackson Bell
Alcohol is the only real currency. Fuel too, especially propane and its accessories.
Samuel Nguyen
I'm sure a handful of 9mm would get one a blowjob from OP's sister, but other than that, a big NO.
There's too much variety. With gold you have precise weights and purity. As such, you would have to work out a deal for every transaction.
Hunter Taylor
My god what have you done?
Lincoln Watson
OFF BY ONE
Mason Price
AGAIN
Leo Sanchez
quints
Daniel Thompson
if (((they))) start requiring background checks on all ammo purchases nationwide, I expect black market ammo will be a thing. Would people "pay" a lot for cheap range ammo? Probably not. I could see people happily paying a premium for quality defensive rounds like HST's or Gold Dots in common calibers. I got caught with only two mags worth of 147gr Golden Saber's after SandyHoax. It was almost a year before I could find any suitable HP rounds, and I was always on the lookout
