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Two Letters Re: Alcohol and Tobacco as Barter Items

Mr. Rawles:
Thanks to Warhawke for his very well written article. There are two items conspicuous in their absence, tobacco and alcohol. I seem to remember reading somewhere, perhaps in the novel Lucifer's Hammer, that people will always want to smoke and drink no matter how bad things are. I am wondering if you and/or Warhawke have any thoughts? Would it be prudent to stock an occasional can of Plowboy tobacco and some of the little airline bottles of booze? I'm very Interested in your thoughts. - Carl In Wisconsin

Sir:
Greetings and thanks for the great web site. In all this discussion of barter goods, I'm amazed that no one has focused on the two most obvious items to keep well-stocked: booze and
smokes! The Great Depression is the only national economic collapse and near-TEOTWAWKI situation that is still in the living memory of the nation, and we all know what happened then, right? The people who controlled the means of supply for beer and liquor made a killing, and everyone smoked like chimneys. So I don't see how it could hurt for the good survivalist to have, at a minimum, the equipment to make an operating still and maybe brewing equipment as well. The tools needed to do this fit hand-in-hand with other useful stuff too: sanitizing, bottling, etc. For smokes, a good supply of wrapping paper would be handy in a post-TEOTWAWKI world. I've read that in the dark Stalinist years of the Soviet Union, cigarettes and wrapping paper became so hard to find that the proletariat resorted to tearing out pages from their Russian Orthodox Bibles to wrap tobacco in. - Matt

JWR Replies: I'm a conservative Baptist, so needless to say, I don't plan to stock either booze or cigarettes for barter. As I mentioned in the "Rawles Gets You Ready" preparedness course, if I were to stock any sort of liquor, it would probably be 190 proof Everclear, which can be used for medicinal purposes, can be burned in lamps and some stoves, and can be used to fuel wick-type cigarette lighters such as the legendary Zippo.

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