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What would you consider the most valuable trade item would be. My guess is that it would either be food, water, or ammo.

I'd go with medicinal supplies, especially bandages, painkillers, and anti-biotics.

Apparently thermo imaging goggles at $20,000. Plus the note that things can go for a lot more. Why are they so expensive? Zombies have no heat, so during the day when you see someone you can flip the switch turning the goggles on for a fraction of a second...if they have a heat signature they are human, no heat means a Zee. Plus in general they are useful at night or where there is no light - like the sewers.

Condoms. Don't want that group of hussies your pc just met to get knocked up

Woman and porn.

I think the most valuable thing to trade would be performing a service from a skill set that is not possessed by an average individual. Since you said most valuable item, I think that water would probably be the most valuable. Food and other supplies are important but lack of water will kill you pretty fast.

Most valuable trade item would vary person to person, sure everyone needs water and Asprin. But let's say you have someone in your group who is allergic to bee stings and I happen to have an EpiPen to trade ? It's more valuable to you than someone without allergies. So I would make sure to collect the basics, food, water, bandages, but also those items people don't think of, or are hard to come by. Everything will be worth something to someone sometime or another. You never know when someone is going to need, some ammo for their .38, some shoelaces, reading glasses, etc.

Ammo for the guns you have. With ammo and the gun to fire it you can (hopfully) survive long enough to need water and food and you can hunt for food with gun+ammo too.

After that would be clean water and safe shelter.

a safe place to sleep at night, you could charge heavy for a fortified base to sleep in at night.
Then id say food, then protection(guns, ammo what not)
with so many people dead there are going to be a crap load of weapons just laying around. in 2003 their was an esitmate of 268 million guns....thats 03 and thats from an anti gun source so take that as being high or being low but yeah last year i think it was 23 million guns were sold, that isnt to say new guns but you get the picture. thats a crap load of spare loose weapons after the population goes down to at best 20%

It is true that there any many firearms in the United States but how many of those will actually be accessible? Keep in mind, many responsible firearm owners keep their firearms locked in gun safes. Unless you know the combination or are suddenly a safe cracker, you're not going to be getting to those. Most retail stores keep their firearms under lock and key also although I would think it might be easier to get at them. That being said, I would imagine that most of the firearms currently in existence in the US are currently owned, not just sitting on retailer's shelves. I suppose you may be able to come across some amongst the deceased but remember that you are not the only scavenger around.

Many are responsible gun owners, a huge number (probably the majority) are not based on what people have said on this forum, knowing some friends and acquaintances and general "news stories". Especially in states that don't require gun locks and even states that do, most people store their guns not locked up and with ammo loaded.

A large number of American households own a gun. Give a neighborhood of 100 homes and unless well picked over, I'd bet you could find at least 20 of them with at least one fire arm that is not locked up and probably more like 30-40 total that have them (with half or so having all of their's locked up in some capacity...though a trigger lock can easily be drilled off or even have the trigger guard cut off). Now considering even a 1 in 5 odds of an unsecured firearm in any given house (and I'd bet in rural areas it is probably more like 1 in 2 or maybe 1 in 3) it might take you an hour or two to search each house well enough to either find it, or rule out there being one hidden somewhere (of course I'd bet a 15 minute quick search is probably more than 75% likely to turn it up. Most people store their firearms in one of just a few obvious places).

This is even assuming people who "fled" with one or more guns when the zombies started taking over. Of course most people don't have hundreds or thousands of rounds of ammo for their guns (some do)...but you probably could still find a pistol with a box of ammo and/or a few clips (so maybe 20-200 rounds) or shotgun or rifle with a box or two of ammo (10-300 rounds) in a lot of homes.

I tried looking quickly at the NRA website as well as a fast search on google to hopefully find some sort of statistics about gun owners and storing their firearms in a gun safe but came up empty handed. Perhaps I am just lucky enough to have been raised to keep firearms in a gun safe and have always been around fellow responsible firearm owners because I don't know of anyone who does not keep their firearms in a gun safe. Obviously, I am not ignorant and know that there will always be people who do not keep their firearms stored safely and responsibly but, in my experience, it would seem like that would actually be the minority.

I would not take the palladium forums to be a good judge of gun owners and how many would be responsible. After all, this is a forum for fictional game settings. As for news stories, I would always take them with a grain of salt on any topic but especially on highly volatile topics such as gun control and gun related violence. What story turns more heads? "Thousands of responsible gun owners go about their daily lives without incident while their children are safe and sound" or "14 year old kid accidentally shoots himself. The firearm was left loaded in the nightstand of his parent's room"?

I would just like to add in some statistic pulled from the NRA 2012 fact sheet on here as a reference guide for your above post about firearm ownership.



Edited for spelling

It is by no means conclusive, and looks at rural areas, but I found a study that was attempting to improve fire arm storage safety in rural Alaska. They found 85% of households stored their fire arms unsecured. After distributing a gun safe and trigger locks to each one they found that adoption rate was 86% for those who received gun safes, but only 30% for trigger locks.

For more "mainstream" America, you can reference the study posted on the Brady campaigns website. http://www.bradycampaign.org/studies/view/116/

Honestly, from some limited experience (I am emphasising limited) from the study period of 1991-2000, my ancedotal experience is that the rate of safe storage has probably decreased on the whole, not increased.

The figures the study found was in 2002 33% of home owners owned a gun, 22% kept loaded guns in the home and 13% had both loaded and unlocked firearms. It doesn't touch on unloaded and unlocked fire arms, which I think would be significantly higher (of the several friends/acquintensces that I have discussed such a topic with, I know maybe a dozen people who own fire arms, 3 of them keep their guns unlocked, but unloaded and 2 loaded and unlocked, 2 of those 5 have young children in the home).

So there you go, at least in 2002 you have about 4% of households as of 2002 that stored guns loaded and unlocked (self reported, AFAIK the study was basing it on pediatrician reported statistics. If you have kids, you'll notice most ask at various visits questions like smoking in the home, car seat usage and gun ownership and storage...so the numbers are probably artificially low as many people aren't going to share that they unsafely store firearms, or just might not take their kids to pediatricians and/or aren't going to report it through random phone surveys).

I guess the numbers are probably closer to double to triple if you include actual numbers compared to reported in a survey, combined with those that store guns and ammo seperately, but at least unlocked guns (and maybe also the ammo unlocked).

anything from 1 in 20 to 1 in 10 still means a lot of homes with "easily accessible" guns and I'd bet my bottom dollar most "securely stored" guns are NOT stored in a safe, but have a trigger guard or just have the ammo locked up (which is probably not locked in a gun safe, but in a cabinet, drawer, etc that could be easily broken open).

I would agree that the rate of safe storage has probably decreased and will probably continue to decrease but I would love for someone to prove me wrong. (Please, please prove me wrong!)

Anyways, I don't want to derail this thread any further as we've already done a good job of that. Thank you very much for being able to have an intelligent discussion about the availability of firearms in the PAW.

That all said, I still think that my opinion about fresh, clean water being the most valuable trade item stands on it own. It is true that you may need a firearm to protect yourself or even possibly to provide food to the table; however, you won't make it long enough for that to matter if you don't have a good supply of water.

At the same time, I can totally understand the counter argument that without a viable way to defend yourself, your group and your supplies - you are as good as done anyways.

I guess it would really depend on the type of environment you were in at the time. I am surprised that I haven't seen anyone comment about alcohol or tobacco on this thread. That is usually something I hear/see people throw out fairly often as a valuable trade item.

I'd modify what you said to say water purification is the most valuable trade item. Things like iodine or chlorine tablets, bleach, water filters or UV sterilizers. They would likely be the most valuable to most people most of the time. Ammo that fit your gun or firearms and ammo would likely be the next most valuable. Then things like non-perishable foods, transportation fuels, potable water in storage containers, clothes, wide spectrum anti-biotics, pain killers, electricity generation equipment and transportation would probably be some of the next most valuable, but likely would vary significantly from one individual or group to the next and their circumstances for how valuable they might be.

Tabacco likely would have some value, but would still vary (a lot of people aren't smokers any more) and likely would never be worth all that much. Something, but probably not much. Probably in league with some other "lux goods" like coffee or tea (which might be more valuable as being able to stay awake longer could be worth quite a bit). Alcohol could be worth a lot more. It is a lux good also, but has a lot of other uses, like fire starting for high proof liquors, disinfection, cleanser and a couple of other uses.

I'd have to say batteries and propane (small camp size jugs for lanterns) would also be good trade items...both those and working walkie talkies.

In reply to Ravenwing and Oberoth...porn, women, condoms...don't forget the viagra. Sometimes when times are hard, times aren't, if you know what I mean.

I think two drugs that would be in fairly high demand for most people, no matter their situation would be caffine pills/stimulants and sleeping pills/downers. Considering the stress and everything, I think there are going to be plenty of times you are going to have be amped up to survive and plenty of times once you can safely relax, that you just aren't going to be able to and get to sleep.

This depends on allot of variables. How long after the wave, where you are, who your trading with ect...
However, there are at the very least the top four needs. That being water, food, shelter, and protection. They will always be of some trade value wherever you go, as long as you have all four to trade at any one time. Then there are the wants. The top four are alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs, and sex. Not necessarily in that order. Again, if you have at least one of these in excess, you will be on firm ground for haggling.

We should remember that they are not making ANYTHING anymore. Even six months after the wave there will be no industry, agriculture, government, or police. Scarcity makes whatever is scarce more valuable. Everyone is on there own surviving on whatever they can scavenge. It may be easier to trade for that gallon of gas with extra food rather than "go into town" to get it.

I wouldn't say no one is making anything 6 months on. There is likely to be at least limited agriculture in a few places, especially safe haven communities, which there are likely to be at least a handful scattered around in rural areas. Those safe haven communities are also likely to have some form of government, police and industry, even if not much of the later. It will not be strictly scavenge only, though that is 99% of what would be going on and even in safe haven communities 75% of their subsitence would be scavenging. A couple of years after and the better established safe haven communities, so long as they are not completely insular would likely have some well established industries up and running relying on the natural resources around them. So you might have one that has setup some natural gas bottling because they had a pre-existing NG well. You might have one that does clean water refills/bottling. Another that'll charge batteries (or all of that within one). You might have a community that'll repair and modify vehicles because they were lucky enough to have had an auto parts distributor warehouse in town when things went to pot or maybe another one sells clothing, because they had a jeans, textile or similar factory in town and have plenty of excess material in the warehouse for the factory.

Any consumable would be tradeable, but I think the ones a lot of people would be after as well as the ones listed already would be things like - feminine hygiene products, deodorant, shampoo, soap, that sort of thing.

Others would be life saving medical supplies for people who have acute conditions - asthma inhalers, insulin (and sterile needles or an autoclave to sterilize used needles).

Remember, essentially during a ZPAW, you'd be going back to the dark ages. Most if not all drugs would be hard to come by, and even more difficult to manufacture without power or facilities specially designed to do so. Antibiotics (pills) would be a must, and so too would stuff even like polysporin - topical antibiotic creams. Probably your best defence though would be to stop using antibiotic soaps BEFORE the $#!+ hit the fan. Build up your immunity for those rather pesky bugs.

I respectfully disagree Azazel, here's why. Supply and demand. Living humans are rare in DR. 70-80% of the human population is gone, and with it the economy and industry that large populations require. There simply isn't enough humans left to maintain or want industry. There is not enough need for products anymore. All of your examples are not industry because they aren't making the products anymore. Simply using up what remains of the civilized world is not industry. Your example of a safe haven using a warehouse of auto parts is not industry. They don't make the parts (and will run out eventually), they just trade them out for whatever they need when the odd group or individual shows up to trade (Perhaps every six months. Not a daily sale). You certainly could not employ anyone full time trading these parts as there simply isn't the need for their services every day anymore. The natural gas bottling is a good idea, but again there aren't enough humans left to use a sizable quantity of gas anymore.

So again, people aren't going to be making anything for quite some time until the population requires and can maintain demand.

Also, agriculture requires a large amount of water and irrigation/pumps. It,s not likely that a haven would want to potentially wast water and food growing much extra to trade twice a year.

Actually disagree with this to some extent.

In a safe haven community, there is going to be demand for products that aren't readily available, but which can be created by those with the proper skills, like blacksmithing, seamstresses, tailors, leather workers, fletchers, Gun smiths, ammo production etc. Now admittedly these all require some sort of raw materials, but that's where the scavengers come in.

Example.

A group of four salvagers manage to find a small quilting/sewing shop, knowing there is a seamstress/Tailor in town, they loot all the fabric, tools(Needles, machines if the town has power, scissors etc) to trade with the seamstress back in their safe haven commune. the seamstress in turn trades her goods for the things she needs, IE food, water, ammo, and bolts of fabric and tools.

This results in at the very least a cottage based industry, and a very poor economy, but it is still industry and economic activity. The demand may not be great, but it will always be there, especially if today's world was suddenly overcome with a Zed outbreak. Could scavengers find clothing? Absolutely, mass production from before the outbreak ensures there's going to be more then enough clothing, etc for the smaller population.

However, just because there are ten dozen pants in the store you found, there is no gauntee they'll have the size you need, especially if you're a large, or small person. For example, even in our modern day and age, I have difficulty finding clothing in my size at my local stores, and have to do most of my shopping online. If a Zed outbreak occurs today, the only clothing I would have is whatever I was wearing, or was able to escape from my house with.

And while that may not seem like much of a problem, having only one set of cloths can lead to severe health problems, not to mention you'd stink! Now obviously you could wash your clothing, but that would leave you naked until your cloths dried. And humans, at least most are conditioned to feel their most vulnerable when nude, so you aren't likely to do that very often.

Anyway, just my thoughts on the whole industry thing.

Sure. But what happens when they run out of fabric to give to the seamstress? And does a "cottage community" require enough clothing to keep the seamstress fed and protected the whole year round? I don't think it's as simple as some may think. There just aren't enough humans.

My point is that you can't rebuild a viable economy and industry within even a few years of the zompocalypse. There will simply be no need as you could get everything you wanted for free anyway. Five, maybe ten years on some havens will have grown roots and regular trade partners. Certainly not within the first six months.

Assuming a population of 6 billion and a 90% conversion to zed or fatality rate of that population it still leaves 600 million people on this earth. That't plenty to want industry since many of those will have been used to having at least some exposure to it and some of those will have the know-how. If Desire for the way things were coupled with human ingenuity cannot recover industry to at least early industrial age level within 6-18 months I would be surprised.

Lol, ironically I think she would.

My wife is a seamstress. She has a normal nine to five job as well, but as of this tax season, when we were doing our taxes we made the startling discovery that she actually makes more from her 'part-time' job, then she does her full time one at the hospital. Between alterations on clothing, repairs, and making quilts, she makes more. Because of this discovery, she's actually went to less hours at the hospital, and more at home doing the seamstress thing. We don't live in a big town, more a modest one. But I can still see a need for seamstresses in the Zed'lypse. Course I can see more of a need for blacksmiths, gunsmiths, and doctors, but it would still be there.

Well considering that this 600 million people is a world wide figure. That's 600 million people that have no means of communication between one another. No long range transport, and no air travel. That figure when spread out world wide becomes a very small number indeed. Who knows where the lions share of that is.

Nope. 6-18 months is not enough time.

Now cut your population to 15-20% of what it is now, perhaps less. And cut your transient population by even more. Still think she would have enough people and trade-able product to make a living at it?

Yes actually I do. My previous examples of clothing are still valid.

But I want to point out that I agree with you in that I don't see a return to the industrial age any time soon in the Zed'lypse. Instead I see a return to medieval/Renaissance cottage industries. I'll expand on why I see this happening.

First, let's not kid ourselves, no matter how many, or few, survivors there are, a significant amount are going to want nothing to do with Zed's. That means they'll avoid going anywhere they are. Obviously in a world of undead, you would expect them, even in a safe haven community, but that's what the 'Guardians' of your community are for, to kill the Zeds. I wouldn't think of them as cockroaches, or spiders, more like venomous snakes in some parts of the world, you know they're there, but you avoid those places they tend to linger or congregate at.

This means that I see a significant number of people unwilling to venture into places where all the free resources are. If a town has a pre Zed pop of say 15,000, then its a safe bet that at least 13,000 of them are Zeds. Assuming that those not turned into Zed's managed to get somewhere safe, IE a wilderness type community, think campground and form a safe haven, you'd have a population of 2000 in your little community.

Of them I'd wager that atleast 200 are children, and unable to scavenge for supplies. I'd assume that these children in turn have 'guardians or parents' of some sort, which means atleast another 200 of your population is tied up in this. So that cuts out 400 from salvage operations.

Of the remaining 1600, lets assume that most have either an abundance of common sense, or if we're less kind an abundance of yellow in their backbones, I'd easily place this amount at 80%. Which means that 1400 People in the community have no desire, or overpowering urge to go back into the city they fled which is over running with Zeds, even if it does mean finding the things they need to live, why?

Because 200 of our hypothetical group are more then willing to go into the city and find things. But what happens when they returned?

I'm afraid that in the US at least, capitalism burns in our minds, and those same salvagers now have the only viable form of currency in the community. They aren't likely to just give away their hard won booty. I suppose that there would be some commune style safe havens, especially at first, but eventually good ole' greed will come out and people will expect to be paid for things, even if that payment is in the form of goods and services for goods and services.

So then our salvagers come back to the community, and since the city is crawling with undead, some of them at least are injuried and need medical attention. But if the community is lucky enough to have a doctor, he isn't about to treat the very rich, very resource laden salvagers for free. So he takes some of their loot to patch them up, and he charges like he would now, the cost of his supplies, plus a fee for his services. This sceniro works if the community has a doctor, a nurse, or a paramedic. Anyway regardless, the 'Doctor' takes some of our salvagers medical supplies to cover the use of his own(His supplies.) then he takes some other things, food, clothing, tools, ammo, etc(the fee for his service, or wage if you will.)

But what if the salvagers only have twenty pairs of pants, and their all the wrong size for the Doc? Does he then wave his fee and give the salvagers his services for free?

Nope he takes his fee, ie the pants, and looks around the community for someone who can alter the clothing to fit him, IE the seamstress. She inturn charges the doctor for her supplies, and her time, and the doctor trades her some of his newly aquired goods for it, or possible he gives her an IOU to use at his clinic/medical tent/whatever he calls it.

And it continues throughout the community. The salvagers have a truck, but it's misfiring badly and they need it fixed. The salvagers found dozens of boxes of ammo, but for a weapon they don't have. The Salvagers kewl flea market sword broke the moment he swung it as a Zed, and he'd really like another one, one that would actually work and not break this time.......

That means you'll have people making things, swords, horseshoes, gate hinges, clothes, armor, ammo etc. You'll have people farming, working etc. None of this is free, and will create a demand for goods and services from others in the community, others who like them have no desire to go into the city filled with all the free stuff they want, but crawling with Zeds.

Anyway thats my take on it. Even a small community is going to create a demand for goods and services, and a rudimentary industry and economy will arise from it. A smith might only make ten swords in a year, but he gets such a large amount for them that he still makes a decent living. The disposable item theory in the DR mainbook always struck me as odd. Yes there are plenty of whatever out there, but are the average person going to be willing to brave going through the Zombie hordes to get it? Or are they going to look for alternatives to doing so? Personally I see most people looking for an alternative, having things fixed, patched and jury rigged until it simply falls apart. Or having an item fashioned for them, instead of risking going into the city for it.

And another thing that always struck me as odd about the book is this. Yes there are a number of firearms, clothing, gear, supplies etc. But with nothing new being made, even a small community will use them up rather quickly if they make no attempt to form some sort of industry.

I understand those 600 million would be pretty spread out but just like all people through time we would cluster together and then want to communicate with the other clusters. Now we have 200 years worth of industrialization and infrastructure to use as a springboard to jump us back into some semblence of the normal existence we had just prior to Z-day. We dont have to invent it and build it all we just have to power it back up and repair what is there.
The power grid is still there and the comm infrastructure is still there. The lines didn't get ripped down (in most cases) nor did the fiber get pulled up from the sea beds nor did the satellites fall from the sky. All they need is power to the systems & a little TLC and they will be back working again. It will take some know how and some effort and some general sense that others are trying to achieve the same end or nobody will even try at all. Seems you are of the mindset that is the case, that no one will try because there are just too few of us. I'm of the mindset that people will actually TRY to recover what we had, rather than persisting as scavengers/hunter/gatherers. Why would we not when everything we need to jumpstart back into a somewhat normal existence is there ripe for the taking and the only thing standing in our way is a few billion zed and our own lack of effort? Unless the variant zed start actively sabotaging our remaining infrastructure or waging a ORGANIZED war against us I truly believe we would prevail in our efforts... as long as we didn't give up. 600 million is PLENTY to recover our communication networks and power grid assuming we actually put forth the effort to make it happen. IMO the required effort is what is important.

I disagree with this completely.

Yes the infrastructure is still there, but how many people know how to use it? Or rather, make it work? Do you know how to work a Nuclear Reactor? I don't, nor do I know anyone who does. I live in New Mexico, so solar, and wind power, IE environmental Engineering is pretty popular here. So we have the know how to make solar and wind turbines work easily enough.

However what we dont have is parts, or the raw materials to make new ones. Wind Turbines have to be serviced regularly, and while this mostly means changing the oil in them, something we have in abundance here, what we don't have is manufacturing, or the raw materials. Yeah, theres iron mines, along with a few others, but from where I live, that would be an overland trip of a hundred miles at least. Not that the trip would be hard, there's enough back roads here in New Mexico that I can go from Texas all the way across to Arizona without going through a town, or finding a automobile graveyard. However there's no guarantee that when I get to the mines that I'm going to have something they consider worthwhile trading their ore.

But since I live in cattle country, I'd assume I could trade some cattle for it. Something thats alot more valuable else where in this country, as most of the beef grown in this country is from down here in the southwest. Yeah, you have cows up north and out east, but not like we do here. But it could probably be assumed that within a ten mile radius of any mine in New Mexico there's atleast ten to fifteen ranches/Feed Lots/Dairies, so my cattle might not be worth all that much to the miners.

And this problem goes all across the country.

Do you live in Wyoming, or Appalachia? If not good luck getting coal(In the US of A that is) to burn in your standard power plant. Sure you'd have a supply when you first moved in, but a powerplant burns through them rapidly. Thats why most power plants have a railway head, where trains can bring in Coal by the tons every few days. Coal that comes from Casper Wyoming, or the Applichia mountains in Virginia and such.

But assuming you instigated rationing, making power only available to services needed, and to residential areas only during certain times, you could nurse your supply for a time. Maybe you could even raid other powerplants to fuel a single one. But that takes away stores from the other plants, meaning those places then go without power.

As to communications grids, yes they're still there, and workable.... Except you have no power to provide to them, except for small windows of time. Small windows that probably dont match when other communities are using their power, assuming you hadn't already raided their powerplants and fuel stores to power your own community. This means that communications grids are pretty much useless. Sure your community has power, and can even make phone calls to others in the community, but most of you are going to be busy doing the things needed for the day to day survival to have the luxury of time to waste on frivolous things like phone calls, surfing the internet, or even caring whats going on in the town over from you.

Which is another point I think people forget. Everyone assumes that, hey massive disaster everyone pitches in and tries to help out their fellow human. Thats true when a majority of people weren't in the actual disaster. But in a world where the dead have overrun the living, the only thing your really going to care about is you and your family. Your safe haven community runs second, only because it helps your family to survive. But the town over? Probably not, heres why.

You're community probably raided it to provide the fuel to run your powerplant. The people there, left in the dark, and with no supplies of coal now look to your community and think to themselves.... they took our coal, they have power in their houses, they're living a good life while me and mine are starving, freezing, and blind. All because they stole what was ours. But since they stole what was ours, I bet they've stolen from others as well, and since they're already living the fat life, I think I'll go over there and TAKE what I need to get by, what I need to keep my family alive. And suddenly you have a war starting up between to groups of survivors.

Other problems I see in your thoughts are this, Satellites may be in orbit, but does anyone know the codes to communicate with them? Maybe, if your community was one that managed satellites, if not probably not.

And this applies to nearly everything. If a community didn't make it before the Zed'lypse, then they probably dont know how to do it now that the dead have risen and are eating the living. Since everyone is isolated, cloistered into independent communities, few people are going to go out of their way to work with another community, unless their was immediate and tangible benefits for both right off the bat. I don't see wide spread industrialism, or even a global telecommunications network anytime soon. A decade after the dead? Maybe, if enough people survive and the race begins to repopulate. But in a Zed'lypse you can figure things like Infant Mortality will once again rise to numbers unheard of, even in unadvanced third world nations. With Zed's constantly poping out of the wood work, and constantly growing in numbers as we die the possibility of people making any sort of advance towards per-apocylpse standards is just ludicrous to suggest. There will be cottage based industries, like those of medieval Europe, with a very limited, very rudimentary barter and trade economy.

I'd say yes and no. I think mostly it'll be a return to cottage industries and artisans given time. However, I think there'll still be a smattering of industrial age and even modern technology, but new manufacturing and maintaining what exists.

With some know how, some relatively basic machine tools and some raw materials it isn't really all that hard to make a basic steam engine.

I think you'll see a massive contraction of industry, but at the same time, unless population level dips in the fractions of 1% of what they were, you'll see some pretty big safe haven communities develop down the road (within just a couple of years, other wise things would have collapsed completely to the level of litteral a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of survivors across the planet and those numbers would dwindle rapidly). Raw materials are going to get much harder to acquire, but crap, just look at steel. Any community within resonable distance of any "former" town, city, etc has massive steel resources. Cars, even post apocalyptic are fairly easy to recycle. You get massive amounts of steel and aluminum from each one, which with making a basic blast furnace (which isn't really all that hard with some leather working/textile making and brick making capability for bellows, hearth and chimney as well as making cruciables). A community of maybe 10,000 built within the "ruins" of a city of 100,000 if they canablized most of their automobiles would have on the order of 100,000 tons of steel and roughly 10,000-20,000 tons of aluminum from the chasis and engines of the various vehicles.

I think you'd also have some straight up industries producing things like smokeless powders, brass casings, bullets etc. Going back to salvage, those 100,000 cars would have 100,000 lead acid batteries, of which each one has roughly 20lbs of lead in it and lots of sulfuric acid to use in industrial processes without even having to make your own sulfuric acid. You now have 1000 tons of lead...that is a LOT of bullets. Stip out the copper wiring and you have jacketing for the bullets you'd be making from all of that lead. Brass isn't all that uncommon for casing, and you can make steel bullet casings (look at the AK series, plenty of armies use steel casings for their bullets instead of using gilding materials like brass).

Plenty of communities could easily have self supporting or exporting textile industries. In the south cotton or in the north flax/linen growing/producing isn't that hard to do. Even if you had to fall back on animal and steam/water powered machines.

No those aren't the kind of industries that would be easy to support with a community of 100 people...but hell man, go back to the 1800's and there were plenty of farms/plantations that would grow cotton AND produce cotton yarn and/or fabric even all in situ (not many, but still plenty, most actual fabric production was in the north though).

Get a community of 1,000 people and you could easily have a cottage industry producing bullet reloads, or even full shells from casing to propellant to bullet, in numbers to support their own use and limited export/sales to travelers. Throw in textile manufacturing, things like battery manufacturing...you have plenty of options there, you could make Alkaline batteries in typical sizes depending on your resources (need zinc and magnesium oxide) or you could make silver oxide batteries in typical sizes (both button and you can scale them up to AA and AAA as well as C and D size, they have much higher energy density, but because they use silver they are several times the cost as alkaline batteries today, but that might not stop a community from making silver oxide batteries in those larger sizes if they have access to a silver mine, or even just a boat load of silver jewlery, flatware, plates, etc that they could repurpose). You'd probably have a ye old blacksmith doing things like shoing horses, doing minor welding repairs for travelers, making good old fashioned blades for removal of ye modern zombies, making zombie bite protectors (IE light plate mail armor), etc.

The list goes on. You might not have that in every community, but once you get beyond a hundred or two people, you are going to have more than just salvage and/or agriculture going on. You are likely to have at least a couple of small artisan/cottage industries and bigger ones over a couple of thousand people are going to many cottage industries and maybe even a modern industry on a small scale as well. Big ones in the tens of thousands are likely to have a lot of "modern" industries producing small scale.

Of course all are going to be limited to what raw material inputs they have either newly acquired raw materials because they are near a mine, forest, oil field, natural gas wells, etc or repurposed/recycled from automobiles, buildings, stockpiles, etc.

I also semi-disagree about the economy. It'll be in the toilet at first and near non-existant, but give it even just a couple of years and I think you'll see substantial trade both with individuals and groups who are transient, but I think you'll also see a lot of trade between safe havens that are near each other. Sure if you run in to a major bandit group or a horde of tens of thousands of zombies, you are in huge trouble, but get a dozen vehicles together, up-armor them to resist zombies and a bit your fellow man (think kind of Mad Max type up armoring, some welded/bolted/riveted metal plates over windows, some extra sheet metal over doors, bars, etc, run flat tires if available, maybe making solid rubber tires, etc). Figure a couple of tractor trailors and half a dozen SUVs/pickups/cars and get maybe 30-40 well armed people in those vehicles and they could easily make runs to neighboring safe havens. It would take awhile, but you could clear the existing roads between them and make runs to carry the higher value goods that you are trading (for instance maybe one community specializes in making batteries and another one ammo, so they trade those between each other periodically, maybe a couple of times a year).

You'd probably also have some "independents" forming their own trade caravans that would roam between safe haven communities and even trading with the little fortified homesteads and stuff they come across would diffuse some products from much further away safe havens. You'd certainly see some of these caravans independent and not be lost periodically, but stuff happens in life. If you are careful, well armed and armored and skilled/experienced it probably wouldn't be all that dangerous for the typical trade run (independents because of how far and wide they roam would likely be in much more danger).

Do you think that the parts to repair infrastructure are made the day they are used? No. They are stockpiled and used as need arises. They are there for the taking for those with the know-how and the drive to put that to use to get back to (or much closer to) normal. You don't have to mine new iron and make new steel or drill for new oil and refine it you just need to scavenge what is here for the taking. So at least at the beginning there will be the needed supplies to start rebuilding without having to start from ore and crude. So again unless the zed start purposely trashing the infrastructure and/or the parts that are already laying in wait to repair it the materials and tools are all here for our use. All we need is those people that are willing to use their old skills to get this stuff back up and running.

I know that those with various skills will be much more limited but I have to believe that there will be survivors that are more than just burger flippers and ditch diggers. People who held jobs in the communication field and the power generation and distribution field WILL still be alive. They will certainly need the assistance of those ditch diggers and burger flippers and everyone else who survived if they are to be able to do their jobs. Before my group had to end its time together their mission was to restore power to parts of SD, NE, MN & IA using the hydroelectric dams on the Missouri river. We had set up shop in the HE dam in Yankton SD and in their records found out about the workers in the area. We found 2 HE dam engineers and a half dozen or so linemen still alive and recruited them to help us with our endevour and were providing them (and their surviving family and friends) with food and protection so they could do their tasks in relative safety. Our next goal was to find either a helicopter or small aircraft pilot to be able to inspect the lines faster and further afield and find the breaks that would hold us back from getting those larger areas of the grid back up. We were also using HAM radio and CBs to communicate distantly and locally, and were trying to use them to find our pilot and then also trying to find people to help restart the comm network.

It wasn't perfect but it was working and it was a goal that the characters were driven to achieve and kept their attention focused. Obviously there were bands of assailants and zed to worry about. By the end of the first winter after the wave we had cleared out all the Zed from a town of about 14,000 people (Yankton) and had restored power to it and the surrounding countryside via the hydroelectric dam on the river that passes by it. The linemen and engineers were able to isolate it from the rest of the grid or this would never have been possible. We were going to invite people to start moving back to the community but decided that for the time being we would keep our success a secret so as to not draw too much unwanted attention from those sorts that were only out to benefit themselves.

Also just so you know I personally do know 3 people that know how to operate a nuclear reactor. 2 buddies from college who went on to work on nuke subs and a brother in law to the best man in my wedding who works in a nuke reactor out on the east coast somewhere. None live anywhere near SD so they wouldn't be of any use or immediate concern to me in an Apocalypse but I would have hope that the would survive and could eventually make use of their skills in the distant future.

I think you kinda skimmed through what I wrote,or perhaps I wasn't very clear( lol i ramble sometimes) so let me rehash here.

Yes the parts are there, however their being there is all dependent on the former local economy. My town is an Ag town, we do cattle, corn, cotton, and dairies. Look all you want, but you'll never find any parts for Solar panels, Nuclear reactors, Etc. Why? Because they simply aren't here. To find them, one has to travel to other towns, towns whose economies are based on these things. In a Zed'lypse travel is incredibly dangerous, not to mention once you reach your destination you have to fight an army of the dead to get to the parts you need. The distance might be only a few dozen miles, but when a half million undead stand between you and the warehouse/Refinery/Smelter/Forge/Etc where the parts/Items are they might as well be on the moon for all the good it does you.

While New Mexico as a whole is very into Environmental Engineering, can the same be said of say...the Dakota's? New Hampshire? New York? Wyoming is huge on Wind Power, and coal production, but they don't make cars, or run satellites. and even in Michigan where vehicles are built, I doubt you'd find say......a forty thousand head Feed Lot, or a 600 Acre Cotton Farm.

Do you see my point? You can't find something stored for later use in a place it isn't produced, or at the very least shipped.

So while you could find some parts for a Solar Farm, or Wind Farm in Wyoming, or New Mexico, or Nevada, you won't find enough to maintain it for very long. Six-seven months and your Wind Farm screeches to a halt. And while the parts might be easier to find in say Michegan or Missouri where alot is manufactured, neither of those places are very good for wind farming. So your problem is compounded, either you have the natural resources to utilize something but few parts, or you have an abundance of parts, and few natural resource to use for it.

Furthermore I think you gloss over the human element in your thoughts. Especially in a global disaster. If anyone can be against you, then everyone becomes the enemy. Trust isn't going to be high on to many peoples lists of 'survival skills.' I also think you underestimate the sheer number of human 'vermin' IE Bandits, Raiders, Thieves and other scum that would inevitable rise to the surface during such and event. Which only compounds the problem. Even if you assume people are good natured, they'll still happily do horrible things to survive, or to keep their families alive, and they will based on their own thinking assume others would as well. Communities would learn quickly that life outside it was very dangerous, and often filled with peril. I just don't see them making an effort to contact people outside it, the danger that you'll attract the wrong sort of people, and lets face it in a Z-day event that's pretty much anyone you don't personally know, and even then half of them would be on that list.

Furthermore without power, communications over long distances, even by radio becomes extremely hard. and by distance I mean any where the people you're talking to aren't within earshot of you. The other communities may have radio's but do they have power to operate them? Assuming they have some that operate by batteries, or a generator to power it, how much time do you think they have to sit at the radio and listen for someone to call when finding Food, Water, Medicine, Ammo, and watching out for hunting Zeds, roving bandits, and keeping a look out for raiders are all daily occurrences? Furthermore, why would those people answer, even if they did somehow have someone who had enough time to listen to it and hear your transmission. Yes you say you're trying to re-establish the infrastructure IE get the hydro electric plant working, but how do they know that? Do they just take your word? What if you're a bandit, Raider, Retro-Savages, or Death Cult, and this is all just a clever scheme to find out intel on the community?

Personally if the operator answered you, I'd execute him for Dereliction of Duty on the spot without a second thought. Then I'd set triple guards, with orders to kill or destroy anything that moved for at least the next week, while the community worked on fortifications and defenses. Why?

Because his foolishness put not only myself and my family at danger, but the entire community. Yes you might be the savior of humanity. But the Community knows for a fact that their are roving bands of Bandits that steal our supplies(Like the Coal from our Powerplant so that we now have to go without power) Raiders that kill our people, enslave our children, rape our women, and steal what little we have to live on, Retro-Savages that sacrifice people to the Zed's, and Death Cultists that worship the Zed's and likewise sacrifice people to Zed's. Why in the hell would we trust someone we don't know?

Now take this mentality, and apply it to the entire world, and you see why I disagree with your thoughts on rebuilding. In a Apocylpse setting all you have are little islands of people amongst a vast ocean of dangers, and problems.

I have to respectfully disagree. Beyond a relatively short lived period of time, from months to a few years, few safe havens could survive long term if they are completely insular. As you pointed out, they don't have the resources. I don't there will be a world economy, but I'd certainly expect a local economy between safe havens near each other as well as wider ranging trade caravans. I would absolutely expect beyond a few months, every safe haven is going to be fortified to some degree, even if it is solely limited to chain link fences and barbed wire or razor wire at the top. At least the primary downtown/industrial area/main living area of town will be.

Ah, but after say four years of being insular, how easy would it be to become open? Think about it, you have children that have been taught, 'Don't talk to outsiders, don't trust outsiders, etc.'

Instead of trade, I see the people becoming, in say five or six years not unlike the Native Americans of old. When they find they lack a resource, they raid others for it. Of course some trade would be established, but the people of Safe Haven communities would become very tribal in nature, distrustful of everyone not in their own community or 'tribe' if you will.

If there was trade, and I could see very limited trade opening up, it would be conducted away from safe haven communities, in area's that are unclaimed by either faction, and would again be similar to Native America trade days of old, where tribes would meet and trade with each other.

Everyone seems to think that rebuilding civilization will be easy (Not that we won't try). I'm a mechanic, machinist, and fabricator. I can tell you from personal experience that maintaining or building anything, without our civilized world to back us up would not happen easily. If you needed say, a connecting rod for your generator, you couldn't just order it. You would need to find a replacement. What if there wasn't one? Making something like a connecting rod wouldn't be easy. You would need some very specific equipment to do so. Again, you can't just run out and get it even if it's free. And if you did, would you know how to operate all the machines? Probably not. It takes years of experience and training to one-off a part like that. What if there wasn't a mechanic for hundreds, or even thousands of miles? Weather your looking for that part, making it, looking for a mechanic, or looking to replace the entire genny; everything takes time. Time we don't have.

Six months after the wave is when things are really going to get bad, and will get worse by the day. All of our infrastructure will be slowly crumbling into dust. The longer we take to reclaim the pre-apocalypse technology, the more things degrade and parish. Agriculture is one of the first things that will go down. Except for the odd farmer who managed to not run out of food, water, fertilizer, and electricity; then sow his last pre-apocalypse crops. Fresh food will be rare. It takes time, energy, and water to grow food. All of that they likely won't have since the end of week two of the wave.

It will take years to form as many havens as have been described. Seems as though everyone thinks there will be a convenient barter town on every back road in America within months. It just won't be that way. We will be spread out and hidden, spending all of our time and energy trying to survive just one more day.

And even if we should reach that many communities, they'll distrust each other so badly that it'll take even longer for them to begin trusting and trading regularly with each other.

That thought process makes you part of the problem, not the solution. You should be the one executed for being such a zellot and not believing that there is anybody else out there that has more than themselves in mind.

We know it wont be easy or quick yet we try to rebuild and for that we need help and to help others. So despite the dangers we face ( yes we chose to fight those dangers too) we will still embrace our fellow man once he has shown himself to be trustworthy and we at the very least give the chance to earn that trust. You would kill one of your own for simply responding (not disclosing information just responding) to a stranger over the radio! People with that mentality will hold the rest of us back for years because you are only looking out for yourself. Do the rest of the surviving portion of humanity a favor, take yourself and those like you that have only themselves in mind, and jump off a tall cliff and let the rest of us do the hard work of rebuilding not only the infrastructure but also the sense of humanity and community that we need to survive as a species.

Does it make sense to run to everybody you meet with open arms and welcome them back to humanity and take them back to your home without getting to know them first? Of course not. We had rules for encounters with other humans and those rules allowed for limited interaction and the gradual earning of trust. One such interaction was with a roving gang of bikers that at first seemed to be nothing more than bandits but as we came to find out through more and more interaction that they were really the resource hunters and protectors of a relatively large survivor community about 60 miles away. Once we came to see what they were all about and they us we became staunch allies. Had we taken a short term view of "everyone is out for themselves and therefore is against us" we would have either went to war with them out of fear, and eventually lost, or best case scenario simply isolated ourselves from our largest ally.

You can get a lot more done (and in a much shorter time) if you try to trust others rather than keeping everybody at the point of a sword (or barrel of a gun as the case may be).

As was mentioned we need to start reclaiming the infrastructure before it falls into such a state of entropy that its impossible for us with our limited knowledge and materials to repair. The longer we dont trust the longer we dont try and the longer we dont try the less successful our attempts will be.

Sure there will be communities that are completely insular. However, most won't be. They'll be reluctant to trust people, but since to some degree they will HAVE to trade to survive, they won't be completely insular.

I agree completely, that a lot of modern infrastructure and industry will fall apart. Cottage industries will take their place for a lot of things. For a connecting rod, sure it isn't easy, but if you have the skills, doing lost sand casting for a steel connecting rod and then touch up machining isn't that hard and it doesn't take THAT maybe tools to do. Is it going to be perfect doing it the simple and dirty way? No, but that doesn't mean it isn't likely to work and last awhile. You might not get several thousand hours out of the connecting rod, but you might get several hundred. If you are lucky and got it pretty well balanced and good tolerances a lot more.

Or you can scale back a lot of your industry to early industrial revolution technologies where you can, like power production and the sort. Low RPM steam engines, water wheel or wind turbine generators, etc. Heck I could make a few hundred watt wind or water powered generator with not much more than hand tools, copper wire a magnet and some wood. It wouldn't be pretty and it might fall apart in a really bad wind storm or flooding, but it would get the job done for some basic power for a few months, and if I needed to it would be easy to rebuild.

Light bulbs would be a big problem, but if you conserve, a couple of dozen CFL/LED bulbs could easily last something like a house years and years and year if you limited the number of fixtures you used and how much you used them.

You could always go back to gas lamps, oil lamps or wax candles for a lot of your lighting needs and use electric lighting very sparingly. Even then I know how to make carbon arc lamps...which aren't easy, are three kinds of a copper plated female dog to maintain (I don't know that I could make auto-regulated carbon arc lamp) and suck power, but could make due if you needed the amount of light you get from electric lighting for something (search lights, lighting large gatherings, etc).

You would lose a lot, like the whole tech industry. However, vaccum tubes aren't easy to make, but they aren't really all the difficult either for some simple ones (you need to be able to make the glass for them, be able to vaccum them out and make the anode/cathodes, but the later isn't really thattttt hard to do). So you could have a basic electronics industry in so far as things like vaccum set radios go and I'd bet with scrounging you could still have basic transitor radios and a lot of other electronics "on line" for years or decades at least (maybe even a few centuries...I have seen plenty of transistor radios from the 70's that work just fine today still, 40 years on, even some TVs from the 70's that still work okay).

The fact of the matter is, once you know where someone lives, there is not "taking that back"...well without killing them, which is an option. However, if any trade is going to be setup between communities, it is going to be direct trade.

Look at our past history for good examples, though with a modern flare. Unless highly isolated, tribes traded all the time with each other. They frequently didn't trust each other all that much, but they still traded without any serious problems. They just set aside their differences to conduct trade and then went on their marry way. Might do this one or two times a year with "rival" tribes. They'd exchange goods, maybe "trade" brides and then they wouldn't see them again till next year.

There likely would be a lot of mistrust, but that doesn't mean that Community A which is right by a nice coal vein wouldn't trade a few truck loads of coal for heating/steam power fuel every couple of months with an "industrial" safe haven down the road 100 miles for bullets and basic steam engines because that is what that industrial safe haven specializes in because they were lucky to have a few good machine shops and some inventive guys there who survived when the crap feel in the pot. Doesn't mean they are going to trust each other a whole lot...but safe havens aren't generally going to worry a whole lot about other safe havens.

Most aren't going to be in a position to "conquer" other safe havens and they mostly aren't going to want to crap in their own bath water by raiding other safe haven communities, especially onces they are engaged in trade with or would want to trade with. Now out right bandits or some of the really insular safe haven communities you'd have to worry about, because they might not bat an eye at raiding someone else. However, once you have "relations" and trade setup with a safe haven communities, you probably don't have to worry about them much. It is in both of your self intrests to be on good relations, at least so far as trade and not raiding each other goes.

That doesn't mean any given safe haven community, or even most is going to welcome strangers with open arms, and they'll probably inspect that trade caravan from the other safe haven community pretty closely before letting them/it inside of their defenses. For random travelers who aren't known to the community, the best you might get is met outside of the gates/town, asked about your business and offered trade right there and politely told to move along once you are done trading with them outside of the gates. Stronger or somewhat more trafficked safe havens might have some "guest" accomations outside of the main safe haven, say the equivelent of "ye olde" travelers inn and maybe even a travelers bazzar setup there as well if they get a lot of frequent visitors positioned just within the outer most defenses, but outside of the inner defenses.

Few safe haven communities would let anyone truely inside of the defenses of the main safe haven community unless they were a "citizen" of the community or very well known/trusted unless the safe haven was pretty darned confident in their security (example, a safe haven community in the tens of thousands with a large standing military force and pretty much all adults/teens in the militia probably isn't going to worry about their security enough to keep travelers from entering the main community as they are going to be pretty "immune" to even large bandit raids as they could easily crush most of them).

The reason for executing(There is a difference between execution and murder you know.) the operator for responding is simple. Radio signals can easily be traced back to their source. Thus revealing the safe havens location, and placing all of us in danger!

See if the operator had DONE his job he would have listened, then reported it to the community, allowing them to formulate a plan, like say, sending out a small party to met said saviors of humanity rather then just reveal our location. But he didn't. Instead he took things upon himself, responded, and revealed our location. Whether he actually spoke our coordinates or not is irrelevant, because a Radio Operator just out of basic could easily trace the signal back to it's point of origin. When dealing with an unknown enemy, and everyone you don't know is an enemy until they prove otherwise always assume the worse and plan for it.

And while I understand you think that my mentality in the above sceniro is part of the problem, you seem to be laboring under a sort of 'everything is rosy and will be ok if we just pitch in together!' thought process. Which in the Zed'lypse would see you dead long before me or mine.

Furthermore my thought process isn't selfish, thinking about the protection of the community as a whole is never selfish. Furthermore in a land filled with the hunting undead, and human predators trust will only lead to the deaths of everyone.

Everyone assumes that good people will survive, and that the bad people will die off, but the fact is quite reverse. The good people will be dead, and the bad people will be surviving.

I understand your thinking, but I just disagree that trade will be wide spread, between safe haven communities.

Now I see alot of interior trading, like a closed economy, within the community itself. But I see several years of raiding, and barbarism before communities begin to trade with other communities.

But I tend to have a dark outlook on things, To much Werewolf the Apocalypse/Vampire the Masquerade I suppose.

The difference between murder and execution is that execution is sanctioned by the state through due process of law. Killing a person who responds to another via radio on the spot without any sort of due process just on your whim alone because you think its best is murder. But hey you want to murder your people to make them safer then who am I to argue... less untrusting idiots that the rest of us have to worry about.

Also tracing a radio signal back to its point of origin is no "easy" task. It requires specialized equipment such as directional antennas (or multiple antenna to triangulate the signal) and the knowledge to use this specialized equipment. Though the FCC has this stuff on vans they can use to track down pirate radio and other radio sources its not gonna be stuff that an average HAM buff would have or know how to use so its going to be DAMN rare.

As previously stated this is BS. radio signals are omnidirectional and are NOT easily traced by Joe Average with a CB or HAM radio. It requires special equipment and the knowledge to use it. You might as well condemn a man to death for having a cookfire near the community. Joe Average would have an easier time tracking the smell of woodsmoke upwind to its source than he would of having the equipment and know how to trace a weak radio signal.

No its a viewpoint of guarded optimism. I'm hopeful that people are out to help eachother rebuild not just out to help themselves survive. I hope for the best and prepare for the worst. We don't simply throw open our doors to all comers. We have rules regarding our interaction with others as well as very strict rules about acceptance into the community (including quarantine and even psychological screening)



Bullsh!+ seeing only to the needs of your community to the exclusion and possible detriment of all others is selfish tribalism, nothing more. You are willing to cause harm to others just to help your band of survivors make it another day. There is no nobility in this only foolishness.

There will be good and bad... and good turned bad, such as yourself. I know where I stand and its on the side of humanity and not JUST my little pocket of it. It takes courage and determination to help others in their greatest time of need even if there is risk to yourself. Sure we can all "turtle up" and pull our heads into our shells and say FU to the rest of humanity but that makes you part of the problem not part of the solution and worse yet are those people who will thrive on their ruthlessness such as you. Yes you will survive because you are willing to lose your humanity if you think that's what it takes to make it another day. The murder of your radio operator is a prime example of this. Whatever potential harm was caused is already done so killing him serves no purpose other than to scare the others in your group into obeying your (asinine) orders. Your willing to commit murder of your own tribe members to assert your control over them.

There could be no better time than at this time of greatest need to step up and do whats right and start helping others rather than thinking only of your little band or tribe.

nvm dude, you just don't get it. But thats cool. We'll just agree to disagree.

Hrm, I'd go with anti-biotics. The new world would be full of other things, water and food, ammunition and such, but good luck on getting the Anti-biotics. However, I would not be one to advocate a capitalist economy in a survival situation. Basic level barter between seperate groups of survivors, with rationed community resources inside of the groups would probably work best in this kind of ruined world.

Cows. Easily, cows/oxen. A single cow would be about 50,000$ of current world money. Here's the reasons.


- Cows/Oxen can plow fields and help move heavy things thus reducing the need for man power and allowing them to focus on other areas.
- Their meat and their milk that they give. (Removing meat would kill the cow, so of course that's the desperate last act or, if you already have many cows)
- Butter from cow milk stays good for months.
- The urine has many minerals and vitamins, thus can be used to make medicines and treatments.
- Manure can be used as fertilizer and as energy.
- Manure can be used as mosquito repellent. Depending on where the game takes place, this would range from somewhat useful to incredibly useful.
- Blood can be drinked and made into many types of food. It it is great source of iron. (Can be done without killing the cow)
- Cows are very noisy and can act as "zombie alarm" or if bad animals or strangers come too close.
- Reproducing cows is fairly easy
- Oxen can gore Zombies and help in case of an attack.

In the case that the cow is killed or you decide to butcher it, there's still much more use for them;

- Fat can be used for lubrication or making torches.
- Skin can be tanned and turned to clothing or makeshift bandages.
- Hair can be used to repair clothing or to knit the bandages.
- Bones can be used to make tools or weapons.
- Tail can become a brush or whip or rope.
- Hooves can be made into glue.



There are so many uses for cows and the best way to know someone is rich is if they have a big herd. Stealing/Killing a cow would be a major offense.

A single cow probably not that much. Especially because after the fall it is likely, even with zombies munching on some of them, that there'd plenty of feral cows wondering about. Probably a good business in rounding up stray cattle and selling them for the above stuff (even just for the hides and some tallow/meat). That said, sure they'd be pretty valuable, but I doubt even close to the "value" you mentioned. Even a mateable bull/cow pair probably wouldn't be that valuable. In the several thousand dollar in "todays value" range for a mateable pair deffinitely, but a single animal not so much. Maybe $1,000-3,000 of value for the whole animal.

A trained medical professional would be a high commodity. The lack of schools to train more would make their skills in high demand. Of course potable water is more than likely the most valuable commodity. It is hard in today's world to find non-contaminated sources and anyone who could keep large amounts on hand could trade for anything else they need. As for watering fields of crops, the water need not be as nearly pure as that of drinking water. It could be pumped in from a stream or river easily enough with a simple water wheel that is extremely low-tech. Learning to plant crops and care for animals is a simple kind of skill that can be learned from books, unlike medical professions or something complicated such as running a nuclear plant. Other things such as the creation of cloth can also be easily learned through books and a little trial and error. Spinning wheels and looms would be easy to build and therefor replace more bulky machines requiring electricity or fossil fuels. Speaking of fossil fuels, all those people riding in motor vehicles are going to eventually run out of gas. Without the ability to refine more, they are going to have to trade more and more highly valuable items to get a few drops of that precious gasoline.