What currency should post-apocalyptic games use?

[WaterMage]

Depends on the setting. Could be water, coal, silver, or whatever depending on the worldbuilding. For eg, in Metro is ammo, in Caves of Qud is non polluted water, etc.

[sheet]

Furs.

[UltraFan123]

I agree with the ones that say that, while there may be some form of standardized currency in a post-apocalyptic world, the vast majority of the remaining population would most definitely resort to bartering for the most part.

Stuff like drinkable water, livestock, long-lasting foods, salt, etc, would be far more valuable in a post-apocalyptic world.

[Stack of Turtles]

Unironically, the US dollar. There's plenty of them around, people are used to associating them with value, and the funniest thing is that the government collapsing would make them MORE valuable because nobody's dumping billions of dollars of new supply on the market to try to make infinite debt go away anymore.

[Norfleet]

Unironically, the US dollar. There's plenty of them around, people are used to associating them with value, and the funniest thing is that the government collapsing would make them MORE valuable because nobody's dumping billions of dollars of new supply on the market to try to make infinite debt go away anymore.

I actually argued this idea several times in the past. Money is, first and foremost, a meme, after all, and nothing currently embodies the meme of money quite like the US dollar. Imagine that society implodes: When do you stop accepting the money? Day 1? Are you still willing to take the money? What about day 2? Day 3? Which day does the money stop? When it becomes clear that the government is gone, what does that really mean? Like you said: That they won't be printing any more money.

If anything, reality already bears this out: The US (and for that matter, European) currency is accepted in actual post-apocalyptic landscapes. These places are largely beyond the reach and influence of the US and Europe...in fact, some of these European currencies have since been entirely discontinued post-Euro (some can still be traded in, not that those people will ever be able to do so) and are still being accepted there, because either those people have not gotten the memo, or the meme of money persists.

I agree with the ones that say that, while there may be some form of standardized currency in a post-apocalyptic world, the vast majority of the remaining population would most definitely resort to bartering for the most part.

Stuff like drinkable water, livestock, long-lasting foods, salt, etc, would be far more valuable in a post-apocalyptic world.

Bartering is almost certainly the initial stage, but at some point, the situation stabilizes and carting barter goods around demonstrates itself to be as awkward as it was in history. A currency will then (re)establish itself.

[J1M]

Bartering is always more interesting in those settings.

Are there any games that have actual bartering? All of the ones I can think of have a currency and a light feel of bartering because NPCs have limited currency.

[J1M]

Unironically, the US dollar. There's plenty of them around, people are used to associating them with value, and the funniest thing is that the government collapsing would make them MORE valuable because nobody's dumping billions of dollars of new supply on the market to try to make infinite debt go away anymore.

I actually argued this idea several times in the past. Money is, first and foremost, a meme, after all, and nothing currently embodies the meme of money quite like the US dollar. Imagine that society implodes: When do you stop accepting the money? Day 1? Are you still willing to take the money? What about day 2? Day 3? Which day does the money stop? When it becomes clear that the government is gone, what does that really mean? Like you said: That they won't be printing any more money.

If anything, reality already bears this out: The US (and for that matter, European) currency is accepted in actual post-apocalyptic landscapes. These places are largely beyond the reach and influence of the US and Europe...in fact, some of these European currencies have since been entirely discontinued post-Euro (some can still be traded in, not that those people will ever be able to do so) and are still being accepted there, because either those people have not gotten the memo, or the meme of money persists.

I agree with the ones that say that, while there may be some form of standardized currency in a post-apocalyptic world, the vast majority of the remaining population would most definitely resort to bartering for the most part.

Stuff like drinkable water, livestock, long-lasting foods, salt, etc, would be far more valuable in a post-apocalyptic world.

Bartering is almost certainly the initial stage, but at some point, the situation stabilizes and carting barter goods around demonstrates itself to be as awkward as it was in history. A currency will then (re)establish itself.

The US dollar is only accepted in those real-world scenarios because the US government still has a military. Name a currency where the government has fallen and the military is gone that still has value. The only ones I can think of used a commodity, such as silver, as a currency.

[rusty_shackleford]

USD would make a good currency insofar caps would except it's far harder to actually counterfeit

[Stack of Turtles]

Unironically, the US dollar. There's plenty of them around, people are used to associating them with value, and the funniest thing is that the government collapsing would make them MORE valuable because nobody's dumping billions of dollars of new supply on the market to try to make infinite debt go away anymore.

I actually argued this idea several times in the past. Money is, first and foremost, a meme, after all, and nothing currently embodies the meme of money quite like the US dollar. Imagine that society implodes: When do you stop accepting the money? Day 1? Are you still willing to take the money? What about day 2? Day 3? Which day does the money stop? When it becomes clear that the government is gone, what does that really mean? Like you said: That they won't be printing any more money.

If anything, reality already bears this out: The US (and for that matter, European) currency is accepted in actual post-apocalyptic landscapes. These places are largely beyond the reach and influence of the US and Europe...in fact, some of these European currencies have since been entirely discontinued post-Euro (some can still be traded in, not that those people will ever be able to do so) and are still being accepted there, because either those people have not gotten the memo, or the meme of money persists.

I agree with the ones that say that, while there may be some form of standardized currency in a post-apocalyptic world, the vast majority of the remaining population would most definitely resort to bartering for the most part.

Stuff like drinkable water, livestock, long-lasting foods, salt, etc, would be far more valuable in a post-apocalyptic world.

Bartering is almost certainly the initial stage, but at some point, the situation stabilizes and carting barter goods around demonstrates itself to be as awkward as it was in history. A currency will then (re)establish itself.

The US dollar is only accepted in those real-world scenarios because the US government still has a military. Name a currency where the government has fallen and the military is gone that still has value. The only ones I can think of used a commodity, such as silver, as a currency.

I think that the US military is not the reason that the US dollar was accepted on the Venezuelan black market. It was accepted because people reasonably believed it could be exchanged for other things. As long as that continues to be the case, there's no reason not to use it - in other words, it has inertia.

[J1M]

I actually argued this idea several times in the past. Money is, first and foremost, a meme, after all, and nothing currently embodies the meme of money quite like the US dollar. Imagine that society implodes: When do you stop accepting the money? Day 1? Are you still willing to take the money? What about day 2? Day 3? Which day does the money stop? When it becomes clear that the government is gone, what does that really mean? Like you said: That they won't be printing any more money.

If anything, reality already bears this out: The US (and for that matter, European) currency is accepted in actual post-apocalyptic landscapes. These places are largely beyond the reach and influence of the US and Europe...in fact, some of these European currencies have since been entirely discontinued post-Euro (some can still be traded in, not that those people will ever be able to do so) and are still being accepted there, because either those people have not gotten the memo, or the meme of money persists.


Bartering is almost certainly the initial stage, but at some point, the situation stabilizes and carting barter goods around demonstrates itself to be as awkward as it was in history. A currency will then (re)establish itself.

The US dollar is only accepted in those real-world scenarios because the US government still has a military. Name a currency where the government has fallen and the military is gone that still has value. The only ones I can think of used a commodity, such as silver, as a currency.

I think that the US military is not the reason that the US dollar was accepted on the Venezuelan black market. It was accepted because people reasonably believed it could be exchanged for other things. As long as that continues to be the case, there's no reason not to use it - in other words, it has inertia.

I assert that the reason the US dollar has value is because it is backed by the threat of violence.

If you disagree then it should be easy to name a few examples of currencies that still have value even after the groups that issued them dissolved.

[DecadeRiptide]

They'd probably just trade or do things for people to get smth in return

[rusty_shackleford]

Downside of accepting USD is that yes you could theoretically create some lower/upperbound of what exists physically, the amount available to people within a 100 square mile radius of you in nearly any part of America will at most be a fraction of a fraction of a percentage of that.
So it's still not a great thing for using as something to use for your valuable resource. But it's still better than bottlecaps.

As @J1M touched on, the real value of the currency in Fallout is the value of purified water:

Long answer: are we talking about currency or money?

---

In the Fallout scenario, what the merchants would need is something with the properties of being fungible, extremely hard to counterfeit, they control the 'creation'(which would include finding more) of, and ease of carrying or trading large amounts of.

USD fails the prong of them not controlling the supply. But… reminting could work, if you could figure out some way to alter the currency such that it retains all the properties of USD while also receiving a new property that would be very difficult to counterfeit. Then you'd control the total supply. But at that point they could probably just issue their own Chuck E. Cheese tokens if they're capable of doing such.

[rusty_shackleford]

Scrip.

Like Wasteland, and early fallouts, or NV.

I think scrip is actually one of the more interesting systems and is very rarely done, I like when games have different currencies

[J1M]

Downside of accepting USD is that yes you could theoretically create some lower/upperbound of what exists physically, the amount available to people within a 100 square mile radius of you in nearly any part of America will at most be a fraction of a fraction of a percentage of that.
So it's still not a great thing for using as something to use for your valuable resource. But it's still better than bottlecaps.

As @J1M touched on, the real value of the currency in Fallout is the value of purified water:

Long answer: are we talking about currency or money?

---

In the Fallout scenario, what the merchants would need is something with the properties of being fungible, extremely hard to counterfeit, they control the 'creation'(which would include finding more) of, and ease of carrying or trading large amounts of.

USD fails the prong of them not controlling the supply. But… reminting could work, if you could figure out some way to alter the currency such that it retains all the properties of USD while also receiving a new property that would be very difficult to counterfeit. Then you'd control the total supply. But at that point they could probably just issue their own Chuck E. Cheese tokens if they're capable of doing such.

The creation of the Brazilian Real is often discussed as a real example of creating a currency successfully. I think there are lessons from that about how to get people to adopt a new currency that the water traders could use to get people to transition from a temporary currency like USD to their own. The oft-cited example of a technique that was deliberately used was to widely advertise the exchange rate and show that it was stable over time while the other currency that was in use continued to suffer inflation. Even though people didn't have any Reals (and probably wouldn't have accepted them if given the chance at the time) they associated them with a store of value.

Another method is to seed the currency by giving it away initially (everyone gets one free gallon of water token) and people think it is a joke until they see proof they are able to use them with the water merchants. Another would be giving that currency preferential treatment: if you are paying in water trader tokens, you go to the front of the water trading line.

[Norfleet]

The US dollar is only accepted in those real-world scenarios because the US government still has a military.

No, the US dollar has value because it has meme value as money. Sure, the fact that the US exists contributes to that meme, but for random people in the middle of a shithole in Darkest Africa, the existence of the US is a meaningless academic question and they wouldn't have been informed otherwise if this had ceased to be true. The US dollar is money because people accept it as money. The justification is circular.

For this to change, the circle would have to break. When does the circle break? And what replaces it? No one else is producing money that is both ubiquitous and universally recognizable as money. And every day after the end that somebody willing to accept it as money, whether due to lack of information about the fact that the US is gone, or belief in the "greater fool" that someone else will take it because THEY don't know, the meme persists. And even once everybody knows, given a lack of viable replacement, the fact that the US government is no longer around to print it simply turns it into a rare commodity of its own.

Like I said: The lights go out. The Internet is down. On what day do you stop considering it money?

I assert that the reason the US dollar has value is because it is backed by the threat of violence.

If you disagree then it should be easy to name a few examples of currencies that still have value even after the groups that issued them dissolved.

Still HAVE value? Not so much, because civilization exists and defunct currencies get replaced. But when NOTHING replaces it? The Reichsmark lasted 3 years after the end of Nazi Germany, going until it got replaced. Similarly, Roman currency continued to exist and be used outside of the Roman world long after the fall of the Roman Empire itself, and cannot be considered simply a case of commodity money because it had been so debased by that point.

If anything, the historical precedent is that the US dollar will effectively continue to be used after civilization collapses, simply due to its meme value and lack of viable replacement, until civilization reestablishes itself, and even then, the meme will stick. The USD itself is just a continuation of the meme of the thaler, which evolved from the groat, which was the denarius. So, you know, the meme of Roman money is still running.

[Norfleet]

USD fails the prong of them not controlling the supply. But… reminting could work, if you could figure out some way to alter the currency such that it retains all the properties of USD while also receiving a new property that would be very difficult to counterfeit.

The thing with the USD is that it already IS a remint. Pretty much all European-derived currencies are remints of Roman currency. This even includes things like the Arabic dinar, which is just "denarius". The USD came into being so that the US could mint its own coinage to replace the previous currency we were using, the Spanish dolar. Which is the Thaler. Which was just a "Groat" minted in some village in a valley ("thal"). Which was just a rehash of...yes, the "fat denarius", "denarius grossus".

So yes, we're still basically using Roman meme money 1500 years after the end of Rome.

[J1M]

The Reichsmark didn't "last 3 years". It dropped sharply in value and was replaced by cigarettes and bartering until the authorities provided an alternative. I would expect something similar for USD if the US government fell. It might take a decade and devaluation would spread unevenly if communication and trade became difficult, but it would go to zero unless another form of government emerged that enforced it as a currency.

I'll let someone else tear apart the claims that we are still using Roman money.

[Tweed]

The US dollar is only accepted in those real-world scenarios because the US government still has a military. Name a currency where the government has fallen and the military is gone that still has value. The only ones I can think of used a commodity, such as silver, as a currency.

I think that the US military is not the reason that the US dollar was accepted on the Venezuelan black market. It was accepted because people reasonably believed it could be exchanged for other things. As long as that continues to be the case, there's no reason not to use it - in other words, it has inertia.

I assert that the reason the US dollar has value is because it is backed by the threat of violence.

If you disagree then it should be easy to name a few examples of currencies that still have value even after the groups that issued them dissolved.

Money is law with a face.

[rusty_shackleford]

If you disagree then it should be easy to name a few examples of currencies that still have value even after the groups that issued them dissolved

Any currency produced with precious metals, but this is more assuming other currencies exist and therefore the people still with power consider those precious metals to be precious soo...

[J1M]

If you disagree then it should be easy to name a few examples of currencies that still have value even after the groups that issued them dissolved

Any currency produced with precious metals, but this is more assuming other currencies exist and therefore the people still with power consider those precious metals to be precious soo...

Yeah, I mentioned that the only examples I could think of were ones where the currency was also a commodity. But I think it's obvious that the value is either from the commodity or numismatic value due to rarity, which is different than the currency itself holding value once the issuer is defunct.

[Tweed]

If you disagree then it should be easy to name a few examples of currencies that still have value even after the groups that issued them dissolved

Any currency produced with precious metals, but this is more assuming other currencies exist and therefore the people still with power consider those precious metals to be precious soo...

So Underrail had the right idea with stygian coins.

[Stack of Turtles]

The US dollar is only accepted in those real-world scenarios because the US government still has a military. Name a currency where the government has fallen and the military is gone that still has value. The only ones I can think of used a commodity, such as silver, as a currency.

I think that the US military is not the reason that the US dollar was accepted on the Venezuelan black market. It was accepted because people reasonably believed it could be exchanged for other things. As long as that continues to be the case, there's no reason not to use it - in other words, it has inertia.

I assert that the reason the US dollar has value is because it is backed by the threat of violence.

If you disagree then it should be easy to name a few examples of currencies that still have value even after the groups that issued them dissolved.

Roman coins circulated for hundreds of years after the fall of the Roman Empire. Of course, you won't accept that because they were bullion coins, but the issue is that, since then, there's never been a time when an "issuing group" just collapsed and left behind a void with no credible currency replacement; generally the new government offers its new money in trade at par value.

On top of that, there's also only one apex predator in the money ocean: in Zimbabwe, for example, Rhodesian dollars probably saw some use on the black market — they're still valued by collectors today and thus technically fill your request — but they were crowded out by the easy availability of USD. Bills in particular wear out fast and become scarce soon after minting stops, so naturally it becomes easier to import them. And at the end of the day, can you really even name many currencies still in use other than the USD that would have any value if it became illegal to convert them to USD? Only in the third world "dedollarization" sphere. So the comparable situation, where the biggest existing issuer of money in the world suddenly ceases to exist and nothing is able to fill the void, has just never happened since the dark ages.

[J1M]

I think that the US military is not the reason that the US dollar was accepted on the Venezuelan black market. It was accepted because people reasonably believed it could be exchanged for other things. As long as that continues to be the case, there's no reason not to use it - in other words, it has inertia.

I assert that the reason the US dollar has value is because it is backed by the threat of violence.

If you disagree then it should be easy to name a few examples of currencies that still have value even after the groups that issued them dissolved.

Roman coins circulated for hundreds of years after the fall of the Roman Empire. Of course, you won't accept that because they were bullion coins, but the issue is that, since then, there's never been a time when an "issuing group" just collapsed and left behind a void with no credible currency replacement; generally the new government offers its new money in trade at par value.

On top of that, there's also only one apex predator in the money ocean: in Zimbabwe, for example, Rhodesian dollars probably saw some use on the black market — they're still valued by collectors today and thus technically fill your request — but they were crowded out by the easy availability of USD. Bills in particular wear out fast and become scarce soon after minting stops, so naturally it becomes easier to import them. And at the end of the day, can you really even name many currencies still in use other than the USD that would have any value if it became illegal to convert them to USD? Only in the third world "dedollarization" sphere. So the comparable situation, where the biggest existing issuer of money in the world suddenly ceases to exist and nothing is able to fill the void, has just never happened since the dark ages.

Germany after World War II is a counter-example to your first point.

Collectables aren't currency. Do stores accept Rhodesian dollars?

For the third point, I would say the Canadian Dollar. It is legal to accept USD for goods and services in Canada, and many places near the border accept both currencies, but the USD has not replaced the Canadian dollar. If anything, the use of electronic currency has made the USD less prevalent in Canada compared to the past. Liquidity and convenience edging out a stronger-backed currency (both are fiat backed by the threat of violence).

[Stack of Turtles]

Actually, come to think of it, I should've taken my example from the same country a little later:

Zimbabwean dollars are now worth, on the collector's market, hundreds of times what they were at the moment the Zimbabwe government stopped issuing them.

[Stack of Turtles]

Germany after World War II is a counter-example to your first point.

After WWII, the German government was replaced by an Allied occupation government which was explicitly hostile toward the Reichsmark; it didn't just evaporate. Furthermore, it had already hyperinflated. This is the real main issue with using currencies after a government collapses: a collapsing government usually triggers hyperinflation in its flailing death throes.

Collectables aren't currency. Do stores accept Rhodesian dollars?

No, again, they accept USD (under the table) because USD pushes out everyone else.

For the third point, I would say the Canadian Dollar. It is legal to accept USD for goods and services in Canada, and many places near the border accept both currencies, but the USD has not replaced the Canadian dollar. If anything, the use of electronic currency has made the USD less prevalent in Canada compared to the past. Liquidity and convenience edging out a stronger-backed currency (both are fiat backed by the threat of violence).

The Canadian government would cease to exist in approximately a week if they were unable to trade with America. Their critical infrastructure passes through the US. So yes, the Canadian dollar's value is dependent upon being exchangeable with USD.

[J1M]

Trade can happen without currency exchange. It is in fact preferable to use a reserve currency for trade.

[Stack of Turtles]

Besides, if you want to know the REALLY big secret...

The USD isn't actually backed by the threat of violence. Businesses frequently refuse to accept cash. Even though the dollar bill has those little words on it saying "all debts public and private", I can make contracts with the people around me for non-dollar-denominated debts secure in the knowledge that, while a debtor could technically take me to court to force me to accept the dollar value of a particular commodity instead of the commodity itself, that will never actually happen in my entire lifetime. People already don't behave as if they use USD because of the promise of government enforcement. It's a chimera.

[Stack of Turtles]

Trade can happen without currency exchange. It is in fact preferable to use a reserve currency for trade.

The issue doesn't have to be direct currency exchange, but people in Canada need to be able to buy imports.

[Norfleet]

Roman coins circulated for hundreds of years after the fall of the Roman Empire. Of course, you won't accept that because they were bullion coins, but the issue is that, since then, there's never been a time when an "issuing group" just collapsed and left behind a void with no credible currency replacement; generally the new government offers its new money in trade at par value.

I wouldn't call late Roman Empire coins bullion coins, really. By then, the currency had been so severely debased that they had effectively become meme money. This meme of them being money persists effectively to this day, as successor currencies effectively claim continuance from them.

Therefore, I would expect the following things to happen in the event of a civilization collapse:

1. Barter dominates initial phase of total anarchy. You can't eat money, after all.

2. As things begin to stabilize out of the immediate phases of looting and cannibalism and barter becomes too inefficient for trade, hard USD currency continues to be accepted as meme money as it is not confirmed that the government is truly GONE.

3. Even as the idea that the US government is truly gone sinks in, the money continues to retain meme status, just like Roman coinage, in the absence of replacement. After all, it's not like the USG is minting more of it.

4. As new governments begin to form, they will attempt to tie themselves into the preexisting system and take control of it by issuing coin, likely bullion, exchangeable for meme money.

5. New currency eventually replaces USD and becomes the new meme money, even after it is eventually debased.

We know it works this way because we've seen this episode before, with the fall of the Roman Empire.

[Norfleet]

After WWII, the German government was replaced by an Allied occupation government which was explicitly hostile toward the Reichsmark; it didn't just evaporate. Furthermore, it had already hyperinflated. This is the real main issue with using currencies after a government collapses: a collapsing government usually triggers hyperinflation in its flailing death throes.

An interesting thing to consider is that in the modern system, the government does not hyperinflate currency through the printing of physical currency, but electronically.

When the system collapses, all that fake electronic money is GONE...but the hard currency remains.