cash remains the only option if there's an emergency

[countryfree]

If there is a real emergency or some sort of epidemic then even cash is useless. I'd be moving with my Glock, that'd be the only way to survive

A gun? What would you do with a gun? You'll go to to a food store and kill the shopkeeper to get his supplies? If there's only one piece of bread left, and there are 9 other people hungry, will you kill all the 9 of them?

At a time, there were several streets with water at knee-level, you don't think about using a gun in that situation.
Besides, in western Europe, very few people own guns.

[1714879938]

1714879938

[1714879938]

1714879938

[1714879938]

1714879938

[1714879938]

1714879938

[OROBTC]

...

I think it very much depends on the particular disaster scenario...

-- If traveling, like the Cannes example by OP, then local cash (or $ in the Deveoping World) is indeed likely to be king.  Some tiny gold coins maybe, gold may help you get back home...  BTC may be OK if the Web and electricity are working (the value of the imperfect blockchain.info wallet and/or a hardware wallet).  Your Glock will be of less value in Europe, you may wind up in jail!

-- If at home, I would have a variety of options.  Gold/silver.  Gun(s) & ammo.  CA$H.  Beans, lighters, batteries.  Water purification devices.

-- Location of your emergency matters!  Weather and how many other people are around.


It all depends!  That's why "Diversification" is my middle name!

[zencomp]

it all depends on what type of emergency you are facing, the example you gave is even the cash wont be usefull because full places are drown by water then where will you go and shop with cash when everything is in water. so everthing depends on situations.

[deon]

Remember the Boy Scout motto "Be Prepared"?    I believe in diversification.  Yes,  It is good to have some cash ready.  But what about a run on banks?  If you come walking out of the bank with your cash, there could be robbers or cops (civil forfeiture) following you home and ready to take your cash. 

[teddy5145]

Remember the Boy Scout motto "Be Prepared"?    I believe in diversification.  Yes,  It is good to have some cash ready.  But what about a run on banks?  If you come walking out of the bank with your cash, there could be robbers or cops (civil forfeiture) following you home and ready to take your cash. 

Well maybe you could put the money inside your wallet before walking out of the bank so the robbers won't see how much money you had
And im pretty sure that nobody is this insane to following you all day
I could be wrong though

[QuestionAuthority]

My tight buns are all the currency I need when the world ends.

Everything other than that needed to defend or sustain life is an abstract irrelevance in a full on collapse. All those gold stackers will get just as much of rude awakening as the space cadets trying to trade their paper wallet for some antibiotics after their cock's gone green.

That's no joke. A tight ass and a closet full of antibiotics are all the money you'll need in a major catastrophe. I'm waiting for the big pandemic to come from Asia or Africa that can't be stopped. Something like a new and improved airborn Ebola or H1N1 with rapid onset and death. When martial law happens and the looting starts, I'm not taking food. I'm going straight to the antibiotic section of the closest pharmacy and wiping them out. I'll work out the exchange rate later. Maybe one 500mg keflex for a case of corn and an hour with your wife. lol

[AGD]

Remember the Boy Scout motto "Be Prepared"?    I believe in diversification.  Yes,  It is good to have some cash ready.  But what about a run on banks?  If you come walking out of the bank with your cash, there could be robbers or cops (civil forfeiture) following you home and ready to take your cash. 

Thats where the Glock comes back into the story.

[Kakmakr]

In most of the disaster areas I have been before, the first thing people are worried about, would be clean drinking water and food and getting the families together. So the emergency services give aid in that regard for the first few days.

Mobile telecommunication stations are moved into the area to provide for people to phone their relatives.

Most of the cellphone towers are situated on the highest possible areas, and will not be affected anyways. It's only the power that might be the problem, but emergency services provide access to power, if you want to charge your cellphone.

Bitcoin is not the ultimate solution, and you can always have some fiat currency stashed with your Bug out bag, if you want to trade for those few days, until the most basic services are restored.

This is not such a big deal, when everything is destroyed around you. You can trade with any item, if it comes down to that. < A watch or a ring or shoes > ^hmf^

[QUEDOS]

I have a friend in Cannes, France. You may not know anything about it, but there were terrible floods there 10 days ago.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34443189

My friend told me her landline phone still doesn't work. There are no phones and no Internet in most of downtown Cannes. Electricity has been fixed quite rapidly, but for 2 days, the mobile phone networks were down, so no bitcoin, and no credit cards either! All the shops couldn't handle any transactions.

The only thing which kept on working was the fiber optic network, I guess because that's the newest.

The whole thing was very local. Everything was fine a few km North, but this shall reminds us that if there's a serious emergency, cash is the only safe option.

I'm sure there remained numerous forms of transport out of the downtown area, which your friend could easily have used to get to an area that wasn't effected by the floods... In which case, cash, bitcoin, gold could all still have been used quite easily

[Q7]

If the condition is so bad, cash won't safe you either or even offer safe passage in this desperate situation. It's your inner survival and bartering skills that will get your through. But at least once you managed to crossover to safer location, you bitcoin will still be there regardless of which region or country you are right now.

[aakashsangwan]

what you are telling is half correct and half wrong, everything is according to the situation. most of the places if you have got stuck then you wont be able to use cash also. the situation what you have mentioned is their even cash also wont be helpfull as everything is drown in water, only mutual help will be available.

[maokoto]

I have a friend in Cannes, France. You may not know anything about it, but there were terrible floods there 10 days ago.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34443189

My friend told me her landline phone still doesn't work. There are no phones and no Internet in most of downtown Cannes. Electricity has been fixed quite rapidly, but for 2 days, the mobile phone networks were down, so no bitcoin, and no credit cards either! All the shops couldn't handle any transactions.

The only thing which kept on working was the fiber optic network, I guess because that's the newest.

The whole thing was very local. Everything was fine a few km North, but this shall reminds us that if there's a serious emergency, cash is the only safe option.

Good reflection. I think you are pretty much right. Although cash may also become useless in a greater emergency, it is still a step ahead of Bitcoin.

But I think that Bitcoin might become more "physical" if it goes really to mainstream adoption, and people would begin to accept it (paper wallets, physical bitcoins etc).

[Nobitcoin]

Wait if there was a flood wouldn't cash in the form of notes be useless and most shops these days only accept a certain amount of small change. In a situation like that maybe silver coins or gold coins would be a valid form of repayment guarantee.

[Betwrong]

Wait if there was a flood wouldn't cash in the form of notes be useless and most shops these days only accept a certain amount of small change. In a situation like that maybe silver coins or gold coins would be a valid form of repayment guarantee.

Nah, notes are not damaged by water, you can trade underwater with them. And silver coins or gold coins may sink much faster than paper so notes are still good. )

[chennan]

My tight buns are all the currency I need when the world ends.

Everything other than that needed to defend or sustain life is an abstract irrelevance in a full on collapse. All those gold stackers will get just as much of rude awakening as the space cadets trying to trade their paper wallet for some antibiotics after their cock's gone green.

That's no joke. A tight ass and a closet full of antibiotics are all the money you'll need in a major catastrophe. I'm waiting for the big pandemic to come from Asia or Africa that can't be stopped. Something like a new and improved airborn Ebola or H1N1 with rapid onset and death. When martial law happens and the looting starts, I'm not taking food. I'm going straight to the antibiotic section of the closest pharmacy and wiping them out. I'll work out the exchange rate later. Maybe one 500mg keflex for a case of corn and an hour with your wife. lol

Haha, I literally lol'd at this.  The thing is with speculating about what's going to happen when an "apocalyptic" even occurs, is that there is no way to know what kind of threat you are going to be facing, so there's really no idea how to prepare for it.  You don't know whether it will be a massive flood, comet hitting earth, nuclear warfare, air borne virus, etc. etc. ... But if it gets to the point where people will riot, you need to be one of the first to act on it to get the most goods as possible.  And for me, I would probably not think any thing of the situation before its too late, so I just hope that nothing like that would happen.

And why would you need a tight ass and nice buns?? lol.

[Wapinter]

If there is a real emergency or some sort of epidemic then even cash is useless. I'd be moving with my Glock, that'd be the only way to survive

Absolutely.In situation like this prices rise rapidly and you must carry a lot of cash even if you find something to buy.Most of the time people need humanitarian help in emergency or disaster not money

[BADecker]

Before we had GPU mining, there was only CPU mining. Then came the GPUs and finally the ASICs.

Why not hand-held walkie-talkies that do only two things... communicate with the Bitcoin blockchain... and each other. At least in the big cities we wouldn't need the Internet, because, these being battery operated, would do all the communicating directly. They could integrate with the Internet as well. This way people could use Bitcoin like cash. The hand-helds would be the network.

See the article "Building Cell Networks Like Wi-Fi Could Make Service Better" at https://www.freedomsphoenix.com/News/184898-2015-10-15-building-cell-networks-like-wi-fi-could-make-service-better.htm to see how people are thinking along the lines of making cell phones connect like WiFi.

Just think of all the smartphones that could be adapted to use Bitcoin if they could all talk directly to each other. There wouldn't be much chance of an Internet collapse hurting Bitcoin this way, and people could use their phones, easily, for cash-like transactions... even at yard sales.

[Omikifuse]

only option as only people keep faith that they will be in touch with the central bank and the economic system.

when things are really bad, I think only gold and physical things will matter, as long there is no one with more weapons than you to steal them

[mtnsaa]

Completely agree, if there's a energy blackout or similar, like preppers stuff, all digital technology will be reserved for the elite and government. Bitcoin shares some nice ideologies but if fiat money falls (US Dollar basically) Bitcoin won't save the day, we'll have huge infrastructure problems and possibly imminent wars for resources.

[tennozer]

I have a friend in Cannes, France. You may not know anything about it, but there were terrible floods there 10 days ago.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34443189

My friend told me her landline phone still doesn't work. There are no phones and no Internet in most of downtown Cannes. Electricity has been fixed quite rapidly, but for 2 days, the mobile phone networks were down, so no bitcoin, and no credit cards either! All the shops couldn't handle any transactions.

The only thing which kept on working was the fiber optic network, I guess because that's the newest.

The whole thing was very local. Everything was fine a few km North, but this shall reminds us that if there's a serious emergency, cash is the only safe option.

So you are keeping your cash in to your bank account.Right? If there is a disaster you can not use ATM and you can not get cash. It is same like bitcoin too. If you do not have internet you can not spend them.