The Fallen Continent: Trade and Currency
Examining the economic activity that sustains the wasteland and the money that makes it possible.
And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore, cargo of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wood, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves, that is, human souls. "The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your delicacies and your splendors are lost to you, never to be found again!"
Introduction
The Great War naturally brought about an end to the globalized economic system that dominated the antebellum world. In addition to military and government installations, many power plants, civilian industrial complexes, seaports, and even certain strategic highway exchanges were targeted during the nuclear exchange to cripple American economic and industrial activity. Even if the nuclear winter had never occurred, the disruption to the livelihoods of billions of people would have led to the Starving Time and its great famine nonetheless.
The years following the War are typically remembered as ones of desperate, filthy scavenging, barely eking out an existence by plundering prewar ruins. Yet the Great War did not mean the end of all economic activity, nor the end of industry. Some industrial centers remained completely intact, and a small handful of cities never even lost power. Economic activity certainly plummeted, and without proper personnel, management, and most of all the supply chain, industry was crippled; but this didn’t prevent people from relocating and reorganizing what little industry remained, or from producing new value and trading it amongst themselves.
Though New York, Houston, Seattle, and Atlanta were gone, new cities emerged as the centers of American commerce and productivity. Corvallis, Oregon; Chico, California; Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Bozeman, Montana; Dodge City, Kansas; Springfield, Missouri; Green Bay, Wisconsin; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Columbia, Tennessee; Elizabeth City, North Carolina—these cities emerged as the new nuclei of American civilization.
Still, these industries are limited by the supply of raw materials, fuel to generate electricity and operate machinery, and industrial expertise. America today—or rather the hundreds of factions that comprise it—is much more autarkic than it was before the War, and factions have learned to become very resourceful. Where there is still oil and natural gas to extract, or ore to mine, or some other unique advantage like virgin forest preserves, you can count on the ruling powers tapping into it. Industrial know-how presents a less easily-surmountable obstacle. Many factories are dependent on industrial and chemical processes that were known to a relatively small group of engineers who are now few and far between, if any are still alive at all. Some chemical processes have been permanently lost until some future generation can re-discover it; others are arcane knowledge fiercely guarded by the few factions with robust enough chemical industries to possess them.
Trade Goods
When one lacks a certain good or material, or the expertise to properly exploit it, then the natural course of action is to trade with someone else who can afford to relinquish it. During the Starving Time, trade was often eschewed in favor of plunder and slavery, but less violent and more mutually beneficial means tend to triumph over time. Factions can and do trade with each other, either through private enterprise or faction-sponsored ventures.
What do they trade for? The most commonly-traded commodity in the wasteland is still food. More than 50% of the American population is employed in the agricultural sector, and much of the country still lacks basic food security, especially in the winter. Most factions are as self-reliant as they can manage on basic foodstuffs, but regions capable of growing cash crops rely on them as an economic staple. Grain, corn, vegetables, fruits, herbs, and spices all travel along intra-factional and interstate trade routes; citrus and other warm-weather fruits fetch especially high prices up north. Textile cash crops like cotton and flax are important as well, and cotton is once again an economic staple of the American South, albeit under different circumstances and without the social baggage of the colonial era.
Animals are another cornerstone of trade. While any gang can keep chickens and a handful of slaves to tend them, it takes an industry to raise herds of cattle, send them to slaughterhouses, process them into beef, and distribute it throughout the country in refrigerated trailers and iceboxes before the meat spoils. Some of the country’s largest cities, like Dodge City and Green Bay, got their start as meat-packing towns with the capacity to feed large numbers of refugees. Swine, poultry, sheep, goats, are common farm-raised animals, but some regions also farm bison, alligators, and even domestic cats. Timber and ores are also mainstays of inter-factional trade, as are consumer and industrial goods. These can be mass-produced on an industrial scale, but are more often assembled in cottage industries. These cottage industries can range from tiny single-family workshops to massive low-tech manufactories, similar to the trading factories of colonial America.
The most important trade good after food, however, is fuel and the materials needed to make fuel. Factions fortunate enough to be blessed with petroleum or natural gas reserves readily rely on it as the backbone of their economy, but coal is useful in a pinch. Steam cars are not an uncommon sight in certain parts of the country that are starving for petroleum but rich in coal, and natural gas cars are an even more prolific form of transportation. Some post-apocalyptic theorists have speculated that wood-based synthetic gas would be a mainstay of post-nuclear America, but things have transpired differently. Wood-gas requires advanced chemical knowledge and resources that only the most well-off factions can afford, and these factions tend to have access to oil or can easily import it from someone else who does. The only faction where wood-gas is prevalent is the State of Oregon, though the USA-Dodge City and USA-Bozeman have both flirted with the concept.
There are also trade goods of a more suspect variety. All manner of contraband passes through the borders of all factions in America, from simple vices like tobacco and alcohol to explicit cargo like slaves and weapons. The weapons trade is less prevalent between factions simply because most people are trying to hoard whatever arms they can get, but it’s not uncommon for a shipment of Aztlan Xolotl rifles or Appalachian Longrifles to go missing and wind up on the black market. As for the slave trade, a reversal has occurred over the years. During the immediate panic after the Great War, it was mostly southbound American boat people who were captured and enslaved by warlords and pirates to sell abroad. Nowadays, American factions like Aztlan and the State of Lincoln are the ones importing slaves from Latin America.
Drugs are another facet of illicit trade and sometimes transcend their status as contraband and enter the realm of respectable business. Some drugs are less prevalent in America simply due to the lack of chemical knowledge and resources to make them, and their less potent base forms are often bought and sold as medicinal goods. Mexican opium and Colombian coca are just as likely to be found in household medicine cabinets as gambling halls and other dens of vice. Some factions rely heavily on a state-controlled drug trade and carefully regulate it to turn a profit. Cannabis cultivation has grown so prevalent since the Starving Time that it’s more common than tobacco or alcohol in certain areas, and many plantations grow the plant for industrial purposes like hemp or soap-making, rather than recreational consumption. Cannabis is a sharply divisive subject between factions, which tend to either totally allow its cultivation and sale or heavily crack down upon it.
Trade Routes
For all this talk of trade within and between factions, one might wonder how goods are actually transported over long distances in such a divided country so bereft of surviving infrastructure. Most Americans have never left their home state since the end of the Starving Time, and some have never even ventured beyond the frontiers of their home faction. This is certainly the case for the significant portion of the population that is stuck in serfdom or outright slavery, and for much of the agricultural sector in general. Yet the continent still harbors a large population of transients, travellers, and traders who aren’t strictly bound to one locality.
Like medieval Europe, post-apocalyptic America has a surprisingly robust trade system, with many lucrative trade routes that span the entire continent. Most of these routes run along the major rivers of the country (with occasional overland detours to avoid the worst NEZs), but there are many entirely overland routes as well. Most overland routes roughly follow the major interstates and highways from before the war, but some new trails have been blazed as well, such as the cattle trails of the Great Plains, or the safe routes through the larger NEZs.
The means of transport include animal-drawn wagon caravans, semi-truck convoys, river barges, and even very limited air travel between certain wealthy factions that can afford to spare the fuel and maintain working airports. The USA-Elizabeth City has even delved into experiments with airships for their long range and low cost. The rail system was the most badly affected, as almost all of its important junctions were destroyed during the war, but there have been renewed efforts in recent years to rebuild them. Given the difficulty in building and maintaining railways and bridges, the few railroads in America are entirely confined to the borders of large factions that span entire states or multiple states.
The great risk of travel beyond one’s borders is that of being attacked and robbed by those who seek to gain your cargo by dishonest means, be they enemy factions or simple bandits. To ensure the security of their ventures, merchants frequently hire mercenaries to guard their caravans in return for a cut of the profit. Some factions sponsor their own merchant caravans and protect them with their own armies, while others sell their forces to the highest bidder. Other factions protect all kinds of trade within their own borders in order to foster their reputations as a safe place to do business; even in the heart of the desolate Badlands, one can still find these kinds of factions. Many known trade routes are dotted with forts, outposts, and armed patrols to protect merchants and deter bandits from attacking. The maritime equivalent is piracy, which remains a significant impediment to foreign trade. The rise of Gulf Coast piracy has prompted an arms race between coastal factions and pirate bands to upgrade their naval arsenals in order to gain an advantage.
International Trade
Although America is rich in natural resources, it still depends heavily on the outside world for many of its most desired goods. Although millions of Americans do the best they can with yaupon tea, coffee remains an indispensable source of caffeine. A vast fortune of wealth continuously flows out of the country in return of sugar, spices, tropical fruits, and other plant goods that cannot be easily grown in most of the United States. Many Americans still have a craving for soda pop, and foreign merchants are happy to oblige. There are even bootleg cola recipes that have added cocaine back into the formula.
The US also imports many other raw materials from abroad, including ores, precious metals, tropical timber, and fuel products. Finished goods, be they industrial machinery, chemicals, consumer products, weapons, vehicles, or even electronics, are also vital imports. The electronics industry is of special interest as most electronic products require rare earth metals to manufacture, and 90% of rare earth metals before the war were sourced from China. New deposits have been found and exploited since then, but the world of electronics remains underdeveloped and has yet to recover from its postwar zenith. Some factions are trying their hardest to recover the lost industry (Oregon even has regional dialup internet), while others remember the social and economic damage caused by the internet and have passed laws forbidding its use, should anyone ever try to reintroduce it. Either way, cheap consumer electronics remain a popular luxury good in affluent coastal cities, awash with CD players, DVDs, and old video game systems.
In exchange for these goods, America offers up its own bounty. Foodstuffs and textiles are America’s main contributions to the world. As much as the country has suffered over the past 30 years, it remains a worldwide breadbasket, and there are Brazilians and West Africans who depend on Missouri corn, Louisiana rice, Tennessee whiskey, Texas beef, and Maryland dairy to fill their stomachs. The America South has also reclaimed its status as a powerhouse of the world textile industry, and various factions throughout the region compete to export the most cotton bales to South America. America also still has its own share of timber and mineral wealth to export, and the industrially-developed factions send their share of finished goods overseas.
Currencies
But enough about what’s for sale! What do people actually exchange for goods and services? The answer is still money, and America has all different kinds of money, propped up by different factions to represent different ideas towards government and economics.
Prewar Currency
As the sole legal tender in the United States before the Great War, the US Federal Reserve Note was the default method of transaction following the nuclear conflagration. Some people were woefully optimistic about the future of the US Dollar; many others speculated that it would become completely worthless and fall out of circulation altogether. The reality falls somewhere in between.
The US Dollar had a very bad run of luck leading up to the war. Hyperinflation during the Great 21st Century Crisis inflated the US dollar to several hundred times its turn-of-the-millennium value by the eve of the Great War, and traditional coinage was finally abolished in favor of new denominations. The smallest currency in use before the War was the aluminum $1 coin, followed by the copper-zinc $5, the $20 “nickel,” the $50 “dime,” the $100 “quarter,” and the $500 banknote.
Despite the rapidly decreasing value of the US Dollar, it continued to hold some value after the bombs fell. It was a nigh-universally agreed-upon measure of value that was good just about anywhere, except in certain extreme factions that forbid its use (such as the Acadian People’s Republic or Northwest American Republic). Nonetheless, there are many problems that prevented the US Dollar from remaining the primary form of money in circulation; most of these have to do with their scarcity.
Most dollars in circulation were destroyed by the bombs themselves, as most money is in the pockets and vaults of people in the big cities. The mints and presses were also targeted, and the only surviving press was captured by salvagers in the Fort Worth Exclusion Zone and later acquired by the Government of National Salvation in Tyler, Texas. The GNS proudly touts their possession of the last US Dollar press as a sign of their legitimacy, and it is the only renewed source of genuine prewar-style banknotes. There are also numerous counterfeiters who print replica dollar bills. Some are foolish enough to print dates in the 2030s and 40s, but the wiser counterfeiters print 2020s dollars and put them under enough stress to seem reasonably worn from decades of use. The most talented counterfeiters are the Hobart Hoods in Hobart, Oklahoma, who print sheet after sheet of convincing replicas of Dodge City banknotes, GNS banknotes, and Okie Cards.
The other bills in circulation have a limited lifespan, as they wear out and fall apart within an average of 10-15 years of continuous use. Most bills have disintegrated since the Starving Time and those still in existence are kept as historical artifacts and mementos rather than real tender. The USA-State College pays its Congressmen with a symbolic $500 note every year they are in office, in addition to their regular salaries.
The exception to the derelict dollar’s falling out of circulation is the coinage, which hasn’t been outright destroyed yet like most banknotes. Although there are no surviving mints and many aluminum dollars are in poor shape, the higher denominations of American coinage are still in circulation throughout the country. There is no agreed-upon, universal value for these coins—a $5 “penny” means more in one faction than in another—but they are generally worth a lot more than they were 30 years ago, when they were generally worthless. There are also a handful of pre-currency reform coins, the actual pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters, which remain in circulation. These coins are almost never traded on their own, as they are too cumbersome and scarce to accumulate in sufficient quantities for high-value transactions. They do, however, make for a convenient “transaction enhancer” to supplement deals made with other currencies. In short, prewar coins are still used for small change.
Foreign Currencies
If the US Dollar was struggling before the Great War, then few other currencies could say they were doing any better. They all suffered the same problems as the US Dollar and then some, but a few have had a better run of luck after the War than the US Dollar did. These currencies tended to have relatively strong, intact governments backing them, or come from countries rich in natural resources that post-apocalyptic people needed. Many of them have found there way to American shores, where they are frequently employed as transaction enhancers or are pegged to local currencies.
Popular trading currencies on the West Coast are Hawaiian dollars (or “dalas,” in the Hawaiian language), New Zealand dollars, Australian (Tasmania) dollars, Chilean pesos, Japanese yen, and Papua New Guinean kina. Kina is closely tied with the Hawaiian dollar, as the country is closely linked with the fate of the “Pacific Continent” refugees from across the ocean. Although the central government in Port Moresby fell apart, the country was taken over by a consortium of mining companies and plantations who took on a disproportionate share of American and Australian boat people. In certain Pacific Northwest factions amenable to the Russians, Korsakov imperial rubles are a common sight.
On the East Coast, the two most common trading currencies beyond a reasonable doubt are São Paulo reals and Afrikaner guilders. West Africa CFA francs and Portuguese escudos and reals are less common, but by no means unheard of. Cuban pesos, Dutch guilders, and Eastern Caribbean dollars circulate along the Gulf Coast, and a few merchants from Europe even deal in pounds sterling, Seventh Republic francs, and derelict euros.
Foreign currencies are also prolific near both the northern and southern borders. Mexican pesos and their Aztlan derivatives are both extremely ubiquitous even hundreds of miles north of the US-Mexico border, and various Canadian currencies have made their way south into the United States.
Specie
For those who are skeptical of the value of the postwar dollar and its foreign equivalents, specie is one of the most promising alternatives. Specie is money struck from precious metals, usually gold or silver, and is popular for its near-universal recognition of worth. Many factions have attempted to bring back specie and enforce it as legal tender, with mixed results. Although gold and silver coins are certainly valuable, there is simply not enough of it to go around. Precious metals are, by nature, uncommon, and they were made even rarer by the Great War when the US gold reserves were destroyed and irradiated by cobalt-salted warheads.
As a result, gold is a rare luxury throughout the wasteland, and only two factions employ it as its primary form of currency. Attempts to mine more gold have not resulted in a significant increase of the total amount in circulation. Gold is still traded when available, but usually circulates among private owners who possess pre-existing gold coins, bullion, or jewelry. Many factions have tried to issue specie, but nearly all of them have either switched to specie-backed representative currency or gave up on the endeavor entirely. The factions which still use specie are as follows:
State of Jefferson (Redding, California): Mints tiny silver coins called Jefferson Silver Dollars.
Battleborn Army (Elko, Nevada): The only faction to use gold specie. Mints a very tiny amount of small gold coins, and allows citizens to privately mint their own gold coins with value based on weight.
George Washington Legion (Truth or Consequences, New Mexico): Issues a less-deflated copper-based currency. Value is derived from weight, and coin sizes can range from penny-sized coins to large “plate coins” weighing forty pounds.
Colorado Republic (Loveland, Colorado): Mints its own silver currency, the Colorado Silver Dollar.
American Empire (Bogalusa, Louisiana): Its predecessor, the Regenerated United States of America in Congress Assembled, minted specie of gold, silver, and copper. The KKK-centered faction in Bogalusa inherited this practice from the Regenerated Congress before it, but abandoned gold and copper in favor of a purely silver currency.
Tennessee Patriotic Congress (Jackson, Tennessee): Also a successor to the Regenerated Congress, and maintains its practice of minting silver and copper coins as well as very, very tiny gold dollars.
Armageddon Authority (Lumberton, North Carolina): These Millenarian militiamen like to confiscate all the gold and silver they can find and mint coins stamped with Biblical imagery and the letters “AA.” Their official position is that physical currency must be preserved among the Authority so that they can resist the Mark of the Beast once the Antichrist comes.
As one may observe, all of these factions are either right-wing states who employ specie for ideological reasons, or are mountainous factions who have sufficient access to gold or silver in order to mint precious metal currency.
Representative Money
When there aren’t enough precious metals to go around, the first natural conclusion is representative currency, in which paper money represents a theoretical store of physical value. Representative money is usually backed by precious metals, but some factions have gotten creative with what they base their money on. Some representative currencies can be redeemed for whatever it is they are representing, while some others cannot be exchanged for their store of value (either through outright denial, or a bureaucratic process that makes it virtually impossible to redeem). The factions which use representative money are as follows:
Republic of Hawaii (Kahului, Hawaii): Their Hawaiian dollar is backed by a reserve of foreign currencies including New Zealand dollars, Papua New Guinean kina, and Chilean pesos.
Provisional Government of California (Chico, California): Their “Granger Dollars” are backed by agricultural produce, including cannabis. They are redeemable once per year at harvest time, and new bills are printed annually.
Kingdom of God in America (Moab, Utah): Uses a dual-standard currency backed by gold and silver. These “Mormon dollars” are actually redeemable in the form of gold or silver bullion upon request.
Nuclear Republic (Nucla, Colorado): Uses the “Atomic dollar,” a non-redeemable dual-standard currency backed by uranium and vanadium, the two key exports of the regime.
Buffalo Republic (Buffalo, Wyoming): These libertarian militiamen are very proud of their return to the gold standard. They have strong principles about not printing more money than they can back up, but they have such a limited supply of gold available to them in the Badlands that many people in town just barter. Other rival US dollar currencies are illegal in Buffalo, although non-dollar currencies are allowed.
United States of America (Bozeman, Montana): The “Deacon Dollar” employs a unique dual-standard currency of platinum and palladium. Technically redeemable, but bureaucratically impossible for the average citizen.
Republic of North Dakota (Williston, North Dakota): Although technically a fiat currency, the North Dakota dollar is backed by the Republic’s petroleum reserves and is the only trusted currency that is valuable throughout the Badlands. The North Dakota dollar actually originated as literal Monopoly money collected and signed by the Republic’s president during the Starving Time. The currency succeeded because of the oil backing it, and today the Republic of North Dakota continues to print multicolored paper bills.
Heartland Social Republic (Nebraska City, Nebraska): The Heartland Dollar is backed by the collective value of all government property. This includes public land, buildings, grain stockpiles, weapons and military materiel, and everything else, down to the office supplies of the lowliest government employees. The Heartland Dollar isn’t redeemable, but is nonetheless a popular and trusted currency. The HSR also has other interesting monetary schemes, including a postal savings system.
Grand Shangri-La (Shangri-La, Oklahoma): Shangri-La “leadbacks” are backed by lead metal, the main mineral output of the region. Leadbacks can be redeemed in lead, and the government even mints lead coins, though the fear of heavy metal poisoning prevents their extensive use.
Midland Special Administrative Region (Midland, Texas): The USA-Midland used a petroleum-backed currency for the duration of the Ingersoll Presidency. Although Midland has since been conquered by Aztlan, the autonomous MSAR continues to use the oil-backed Midland dollars as a secondary currency. It isn’t commonly used outside of the MSAR, but can still occasionally be found throughout the United States of Aztlan, mostly in English-speaking settlements.
Kingdom of the Ozarks (Hot Springs, Arkansas): The Ozark pound is backed by silver. They adopted representative currency after conquering the Arkansas Salvation Alliance, a Regenerated Congress splinter faction that used silver specie.
Second American Republic (Bowling Green, Kentucky) has a dual-standard currency backed by gold and silver. Only Bravo Rank citizens or higher can legally possess gold or silver, and only elite Alpha Rank citizens can redeem paper currency for precious metals. Most of the Republic’s gold comes from irradiated Fort Knox gold retrieved and purified by lowly Lambda Rank laborers, who often die in the process.
State of Franklin (Columbia, Tennessee): This faction was literally founded by the Jack Daniel’s distillery and originally employed Jack Daniel’s whiskey as the main form of payment for its soldiers and employees. Nowadays Franklin can be described as a “distillery with a state,” though they are trying to reform into a legitimate, modern faction. They issue paper currency backed by and redeemable in bottles of black label whiskey: the popular “whiskeybacks.” Whiskeybacks are a widespread trading currency throughout the state and have diffused beyond the State of Franklin’s borders. Possession of whiskeybacks in the Second American Republic is punishable by six months’ penal servitude for lower Ranks, although higher-ranking citizens can pay a fine and forfeit their contraband to the state.
Knights of the White Camelia (Greenville, Alabama): Their currency is backed by reserves of cotton. This is not so much an economic decision as it is symbolic of their imposition of slavery on African-Americans. They are the only extant faction in America that has attempted to revive 19th Century racial chattel slavery, and has done so more on ideological grounds than for any economic reason.
United States of America (Elizabeth City, North Carolina): The Elizabeth City dollar is backed by foreign reserves of São Paulo reals and Afrikaner guilders.
New Netherland (Saratoga Springs, New York): The hipster warlord of New Netherland has a lot of weird ideas about how to run a government. The state currency is theoretically backed by Bitcoin, with a limited supply of paper money tied to physically-stored Bitcoin keys that could potentially be used if the internet were ever reinvented. In practice, the New Netherland dollar is a fiat currency. New Netherland also has a lot of other theoretical practices that are in no way actually realized, including UBI, direct democracy, walkable cities, and the metric system.
State of New Hampshire (Laconia, New Hampshire): The Libertarian Party which tends to dominate state elections passed a law allowing the state government to issue bills of credit known as the New Hampshire pound. These bills are backed by silver and government-owned land. They cannot be redeemed on request, but are issued with a specified date by which they must be paid off. Although the Republican-Democrats who swing into power from time to time are more freewheeling with their spending, the more dominant Libertarian Party is consistently frugal and has successfully avoided spending more money than it can afford to pay back. The New Hampshire pound is also used by the New Hampshire-occupied parts of Maine and the New Hampshire-affiliated Green Mountain Boys in northern Vermont.
Despite the advantages of representative currencies, they have their limitations. There is the obvious limitation of supply, but there is also the geographic limitations of being tied to a certain faction and government. Unless the currency is easily redeemable in some kind of universally-desirable commodity, representative money tends to make for a poor trading currency. If factions issue more money than they can support with their stockpile or if they simply suffer a crushing military defeat, it can dramatically affect the public’s trust in the currency and inflate its value.
Fiat Money
When even representative money is not available, fiat money—currency backed by nothing more than the people’s trust in it and the government that issues it—becomes the primary tender. Fiat money was the standard form of tender worldwide before the Great War, and the US Dollar was the king of currencies. Fiat money is only as valuable as the government says it is, or rather how much the markets are willing to trust the government, and isn’t limited by physical quantities of goods. Fiat currency was a necessity for the global economy before the Great War, but the postwar world is one of numerous small economies that are only loosely linked with each other through physically-limited trade routes. To put it bluntly, America lacks the conditions necessary for a single successful fiat currency.
Many factions have tried to print their own money and have failed miserably, often after military or political crises destroyed the public’s faith in the currency. Others have introduced surprisingly successful fiat currencies that have stood the test of time. Most, however, are of middling effectiveness and have limited range. Most USA claimant factions use fiat currencies, including the USA-Dodge City, USA-Mt. Pleasant, USA-Tupelo, and USA-State College. Military-based factions also commonly use fiat currencies, usually military scrip that gains wider use among the civilian population. Some large, organized factions have successfully introduced fiat currencies, such as the Republic of Texas, Evangelical American Republic, and Acadian People’s Republic (though the Acadian franc is backed more by the people’s fear of the government than their genuine trust in it). Other fiat currencies started out as local municipal scrip issued by prewar cities to promote local commerce, or were corporate scrip issued by companies to their employees. Promethean Energy scrip is common throughout Texas, Oklahoma, and the Badlands. Some other notable fiat currencies are as follows:
State of Oregon (Corvallis, Oregon): The Pacific Northwest has had a long history of local municipal currencies dating back to the 19th Century. The City of Corvallis started printing its own money after the Great War and the state government adopted it as the unofficial currency of the entire state. As a result, the Corvallis Exchange Notes have been renamed to the more universal-sounding Beaver Dollars.
Northwest American Republic (Coeur d’Alene, Idaho): The Northwest Mark is a fiat currency derived from prewar and early postwar-era bills of credit. During the Northwest War of Independence, the Northwest Volunteer Army frequently found itself unable to pay for its own equipment and reimbursed their suppliers (who often sold against their will) with bills of credit promising to pay them in real money once the war was over. Now the war is more or less over, and the NAR is starting to make good on its promises. Still, the Mark is backed by nothing more than the people’s confidence in the government through its repeated military successes.
Oklahoma Emergency Military Government (Shawnee, Oklahoma): After running out of money to pay his troops in the coldest days of the Starving Time, Oklahoma Adjutant-General Freiherr devised a creative solution to stave off mutiny. He collected hundreds of packs of playing cards, marked denominations on them, and signed his name on them before passing them out to his men as provisional currency. The scheme worked against all odds, and Okie Cards remain one of the most successful fiat currencies of the post-nuclear age. They have widely disseminated throughout the state into other Oklahoma factions where they are used as a transaction-enhancer alongside other secondary currencies like prewar US coins.
Eufaula Rifle Brigade (Eufaula, Oklahoma): Inspired by the success of the OEMG’s Okie Cards, the Eufaula Rifle Brigade started printing denominations on flattened bottle caps. The system has not worked at all and they are stuck wondering why. Still, they try very hard to force locals to use the cap currency and suppress the use of rival forms of exchange.
Provisional All-American Government (St. Cloud, Minnesota): Stuck in a similar predicament as Oklahoma’s Freiherr, General Carlton of the Minnesota National Guard faced the threat of mutiny when he ran out of money to pay his troops during the coldest months of the nuclear winter. Rather than using playing cards, Carlton cut wafer-thin slices of pine and spruce wood and stamped denominations on them, along with the red bull insignia of the 34th Infantry Division. These wooden card dollars continue to circulate and are a popular hallmark of the militaristic PAAG culture.
New Vinland (Grand Marais, Minnesota): This neo-pagan faction uses the krone, a fiat currency backed “by the blessing of the gods.” These blessings are bestowed through rites performed by Sigurd Loken, the High Priest of New Vinland and the leader of its Great Heathen Army.
League of Central Florida (Leesburg, Florida): These central Florida militiamen have a local fiat currency derived from Disney dollars, recovered from the Walt Disney World amusement park after Orlando was destroyed in the Great War. Nowadays they print their own money and blend local militia imagery with copyrighted Disney material.
Confederate States of America (Rome, Georgia): This CSA revivalist faction uses accurate replicas of original 19th Century Confederate money.
State of Erie (Mayville, New York): This small democratic faction has a unique form of local money that features a map of the country on the back of each banknote. Spenders are encouraged to draw a dot representing their location on the map each time they spend or receive a note, in order to showcase how the money flows throughout the community.
Currency Alternatives
Ideological extremists throughout America saw the postwar anarchy as a clean slate and an opportunity to experiment with unorthodox social and economic ideas. For far-right factions, this typically manifested in a return to “hard money” backed by gold and silver. For far-left factions, this was their best chance to implement unproved methods of transaction and shake off the specter of capitalism. The result is a variety of bizarre attempts to exchange value without establishing a capitalistic system. A few unique cases have no ideological bent to their experimenting whatever, but simply chose to agree upon something entirely different as their common unit of value.
American Socialist Federative Republic (Green Bay, Wisconsin): America’s largest socialist state operates off of a planned economy (largely dictated by the needs of the military), where the government controls prices for all goods. Because there is no free market, the “People’s Dollar” of the ASFR doesn’t function like a traditional currency, but more like corporate scrip in a company town. Goods are limited and often in short supply, and prices have no direct connection with manufacturing costs. To make matters more confusing, most residents of the ASFR possess older currencies, such as PAAG wood dollars or USA-Green Bay fiat money, all of which is illegal to own in the socialist republic. ASFR residents can, however, exchange their non-legal tender for People’s Dollars by turning it in to the foreign trade office at a rate determined by the government.
Social Democratic State of Lincoln (Bloomington, Illinois): The socialists of Illinois utilize a system of labor vouchers instead of money. Labor vouchers are meant to circumvent the existence of capital altogether and prevent people from using money to make money. Labor vouchers are earned through performing work and can be redeemed for “means of production.” They are destroyed upon use and do not transfer over to the other party of the transaction. They can only be re-earned through more labor. The SDSL’s use of labor vouchers is especially confusing because the Social Progressive Republic of America, which they recognize, instead uses a freigeld system and does not endorse Lincoln’s labor vouchers.
Social Progressive Republic of America (Bloomington, Illinois): The technocratic socialists of southern Indiana use a similar system to labor vouchers, meant to prevent capital from accumulating in the hands of a few people, who use their money to keep making more money. Instead of labor vouchers which are destroyed upon use, however, they use a system of “freigeld,” or “free money” (not to be confused with Universal Basic Income, or other systems in which money is handed out for free). With the freigeld system, every banknote has a limited lifespan that quickly expires after a few days. The date of expiration can be extended by purchasing government-issued stamps that renew the bill’s lifespan, until enough stamps are purchased that it would negate the bill’s original value entirely. The default lifespan of an Indiana Free Note is two weeks, and it can be extended by an additional two days per stamp with up to seven stamps per note, giving each bill a maximum lifespan of 28 days, or four weeks. The purpose of this system (in addition to raising funds for the government through the sale of stamps) is to force money to stay in circulation and immediately re-enter the economy to prevent people from hoarding it, stealing it, or generating money through interest. There is considerable debate within the SPRA and SPSL as to whether or not the labor voucher system or the freigeld system is superior.
Menominee River Defensive Zone (Iron Mountain, Michigan): This remote iron-mining region of Upper Michigan utilizes one of the most unique forms of currency in the world: knife money. Inspired by Bronze Age tool-based currencies from ancient China, Europe, and Mesoamerica, this alliance of survivalist militias agreed upon a system of steel coins that can double as useful implements. The coins consist of approved shapes of knives, axes, and spades produced at the Zone’s official mint in Iron Mountain, and their value is based on certain classes of weight.
New York Progressive People’s Front (Ithaca, New York): Ithaca was historically home to one of America’s more successful alternative currencies, the Ithaca HOURs. The HOUR has its roots in anarchist time-based currencies, such as the Cincinnati Time Store of the 1820s. Time-based currencies are similar to the labor voucher and freigeld systems, but more closely resemble traditional currencies and can remain in indefinite circulation. Each Ithaca HOUR was meant to pay for one hour of basic manual labor, and was valued at a base price of $10.00 upon its introduction in 1991. Professional labor or work of a more demanding nature allowed for more HOURs per hour, but the rate was often reduced for the sake of equity. The Ithaca HOUR gained traction throughout the city until its decline in the age of digital commerce, but the left-wing NYPPF that took over the city during the Starving Time reimplemented the time-based currency. Now called the People’s Hour, it continues to support the faction’s economy.
Barter
When all else fails, people fall back on the most fundamental mode of commerce known to man: barter. No one currency has universal recognition throughout the country, and many currencies are weak even within the factions that issue them, prewar currency is too rare, and gold specie even rarer, but will always remain certain goods that are desirable almost everywhere people live.
Food is the most obvious and most universal means of barter, and is perhaps the single most common medium of exchange in the country. As half the US population works in the agricultural sector, it should be no surprise that payment in kind is the most common kind of payment. Still, food has its obvious problems which necessitated the invention of currency in the first place. Food spoils and goes bad, is difficult to store and transport (there’s a reason the ice trade was revived following the Great War), and people in food-insecure regions like NEZs or the Badlands are loth to part with it.
Clothing and textiles are another common method of barter. Cotton is ubiquitous throughout the South, furs and pelts are extremely common up north, and the wool trade is prevalent on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. The Constitutional Protection Authority in Bemidji, Minnesota uses beaver pelts as a form of pseudo-currency not directly tied with the actual commercial value of a beaver pelt, in order to represent the price of various other goods, especially when trading with Indians and Canadians.
Fuel is naturally economically vital, but fans of the “road warrior” archetype may be disappointed to learn that the days of insane raider gangs killing each other over nearly-empty jerry cans are long since past. Gasoline was an essential part of the barter economy in the early days of the post-apocalypse, but nowadays fuel is mostly handled by large corporations or faction-controlled economies. A large percentage of the American economy revolves around energy, but it’s mostly in the hands of Promethean Energy chapters and large factions sitting on the country’s oil reserves. Like many aspects of hard-scrabble wasteland life, the old ways stubbornly persist in the desolate, lonely Badlands, where raider gangs still ride free to claim their wealth in slaves and gas.
Ammunition is a mainstay of post-apocalyptic trade, and is one of the main forms of barter. There are downsides, as large stockpiles of ammunition are prone to seizure by authorities who would prefer to use it for themselves. This prevents a serious obstacle in factions that restrict the use of firearms by the people, such as certain left-wing states or despotic warlords. Additionally, not all ammunition is universally desirable, as not all guns fire the same ammunition. There are certain especially prolific rounds that have become staples of American commerce, however. 9mm, .223 Remington and 5.56 NATO, .22LR, 12-gauge shotgun shells, .308 Winchester and 7.62 NATO, .45 ACP, .40 S&W, .38 Special, and even .50 BMG are among the most popular types of ammunition in American marketplaces. Weapons themselves are less commonly traded in barter interactions.
Cannabis, tobacco, and narcotics are another class of staple commodity. Cigarettes are near-universally desirable and can fetch good prices in places with climates unsuitable for growing tobacco. They are also easy to transport and don’t spoil like food does. Cannabis is less-commonly tolerated and is outright banned in certain factions, but grows faster and is easier to cultivate and prepare than tobacco, making it a very cost-effective option. Narcotics are less commonly-traded but are still big along the Gulf Coast and in parts of California. All of these substances are vulnerable to seizure by state authorities, either from moralistic regimes who restrict their use or opportunistic warlords who want to be the ones to profit off the drug trade.
Of any commodity that can be found in the wasteland, coffee might be the most valuable, as almost everybody wants it and there’s only so much of it to go around. Coffee is up there with fuel as a good that was vital for barter during the Starving Time and is now mostly in the hands of large trading companies and mercantile factions. Still, for those who have coffee grounds and are willing to part with them, it’s good for almost anything, anywhere, at any time.
The most versatile and economical king of barter has to be, by a long shot, alcohol. It may be a challenge to store and transport like food, but it doesn’t spoil like food does and can be stored for many years. It has recreational, medicinal, and even liturgical uses, and is desirable by almost everyone, everywhere. Only a small handful of puritanical religious factions forbid its sale (Mormon factions in Utah, the Shia Muslims in Michigan, the Evangelical American Republic with exceptions for sacramental and medicinal purposes), and all the others are happy to promote its trade so they can make money off of excises and licenses. It’s easy to cobble together a still and make some alcohol from yourself, so any farmer can get in on the money. As most of the US population is farmers, it’s many people’s best chance to make a living beyond what their warlord masters are willing to pay them. Alcohol is the closest thing America has to a universal currency. It serves as the de facto currency in unstable regions without dominant factions, such as the Badlands, Florida, or the Midwest. Even in factions with established currencies, alcohol still serves as an essential means of transaction.
Index
Click here to read the master post of the series, with links at the bottom of the page to all other Fallen Continent entries.
It would be more realistic if coal abundant areas used EVs. Its more effective to use coal to produce electricity and power prewar EVs, rather than invent a brand new type of car that wouldn’t be fast or effective.
"even domestic cats" must be Haitians