Dinner convo about life without global banking system

[whymadam]

AIBU to think we could be sleepwalking into financial crisis?
Last night, over dinner with the ILs, we were talking about whether we should stock up gradually in case of climate disaster, some kind of infrastructure collapse, whatever. They are organised hoarders, so have a bit of a headstart! The convo moved on to what if the global banking system was hacked, and nobody could access money, for an indefinite period. Given that money is basically data, how would that work out? Should we stock up with cash, alongside our tinned tuna? Gold coins 💰? LOL. Would cash work where the banking system ceased to exist? Or should we all be growing veggies, raising chickens and harvesting rainwater? Im aware plenty of people in the 'developed world' exist like this, but how would 'the West' survive in a world without money? What would the fallout be like?

I think where I struggle with prepping slightly is that it does assume that social structures are somewhat maintained, which personally I think is doubtful.

If I'm ever in a "breakdown of society" situation I really hope it's something like a virus that wipes out a lot of people immediately so reduces competition for resources and gives time for a re-set, rather than something like a really major cyber hack that destroys all normal systems and processes and supply chains but leaves everyone alive and fighting over the remaining food as that would be really bad.

Wow - hadn't thought of a eg. Virus situation. Interesting angle.

FGs utterly insane post lol

Agree, its very the world is burning outside my window but I am browsing my well stocked pantry for a lovely dinner. Reality will likely be very different.

It's just a 'what if' 🤔

This is true, we reckoned. Also, while ILs have vast veg garden, fruit trees and large larder (in a barn), their site in the countryside is completely open. So, they'd be self sufficient only until the looters descended (and i hope they love cabbage).

The internet is always divided by posts like this, with some viewing it as an extension of the zombie apocalypse movies and shows like The Walking Dead where any compassion is a bad thing (mostly male). The other side has a version where we all work together to create communes for growing food and care/education duties (mostly female). In reality I don't think there will be time to set up anything long term as the short sighted men will blow us all to smithereens to "win".

Yeah you'd basically have to form a tribe really quickly and organise yourselves to defend your stuff and go raid other people's. It would be actually really awful and you'd probably end up doing some bad things to survive, and people who couldn't add anything to the tribe would be on their own.

Honestly I think the men are likely right on that (minus the zombies) because it's not realistic to expect people to form communes and survive like that. How do you survive until the first harvest, for a start? Also, not enough people who actually know how to farm, wouldn't have any modern equipment or the fertilisers to farm at the intensity required. You'd still need to guard your farm against interlopers. If the population was reduced enough by whatever event caused this breakdown in society then maybe it could work - like say the population was reduced by 90% instantly then the survivors probably could scavenge shelf stable food until a harvest and there would be enough good land to survive without fighting. But if population not reduced, then zero chance of Amish fantasies being realised.

That’s why I’d rather go in the “blast”!

Women are quite capable of harvesting - see the world wars when we survived and thrived. We care and nurture and build. Most 40+ women cook and keep plants alive at a minimum. A lot of men can do neither.
Trigger happy men are the weak link because killing=winning with no long term thought processing going on as to consequences.

Right but at the start of WW2 Britain imported 70% of its food- this only fell to around 35% as a result of the blockades, which is roughly what it is now. So with a huge national state coordinated effort on production and rationing, 35% imports and a massively lower population, they managed to scrape together enough food. Oh and 5% of the population worked in agriculture so knew how to grow food (rather than keep an orchid alive) so there was a knowledge base.

Now, only 1% of the population works in agriculture (so level of knowledge at population level is v low and knowledge of small scale mixed farming is even lower), the amount of cultivatable land is less than required to sustain a population using small scale farming without imports (which wouldn't be happening anymore if there was a total societal collapse), most of the population lives in cities and there would be no coordination of production so everyone would just be subsistence or v small scale farming. People in cities would have to go out to the country and try to grab some land to farm. It would be absolute chaos.

We would all starve, no matter how nurturing the people doing the harvesting are.

This feels overblown to me - banks and paper money have been around for centuries. The Bank of England was set up in 1694, fgs. There would still be records, cash and a banking system, but it would all be harder to use, access and circulate. I don't suppose anyone wants to return to the days where people had to go to the bank in their spare time to withdraw enough cash for the week/work wages over the counter from a bank clerk but it was a workable system even in a time of pen and paper, before computers.

In the name of innovation we seem to be sleep walking into handing control of everything into fewer and fewer hands.

But that sort of banking system wouldn’t work for the modern economy so you’d still have total economic collapse- to compare the BoE in 1694 to the banking system now is kind of silly. The records are computerised so if the computers didn’t work then there is no record. Your money effectively ceases to exist. You’d be starting at ground zero. It’s kind of like the adage of “I don’t know what WW3 will be fought with but WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones”- you can’t just recreate civilisation if it fails even though the collective knowledge is theoretically there to recreate it.

Modern agriculture is 1% because of high-tech efficiency, automation, and massive machinery, not because humans forgot how to grow crops. The actual scientific, botanical, and agricultural knowledge available today is exponentially higher than in the 1940s. All easily accessible on a phone.

Women make up a massive percentage of global small-holder farmers and community gardening initiatives today; "keeping an orchid alive" is a false equivalence.

Currently, vast amounts of UK land are used for biofuels, livestock feed, or left fallow for subsidies. If cash systems went down, farming would instantly pivot to high-yield, human-consumable crops (like potatoes, grains, and root vegetables) which drastically increases the calories produced per acre. In a crisis we would ration and not need the highly calorific diets that we have today.

If cash systems went down today, survival wouldn't depend on physical muscle or a 1940s plow; it would depend on community organization, resource rationing, and adaptability—areas where women historically and sociologically excel.

The only way it wouldn't work is if a man with a gun and no braincells turned up, which is sadly the more likely outcome.

These are excellent points.

I agree, we should focus less on the potential for trading and more on the potential for violence.

So I’d still be stocking up on the ammunition

When it comes to ammunition, perhaps you also need to think laterally e.g. bolts and ball bearings for an improvised crossbow or catapult (see TikTok for details)

Maybe time for a rewatch of Mad Max to get into the mood too.