But doctors and medical professionals are out there in the general population, and are random events that can coincide with your emergency. It has happened to me on more than one occasion - the timely appearance of a doctor or nurse on the scene of an emergency. On at least one of those occasions, the physician just turned to our team and said, "go ahead, your treatment looks fine, you know more about this than I do."

The most outstanding example I can recall was treatment of a victim of high altitude cerebral edema on Denali. The victim was able to descend to 14,000, Advanced Base Camp, was in much better shape, and was examined by our team. Also in camp was Dr. James Wilkerson, who wrote several books on the subject (Medicine for Mountaineering). He came over, as word spread about the incident through camp, and monitored our performance. Afterwards, we had a very insightful and educational critique and evaluation, which is one of the highlights of my climbing career. The event messed up our attempt of the summit, but is was easily a fair trade.

Just got to add. This one wins the all time championship for thread drift - physicians and ballistics of .22 rounds! I wouldn't trade it for anything..

We had a good thread on this not that long ago that would be a good read.

In situations that are not yet TEOTWAWKI, the concept of a "time bank" apparently is catching on in Greece as many people just don't have the Euros to pay for a lot of things. In a time bank, you trade time/services, like an hour of babysitting for an hour of piano lessons. So you don't necessarily need specialized skills like a doctor or mechanic to barter your services.

Personally, I don't think barter would ever be the main means of exchange, or not for long. It's just too unwieldy for frequent day-to-day needs and if trading a lot of consumables, the supply of them are going to be used up fairly rapidly.

And with large or expensive items, it's going to be hard to weigh relative value. People will get ripped off a lot with big items, probably because one side doesn't have a choice and are desperate.

If things really got that bad, I think some sort of alternative currency or scrip system would come about, or perhaps certain items, like cigarettes, would essentially become money. You wouldn't trade cigarettes so you could smoke, you'd hold onto them and trade them for other things.

Unfortunately, I think it's hard to predict what items might become some new trading medium. Bar soap? Sewing needles? If cigarettes, maybe only a particular brand will be acceptable as money and anything else will only be good for smoking. I was reading about a recent example of cigarettes as money a while back, but I forget the details or where I read it (did I read it on ETS?). Only one particular brand was acceptable, though, like Merit or something like that. If you had a closet full of Camels, you were out of luck. You could still trade, of course, but you'd need to spend more effort to negotiate a trade.

Here are some bigger options for people or companies that have the means:

-water purifying service
-power supplier
-garbage hauling service
-ISP (Internet Service Provider)
-information technology service
-cell phone network service

Hey, it's not like our modern technology is all going to vanish suddenly.

If that happened, that would come much later rather than sooner. Everybody in the system would have to agree the alternative currency has value, or everybody would have to believe they would get their skull knocked in if they don't honor the currency. If just a few influential people didn't honor the alternative currency, then the whole system would collapse because those few people would cause a ripple effect. The U.S. Dollar works because substantially everybody believes Federal Reserve Notes have value. I'm sure even Ron Paul believes it's possible to walk into almost any store and buy something with cash in his wallet.

Bartering is clumsier and less precise, but several orders of magnitude simpler.

Agreed, and I'm part of the problem! But even a mediocre doc SHOULD have enough knowledge to treat most basic things that are above a paramedic level. It'll also be harder to do damage to someone as meds run out ...

I've got nothing to add re: 5.56 ballistics ... lol.

Where there is no doctor and where there is no dentist are good also.

Thanks Ponder. SD

Sorry Mdiana. I lumped in the emts without the intended qualifier. My bad.

I didn't mean to disparage anyone on the forum. I suppose I was just reacting to my personal experience. I am chronically ill, and I live in a small town. I had to travel almost halfway across the country to find a doctor who could treat me. I'm sure there are many excellent doctors, medics, and nurses out there, and on this forum. It just may take a bit of work finding them.