Although I generally roll my eyes when someone asks about bartering a la Mad Max and "Bartertown", I don't consider the general topic of barter to necessarily involve a fantasy scenario like that.

Tarzan, I think you've pointed out the reality that bartering can certainly co-exist with the normal economy as a shadow economy, so we don't have to have some apocalyptic meltdown all of fiat currencies or nuclear war or something similarly spectacular to utilize bartering.

From what I've read, barter of services has been increasing during the economic downturn, when even skilled folks are out of work or business is very slow. Of course, the IRS officially requires their cut of the action. Maybe building up our skillset may actually be a more practical and likely to be used form of barter?

I think that currency is just too useful for us to ever to truly reject it in favor of barter. I'm sure that we would quickly re-establish some sort of currency-based economy if the regular economy imploded, even if it meant going back to using greenbacks as an easily recognized, hard to counterfeit medium of exchange, of course, with each denomination having a new value in the new economy.