When most people think about bartering, they limit themselves to thinking about what goods they can give away. That’s fine as far as it goes; but there is an inherent risk in bartering goods in a crisis situation. That is that others might get the idea that you have something they need and decide to try to steal it from you.

On the other hand, you can barter skills just as well as you can barter goods. While bartering goods may invite attack and cost you supplies in the long run, bartering your skills may make you valuable enough to the community that nobody would think of attacking you. Instead, they will want to protect you so that they can continually benefit from your skills.

Of course, being able to barter skills requires having skills that people will need during the crisis. What skills might those be?