Chapter 277: People’s Innovation
This seemed unfair since the meat was obtained from killing the fish in the flood water. However, how many people could keep their lives when they went to hunt was evident.
People lost their lives just to kill one fish. So, the meat that was exchanged with the lives of others could not be considered to have been obtained easily.
The barter of exchanging supplies had started in one building where a mother of two children saw her neighbor coming back with a large piece of meat and asked to exchange some with noodles or rice so that she could cook some soup for her children.
The neighbor had a good impression of her, so he agreed. He gave her a kilo of fish fillet and a small part of the fish head in exchange for two kilos of rice.
That night, the two households had a sumptuous meal they had not had in a long time. They had soup to drink and warm up their bodies, they had rice to fill their stomachs, and there was meat to replenish their energy and build back their lost body mass.
This gave them an idea. If they went to scavenge and found something they didn’t need but was useful and someone else needed the same thing and had something they could use, then they could exchange said things and everyone is happy and surviving.
Thus, the trend spread in the building where the two neighbors lived, and soon it had spread to others as they shared their new found wisdom with the people they met when outside scavenging in the rain.
In just a short while, the entire city had gone back to the ancient era where money was not available and people used barter trade to do business. However, this trend has saved many people from starvation and malnutrition.
Now, what people lacked most were vegetables. Even those who could cook some vegetables were those who had managed to stock up more of the dried ones or those lucky enough to come across some abandoned house or pantry in an office building with packets of dried vegetables.
Unfortunately, apart from some tomatoes and mushrooms, there weren’t many options when it came to this. Fortunately, this was better than nothing. However, the majority of humans at the moment lacked vegetables, but no one was complaining.
Compared to starving because you had nothing to eat or simply eating plain rice every meal because that was the only thing you had in the house or the only thing you could get when you went out to scavenge, it was heaven having soup and meat.
Because many people had learnt the hard way that saving food and stocking up more could literally save their lives, they didn’t dare to waste the opportunity they had.
There was no electricity, so they could not use electric cookers and gas had already been cut a long time ago. The only option for cooking now had become the LPG cylinders. This was another form of business that had sprouted up.