Post Apocalyptic Gold

What sort of items would be most sought-after in a post-disaster world, really? Food could become extremely important, possibly gas if there were generators that needed running. Soap, clothes, items more easily obtained by looting stores and fighting for them at least until making them is again possible. Books? Maybe, depending on who is alive. More likely later on, once things are at least partially rebuilt, when people can worry about education and pleasure and such instead of just immediate survival. Unless there was a book on survival, how to build things or what plants to eat or natural ways to treat various illnesses. Guns, possibly, if conditions are such that you and your family and your belongings need defending. Lucifer's Hammer has a bartering system involving high demand for alcohol and cigarettes - possibly those and other niceties that people can't get any other way.

In Norway, however, seeds from today's crop plants will become the new gold for anyone who reaches the agricultural age again. They're building a vault in the far northern part of the country in order to freeze seeds which could then last for thousands of years, ready to retrieve in case of any disaster. Unlike current seed banks, this one will be global and because of the specific area it's being created in, more likely to survive a major disaster and still be of use after. Of course, the real winners will be whoever is able to become sea-faring quickest and find the island, as the actual location is quite a ways off the mainland.

I think I'll keep a map and a book on boat-building near at hand from now on.