The median weekly salary in 1985 was $343. That means it would take the average person twenty-two years to accumulate a $400,000 gold stash - assuming he spent his money on nothing except gold. I find that hard to believe.
Holding him hostage and beating the hiding place out of him was pretty much what I was going with. Although I was thinking more towards torture than a general beating. You think there aren’t people who would kidnap somebody and start cutting off their fingers for that amount of money?
The guy was probably saved by the fact that his story was so unbelievable. If he had claimed he had five pounds of gold somebody might have thought it was true and tried to steal it.
I wouldn’t be too sure; depends on whether the disposable lighters are leak resistant or not. Matches can degrade with exposure even to humid air, especially cheap paper matches. I keep mine in old prescription bottles. Even then you’re probably going to get many more lights for the same volume or weight with propane lighters- you can even use the sparks after the fuel is gone.
Excellent idea.
Unroasted coffee beans store for long periods of time, it’s the roast that becomes use it or lose it.
Making reliable, good quality black powder was a refined art that was carried out at the limits of what passed for industrial production at the time. It’s NOT as easy as some make it sound. As for guncotton, the problem is making sure it’s been properly stabilized. Even tiny residual traces of the acids used to make it can lead to spontaneous combustion. It didn’t become practical until the development of cordite and other such compounds that used nitrocellulose as an ingredient.
Very bad scenario’s are inherently uncertain. Therefore talking about the usefulness of this or that as binary ‘yes/no’ is inherently unsuitable.
IME some pro-gold people are too certain gold would be useful in very bad scenario’s, but anti-gold people are often overly sure it would not be.
Especially considering how there are lots of really crappy economic situations which aren’t apocalypses. Not that even those are necessarily likely. If you live in places with a history of relative economic/political stability it’s reasonable to induce that that’s likely to continue, but still not gteed.
Anyway I’ve always found arguments that put forth a specific scenario where your gold doesn’t help you in a very bad economic situation as not very good arguments against holding any gold. A realistic person doesn’t assume the gold must help them, but that there’s a good chance it could (contingent on an albeit unlikely big downside situation in the first place).
‘They’d just steal it from you’ is particularly unconvincing. How are ‘they’ going to know you have it? Or alternatively, how’s it going to help to not have it if they think you do have it and start torturing you to give up its location? Shouting (under your name or some venue where people can track you down) about all your stashed gold would be stupid. Having the gold wouldn’t necessarily be.
Of course, but then there’s the non-binary question of what to do after we’ve determined that gold is not, in fact, a sure thing. It leads us to ponder what to do, with our money pre-collapse, and whether gold is such s good bet in less troubling times. Gold beneath the floorboards may be better than cash dollars under the mattress, but is it better than a stock index fund as a long-term investment?
There are various answers to the OP as there are different flavors of apocalypse. But broadly, I disagree with the OP and many of the posters here. I think gold will still have high value.
I think many here are imagining scenarios where there basically are no communities other than people looking after their own families, and then two randoms meet and need to decide if the shiny stuff is worth anything.
But in reality, humans always have much bigger communities than this. And there are always those who, through luck, skill or ruthlessness, own a disproportionate slice of the resources. They don’t have a hunting rifle: they have a militia with hunting rifles protecting them.
It’s these people who look for ways to store their accumulated wealth, as well as flaunt it (in the modern world, a big gold chain is vulgar, but in more chaotic times showing that you 1) have wealth 2) can openly flaunt it without fear of being attacked, is a big deal).
Then, joe ordinaries, the poor saps trying to make their way in the hellscape, value gold only because they know they can sell it.
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IRL torture works perfectly well, in those cases where the victim in fact has the answer, and the answer is immediately, or at least quickly, verifiable. The location of gold, known to the victim and nearby, would qualify most excellently.
The real answer is ‘it depends’, but I said ‘no’ because, honestly, if there is a complete collapse of civilization, it will almost certainly be survival goods or services that will be in demand, not gold. Gold is something that would emerge, perhaps, once civilization starts to re-emerge, not something you would or could use in a Mad Max post apocalypse type scenario. Food, water, medicine, weapons, shelter, perhaps access to energy resources…THOSE are going to be the real keys to survival. If you have a pocket full of gold and nothing else in a Mad Max world, you are screwed, even if someone does value that. But why would they, frankly, if survival is on the line?
Also, it is highly malleable, has a unique color among metals, and, unlike almost every other metal, it stays shiny. That is why it was prized to begin with. It has value for ornamentation, so the wealthy in ancient societies were willing to exchange goods and or properties for it.
Huh. I keep boxes of wooden kitchen matches lying around for a decade or more. I just leave them in the paper box they came in, in the kitchen. And I’ve used cheap paper matches that were sitting in a damp cabin for a couple of months with no trouble, too. Yeah, if they actually get wet they degrade. But I think some boxes of matches in a plastic bag would be useful for a long time.
I tried to make gunpowder as a kid, with the help of a good chemistry set and my father. We made something that burned, but it didn’t really go “bang” the way you’d want gunpowder to do so.
Your stash of gold does you no good after an apocalypse if you don’t use it. And every time you trade a piece of gold for some good or service, that’s another person who knows you have some gold. Word will get around.
Otherwise known as “the most abundant organic polymer on Earth”
If you can get sulphur for your gunpowder, you can get sulphuric acid (and if you use FeS as your precursor, it’s way more common worldwide than elemental sulphur).
Similarly, if you can get saltpetre, you can get nitric acid.
But see my previous post about stockpiling acids. It wasn’t for cleaning pools Although batteries will need H[sub]2[/sub]SO[sub]4[/sub] as well.
No, the belief that torture doesn’t work is the fantasy. Torture may be immoral but it works just fine.
You have a stash of gold hidden somewhere. Me and my band of outlaws have captured you and want your gold. So we start cutting off your fingers. One of four things happens:
You tell us where your gold is. We go take the gold while some of my outlaws keep you prisoner. And after we have the gold in hand, we kill you. Because we’re assholes.
You lie about where the gold is. We go take the gold while some of my outlaws keep you prisoner. We don’t find the gold so we come back and cut off some more fingers. We keep doing this until you either tell us the correct location (see #1) or die (see #4).
You don’t have any gold. You try to make up a location to fool us. We go take the gold while some of my outlaws keep you prisoner. We don’t find the gold so we come back and cut off some more fingers. We keep doing this until you die (see #4).
You are one badass dude. You refuse to tell us anything while we cut off all your fingers. And when we cut off other parts of you after we run out of fingers. Eventually you die. We wasted several hours torturing you for nothing. You got tortured to death. You win?
For situations where the US (and therefore global) economic system collapses and things like food, guns, etc. are the key things needed to survive and people have to barter to survive there will be a “thinning of the herd” on a grand scale.
A very high percentage of people will be concerned about where their next meal will come from. Only a small percentage of people will be looking for bling for bling’s sake. And their needs will account for only a small percentage of gold.
The large amount of gold used now on jewelry reflects the current situation. Once the food gets scarce, it’s a whole 'nother ball game.
On the plus side of prepping with gold instead of sulphuric acid, penicillin and 12 gauge shotgun shells is that if the apocalypse (sadly) doesn’t happen, and you’re having trouble making ends meet, you can sell the gold for actual money, and it won’t have gone bad, or be sellable for 5 cents on the dollar.
Sorry for perpetuating the OP derailment, BUUUT… The mention upthread referring to few people being capable of manufacturing gunpowder really piqued my interest because I thought I was one of those few. Boy, was I wrong. In my haste, my brain thought blackpowder even though my eyes saw gunpowder. To be clear: Blackpowder is in my wheelhouse, smokeless modern gunpowder is not.
Snips mine.
I dabbled in guncotton (nitrocellulose) when I was young & (more) dumb. It is very sensitive, and tends to rapidly become unstable. One doesn’t want to store nitro tossed on a shelf long term, or any term for that matter. Besides, nitro in its crude form makes a terrible propellant for firearms. Blackpowder suffers none of these drawbacks.
Unsure what shorthand you refer to, but I’ve been talking about blackpowder.
Thank you for the clarification between a child’s mixture of 75/15/10 that merely fizzes when ignited, and commercial grade blackpowder.
I think the best way to approach prepping is with the “last man on Earth” attitude. What would you need to survive if you were the last person in the world? Make a list of all the things you’d want or need. And gold? Gold is what you plan on trading for the items on that list. But that only works if there’s somebody to trade with. So why not just stock up on the items on the list?
And there’s the target issue we’ve mentioned. If you have a reputation in your post-apocalypse community as a guy who has a lot of gold, you might have a problem. If you have a reputation in your post-apocalypse community as a guy who has several guns and a lot of ammunition, people are going to be cautious around you.
Shouting (under your name or some venue where people can track you down) about all your stashed gold would be stupid. Having the gold wouldn’t necessarily be.
Although batteries will need H[sub]2[/sub]SO[sub]4[/sub] as well.