You Can't Eat Pm

Well, two things on this. First, money is the lube that facilitates the doing of business. It does this in 2 ways. It is a lot more convenient to carry than those useful items you mention and it is a widely recognized store of value. Second, trading with PMs would be useful in that it allows us to buy things that we don't necessarily need but want for trading purposes. You may want a keg of nails that I do not have but know where to get. If the fellow with the nails will accept my bar of silver for his nails, then I can trade the nails to you for that pig I want. It's entirely possible that not everyone would accept PMs as trade goods, at least at first, but eventually it would become pretty common. Silver and gold DO have a history as being valuable as trade items and this is unlikely to change unless there is a fundamental change in human beings and what we value. For the past 5,000 or so years, we have valued copper, silver, and gold as items of commerce.

Additionally, we do not know the nature of any future SHTF situation. If it is a natural disaster it is likely that it would be handled in a different way than a man-made disaster because there would be different effects from it. A collapse of the fiat currency system, for example, may not be highly likely but is is possible. If paper money were to be devalued (think loss of WRC status) or become worthless altogether, then people would be looking for something that could serve as REAL money. That could be trade goods or it could be gold and silver.

Remember that during the 1930s, money was VERY scarce. Many people in the US had little to no money at all. Barter was the way a lot of business was done, particularly in the smaller cities, towns, and especially in the countryside. Most of my relatives were farmers back in those days, so we have quite a few family stories about those times. One thing was emphasized over and over and that was that if anyone did have money, usually as silver or gold coins, they were able to buy virtually anything that was available. People back then would much rather trade a box of apples for a silver dollar than they would for a couple of chickens. The dollar was a lot more flexible in that it could be used to buy anything from anyone, while the chickens were most often traded only to someone who wanted chicken.

In all of the SHTF situations out there, there are a lot of things that we would need to survive the ordeal. No one thing is going to do it. We will need numerous items and a good balance of them is probably about ideal.

Oh. Just wanted others to realize that Nickels could and do have a true value not like paper money and are something of value to hold on to.

I'll add a fun comment. Why do people think a SHTF scenario will even happen... I probably wont check back on this thread now :)

I have a friend whose van has dual gas tanks. Maybe once or twice a year, he'll ever purposely use the second one, but it's always full, and he starts looking for gas when the first tank gets below half.

He figures he's always prepared this way, I think he's just cutting his mileage by always hauling around 15 gallons of gas "just in case".

If "they" bomb the crapitol 30 miles up the road (one of millions of shtf scenarios), he can get another 150 miles down the road before he needs to fight to fill up.

Will shtf ever happen? Maybe not, but if I have a whole house standby generator and the power goes out for a week, I'll be grilling steaks while you're hauling food to the trash.

Because many people think that it is better to be prepared and have nothing happen than to do nothing and have IT hit the fan when you least expect it to.

As for PMs, collecting them is a terrific hobby. They might also be a significant store of value and an inflation hedge. We've already seen considerable value erosion in the US paper dollar. We have not seen that in the US silver dollar coins.

I also do not think that I will ever be in a car wreck... but I still buy auto insurance.

Shtf is as close as an extra bad solar flare, super volcano (bad crop year), world war (not unheard of), a new plague (antibiotic resistance anyone?), or a simple currency collapse (fairly common?), all these things have more or less happened before. Many financial advisers as of recently say to have a certain percentage of your portfolio in PM.

I guess when you get a little older you see things differently. I honestly can see been there seen that before. We have been in far worse jams that we are in today.

Take the economy ,if your young and like most expect good things then I guess you would think the current economy is pretty bad. But then you never lived in a tent or went with the rest of the kids to pick strawberry for a day to help earn a little money to help feed the family.

No too many I guess went through those duck under the desk drills in school, I never knew how that was going to keep in safe is an atomic blast.

Remember the 1970's getting enough gas to get to work was like the end of the world.

So today is not any worse than other periods in history, I guess it could if Attila the Hun started taking heads again while over running countries again.

Maybe people have become to soft not like our parents who went through the great depression, WWII and the threat of an atomic bomb. My goodness just yesterday there were people who couldn't live because the Black-beery System went down and they were lost.

Gold / Silver is not a bad choice for hard times, probably far better than dollars even though I thing there are better things in times if Attila the Hun.

Amen to that, Brother!



It was all about the possibility of survival. Most schools are not in the "kill zone" for a nuclear attack. The biggest danger most of them faced was from blast wave induced flying window glass. Ducking and covering, as they used to say, was some protection from that. It was thought that some protection was better than none.



Exactly right, MK. My grandparents were poorly educated people who worked hard all their lives. They knew adversity in life and it probably seemed to them like just how life was. The few years they had when SHTF was not occurring must have seemed like the calm before the storm to them. Great grandmother always had a HUGE garden spot, where she and the family girls planted most of what they needed to live while the men and boys planted and harvested wheat and tended the animals. They canned it up and ate the oldest 1/3 of their larder. If a bad year hit and they had no crop, they could still live on the 2nd 1/3 of the larder while the new crop came in. If that failed, there was still the final 1/3 of canned veggies and meat to eat while they figured out what else to do. The important thing was to have enough food to live for 2+ years. That would see them through just about any hard times, including the dust bowl days and The Great Depression of the 1930s. Believe you me they would have been hysterical with joy at the thought of having some gold or silver money in those dark days!