American Survival Blog

Imagine yourself in a rapidly de-industrialized America (or Europe, Canada whatever) due to financial collapse exacerbated by food shortages, disease and a chaotic world exploding in the wake of American power receding. Maybe solar storms or an E.M.P. have knocked out the grid, or cap-and-trade has created energy shortages like we see in places like Venezuela and are beginning to see in Europe. Imagine that supermarkets are empty, refrigeration is unreliable and there is no guarantee that things will ever get back to normal. What would you do?

For many survivalists, myself included, the solution is “prepping” for such a scenario. This involves stockpiling long lasting foods and perhaps water if there is no other way to ensure supply. Those are short term solutions however, completely unsustainable for a lifetime. In the long term many survival minded people learn hunting, trapping and fishing skills. This is a sure way to starvation if it is your only option to put food on the table for you and your family as anyone who has ever been hunting or fishing will tell you. A better option is to supplement those skills with the art of growing food and foraging for wild plants. All together you now have a recipe for a short and brutish life much like that of ancient man when he still lived as a hunter-gatherer. Doable but hardly ideal.

Man is a social animal for a reason: our needs are more easily met when we cooperate in large groups. We need an economy to truly live a sustainable lifestyle; we will need to trade with others for things which for one reason or another we will not be able to produce ourselves. In short the best case scenario for a survivalist is to be enmeshed with a large group of people living in an area they are invested in securing who all produce various things that they will trade internally and on occasion with outsiders.

Producing things people will trade for is the ideal for long term sustainability after a collapse. Much has been written on how to avoid looters by looking like you have nothing to loot. Many survivalists are planning on spending years, maybe decades, hiding in bunkers with a select group of fellow survivalists. This too will end badly for many as anyone who can envision several well armed families living in close quarters and sharing finite resources will conclude. Those who survive any coming collapse will do so by being able to produce things others need, not share things from a collective and steadily depleting collective pantry. Food would be the most valuable resource of course, although a good seamstress or carpenter will likely be able to get by. What we are talking abut is wealth in the old sense of the word, not acquired through business deals or wise investment but through production.

Eggs, for example, are a kind of wealth. Many suburbanites have begun keeping their own hens for economic reasons (they save money on eggs) but we see more and more that a person with  small flock of chickens is doing something most Americans have little experience with – producing actual wealth. Even survivalists often don’t fully understand this idea, explaining why people who think America is about to descend into a new dark age think one ounce gold coins (or worse, gold certificates) are going to pull them through while the rest of us starve. Gold and silver have their uses (one of which is enriching bloggers pre-collapse) but gold and silver represent wealth. They are not necessarily true wealth.

I’ll give you an example. I have two neighbors in the above worst of the worst case scenario. One has a veritable dragon’s hoard of one ounce gold coins each of which are now theoretically worth $10,000 in the new, desperate America. The other has a micro-farm consisting of a flock of chickens, a couple of milking goats and a large garden. Now let’s suppose that both want to get a couple of bowls of Rob Taylor’s famous five can chili or some homemade cough drops I mixed up in my spare time. What happens? Do I make change for a $10,000 gold coin? Or do I take a small basket of eggs for a batch of chili with a home made cough drop lagniappe? Sans a banking system to standardize currency bartering with precious metals is a risky proposition which is an idea I have put forward to before. This is not to say gold will be worthless, but it will be hard to trade with and if push comes to shove, harder to digest. Historically this has always been the case.

The first verse of the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem reads:

Wealth is a comfort to all men;
yet must every man bestow it freely,
if he wish to gain honour in the sight of the Lord.

This line references the rune Feoh which represents wealth in general but its name literally means “cattle” which was the the measure of wealth the ancient Northern Europeans used. Those who study runes for religious reasons point out this understanding of wealth, as practical goods like livestock and furs, provides both historical and spiritual insight into the runic tradition. For the survival minded of any religion it is instructive to note that people who lived in a harsh environment of low technology and scarcity of resources, livestock was how people measured wealth and was the currency that common people traded with.

Of course, many people don’t have room for cattle or other sorts of livestock like goats which are increasingly popular. But depending on the laws in your areas and rules of your homeowner’s association if you happen to be unlucky enough to have one, almost everyone can own a few chickens or grow heirloom vegetables. These renewable resources have value to you and others. If you find no buyers for your eggs, goat’s milk, and Cherokee Purple tomatoes, you can still use them to provide comfort and security for you and your family which is literally what wealth is. Not so your gold hoard or your ammunition reserves. It is time for survivalists to have a fundamental rethinking of what wealth means and how we can acquire it in a post-collapse world.

Survivalism is going mainstream and everyone is looking to cash in, including left leaning “learning” channels like The History Channel which has long abandoned objective and informative programs in favor of communist agi-prop like the completely disgusting Howard Zinn-led call for class warfare The People Speak.

However, I am a fan of Monster Quest so I always check in to see what’s on. This is how I came across The History Channel’s most outrageous program – a show called Apocalypse Man. It is not an exaggeration to say this show is not so much an instructional program on surviving disasters as a plot by The History Channel to murder you.

“Survival expert” Rudy Reyes begins the program by telling people that during a full on TEOTEWAWKI situation they should head into the biggest city they can find, and the show goes down hill from there. I understand that Mr. Reyes is said to be a Marine Force Recon veteran which I have seen some discussion about on the Web as being a bald-faced lie. I won’t play gotcha with someone’s service, but I will say that if Reyes is relaying his military training to audiences then we should start rethinking the training we’re giving our boys.

The key to surviving any situation is being prepared, staying cool, and using common sense. Most of all, the old adage “keep it simple, stupid” should be the motto you live by. Reyes sees things differently, as evidenced by him lighting a campfire with steel wool and a battery. Because I assume there’s no way he could have gotten hold of lighters or matches before TEOTWAWKI.

His preparation for the coming collapse of society, imagined by the producers as some sort of sudden Mad Max scenario (which ignores historical collapses, like Argentina) seems to be a bag of burglary tools, a complete lack of concern for his or any one else’s safety, and the morals of a crack addict. With pry bar in hand and criminality in his heart our “hero” takes viewers on a whirlwind tour through every nerd’s apocalypse spank fantasy where an empty world becomes their kingdom.

As I stated before, his first bit of advice for TEOTWAWKI is to tell people to head into the nearest large city because that, he says with a straight face, is where the supplies are. I guess all the stores that surround me on the outskirts of the very modest city I live by are illusions caused by my lack of “survival expertise” as is my larder of supplies I’ve collected for emergencies. Of course, heading into a city after a disaster is foolish, especially now that a small army of Reyes inspired looters, sorry I meant survivalists, will be rushing there to join the masses of people struggling to survive. The cities are dangerous now, with higher crime rates and worse unemployment/poverty than the rest of the country. After TEOTWAWKI I can only assume that most rational people will be planning on getting out of the city as quickly as possible.

But this is Rudy Reyes we’re talking about! Irrationality is his secret weapon to survive any situation. Like when his path to the shining city (full of supplies which simply can’t be found elsewhere) is blocked by a river he doesn’t want to cross because there could be poop in it. The drawbridge to cross it has been raised by police or military because martial law has been imposed, although none seemed to stick around to keep the crossing secure. What to do? Luckily Reyes has rope in his backpack along with his pry bar (what crime bloggers will immediately recognize as a rape kit) so using the pry bar as a grapnel, he swings across the river. I mean, what could go wrong? It’s not like if you get injured after this apocalypse pulling some stupid stunt it’d be hard to medical attention, right?

Then there’s Reyes’ special survival “foraging” method. Home invasion. Reyes actually tells viewers that to get supplies they should go to the suburbs, look for houses that haven’t been looted and kick in those doors, flashlight at the ready to brain anyone they run into. He never puts forward the idea that A) even in the breakdown of law and order this is wrong or B) the unlooted house is probably unlooted for a reason. The Reyes inspired home invader is going to be shot eventually.

I can only imagine the look on some Apocalypse Man fan’s face as he kicks in my front door to find an angry blogger with the new .327 Ruger Blackhawk I’m hoping to receive as an anniversary present tucked into a garish Halloween orange sash Wild Bill Hickock style. “What would Rudy do?” he’ll ask himself as I shoot him several times before Tweeting “ZOMG! Had 2 shoot looter, he had a Apocalypse man dvd in his pack! ROTFLMAO!”

It’ll be a steep price to pay for canned goods you can get on sale for $.50 a piece at any supermarket prior to TEOTWAWKI.

But that’s not Reyes’ worst advice or most asinine claim. Throughout the one hour episode we’re treated to such ludicrous scenes as Reyes lighting campfires indoors, rappelling down elevator cables (there are access ladders in most elevator shafts), risking life and limb to get fuel for generators because you “need electricity to survive” (explaining why there was no life on earth until the 20th century) and we even watched in horror as Reyes procured drinking water with the same dirty bicycle pump he had used to pump diesel out of a gas station supply tank.

“This is sustainability!” he declares while standing proudly over his three days worth of canned goods. Fuel and power, not food and water, are the things Reyes says we need after TEOTWAWKI. Most laughable is Reyes’ commandeering of a hospital which he claims is worthless except that it has a generator. You know, because one man with a pry bar should be willing to attempt to secure an entire facility alone … so he doesn’t have to sleep in the dark.

In short, Rudy Reyes advocates a survival strategy in which people who’ve spent too much time playing the Fallout games kick in your door, cave in your skull in front of your terrified family and steal whatever is in your house. Then they will retire to the block long hospital complex which they have secured with nothing more than steely determination and a total lack of morality. This is a process they will replicate every couple of days.

That’s not so much a survival strategy as a invitation to get your ticket punched. The Xbox playing pot smokers who take people like Reyes seriously don’t have what it takes to pull off home invasions now, much less when Darwinism ensues and the unlooted homes are filled with the people with the fewest compunctions about blasting some d-bag who spent all his money on drugs and video games prior to TEOTWAWKI. Reyes’ advice to viewers in the event of societal chaos is to do everything they can to make things more chaotic. In Europe that might fly, in a country where more than half the population owns firearms trouble makers are not going to be surviving at higher rates than people who put some food away and mind their business.

If I were a conspiracy theorist I’d be suspicious of The History Channel’s agenda. After all, they’ve been supporting Marxism with Zinn and strong centralized governments benefit from periods of disorder. But it’s more likely they simply want to cash in on the survival boom and looked for someone who was willing to affirm their pre-concieved notions of American immorality.

The real problem is that Reyes is not the purveyor of this sort of anything goes philosophy, but a product of the entrance into survivalism of people who are not preparing for TEOTWAWKI, but hoping for it. There are hundreds of Reyeses out there. People’s who plan on looting Wal-Mart after a disaster rather than shopping there now. People who dream of a time when they can simply smash windows and take what they want from the society and culture they despise for whatever reason. There are people who think the world owes them and they see civil disorder as a time for them to get what’s coming to them.  Reyes is telling them to attempt to take, by force if necessary, what you and I have put away for the bad times. The show is a plot to kill not only those who follow Reyes’ advice, but those of us who get in the way.

It is for this reason that I recommend people view this pilot if they get a chance, so you can see into the mind of a degenerate looter, oh I’m sorry survival expert, first hand.

How about 1918 bad. That’s apparently the last time a flu virus was specifically more fatal to the young and healthy than children and the elderly and the Spanish Flu epidemic killed fifty million people world wide. Granted back then sick people didn’t have cheap over the counter medicines that could help them through an illness like Americans do now, nor the ability to maintain hygienic conditions with good quality sanitizing products, but with Mexico’s fatality rate so far looking to be at 7% or I’m finding it hard to be nonchalant about this potential pandemic.

I became aware of the epidemic in Mexico Saturday when the numbers were small but worrisome. 800 infected in Mexico with over 20 confirmed fatalities and eight suspected cases here. Now their are a confirmed 1300 infected in Mexico with over 100 fatalities and at least 30 cases all over the United States. New York, Kansas, Ohio, Texas and California have had confirmed Swine flu infections. There’s a map charting the infections here. Canada, Spain, France and London may also have cases.

I have seen unconfirmed reports that there are Swine Flu infections in Alabama.

The C.D.C has admitted that the seasonal flu vaccines people have will not be effective against this new strain. Governments around the world are beginning quarantines of anyone suspected of having the virus, as well as tightening restrictions on pork products and travel.

There isn’t a lot of information out there, the C.D.C page on the outbreak is nothing you haven’t heard on the news. Oddly the deaths have so far been limited to Mexico, although they were all young healthy people. I would theorize that although Mexico City is a as urban as any U.S. city Americans in general have more access to potentially life saving items and luxuries than the average Mexican. Cheap over the counter medicine and central air conditioning may among other things really be making a difference in the outcome of a nasty bug. On the other hand there is such a small sample of cases thus far that we won’t know how lethal this new flu is until we have infection numbers similar to Mexico.

Right now no one can tell you honestly how bad this may get, but those with a survivalist mind-set (myself included) are taking precautions. If it’s possible stay home for the next few days and get plenty of liquids in the house and stock up on fever reducing medications as well as the regular flu stuff you keep in the house. Don’t wait to pick up supplies, if more people get sick there will be runs on grocery stores and those crowds may be full of infected people. Many people are recommending you buy breathing masks, but if you don’t already have them going to stores where sick people may be congregating to get them (pharmacies and the like) isn’t a better plan than laying low. You can buy many items online if you can wait a few days for them. The only reason for you to be in a store for the next couple of days is if you don’t have necessities like food, water and toilet paper on hand.

There are already rumors circulating about the flu designed to make you panic. I have seen several comments implying that this was a bio-terror attack by the United States on Mexico and much is being made on various conspiracist forums I will never link to of the death of Felipe Solis just hours after meeting our President. Some newshounds are pointing out that this outbreak came only days after Fort Detrick began an investigation into missing viruses from their bio-warfare facility. It is an odd coincidence, but I have been told that samples turn up missing from government labs with a frequency that would alarm the public if they realized it. Depending on the amount of tin foil hattery in your area (and New York is lousy with people who believe in such nonsense) this sort of conspiracy mongering so early in the event is another reason to stay home if you can.

There’s no way to verify these statements, but readers have sent alarming stories to the BBC which imply that the situation in Mexico is worse than the media is letting on:

I’m a specialist doctor in respiratory diseases and intensive care at the Mexican National Institute of Health. There is a severe emergency over the swine flu here. More and more patients are being admitted to the intensive care unit. Despite the heroic efforts of all staff (doctors, nurses, specialists, etc) patients continue to inevitably die. The truth is that anti-viral treatments and vaccines are not expected to have any effect, even at high doses. It is a great fear among the staff. The infection risk is very high among the doctors and health staff.

There is a sense of chaos in the other hospitals and we do not know what to do. Staff are starting to leave and many are opting to retire or apply for holidays. The truth is that mortality is even higher than what is being reported by the authorities, at least in the hospital where I work it. It is killing three to four patients daily, and it has been going on for more than three weeks. It is a shame and there is great fear here. Increasingly younger patients aged 20 to 30 years are dying before our helpless eyes and there is great sadness among health professionals here.
Antonio Chavez, Mexico City

There are several more testimonies similar to this one. There is no way to know how many sicknesses and deaths slipped by the bureaucrats before the alerts were issued so the mortality rate for the flu may be higher or lower in Mexico than the 7% it’s at now.

Take the day off, buy as much food and water as you need and take a mini-vacation. I know it’s easy to say when you work at home as I do, but if you can stay off the streets do so until you’re sure this bug has mutated into a less lethal form. However there is no need to panic, yet. But it is time to get prepared. Except in Mexico most infections were no worse than the regular flu so stay cool. Water, food and toilet paper, if you don’t have enough to last you a week or more of staying home than get some now.

Cross posted at Red Alerts

Update: If you leave a comment with a link you may be put in moderation.

Here’s a link to a supposed real time infection map. Mexico has remained the epicenter with more than 1600 infected.

I have seen unconfirmed reports that there were more than 100 sick kids in the Queens prep school but only eight were tested originally. They all tested positive for Swine Flu. If true the C.D.C and DHS are playing fast and loose with the numbers in order to control the panic that will happen if people see a new virus spreading quickly. The official tally there is now 28 infected.

Gateway Pundit reports that we’re still not screening passengers arriving from Mexico.

Mexico City has been hit with an earthquake. The gods are angry down there.

The European Union is telling people not to travel to Mexico or America. Obama is not amused.

Update: A private school in South Carolina has been closed after kids coming from Mexico were found to have Flu-like symptoms. Greenville News (perhaps America’s worst newspaper)  gives bare bone details, omitting facts you may want to know like where the school is located. The Newberry Academy website has a statement about the closure.

There is perhaps no idea that will lead to more starving people after any collapse scenario than the “I’ll just go hunting/fishing” scheme that many inexperienced outdoorsman (and some experienced sport hunters) seem to think is a strategy that will supply them and their family with enough meat to live once those pesky park rangers die off. While hunting and fishing are skills that may serve you well in some circumstances, most of you will never hunt enough game to feed yourself or anyone else indefinitely.

Wild game may supplement your diet and certainly can help you survive the bad times that fact is we simply no longer live in an environment that will support the long hunter who relies on meat he catches to feed his family. There are very few areas where this would be possible and in most of those areas competition among other hunters, two and four legged, will make hunting a dangerous and often unsuccessful prospect post-TEOTWAWKI.

Lest you think I’m claiming you should forget about hunting and fishing for game when the times are tough let me assure you that I think you’d be foolish to not try to supplement your larder with the occasional rabbit, pigeon, turtle, crayfish or any other creature that comes your way. However relying on the availability of those nourishing little critters and the occasional deer is foolish in the extreme and does not take into consideration environmental factors post-TEOTWAWKI that will make game scarce.

When I lived in New York I lived on the outer edge of the five Boros, where there were extremely large park systems that lie along side the rivers and in the case of Van Cortland Park literally lead into parkland and wooded areas outside of the city proper. Since there is no hunting in New York City or it’s vicinity it should surprise no one that my former home was teeming with plump and fearless game animals that could be easily harvested with an airgun (something that can be discreetly carried in a pack like the Crossman 2250 XT would be perfect for this purpose) or bow (since drawing attention to yourself with firearms being out of the question there even post-collapse) and even nowadays many older New Yorkers fish the rivers and ponds to supplement their income. Rabbits, squirrel the size of  of small cats and flocks of geese numbering over one hundred could be found in the Bronx, and the further out of the city limits you go the more animals there seem to be. Post-TEOTWAWKI this would be a hunter’s paradise right?

Wrong. Despite the somewhat deserved image of city dwellers as helpless perpetual adolescents who would simply sit in their living rooms and starve to death if grocery stores emptied New York is also home to thriving immigrant populations who come from countries where foraging for food is a family outing. Add to that the couple of million mall ninjas waiting for the collapse to test out their new $1200 crossbow (oddly, bows and crossbows are basically unregulated in a city where pepper spray was illegal for years) and not only will the game become scarce quickly but hunting accidents, and in some cases “accidents,”  will claim more lives than looting. Being in any city park after sundown was risky business even in the halcyon days of Rudy Guiliani’s crime crackdowns, a couple of weeks after some sort of breakdown and even in the daytime the parks will look like war zones, and the quiet affluent suburbs with their food stores and recession gardens will be under siege.

This is in stark contrast to South Carolina where the squirrels are lean and stealthy and pressure from both sport hunters and the dozens of hawks that seem to live in my area has turned any animal smaller than German Shepard into an expert at escape and evasion. Here post-Collapse hunting may be significantly safer, but the competition will make success unsure. Unless you are an extremely proficient hunter with a “secret spot” full of animals no one knows of then puttering around with your rifle in the woods will be wasted energy and time.

Storing food in a safe location is your best bet to survive, and starting a garden to at least learn the basics of growing your own food is something we can all do, even those of you still stuck in the big city. Then there are some adjustments post-collapse which, in my opinion, hunters can make that will help them be more productive than if they stay in the sport hunting mindset.

1. Trapping is more efficient than hunting or fishing. There are good books available on trapping animals (Like Dale Martin’s The Trapper’s Bible) and fishing traps, illegal in most places, are a better use of your time than getting out your fishing gear when putting food on the table is a matter of life and death. An image of a good fish trap can be found here.
2. Target game others may not. For example if I stayed in New York I’d have invested in turtle and crayfish traps rather than trying to compete with the thousands of novice hunters looking for Geese and rabbits. Here there may be more competition but I know of a couple of places to trap crayfish and turtles, but I won’t even bother trying to hunt squirrel and rabbits except in one circumstance…
3. Bring the game to you. My garden is a natural attractor to small game. Instead of trying keeping them out I’ll use this to my advantage with a trap or two to put a little extra meat in the pot. Your property is the one place there should be no competition for game obviously, and if there is you have a bigger problem than getting some protein in your Ramen soup

Of course no system is perfect. Trapping requires you make sure the traps are secured which may be difficult if times are rough enough that desperate, hungry people are out and about.  Camouflaging or standing guard will be your only options which will limit what kind of game you can take,. And attracting game to your house will only make you a more tempting target if, like me, you simply couldn’t afford to move somewhere completely isolated so neighbors will see/hear/smell your bounty.

And I’m not putting myself forward as an expert on hunting pre or post-collapse. If someone has a surefire technique to keep themselves feed on the fat of the land I’d be happy to hear about it, but post-TEOTWAWKI the smart strategy is to have a deep larder, learn to grow and forage your own vegetables and use hunting game as a supplement to your other preparations when it is safe to do so. I’ll never plan to rely solely on my ability to bag an animal, which changes depending on circumstance, and neither should you.

With the survivalist community increasingly based online, misinformation and panicky predictions of impending doom have the potential to spread faster than ever.

The “buy gold” phenomenon now sweeping the net is the best example of rumor based marketing aimed at vulnerable groups of people willing to accept sometimes preposterous claims due to their ideological or cultural views. Gold retailers are have been marketing their services to Americans by playing on the financial fear mongering of a left leaning MSM whose anti-Bush tax cut agenda is best served by convincing people that things are worse than they actually are.

Six years of propaganda, a chaotic middle east gearing up for World War III and China’s manipulation of world currency has substantially weakened the dollar, which is not all bad news by the way, though it does often make stock holdings more volatile. Congress demanded that credit be extended to poor people a decade ago or so, and now all that lending has led to a high default rate, which also hurts stock holders, causes market turmoil and basically makes people panic.

So is gold the answer to that?

Gold can be a wise investment for investors betting against the dollar or worried about long term dollar devaluation, but for the survivalist planning for TEOTWAWKI gold is not the answer. I know, gold prices are soaring and that makes what I’m about to tell you counterintuitive, but the fact remains that survivalists who put their savings into gold are playing a sucker’s bet that will haunt them well after they emerge from whatever apocalyptic scenario they envision.

First things first. Gold is like anything else, it’s only as valuable as long as the demand for it is. Gold prices are soaring in part because of good marketing by gold dealers and affiliate marketers. Many of the sites you’ve recently visited extolling the virtue of gold are what are called M.F.A. websites.

M.F.A. stands for “Made for Adsense” and they’re a powerful money making tool for web marketers. Google’s Adsense program is popular with web marketers because you make money anytime a visitor to your site just clicks an ad; they don’t have to buy anything. Different ads pay different amounts and the best way to guarantee high payouts is to write articles containing keywords that bring up high paying ads.

Guess what term has some high paying Adsense payouts. The payout for just one click can be $1 or more. Compare that to payouts for most subjects, which are often in the pennies per click.

Putting up a site with plenty of content discussing buying gold will bring up high paying ads. Thus site developers have an incentive to put up these sites. As more of the sites crop up, more people link to them, read them and begin internalizing their message, which the developer may or may not even buy into.

If you’re getting your info from a site that looks like this, consider the source.

Consider the message too. Gold sellers want you to believe that all currency is essentially valueless (which in a certain sense it is) but that gold has a value that transcends societal instability or world wide civil unrest. To prove this they point to gold’s wild climb in value, which if anything should prove to you that the gold market is as volatile as any other market.

Gold is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it, nothing more, nothing less. Gold popularity stems from its ability to be easily worked into various forms, like rings or bracelets, making it one of the first forms of portable wealth civilization had. If you’ve ever read the old Epic poems like Beowulf or The Niebulungenleid you will find that ancient lords and ladies were called “ring givers” and similar. That’s because gold rings were used as payment to vassals for their loyalty.

But times have changed. People don’t purchase farmland and cattle with a gold earring anymore, and modern money is a state monopoly. There is no way to be 100% sure that after civil unrest or worse, collapse, that people will trade gold at the levels you bought it at, if at all.

Imagine yourself in the closest America had to a TEOTWAWKI scenario, post-Katrina New Orleans. As the days go on and people emerge to trade you grab your trusty gold coins and hit the makeshift market. You plunk down the ounce of pure gold you bought for $800 and change (you bought at a premium) at the table of some enterprising fellow and then … what?

He gives you roughly $800 worth of goods and services for a coin he may or or may not get $800 bucks for when things normalize? He takes your word for it that it’s worth at least $796 or so?

Or he gives you less for it than if you traded in something he could really use?

People are nowhere near as far sighted as you think and unless you live in a community of gold hoarding survivalists, Ron Paul supporters or maybe Ren Festers, the chances of you trading gold coins for services post-TEOTWAWKI and getting anything near their value is a sucker’s bet.

Gold is a good investment in general, though profit wise currency trading seems as good as gold, pardon the pun. But gold isn’t guaranteed to keep its value any more than any other material. As a survivalist I’m all about the guarantee. I use my wealth now to prepare for worst case scenarios by stocking supplies and trade goods. Things like long storing foods, blankets and candles will have value no matter what the situation.

I have no idea, if civilization really collapsed, what the local economy will look like but I think the safest bet is having goods and a set of skills people will pay for. I’m not willing to bet my family’s lives on gold.

After a short term crisis when the banks reopen your gold will be valuable. But so will your check book. Any disaster in which gold would preserve your wealth would probably not be severe enough that having a diverse portfolio would hurt you either. Gold is a good buy, as long the demand keeps the prices going up, but like anything else the bubble will burst eventually.

But that’s just my two cents. Double down on gold if you want, just give me time to set up a site with plenty of Adsense.