Wednesday, November 29, 2017

cash cache


CASH CACHE
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note: to answer better the question of how long it tales to grind flour in the Victoria ( used to be Corona ), I actually made notes this last time.  Four minutes.  A pint jar fill of grain yielding two and a half cups, or 750 calories.  And I was no more winded/sore that if I had done about a dozen push-ups.  See?  Even running grain through three times, it doesn't take all that much effort.
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For some time it had been less than a surprise when yet another Roman era stash of precious metal coins was unearthed in England during building construction.  Of course, this was during a time of petroleum powered machines doing the digging, and since the normal rebuilding of soil naturally is about one inch a century and if you were in a hurry to bury your wealth because bandits were besieging your village I’d guess you were going down perhaps a foot, my calculations say they would only be about a yard down at the most.  Which is no where near impossible for the most primitive digging implement.

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Why weren’t more caches uncovered?  Yes, of course it would be a foolish activity to dig all day long, using your limited energy given to you by a limited availability of food, and with few hopes of finding anything.  The standard practice of torture to divulge location wasn’t employed if there were so many stashes left for moderners to uncover.  Britain was colonized unlike so many other lands far from the capital city.  It was difficult to garrison ( as Hadrian’s Wall might hint at ) so why was it so important when other areas such as Germany were ignored ( which could be accessed by road rather than ship.  Mediterranean or river maritime shipping was of course cheaper than overland transportation, but getting to the British isles was another thing entirely as far as infrastructure unless it was restricted by season ).

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Britain had tin needed in metal working.  Tin tends to be restricted in availability-few areas offer it, so you go wherever it is.  But she also contained a large pottery industry which was exported all over the empire.  Which says that the whole area was garrisoned and other economic activity was allowed in a tamed colony.  Perhaps the need for the merchant ships for the tin lead to other exports which paid its way.  Britain wasn’t just a company town with only the mines being protected.

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So there was probably a lot of Romans living there, not just the military or mine administrators.  And who would live there unless there was an economic advantage ( akin to the Brits living in India )?  Most likely most Romans apart from slaves or military were comfortably well off merchants.  They all had wealth to bury.  Which means that perhaps the Roman retreat from Britain was not feasible.  Had Rome already fallen?  Either there was no transport back or there was no where to go back to. 

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No matter how pissed the locals were, I have a difficult time assuming they were kill all Romans rather than torturing them to find their gold or silver.  Did the rich bury their wealth and leave for the last safe refuge?  Then were overrun and slaughtered?  That almost seems feasible.  Say, if all the surrounding areas were abandoned and the fort at London was the Saigon embassy of the day.  Although, why not take your wealth with you?   It is of course hard to guess.  And not even a very fun parlor game since we have so little information to go on. 

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But one thing that this hints at, at least to me, is that the Romans were still living in a false monetary wealth paradigm.  They still were worried about saving their money.  Which is just human nature I assume.  Since the Agricultural Age was forced upon us and gold and silver the only was to trade ( and trade was vital for many things your area didn’t have and were necessary for your military which was needed to protect you against other centralized militaries predations ), precious metals in and of themselves were worthless but represented life saving trade. 

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All people in all lands since civilizations were formed all took precious metals.  Even kings who couldn’t trade after decentralization and during a Dark Age still hoarded silver to pass on his wealth to the next generation.  You couldn’t eat gold but you could always buy food, other than in times of pure chaos, famine and banditry ( which were always limited in scope due to mans inherent need to live in tribes ).  And there was always trade, even during Dark Ages which lacked any monopoly on force which trade is predicated on.  It was merely very limited and very expensive.  Each trader needed to protect himself and if overland needed to pay tolls and tariffs for many different governments.  Prices were ruinous as a result.

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So there will always be some limited expensive trade even in troubled times.  But it might be of such a niggardly nature that it is nearly worthless for most needs or wants.  Therefore, for all intents and purposes, trade essentially ceases in such times and gold and silver are little more than long term savings accounts.  Money loses almost all utility.  The fleeing or besieged Romans were still thinking in terms of money saving their lives, because 99% of the time it does exactly that.  But when empires fail, bringing down trade and money utility, defense and famine are the only concerns.  Money is a distant dream.

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You can pretend that soil infertility and irrigation infrastructure failures and lack of military funding isn’t going to cause your empire to collapse, but you would be rather foolish, yes?  And we preparing for the fall of our empire are still busily burying our gold ( insofar as focusing on wealth preservation, if not simply just wealth accumulation ).  Is this the wise course of action, or should we be more worried about defense and famine?  Food enough, not just so that the government takes the six months needed to restore services as is assumed by most, but enough food for a true civilization collapse.  And not just defensive measures against a burglar or looter, but against the whole barbarian hoards surrounding you ( as far as you can, anyway ). 

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2zqTEQA )
 
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19 comments:

  1. Pretty much done with hoarding metals now. Unless it's too good of a deal..? Lead always excluded from this priority. Tho now days , unless it's a good buy I don't need it.
    Defense and bug out are the priorities. Because no matter where ya are, you'd best had given much prior thought and effort to defend the perimeter. Always with a plan A thru C for bugging out.

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  2. Yes Jim, your on a correct path again. Some money (whatever form) ratholed is o.k. for day to day scenarios. But gold bugs are not gonna make it when there is no trade/safe trading available in enough/large quantity of food and essentials to satisfy the costco sized waistlines and appetites of current and post collapse "mericans". Think year(s) plus seige type campaigns like leningrad by groups/govt for control or your necessary isolation from locust like hoardes striping the landscape of everything usable as a collapse prolongs itself from short term drama to a long term no going back to good olde days scenario. Food, food, more food. And some othery dinky stuff like toothbrushes and bandages. As usual, great hair Jim.

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    1. Warfare will be constant, a back and forth fight of bandits, aspiring rulers, etc. Don't be on that prime spot they want.

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  3. Stay away from major roads. Railroads. County/state capitals. Airports with large runways and connected infrastructure. Energy extraction-production-transport hubs. Waterways-ports. Population centers over@ 5k. Food related farms-livestock-processing areas/facilities. Military bases-support-contractor facilities. Well, everywhere in the lower 48 except well out in the nevada desert. Hmmm?

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    1. And in the desert you cannot grow food. The CA and AZ deserts are just sunny sponges to soak up artificial fertilizer, irrigated with far away water.

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    2. I was gonna say, where I live has all of the above and a space port too lol

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    3. Don't worry. Budget cuts. NASA is just "proving" Gore Warming now.

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  4. Technically, I suppose if you had a large enough cache of food, clothes, and a shelter in place, you could get by with only enough PM’s or cash to pay your property taxes (I’m assuming that you already own land). Life would suck, but as long as you had something to occupy your spare time (for you and I this would be books) you would survive. Though at some point you might have to resort to survival poaching to make ends meet.

    For a lifetime supply of clothing on a budget, the thrift stores are the only practical choice. It’s amazing some of the great finds that you come across in those places. One time I saw a like new Pendleton wool shirt, the cost, $5. That’s a $100 shirt. Unfortunately it wasn’t in my size, but you get the idea. I got two pairs of 100% wool dress slacks that were new, for $7 each. These pants would have been at least $100 each new. Shoes are the hard part, because they tend to wear much quicker than most other items, at least in the era of cheap Chinese shoes. Make sure that you have some spare tires lying around so that you can at least make some tire sandals if you end up having to resort to doing that sort of thing. Tires can also serve as building material if you wish to go that route. Land fill junk today, post apocalypse treasure tomorrow.

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    1. I watched a YouTube vid on a tire wall. I think somewhere in Africa. The silly bastards didn't pack the soil and it was sagging in and out. Didn't look like it would last all that long. The labor hard packing them looks like a gold plated bitch. Worth it in the long run but still a big issue for us old bastards.

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    2. Yes, I’ll bet it is a real bitch to fill tires with earth. Earth bags would probably be easier. The main advantage is that neither are resource intensive, though they are labor intensive. Want to say that I’ve seen some earth sheltered tire homes, but I’m not positive? I have seen earth sheltered earth bag structures though, and the one that I saw looked pretty nice.

      Earth sheltered is really the only practical post oil age shelter. Unfortunately it’s also a royal bitch to construct one.

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    3. The Earth Tube bags looked rather easy. You had to bunch up the entire length, then scoop in earth, tamp down or shift the tube back and forth to settle ( I need to look up the video again, don't quite remember-I think it was something simple like "filling earth bags" )and then along a foot or three and repeat. Whatever details I'm forgetting, it looked a lot easier to do than beating dirt into a tire, over and over again with the sledgehammer and tamper. Tires if you are young and poor, a few hundred bucks if you are older and need to use the bag. Hell, just compared to the roof beams ( without access to trees ), the cost of the bag should be a bargain.

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    4. One advantage of the earth bags is that the bags are cheap, and they hardly take up any room to store, as compared to having a bunch of tires laying around that you had to haul to your site. On the other hand, if you really wanted to go that route, you could probably just contact a tire place and they’d haul them out to your site for you, since they have to pay to get rid of them. With earth bags you need some barbed wire to lay between the courses to keep them from sliding. The composition of the earth is also somewhat important, and they have to have so much percentage of clay, so that they set up hard. Supposedly, even if the bag decomposes, the remaining earth is as hard as a rock, and stays put. But they won’t decompose because you’re supposed to plaster the exterior with a mud plaster, that I’d imagine has cement in it.

      I’ve thought about doing an earth bag building since my finances are finite at this point in time (unemployed Elko minion) but something tells me that it will be harder to do than I think it will.

      There are other uses that I thought of for tires besides sandals. I actually did use some to make the tire garden that Kurt Saxon discussed. I also had an idea that if you had a way to cut them (which isn’t easy without power tools) that you could possibly use them as roof shingles. I’ll bet there’s ton of other items that you could make from them, but I can’t think of them at the moment.

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    5. Shingles sounds like a good idea, although they would be flammable, right? I wouldn't want to chance that without some kind of coating. I'm sure they have other uses, you're right. Might make a good research topic for me.

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    6. Good point on the flammability issue, I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose that post collapse, you pretty much have to take what you can get though. Yes, I think it sounds like a good topic. With a little creativity there must be many uses for these things. I recall now that in the road warrior, the oil refinery people were using tires as part of their barrier, but they were only repelling pneumatic weapons and bows/crossbows. But earth filled, they could have the potential to stop certain rounds, or if you put one in front of the other and double the width, you could stop much larger rounds.

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    7. I need to do better searches. I only got uses that are suitable with machinery. Chipped for ground cover, for instance. Repurposed for repaving roads. I did find a few ideas for my place. Replace the steps downstairs. Buried a few inches down upright for a fence. Post-apoc, no ideas.

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  5. I like many of your ideas, Jim; but your notion of history is, at best, quaint.

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    1. Do you mean "my interpretation of the same history books read by both of us is quaint". We are reading the same source material. Such as with "Overshoot", I see 90%+ die-off and the Druid Dude saw a stairstep collapse. We are disagreeing with each others way of viewing the "facts", not the facts themselves. And how do you reconcile that? I don't think it's possible. So, you just don't like my views. It's a Democrat and Republican debate. Nothing changes because no one agrees on the basis of the argument.

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  6. Rome went from over a million people enjoying all the great things a city offers to goats nibbling grass in the streets in just a few hundred years. Lots of political corruption leading to "ghost armies" that couldn't defend against vigorous NorthMen. Roman war technology was the best, but it requires a bunch of high quality soldiers and massive backshop support to make it work. Sound familiar?
    Betcha our collapse is faster and meaner, with more mass graves dug by survivors (got Diesel fuel? That's what it's for, because hand-dug pits suck). Calling our overcrowded urban hubs "shitties" is so generous now, while massive borrowing leads to new sewers and shiny new high screwels (featuring "Performing Arts" where Auto/Metal/Wood/Industrial Shops once were. Dance yerself up some plumbing and a roof, pretty *insert pronoun for non-productive non-binary leech here*)are built with an approved design as a FEMA detainment center to secure the money.

    PM's are part of a diversified collection of goods. Just like all-guns is a bad plan, all-gold is a bad plan. I find a collection of silver 90% dimes to be worthy of weight/space, just as much as 2000 rounds of .22lr for $80 is an okay deal. What gold I have is not very loved, even though it is in tiny increments like Mexican Dos y medio and 1/10th. Not adding to gold with g/s ratio over 70.

    BTN for the first layer of goods is a reasonable strategy, even if you can afford much better. If a person is forced to abandon luggage along the way, replacement BTN is not so much trouble. Good hair is attached, so at least you start with that when dispossessed. BTN goods often do not have an image sequence showing how/when to use them (like a sack of dry beans, or wheat kernels), thus making them useless/worthless to the knowledge-free maurader looking to open an MRE when hunger strikes without warning.

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    1. I think your sack of wheat or beans will be safe. Until the canned goods run out. Two weeks? Even the biggest idiot will eventually think, hey!, I'll boil it. I would hope at least. We need more mauraders in the gene pool for future better stock.

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