Silver & barter in the age of Zombies...

[The War Wagon]

From Survivalblog - a great two-piece article.

Post-Collapse Barter: The Value of Silver – Part 1, by Dr. Derek King

  SurvivalBlog Contributor March 24, 2021 

You, as an avid reader of SurvivalBlog posts, know a few things for sure: 1. That the spot prices for physical gold and silver metals have been tremendously manipulated and suppressed for decades. 2. That if a huge coronal mass ejection (CME) from our sun (similar to the Carrington Event in August of 1859) strikes our country and our planet, that ALL of the semi-conductor circuits, electrical transformers, and vehicles dependent upon those parts will instantly become inoperable. And 3. That the Dominion Voting machines would not be used in the next elections.

If an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) struck the united States of America tomorrow (heaven forbid), what would the price of physical gold and silver be the next day? And at the end of the first week?! Silver will go to $1,000 per ounce and (a) $20 bill will go to zero.

Whether caused by a natural phenomena hitting Earth’s magnetosphere, an unprecedented cyber-hack computer virus, or a North Korea strike causing a type of geomagnetic storm, you were astute and educated enough to recognize that the power was not going to come back on any time soon (if ever…) you would instantly go into your “prepper mode” and begin to organize your preps into priorities. But without a television or Internet to tell you with a quick click what the daily trading price of an ounce of silver was, how would you know what its bartering-power is currently?

The same could be said regarding ammunition, liquor, toilet paper, cigarettes, and water-purification tablets. Those who know their actual worth and value are reading this article- and those clueless souls will only truly recognize the value in a week or so, when it is waaaaay too late! When all the 1’s and 0’s are replaced by Au and Ag (and possibly old carbon with a crystalline-lattice structure) people will still need something to do their “horse-trading” with. The survivors will need gasoline for their old cars, old motorcycles, old mopeds…and for food once the store shelves have been emptied; furthermore, since silver has been known as “the people’s money” for centuries, I believe it will become “worth its weight in gold” so-to-speak.

I am a voracious reader of multiple “post-apocalyptic” book series, including the 18 Left Behind novels (although the power stayed on in those), the One Second After, One Year After and The Final Day trilogy by William Forstchen, and I mowed through all ten of Glen Tate’s 299 Days books (electricity still on, but very plausible and educational). I am currently being enlightened (double ironic puns intended) by Jack Hunt’s series beginning with Rules of Survival and Rules of Conflict and all 12 volumes of Mike Kraus’ Surviving the Fall series. As such, I glean from others’ imaginations and visions of how SHTF scenarios might play out. But none of them drill down on the money value and exchanging issues.

So you, Mr. and Mrs. Prepared, are sitting prettier than 90% of the sheeple masses who took all their goodies and staples and electronics for granted just 24 hours ago. But, on the newly-needed “Black Market,” what will each item (in each category) actually be worth?! Of course pure water and edible food will soon be at a premium! A safe shelter, a loaded weapon and gardening skills will be paramount. A solid Faith in God, mechanical tool skills for small engine repair, and stabilized gasoline in sealed containers will soon be highly sought after…but those are topics for other articles at another time.

I am choosing to focus on physical precious metals, i.e. silver coins, silver rounds, 90% “junk silver” (pre-1965 US minted coins), and fragments of 1-ounce gold pieces and solid mini-bars. I am not including numismatic collectibles, paper mining certificates, silver stock investments, or large, heavy gold-bar bullion or ingots.
This article is for “where the rubber meets the road” in a post-power-outage scenario. An X-class solar flare and its coronal mass ejection (CME) has just struck the earth and melted all of the transformers and electrical circuits on our fragile power grid and All systems are down…Forever!

You know and I know that the value and prices of these historical commodities (yet not eternal in the “heavenly sense“ because the streets will be paved with the yellow stuff- and in hell it will only exist as liquid molten dross…) that have held their value as actual money for 4,000 years or more will sky-rocket!
Gold and silver, used as money and wealth storage, have been utilized for over four millennia and will stand the test of time once again. I mean, what else ya gonna use…loose diamonds, chicken eggs, IOUs, or crypto-Poof?

I believe that paper US fiat currency will last less than Two Months in a total power collapse scenario! Our current twenties will spike in value rapidly as the masses rush to the dark grocery stores, big-box hardware stores and bulk-food outlets trying to stock up (now that it’s too late). But those who actually have wads of cash will be better off than those with only inert plastic credit cards and worthless cell phone apps!

No Power = No Money
With no power, no banks, no ATMs, no credit cards, no Square, no PayPal, no wire transfers, and no government bailouts coming…what will we use to pay for the exchange of goods and services…? See the graph above for my opinion on what will happen to a Jackson note over the first month.

The world will keep turning, right? And other countries will still have power, won’t they? “They“ will certainly come over and rescue us humanely, correct?
I mean, “We” would arrive quickly to aid them and prop them up and kiss their boo-boos…so we can readily expect others to respond and respect our sovereign nation’s problems without taking advantage of our vulnerabilities… or invading us, correct? Nonsense!!!

We will be toast! Burnt toast…extra black. The concepts of “US” vs “Them” on a global scale would be gone…and then greatly increased on a local scale! Earth’s civilized future will depend on whether the grids are down all over the planet or just here in America! I will focus just on out beloved US of A here.
I am being 100% serious here!

Think of the movie A Good Day to Die Hard when the bad guys caused a “fire sale” breakdown where “everything must go.” That meant power, water, communications, transportations and financial services – gone. Jobs, gone. Shipping, gone. Schools, gone. Stocks, gone. Police, gone. And roving gangs…organized and on the prowl.
When asked if silver would ever reach $1000, Allen Fordham in 2019 on Quora.com blog stated, “I can’t see anything happening this century that would prevent market forces of supply and demand from stabilizing the price of silver far below $1000 an ounce.” This naive, closed-minded simpleton just chose to ignore the two main possibilities I am discussing on this topic (EMP and CME). Sure, put your head in the sand and keep the status quo and metals will stay with a narrow “normal” range…but…meet Mr. Murphy and his catastrophic Law…

An EMP or CME will fry our grid and the whole country is plunged into darkness- Permanently! Because which power company lineman is going to attempt to get in his truck (that won’t start) to go fix the transformers (where would you start and where would you get the replacement parts?) and trust to get paid? (with no banks or direct deposit)…

Nope, everyone (once two days pass and they realize that it is never coming back on…remember that excellent television show Revolution, which I believe they canceled because it was hitting too close to reality) will freak out!

“We are nine meals away from anarchy!”
Okay, back to my scenario…everyone will hunker down and stay off the streets (like the first two weeks “to flatten the curve” of the recent Covid global lock-downs) for the first several days…then…food spoils and then runs out. Cars clog the freeways and roads. Smoldering fires from plane crashes spread…and toilets clog and stink!
What will be worth buying, what will necessities cost, and what will you pay for it with? And what will the sellers accept as payment?!

Now that the disaster-riddled stage has been set, we can finally move deeper into the topic of this article: Payment, Value, and Worth.

It began with rocks, pretty shells, cacao beans, and beads. Then they moved to skins, furs and arrowheads. Sex, berries, crude tools and seeds probably came next. Exchange, commerce, bartering and the precursors to capitalism began…

Fear and panic has set in. The SHTF and now the harsh reality of primal survival kicks in for the people who read this blog-page regularly. Crying over spilled milk, trying to get back home to mommy’s house, or jumping off a bridge are the first choices many of the uneducated and unprepared masses will consider. “The governor or government will be around to fix this…right,” will be their first thought…

“It won’t last that long…we’ll be okay,” they will (incorrectly) rationalize to sound manly and positive to their spouse…

What do You have inside Your house Right Now? What is actually valuable? “If you don’t touch it, you don’t own it” is the mantra you have lived by while preparing for this inevitable day of disaster! Boom! It’s here. No, we did not wish for it…we didn’t want it to actually occur in our lifetimes…and we wouldn’t have wished it on our families, kids, friends or even our enemies…Yet, you did stock up (just in case). Good for you. You’ve got toilet paper and cases of water in the basement. Cans of food, sacks of beans and some fish antibiotics on a shelf from years ago- Excellent. And you gun-safe has a few weapons of various types and boxes of ammo that you haven’t use or practiced within months- But you are way better off than the other 90% of your city…

However, your bank account is gone! Your 401k is history. And your job is no-longer…it is eerily quiet and Dread sets in… Oh, Crud! What are we going to do? You have realized the monumental catastrophe that has befallen our beloved country…and you wanna throw up!

You go into your documents safe and pull out the bags of coins. Not enough (of course, Gulp) but you gingerly count out your stash…at least you have some real valuables there. You bought some when it was $13 an ounce and some more when it was $21. Now you’d pay $50 happily! Cuz it’ now worth $100 per ounce!
Or is it? How do you know? Monex.com is gone. Kitco.com is no-longer, and the television won’t turn on to tell you what the hell has actually happened. You are in the dark (figuratively and literally). The silver stuff splayed out on your bedroom floor (behind closed doors and covered windows) is now part of your life-line to animalistic survival. Survival of the fittest has taken on a whole new (gut-wrenching) reality. Metals for life. Barter for necessities. Trade to eat. But with whom? And on what scale?

How come nobody ever covered this before? How come some economist never did a youtube video series or podcast on this vital topic? Because nobody knows how to scale it. And nobody wants to breach the ultimate disaster possibility and be called a fear-monger. Doom-and-gloom purveyor. Yuck. Avoid, avoid, avoid…

Yet, you asked for it. I am writing this for a “prepper blog“ that asked for info on TEOTWAWKI so here it goes…

Your silver and gold will skyrocket…for a while. Even your paper fiat currency will go up in value, temporarily…and then plunge down into scrap for lighting cooking fires. But the precious metals will hold their values longer and stronger, because that’s what Real Money does. It has for over one hundred generations, and I believe it will now. Junk silver coins are recognizable, portable, tangible, fungible (able to be broken up into smaller denominations, i.e. five Dimes for two Quarters) and non-decaying. Those are good, solid traits to have! The Constitution For the United States of America states, “The Congress shall have Power…to coin money, regulate the Value thereof…and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures…” (those capitalized words are called Caponyms and it means that the Founding Fathers thought those words were very important- like bold and italics today). Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5 lists this as a rightful job of the government. Normalcy bias says these will be ideal.

“Gold and silver are the only substances which have been and continue to be, the universal currency of civilized nations. It is not necessary to enumerate the well-known properties which rendered them best fitted for general medium of exchange. They were used…from the earliest of times…And when we see that nations, differing in language, religion, habits, and on almost every subject susceptible of doubt, have, during that period on near (over) four thousand years, agreed in one respect; and that gold and silver have, uninterruptedly to this day, continued to be the universal currency of the commercial and civilized world, it may safely be inferred, that they have been found superior to any other substances in that permanency of value.” – Albert Gallatin in 1831.

He was the longest-serving Treasury Secretary (1801-1814). This statement will be tested in the furnace of post-EMP or post-CME outages.

“B-B-But where is the Congress today…?“ In the dark, like everyone else! The US Mint is permanently closed for business. So, now we have a limited/ finite supply of coinage available. Bitcoins (and the like) are powered-down (so much for $50,000 each) and crypto-trading is over. Poof!

(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 2.)

[The War Wagon]

Part II, the conclusion.

Post-Collapse Barter: The Value of Silver – Part 2, By Dr. Derek King

  James Wesley Rawles March 25, 2021  
(Continued from Part 1. This concludes the article.)

So let us postulate (while we still have time, sanity, and electricity) what that sack of coins might be worth as time crawls on.

The topic of bartering safely, back-room banking, armed protection and hiding places are beyond the scope of this paper and will be saved for another time and venue.
Let’s just speculate as to what a 1960 quarter and a plain 1-ounce 99.9% silver “round” will be worth on a chronological time-line, shall we?! Remember that silver is measured in Troy ounces (12 to a pound) and that this specific quarter is 90% silver instead of 98% copper as today. (According to Coinflation.com, there are 0.4584 pounds of copper and 0.0417 pounds of nickel in $10 face value of the current clad quarters.) By the way, a Troy pound is 373.2 grams.

As I’m writing this (February 2021) silver is at $25 USD per Troy ounce, so we will use that as our baseline. After pondering and evaluating, asking and extrapolating, I guesstimate that a silver round will DOUBLE in the first day. I surmise that it will DOUBLE again the next day. That means it may QUADRUPLE again by the End of the first week! It will then DOUBLE again by the end of the first 30 days. What this really means is NOT that the metals are actually worth more as a hard investment, but that the US dollar has plummeted into worthlessness and it would take a dump truck-full to buy something of value.  (Do you remember reading about the Weimar Republic in Germany when its Papiermark currency hyper-inflated around 1923?). See the graphs below.

Ben Bernanke said on July 18, 2013, “Nobody really understands gold (precious metal) prices, and I don’t pretend to understand them either.” Well, I will sleep better at night now…And what he is trying not to say is that “money” has not been money for a long time…it is DEBT that he ruled over at the FED.
Here are a couple of subjective graphs that I created:


 
 
 
Silver at $1,000 per ounce? This is the part where different people will have different opinions, and that’s okay. You get out a pencil and paper and draw an X and Y-axis and plot some values yourself. Does it look similar to mine, or totally unique? Where do we agree, and where do we differ? How fast do you think Real Money, hard tangible commodities will climb. And how fast will fiat paper currencies de-value? Think hard in real terms of buying bread, rice, beans, canned-goods and gasoline…IF any is even available after the hoards raid it the first three days! That is why I believe the $20 bill will go up, temporarily, and then plunge down to obscurity quickly! There is nothing to back it! And if you can’t get any more…it will be like the Confederate bills following the War between the States (1860s American Civil War). WORTHLESS to buy and sell with because the game changed. Well, when the SHTF, the game will Change forever, my friends…so we must be prepared to “Deal with it.”

A simple formula I have come up with explains it as follows: where n is the day before the power goes out and x is our beginning value of a silver ounce round at $25.
n+1= 2x $50, n+2= 4x $100, n+4= 8x $200, n+7= 16x $400, n+14= 32x $800, n+21= 40x $1000 and n+30 days= $1000+ ?! I figure by then it will plateau off, but it could continue much higher if the remaining folks have learned to survive and barter civilly without having killed off each other…

This also means that gold prices at the end of the first month are about $40,000 an ounce and paper fiat currency is being used as TP. Physical silver and gold have been used as monetary metals for millennia and will continue to be strategic assets, so choose and invest wisely.

Here is another rub. Those billion ounces of physical silver (read: tons and tons) that JP Morgan and the banks of New York, Fort Know and London have stored in their vaults (supposedly) will never again see the light of day…because the electronic locks won’t open, the armored trucks won’t roll and the banksters will not be able to access or transfer them no way, no how. So, that supply just disappeared, literally. Therefore, no cavalry in “silver shining armor“ is coming to save the day with bail-outs from their stashes. As an old adage goes, “Water which is distant is no help for a fire which is near.” Meaning, you are on your own in your little neck of the woods (town or city) to determine bartering values of your own. Localities and proximities will vary tremendously, as they have through the centuries. That precious monetary metal that was a primo strategic asset just one day ago…is now locked away deep beyond the reach of mere mortals (who don’t know about its whereabouts, nor care because they are fighting for their lives and trying to feed their kids about now…).

While researching for this article, I came across one written by Bix Weir for Roadtoroota.com talking about $7,000 /oz silver if they just “remove one or two banks from the supply side of the paper silver equation” and watch “it skyrocket overnight.” He also said, “The silver markets are rigged. Every day. Every trade. Every option. Every derivative.

The silver markets have been rigged since the early 1970s when Alan Greenspan introduced computer market trading systems to the world beginning the long-term commodity market rigging operations.” Now I don’t know much about that because I was only seven at the time…but I do believe that the Banking Cabal controls it so that nobody really knows the “Fair Market Value” of silver anymore. JP Morgan Chase bank and Goldman-Sachs are members of the London Bullion Market Association and, therefore, are wholesales for the industry (read: Banksters, IMHO). Another great resource was the watershed book The Death of Money by Jim Rickards. He foresaw much of what is going on now before “The Great Reset” (but that’s another discussion completely)… He said, “Confidence in the dollar is lost slowly at first, then quickly.” And on page 219 he writes, “If gold is the numeraire (the monetary standard), then it is more accurate to think of dollars and other currencies as the fluctuating assets, not gold.”

In the Holy Bible it speaks of silver as the money of redemption. See Numbers 3: 46-51 for the explanation God gave Moses about redeeming the first-born males for pieces of silver; moreover, read the accounts of Judas Iscariot in the Gospels attempting to redeem the life of Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. There are several other accounts also where silver, specifically, is the “Redeeming metal.”

In Leviticus, males and females were worth different amounts of silver, depending on their age and health…Value determination “charts”. And even Joseph was sold as a slave for silver shekels…only later to have redemption because it was God’s plan. So, will you “redeem” your fiat FRN’s soon for real money…?

This search began for me in 2014 when a SurvivalBlog article talked about being the local bank in a post-collapse scenario. They discussed having a variety of “junk silver coins” and 1 oz “rounds” on hand to act as the exchange “bank” in your local area.

Hey, somebody’s gotta do it, right?!

Then it talked about the security force manpower, guns, and vaults that would be necessary to guard and protect it…and my interest in taking on that project waned. Also, the author suggested 30 oz of gold, 3,000 oz of silver and $2,500 in junk coins which equals about $100,000 today…gulp! “Loans, collateral and acting as a conduit” was outta my wheel-house…

However, the concept has not left me…therefore, I will bring this up…do you have, in your possession, a silver/ gold/ platinum Test Kit?

If not, how will you be able to determine the “real” from the “fake” precious metals. “Where the rubber meets the road” basics need to be procured NOW, ahead of time and while you still can. They are cheap online. And a non-digital, non-electronic postal scale for weighing out the coins, rounds and bars. Go order one right now! It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it! Same with the guns, friends, colleagues, plans, ammo, and food-stores…but you guys already know this…

Pure gold weighs 19.3 gram/ cc and pure silver weighs 10.5 gram per cubic centimeter…did you know that? Do you know how to test and confirm it? Can you spot counterfeits? FYI- Tungsten can be covered with a thin layer of gold and weight about the same. Molybdenum can be coated with silver and resemble a silver ingot. Beware…desperate people do desperate things.

Will you be the banker or the crook? Today, they may be the same thing…but when the SHTF, someone in your area has to be educated and motivated to work it through and head it up…if you have read this far, it could be, and should be YOU. Be able to “prove the legitimacy” of the goods brought in for trade and barter (either on a small scale or a huge scale).

“Get out of currency and buy money.” And precious metals do not need a Faraday cage.

Today, in a day of Fake currency, Fake videos, Fake medicines, Fake news, and Fake elections, who can tell what is Real anymore? In the dark future we may have No politicians, No representatives, No doctors, No teachers, No bloggers, and No hospitals. (I am thankful to be a holistic chiropractor who can work with my hands even if the power goes out!). Evaluate your business and its viability without electricity.

The more post-apocalyptic books that I read (there are three on my nightstand right now) the more I “UPPED” the values in my predictions. I have altered the charts above sooooo many times that it makes my head spin and my gut wrench…it is going to be that BAD!

If it goes down, it will get so ugly, nasty, chaotic and desperate so quickly that no one will be prepared. “The new normal” will be a thing if the past, never to return again…we thought we had it tough with the stupid Covid-19 lock-down periods…child’s play and nirvana compared to No Power Ever again! Our “normalcy bias” cannot even conceive or imagine what this world would turn into…the book authors are pretty close when they write fancifully about the worst-case-scenarios…but it’s just fiction, right? No, it could really happen…in our life-times. Go watch or read The Road…

My wife said unequivocally, that she does not want to live through it…she says she would just rather die ASAP and go see Jesus. Years ago I didn’t agree with her and I wanted to survive and use my meager prepper skills and smarts to out-live the sheeple…but the more I’ve studied this grim subject, the more I agree with her. Lord, please take me away…and the evil cabal, ignorant masses and powers-that-be can have it. I love the 2nd Amendment but I don’t want to have to shoot somebody! I also don’t want to try and stand guard 24/7 to protect my stuff. Is that quality of life worth the cost?!

Today I pray for Pre-Trib Rapture and being absent from the body and present with the Lord is sounding better and better to me. Yet that is the subject for a whole other article… But at least the IRS will be gone…

Your Thoughts?
To wrap up, the purpose of this writing is to ask for help, opinions and collaborations of fellow, like-minded individuals to brainstorm and come up with a standardized, realistic formula or chart that can be printed out and circulated BEFORE the worst happens! Let’s take it on and come up with one, SOON. Feel free to email me at: FreedomDoctor@protonmail.com with your input and ideas. I happily welcome any and all input (except goofball haters who don’t believe that this could happen) and will be open to your expertise and backgrounds. Take another hard look at my charts and time frames above and grill my potential values…and then tweak ‘em, compress them or elongate them and send them to me for eval. Interpolate or extrapolate…raise or lower…what seems reasonable to you IF ALL the power is GONE, FOREVER…that is the main criteria for this message.

Thanks for your interest today. Blessings and prayers that the info above never becomes necessary and remains a no-thing that we never actually have to worry about or use. That would be music to my ears, truly. The bottom line is, “Do not store up on earth your treasures that will rust and rot…” No matter what happens, you can’t eat a gold bar and you cannot drink a silver coin, so appeal to heaven when TEOTWAWKI occurs. The metal-market manipulation will end in one Second! True fortunes will be made and lost on one, unfortunate day…

The saying is that avalanches begin as snowflakes…but if the power goes off, it kinda begins as an AVALANCHE! An Exponentially large one…and the only way to avoid being buried alive is to hold physical metals and be prepared to barter. Oh, and also be prepared to shoot to kill.

As a contrarian silver bug myself, I hope this article helps "wake up" my fellow ZRT'ers, who have ONLY grown up with, or learned of, FIAT currency their whole life. 

Forewarned is forearmed.