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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;John the Jute, post: 560845, member: 17740&quot;]Unfortunately, Joe, you may be right. I do hope you aren&#039;t.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I think I would soften your conclusion from &quot;we will get nuked&quot; to &quot;we may get nuked&quot;. That&#039;s because it is profoundly difficult for terrorist groups or rogue states to find a source of plutonium or uranium 235. If, however, they can find a source, then building a simple nuclear bomb is quite straightforward. Sited somewhere in the Bos-Wash megalopolis it could cause millions of deaths and continent-wide disruption.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>How might holdings of precious metals help those left behind? Well, I believe that those on the West Coast would be in the position of the second-level gold bugs from my previous post, the rainy-day savers. Most large corporations will be functioning only limitedly for months if not years: stock prices will crash, dividend streams will dry up. A holding of either gold or silver (or platinum or palladium), which can be sold a chunk at a time, will make things much easier.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Those on the East Coast who survive the bomb will have to flee, just like the third-level gold bugs, the refugees, from my previous post. After the waves of shock, grief and rage have subsided, the folk out West will be very welcoming, but resources will be limited, and the refugess will have lost their real estate as well as having their savings disrupted. Gold (or platinum) makes it possible to carry substantial value for little weight and to have something with which to start life in the West.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>I think that US society is quite robust enough to survive such a tragedy, though not without horrifying inflation. There will still be dealers where gold and silver can readily be traded. It would, however, be the wrong time to have one&#039;s precious metals in the vault of a bank in NYC!</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>(I chose the Bos-Wash megalopolis--rather than, say, the Blue Banana of Western Europe--because the geographer who first described the idea of that megalopolis was himself twice a refugee. Jean Gottman was born in the Ukraine to Jewish parents who were killed in the Russian Revolution; he fled to Paris ... and then fled to Princeton when the Nazis invaded France.)</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Later,</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>John[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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