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INVESTMENT IN SURVIVAL by Kurt Saxon (c) 1980
In the next two years I see the collapse of organized
societies worldwide, due mainly to the cutoff of Mideast oil,
probably resulting in nuclear war. It's too late to develop
alternative energies so a sizeable cutback in oil will cause a
massive depression.
Millions of taxpayers will be unemployed. Over 30 million
Social Security recipients and nearly that amount on Welfare
will see their checks stopped. Millions who are now on Valium or
other narcotic tranquilizers will go insane when they cannot get
more. Medical supplies will command astronomical prices as drug
addicts swarm over pharmacies looking for dope, ruining everything
they don't steal.
Cities will be cut off from food as oil supplies run out and
the truckers cannot get fuel. As oil-based fertilizers become
unavailable to grow food, agricultural production will drop to the
point where famine will be a reality.
No governmental system can long put off the inevitability of
the above chaos and ruin of our already overburdened society. Our
computer-run system has heretofore depended on a certain percentage
of competent types to second guess our increasingly underachieving
majority and the politicians catering to them for their votes. But
the comptents are gradually giving up and dropping out, almost like
in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged". Of course, they are less motivated
by the logic of withdrawal than by the sheer hopelessness and
frustration of the task of maintaining a Disneyland for dummies.
The threatened cutoff of oil is only the last straw in a long
sequence of factors leading to our ultimate decline and final
collapse.
The process of social disintegration began years ago in
various stages. There is no one cause nor one year. A combination
of giving in to human, social, political and economic weaknesses,
accelerating year by year, has led up to the twilight of world
civilization. The Liberal altruists seeking to make a place in the
sun for the underachiever and the "disenfranchised" has enabled the
unproductive to gain a majority in most societies. So, like
Babylon, Greece, Egypt, Rome and so many other civilizations, our
Disneyland, too, will shut down forever.
So many world systems are breaking down at this time that it
is projected by socio-economists more knowledgeable than I that the
collapse will come in late 1981 or '82. It will begin like the 1929
Stock Market Crash and go on to the utter ruin and obliteration of
nations.
Many others predict another crash and depression. But most of
them expect a reconstruction similar to that following the
Depression of the thirties. But even in the depths of the last
depression, there was plenty of oil, plenty of fertile farmland, a
relatively small world population, oceans of fish, little
pollution, overall mental health, intelligence and competence.
The difference for our generation is that the easily
accessible and cheap fuel, extensive fertile farmlands and economic
freedom which made possible our world's surplus population, no
longer exists to perpetuate it. Even with our bounty following the
Crash of '29, it wasn't until ten years later, and mainly through
war production that our economy recovered from the Depression.
Our politicians have so devoted themselves to nurturing and
perpetuating hordes of incompetent dependents that further
industrialization to put our nation on a war footing will be
unaffordable. Even if it were not, our present union-spoiled and
demanding work force could not be expected to perform the way our
parents did in the war plants in the late 30's and early 40's.
Police go on strike in high crime areas. Firemen picket while
tenements burn. Hospital workers walk out on the suffering.
Teachers stay home for weeks as their students languish in a state
of drooling imbecility. Why should we believe that this generation
of workers will show more dedication to duty than our supposedly
disciplined public servants? No. Our present working class lacks
the sense of duty to again put our country on a war footing and
revive our economy.
That's why I see no avoidance of nuclear war. The world's
resources are in too short a supply to spare for a conventionally
waged Third World War. The world's workers are no longer competent
or disciplined enough to produce for such a war. But the
belligerent powers do have the nuclear weapons to fight such a war
and so they will have no other recourse but to use them.
But no matter. The Earth's surplus population is long overdue
for a culling. A nuclear holocaust will be a blessing for the
survivors. We can start anew, hopefully avoiding past errors.
Imagine a world without such festering social sores as New York,
Washington D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit,
Moscow, Rome, Peking or any of the other great pestholes harboring
the majority of the world's parasites and bureaucrats. In light of
all this, to survive, you must move about a hundred miles from any
major target area.
A lot of boasting is done by and on behalf of the Russians
concerning their technology. I believe it to be more science
fiction than science. They can't land a man on the moon and return
him or even decisively defeat the Afghans.
Their targets will most likely be the major cities. Their
overall strategy would be to knock out the U.S. capability to
prevent them from taking over Europe, the Mideast and Africa. Even
if they lost their own major cities they might believe they could
still prevail with the U.S. crippled.
I don't think they would waste missiles on our missile sites
and SAC bases, since our missiles and planes would be well away
before they could be hit. Nor do I believe isolated nuclear
reactors would be targets. With the cities they served knocked
out, they would be worthless. Even so, I wouldn't trust their
crews to deactivate them. Panic, carelessness or sheer
incompetence will cause a lot of meltdowns after a nuclear war so I
wouldn't live near one.
While the Russians prepare to exterminate the Chinese and use
what's left of their missiles on the world's major cities, you
should prepare to weather the storm. Then, while the surviving
Russians, Europeans, etc. revert to primitive tribalism, we can be
on our way back up.
Following the collapse and/or nuclear war, there will be up to
three billion less humans to share our planet with. Even so, the
devastation of the cities will mean an automatic lowering of the
levels of technology. The cities, even those not bombed, will
explode in panic, rioting and looting hardly imaginable. Most
machinery and articles of value will be destroyed.
After the initial chaos it may take up to five years for the
roots of civilization to send up shoots. Citizens of small towns
will immediately organize to fight off bands of refugees and
marauders. City and suburban survivors wil scrounge from the
rubble enough to barely live. Finally, after the less adaptable
have died out, the criminal elements have been killed off, and the
survivors have become more interested in trading with than killing
off one another, culture will reemerge.
In the meantime, those who planned to survive will be the
virtual salvation of their neighbors. They will have books on
basic 19th and early 20th century technology such as found in THE
SURVIVOR and other Atlan publications. They will have metal
working lathes, scroll saws and various other power tools to make
things for barter. They will have basic barter goods to trade for
necessities.
I read and hear a lot about investments as a hedge against the
collapse. Most such advice is given by professional investment
counselors who are experts on speculation. Their advice is usually
very good in times of affluence when the game is played with
intangibles such as precious metals, gems, paintings, antiques,
stocks, bonds, etc. These things have value in the same sense that
bubble gum cards and marbles have great value among children.
But to advise their purchase for security after the collapse
of a whole way of life is either stupidity or fraud. Many survival
investment counselors predict an economic collapse, followed by a
severe depression and resulting civil strife. In time, they say,
reconstruction will take place, a gold-backed, liberty-loving
republic will be established and we will live happily ever after in
some sort of upper middle class paradise.
Promoters of the above scenario conveniently lose sight of our
millions of mentally defective social dependents, the 55%
functional illiteracy rate among our voting populace and the "hope
of the future". It should stand to reason that with an electorate
markedly inferior to that of only a generation ago, a political
victory by a conservative is impossible. Since the majority of the
electorate consumes more than they produce, they will naturally
vote only for those politicos who promise them more benefits with
less responsibility.
As Rome and the rest of the world of her day degenerated and
collapsed, giving way to a centuries long dark age, so may our
present system. Whether our survivors revert to barbarism depends
on those of us who can preserve the best of our culture and
knowledge. This includes our technology, science, machinery and
the chemicals and other raw materials needed to start over.
Those who invest in gold, silver, gems, paintings and antiques
will make no contribution to the future. They have been led to
believe by "survival investment counselors" that the ignorant
peasantry will flock to them with their chickens and tomatoes to
trade for slivers of gold, not to mention the honor of basking in
their glorious presence.
Quite the opposite will be true. The average survivalist will
have only contempt, and even hostility, for the formerly affluent
who invested in intangibles instead of useful tools and day-to-day
necessities unavailable after the collapse.
The idea of investing in intangibles seems all the more
preposterous when one realizes that the wealthiest investors got
theirs through investing in basic needs such as grains, raw
materials, machinery, etc. Since investing in needs is the key to
wealth in times of affluence, common sense dictates that basic
necessities will be the key to wealth after the collapse. The
investor who makes a million in grain and turns around and puts his
profits into gold will find himself paying all his gold for enough
to eat, if he can find someone who wants it.
On the other hand, had he bought and stored grains in a secure
place now, when the collapse comes, he could get all the gold he
wanted from anyone sucker enough to have laid it by. He could also
trade his grains for whatever other foods and barter commodities
were available.
The truly wealthy should put their investment cash into
warehouses full of power tools, medicines, chemicals, canned foods,
clothing, weapons, etc. You'd be surprised how quickly such items
will disappear when no longer manufactured. It stands to reason
that such storage places should be located in small towns away form
populace areas and refugee routes.
The more modest investors should stock up on such barter items
as bullets, salt, cocoa, razor blades, cosmetics, plain aspirin,
ball point pens, metal pens and pen holders plus ink, matches,
garden seeds, needles, spools of thread, chewing tobacco, plain
antihistamine for colds, combs, tweezers, pocket knives, lighters
and extra flints plus lighter fluid, chewing gum and just about
anything that can't be made by hand.
For more ideas on survival investments, trades, etc. buy the
first four volumes of THE SURVIVOR.