textfiles/survival/invest

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.