Because it's purpose is to facility access via air specifically to and from the region of Greater Glasgow, a region considerably larger "local", and airports are typically named after the target population centre as fits the expectations of the passengers. This happens with every airport because one cannot situate them in dense urban areas. And Now You Know And Knowing Is Half the Battle.
Anywho, back to the topic- people should actually prepare for the opposite of what a "prepper" generally aims for. You don't need to worry about making your home a secure fortress, you'd need to be able to quickly move from it and set up your life elsewhere. Then when people do think it that, you don't assume that civilisation has fallen apart, that would take too much, more likely civilisation is completely intact and that's your problem. You may during your lifetime find yourself in a situation where you have relatively quickly lost your home, you may owe people money, you may be expecting baliffs or people serving papers and you'll need to avoid your home for a while to buy yourself some time. Going to the extreme end, your ethnicity or social class may be targeted for violence. And if society is fully functional what do you have to worry about- well if you are in financial difficulty, you might want to be able to clean your credit record, you might want to be able to set up a new bank account so that your income remains liquid; what if someone is involving corrupt police, hell, what about common or garden but surprisingly easy to manipulate police?
If you prep for these situations, the good news is that they are far more likely than, say, a zombie plague and you may have the pleasure of experiencing one during your lifetime and/or benefitting from the experience of an older relative. Even if you don't experience something like this, it may be more applicable for more mundane activites if you've just got stuff that you need to move house without hiring a truck or a PO box set up or a public library card set up or a working knowledge of banking systems and IRS protocols or a folder full of maps to nearby useful locations that you don't use everyday but might need to check up at a time when the power is out (I think I remember Barkey mentioning he already does something this-or memorising them- I think just having some maps in the kitchen draw is more useful if your wife ever wants to ask you where the local DIY store is). Sure you may have made a friend out of someone with relatives in South East Asia in case you ever need to flee the country or pretend you've just moved in from abroad but you'll find that making new friends will enrich your life and open up new possibilities and cultural awareness.
I think prepping, in its stereotypical form, is more driven by the psychological need to feel independent and to take comfort in our strengths. Heck, even if you're doing it for reality based reasons, you'll still going to be trying to achieve that feeling but if they were doing a survey of preppers, I would like them to add the question "How many times have you seen Red Dawn?" just to see if I have a point.
The guys who completely memorise the IRS practices, protocols and laws, though, they're totally on the right track.
Edit: Oh yes, and it's more fun to be a typical prepper. I know I'd rather be shooting than reading a book on tort law.
edited 20th Nov '12 2:36:07 PM by SomeSortOfTroper
I think that's sterling silver prices. Whatever you get out of melting a quarter is going to be of dubious purity, and therefore quite a bit lower in price. Adding to that, most places that offer cash for precious metals aren't going to give you it's true market value, but if you want true market value you're going to need at least an ounce before it's worth it.
Right, only a know a little bit about precious metals. At any rate, the silver content of a pre-1965 quarter is considerable, so it's value is more than a quarter dollar. Just something to look out for. I'll be checking my change from now on. I know a few people who are into silver and gold and see it as investing, so I'll probably just sell to them, whatever they offer. I'm not looking to make a business out of it.
From the prepper side of things, some folks invest in silver and gold either for barter in a post-disaster scenario or as an investment that won't be so affected by an economic crash. I think the latter isn't a bad idea since silver and gold just keep increasing in price, but the former isn't so smart. I've we've established I have no idea what silver is worth, so offering me a few silver dollars would be the same as offering my a pair of socks. The socks are more useful, though.
EDIT: Quick google search returned this tidbit for the interested:
1946-1964 Roosevelt dimes: 0.07234 troy ounces silver 1932-1964 Washington quarters: 0.18084 troy ounces silver 1948-1963 Franklin halves: 0.36169 troy ounces silver 1964 Kennedy halves: same as Franklin halves
So, a pre-1965 quarter is worth something like $2.50 with prices fluctuating. It now occurs to me that the $5 comment was given when the guy was weighing multiple quarters.
edited 20th Nov '12 9:20:18 PM by Shepherd
Hate to burst bubbles, but... if, as many a doomsday prepper seems to think, civilisation goes bye-bye...
Why would gold and silver be the method of exchange to go to, anyway? Goods and barter would be the new king, surely... particularly if nobody else stocked up.
Seems... weird to me to assume "yay: precious metals!" before "yay: decent Swiss Army Knife for sale!".
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And, like I said, good luck actually getting someone to give you the $2.50 for a quarter's worth of silver. Usually you can't get those prices unless you have a LOT of silver in one place.
Also, I personally think that stockpiling silver and gold in case of economic collapse is pretty silly too. Precious metal prices fluctuate by quite a bit if you're talking market value. There was a large price-crash in the 70's, where the prices plummeted, for example.
edited 20th Nov '12 9:33:02 PM by DrunkGirlfriend
"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -Drunkscriblerian![]()
I think there's some basis in it. It relies on the idea that gold and silver have an intrinsic worth. I.E. when paper money stops being worth the paper it's printed on then precious metals still retain value. I guess that's for people who envision a world less Fallout 3 and more Fallout New Vegas. Which isn't so bad an idea, I guess. Civilization will pick itself up eventually. But, yeah, for your average bum a good knife is worth several times its weight in gold, and to quote Daryl Dixon "Gold won't protect your family and put food on the table".
Gold and Silver tend to be pretty safe investments. The prices fluctuate but silver has been going up in value for years. I think it's now something like 3 times what it was in '06. Silver is used in electronics so it's always going to have a pretty strong demand. I imagine the instant they find a conductive material as good and cheaper than silver, the silver prices will crash.
For the apocalypse, people figure that the value will always be there, in some form, whereas the stock market can always take a nose dive at a moment's notice. Take '08 for example; silver and gold stayed fairly strong while plenty of people lost the shirts off their backs. I've toyed with the idea of investing in silver and gold just to have a bit in case I needed to fill up the refrigerator when paychecks were thin.
On a related note: I saw in the news about a guy who passed away. His neighbors cleaned out his house and found an ammo can full of gold coins to be passed along to his next of kin. They were valued at $7 million. Investing in gold worked out for someone, since now they're rich overnight.
Pretty safe as investments in general, yes. But it's not going to save you if the economy bottoms out.
Gold and silver have market value because they have people willing to buy them. It worked out in the Great Depression, because the government was still purchasing gold/silver, and the government set price was the lowest price you could get. Now there is no lower limit because the US dollar is based off GDP not precious metals, so its worth is decided entirely by market value.
If the stock market plummets, the market value of precious metals are also going to plummet.
"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -DrunkscriblerianThe value of gold has survived the fall of many civilizations before. Knives are much easier to make than gold, and if there's ever a situation where the former is worth more than the latter, it will almost certainly be temporary.
The absolute value will fall, sure, but not so much the relative value.
edited 20th Nov '12 10:02:17 PM by Topazan
Yes, it will be temporary, but there's no telling how long it'll be before precious metals become valuable again. Chances are, immediately following a collapse, humanity would revert to a barter system, so you'd be much better off learning a skillset or learning how to produce products.
You saw it happen a little bit in the latest recession too. I've personally done some odd jobs in exchange for food before.
edited 20th Nov '12 10:06:09 PM by DrunkGirlfriend
"I don't know how I do it. I'm like the Mr. Bean of sex." -DrunkscriblerianI'm not sure how much worth gold will have in a situation where what people want is to trade food and bullets, though. I mean, yeah, it's pretty, but it's only got worth as currency when your world is stable enough for people to get a more complicated economy than the barter system. And even less in a world where a lot of countries don't tie their national currency to the price of gold.
Otherwise it's just a pretty bauble you can make jewelry or something out of.
Gold can have value in a barter system. Especially in a barter system, actually, because it will be one of the best stores of value available. Even if no one can use it at the time, it still has speculative value.
A situation where gold is not valuable is likely to be one where necessities are critically short, such as a famine situation. Once stability is established and trade between communities is resumed, it shouldn't be long before it's considered valuable again.
And, why is that?
Because it was a fake construct, that's why.
Most Western cultures had to "educate" poor savages in the use of the pointless, yellow stuff as a means of economic exchange (which, still has funny stories told about it across cultures: you should hear some of the Xhosa tales
). So, I really don't get where you're coming from with the whole "keeps its value across cultures" thing.
It keeps its value across the cultures who inherited it from the Pharaonic and Greco-Roman obsessives. And, before you ask... Asia got into it to... thanks to Alexander. Jade, Ivory and spices were actually more important, before the shiny stuff.
Because it's an ideal store of value, being portable, divisible, durable and fungible?
Jade is a stone, so when it breaks, it breaks, so it's not as easily divisible*. I don't know much about it, but aren't there varying qualities as well? If so, then it fails "fungible".
Spices are not valuable enough to be a portable store of value. They were once rare in certain parts of the world, but now the channels of distribution have improved. You can carry a fortune in gold on your pocket, not so easy with pepper. I suspect they fail the durable test as well, since they lose their potency with age.
Not so sure about ivory. Like jade, it's not so easily divisible, so that's one thing.
The only other things that fit these requirements are other precious metals and currencies.
Now, you may have a point that gold's value is somewhat inflated beyond its natural value by its reputation as a store of value, but if that reputation has endured since the time of the Pharoahs, I don't see it ending soon.
Even in a culture that does not assign any special value to it, it still has value because of its scarcity and the handful of uses in industry.
If nothing else, gold and silver are relatively soft and easy to work with, so you could fashion various useful things from the stuff such as fishing weights or bullets (not sure how gold or silver do as bulles... they're heavier than lead, right?)
And before throwing all of your 1960s quarters into a smelting pot, check to see if their value as collectible coins is higher than the sum of their materials first. Might be you can make more money sellign the quarter as a piece of history/government sponsored art/whatever than you could as a few pinches of silver and other materials.
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I'm with the amaXhosa. In subsistence times, you know where you are with your cows, goats and sheep. If you're good at keeping the numbers up, you're rich and fed (after all, if you can feed them on extra grains and such, you've got enough for you, too).
If not, you're poor and, probably having to use bush-meat and pot-herbs. Or, starving.
Real value is what keeps food in the pot. And, it's a bit hard to cook gold.
Agreed with the spices. If doomsday falls, you're going to be out of nutmeg for the foreseeable future.
Mind you, ginger and chillies can be grown: start storing seed packets, as those can also be used as preservatives.
edited 21st Nov '12 12:04:08 AM by Euodiachloris
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Actually, that's a interesting point. I suppose those things would gain value pretty quickly.
The problem is that plant-based spices probably lose their potency over time. Salt might keep pretty well, but it would be relatively easy to resume production in many parts of the world.
Well, unlike some cultures we have an exchange economy, wherein small amounts of rare commodities can be exchanged for large amounts of the essentials.
That's not to ignore the value of productive capital like livestock. In fact, if you're a herder and your herd survives the apocalypse, you'll probably be in a good shape, as long as you can protect them. Unfortunately, you can't bury goats and have them be as valuable when you dig them up.
edited 21st Nov '12 12:12:41 AM by Topazan

@ Tam: I've got AWE Aldermaston just up the Road, RAF Odiham not too far away, and not a Million miles away from The Plain — and major Rail and Road Junctions are here too — not forgetting, not too long ago, RAF Greenham Common.
Keep Rolling On