Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
Yes, Gold is the obvious first thought, however how interested is another country going to be in gold when the entire world is in the toilet? What are they going to do with all that gold in the short term? How is it going to be shipped to them in the first place and where exactly is the US going to find it? I would imagine Fort Knox is little more than a steaming crater by this time....
Moving on, "rights" are only worth anything when there are organisations and governments in existence to acknowledge them. Resources (such as food) are not likely to be shipped offshore to foreign countries when they're so badly needed at home. In the year or three post nuke, what sort of resources will the US be able to offer to other countries that they might actually be interested in? The US government is effectively a memory. What's left can make promises and treaties, but how much weight would they have?
As for alternate accounting methods, yes, they exist. BUT, the vast majority of records are either electronically stored, or would have been vaporised or buried under piles of rubble when the nukes hit. Yes, the tools may exist, but the value those tools are supposed to handle is effectively gone.
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Leg,
Although it seems natural to us that the only worthwhile investments are "canned food and shotguns" (per
Gremlins 2), the Twilight war passed the threshold of civilisational collapse without really anyone noticing. This is one of the keys of the background. Protecting important databases from EMP is hardly rocket science.
Governments at least would be interested in doing business as usual, even during wartime, as they tend to see things in the long term. It's vague how the economy in South America fared, but it's possible there was some kind of exchange of gold at the national level or trade in minerals or oil. Further, they knew (or at least hoped) the war was going to end at some point, if the USA took decades to pay off its debt, so what? The UK just finished paying off its WWII debt, one where civilisation didn't collapse. Obligations could be put off for quite a while.
Perhaps it's like this: if the USA can make good on its promises, then all well and good. If it can't because there is no government or a weak government, then they can pretty much do what they like without retaliation. (For example, nationalise American assets outside the USA.) There might not be many working refineries in (say) 1999 in the USA but a tanker full of crude from the strategic reserve would buy a nice bunch of Pucaras and spare parts from Argentina or a number of then-new Super Tucanos from Embrauer in Brasil.
As for Ft. Knox, it's more than likely the gold was evacuated; it wasn't like no one thought a nuclear war was a possibility. After all, someone tried (and at least partially failed) to recover the gold in Manhattan. Ft. Knox would have a higher priority and easier security.
Tony