Thread: Fort Knox
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Old 06-21-2012, 08:23 AM
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Legbreaker Legbreaker is offline
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The only real use I can see for the gold is to trade with other large organisations such as foreign countries for desperately needed items such as food and fuel.
Given just about every other country is also in a very bad place and in need of every last scrap of those vital resources, it's extremely doubtful there'll be any significant trade of such items for a number of years to come, and therefore, no significant requirement for the gold. As Doc said, even a small gold coin is worth far more than the average person will expect to see in months and changing it for lesser values isn't going to be very easy. Trade in kind is the only real way of paying for anything during the recovery years as nobody can eat, burn, shelter under, or wipe their butt with gold.

Back around 2000, gold IRL was worth approximately US$35 per gram, or $35,000 per kilo. In my games I devalue it to $20 per gram and anyone who wants to use gold in transactions is either clipping small amounts from jewellery, or dealing with gold dust and a set of scales.

Even at $20 per gram, 4,578 tonnes adds up to US$91,560,000,000 - far, far more than anyone is going to need, or be able to spend in the first years of the 21st century.

While I can see the attraction in moving the gold, logically there just doesn't seem to be any need to do so when it's possible, and once the situation changes and Ft Knox is/has to be abandoned, the logistics don't stack up as possible, especially when you look at just the publicly known security measures in place.
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