most precious metal

MOST PRECIOUS METAL


A minion was corresponding with me and basically praising my hair, blowing smoke up my ass and in general trying to make up for all the unworthies who dare stain the greatness of all that is Bison just by their mere presence. Actually, he was making it sound like all of the above but secretly I think he was trying to make me jealous. I gloat and damn you all for not having three to five years of grain on hand, which sounds all righteous and wonderful, but it is only one ton of grain per person. Okay, that also sounds like a lot, until you realize that only costs $500 plus buckets. Most of you spend far more than that just on One Friggin Mattel Toy Rifle. Once you add in your magazines and laser pointers and what not, you almost spent enough to buy five years of food for the whole family. Anyway, not to get too dang far off topic, which I always do but simply can’t help myself, I get all highfalutin about having all this food when it isn’t much of a huge deal, but along comes above mentioned minion and casually states he is getting TONS, tons as in plural rather than singular, of grain which makes my one and fraction ton seem puny and pathetic.

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Okay, now granted, he might have a lot of spawn to feed. We didn’t get into particulars, because he is wise enough to know that you just don’t start getting personal about my life or you have to start listening to me go on and on ad infinitum about ex-wives and what not, and that is just me warming up to the subject, like if you are stupid enough to ask an old dude “how’s it going?” which is of course an obvious rhetorical question but after the age of something like sixty seven every single old pathetic geriatric takes the query seriously and starts going on and on about how often their bowels move and what pharmaceuticals they are ingesting and what new skin condition they are worried about and how just the other day they were minding their own business and suddenly they coughed up a bloody hairball and all manner of other disgusting crap no one under their generations age wants to hear about. Then, as if not a care in the world after collection multi-tons of wheat added to multiple tons of rice strained him at all, he goes on to stating his goal of a 100k of rimfire and ten K of every other round of ammunition. Okay, I poke fun, but this guy seriously gets it. Our oil subsidy is ending and you have one last chance to benefit from it. Do not squander this opportunity.

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We have wallowed in our petroleum riches all our lives. We’ve worked at easy jobs requiring, compared to other through history, little to no effort. We’ve wasted no calories keeping our bodies warm in winter, petroleum heat doing the job for us, at the same time we have more to eat every day than is healthy. We grow grain in dead soil by pouring on natural gas derived fertilizer, irrigated by coal fired electricity and transported thousands of miles away at the cost of twenty five cents for a days worth of food, which is only two minutes of wages for the worst paid of us. There is absolutely no way we can eat without petroleum without spending over one hundred times that amount bartering our labor. It is simply awe inspiring the low cost of our grain. Stocking up now, at a hundred bucks for a years worth of food, or only two days labor at minimum wage labor, is a no brainer. As is, for obvious reasons, stocking up on ammunition. No one but the wealthy can afford gold. Silver, past an ounce or two, is also highly priced ( not because China is buying it all but because this country imports 60% of the metal, up from just 6% a mere ten years ago and because globally, at current consumption, the stuff will be out in a couple of decades ) and usually not affordable. You can easily collect pre-82 pennies for copper, but for the majority of us I would say that you should ignore all that and just collect the most precious metal, ammunition and its components.

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Not for barter. Okay, sure, in an emergency like paying the only doctor around to save your life. No, you want to collect this metal because, like the super supplemented grain that feeds you, there is simply no way you can ever have access to cheap and affordable quality ammunition again other than stocking it now. Stocking it for a lifetime of use. I completely agree with Rawles on deep stocks of ammunition for you and your descendents. Our only disagreement is our tactics. His is spray and pray and mine is controlled fire with absolutely no modern military tactics duplicated such as suppressive fire. Here is my analogy on suppressive fire. There is a pond with all the remaining fish in the world in it. Fish is the only thing you are eating. Controlled, aimed, calmly lobbed fish will strike the head of your enemy and kill him. You must use some of your fish to defend your pond, otherwise you lose all your other fish. Suppressive fire of fish keeps the other fellows head down, but you are soon out of fish and die of starvation.

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Bartering ammo is like bartering away your fish from that one pond. Don’t do it. You will need every round because no more will be made in duplicate, only in pale imitation of quality. And the wonderful thing about ammo, even after its doubled in price, is it is still much more affordable than silver or gold. An ounce of silver is selling for close to $50 an ounce ( spot price doesn’t assure delivery, you usually must pay a premium to get immediate purchase ). A small box of rimfire is under five bucks. As is a tray of primers. As is lead. You can still buy over five hundred rounds of .22 for under $20. Shop around and you can get a box of thirty caliber factory ammo for $20. Yes, buying bulk on all the above will get you discounted per item price. I’m just talking casual, one at a time, pocket change type purchases. You need a minimum stockpile of course. It’s all subjective but my minimum is 500 per pistol, 2k per bolt action, 5k rimfire. After you’ve got your minimum you can then slowly but surely keep adding to it each payday. As in all your preps, trip over yourself in your haste to get the bare bones stockpile ( quickly, like yesterday, as no one but Baby Jesus himself knows what happens tomorrow ), then relax and slowly add. Which is why I don’t care that I’m spending seventy cents a pound on dry beans. I’ve already got my basic food storage squared away, so slowly and expensively getting more is just a bonus. Same with the ammo. You can literally never have enough. As another minion helpfully pointed out, just three rimfire shots a day and you are out of ammo in only five years with an initial stock of five thousand rounds ( which I’d wager most of you don’t have close to ). How many semi-auto firefights does it take to burn through your “huge” ten thousand round stockpile of .223? Four thousand bucks won’t even last a year. It is far more important to plan on shooting less ( bolt verses semi ), but it is also critical to get far more ammo than you ever thought necessary. The math of depleting resources is brutal. Do your best to mitigate that.

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I’m not advocating staying in the city, working a great paying job, to pay for an impossible amount of ammo. Like your wheat, you do what you can with what you’ve got. My point is more to use smart tactics to conserve, then stock a minimum, then to continuously add to it forever. You don’t necessarily need, say, a thousand rounds of rifle ammo. Two hundred loaded cases and the reloads for eight hundred more will work cheaply. And you never need to spend more than casual coin on that constant addition. Remember the five buck tray of primers, the $15 box of rimfire, the $20 can of gunpowder. If you are worried about investing in precious metal because you want to convert worthless paper into hard assets, think ammo and components.

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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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