Oddbean

years ago it occurred to me that there are a lot of measures for intelligence. one of the most valuable skills is how to give proper risk allocation to various scenarios. when I was younger, I would read survivalist fiction and kinda romanticize "prepping". having some gold, ammo, tools etc is fun. Realistically, if power and Internet go down and stay down, gold bugs and bitcoiners are equally fucked. dead. its silly to imagine a scenario like you'd see on TV. so back to my first point. he's already a bitcoiner. he understands human nature and scarcity. now think about what's most likely, a post apocalyptic scenario where people are trading goods and services for gold? or a scenario like Venezuela, Argentina or Beirut? hyper inflation makes it hard but hardly impossible to buy the things you need. gold is great but hardly better (fungible). If I tried to buy something on the black market, I'd rather have a phone and btc than some gold that I need to prove is real, a file to shave some off, a scale to weigh it and a security team to keep me from getting shot. its really hard for me to keep a straight face when people say things like this to me.

steam age if total grid down only people who are prepared for it will be ok also, in fact, you can even have diesel engines without electricity, but if we get blasted repeatedly by heavy sun-burps there won't be any working electrical things left this is why i have it in my mind to build an underground structure with tin and carbon radiation shielding, to keep a few things going like some computers for accessing information and doing calculations but outside of that, it's gonna be steam trains and herding cattle and goats and sheep and growing gardens and blacksmithing there is a lot of tech that doesn't need electricity, and an increasing amount of optical computer and communications tech that won't be taken out by CMEs but it's fairly likely that by around 2035 there will be such events and loss of infrastructure and bricked everything