The Ultrarich Ask: "How Do I Control My Compound's Security Force After Civilization Collapses?"

[orthoclad]

22. I used to think about platinum wire

Scarce metals like gold, platinum, rhodium have value as catalysts and corrosion resistance. Gold is too obvious to thieves. Wind platinum wire on solder wire spools, no one would notice.

But these metals require a functioning society capable of manufacturing things to have value. In the bunker world, they're useless. Potatoes would have more value. But even that potato-value requires labor. Who tills the soil? In the end, it's labor which will control a post-apocalypse world. There are techniques now to control labor; capitalists believe they're the experts in that because it works now, with all the force (and guns) of government to back them up. What they are really talking about in this bunker-security world is re-creating mini-States where they will still control labor.

(Personally I've switched to sweet potatoes because potatoes require too much labor in the form of the chemical industry to survive blight.)