Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

38. Threat Spirals

Sheila Randall was not happy with the advent of the new federal currency. It was produced in such great quantities that inflation set in very rapidly. Her solution was simple: She would continue to take pre-1965 silver coinage in payment, and she still marked all of her prices in silver coin. But on her whiteboard she posted a conversion table for calculating payments in “Fort Knox Dollars.” Initially, the multiplier was 10 to 1, but less than a year later it grew to 19 to 1. Everyone knew that that they were being robbed by the currency inflation, but there was nothing that they could do about it.

The old Federal Reserve notes were completely repudiated, but for the sake of convenience, pre-Crunch coinage was accepted at face value to serve as change for the new bills. (It was explained that minting and issuing new coinage would be a logistical nightmare for the fledgling government.) Thus, anyone who held large quantities of the old coinage had cause to celebrate. To “strengthen” the new Fort Knox dollars, the Hutchings government ordered the confiscation of all gold coins, all gold bullion, and any silver bullion bars 10 ounces or larger.

The bullion ban was largely ignored or circumvented, despite a death penalty for disobedience. Countless 100-ounce Engelhard and Johnson Matthey silver bars were band saw cut into ten pieces to get around the 10 ounce limit. Meanwhile, the total ban on private gold holdings helped contribute to the market value of silver rising in relation to gold, to the point where it took just 12 ounces of silver to buy 1 ounce of gold.

Much of the privately held gold bullion in the country was cast into rings. These were not intended to be worn, and in fact they were too soft to be worn regularly, since they were 24-karat. These rings were simply a means of avoiding prosecution under the bullion gold ban. Some of these rings were even stamped or engraved with their exact weight. Another substantial quantity of gold bullion was acquired by dentists, who took advantage of an exemption for “dental gold.” Much of this gold was traded for dentistry services.

The conversations that Sheila Randall had with her customers, and those that she overheard, began to take on an ominous tone. People began talking about the corruption, nepotism, and uneven justice dispensed by the Provisional Government. They soon spoke of putting up some sort of resistance to Maynard Hutchings and his cronies. Often they couldn’t articulate exactly how they might resist the government, but their voices became more and more strident as time went on. Gradually, it became clear that the Hutchings government would never restore the freedom and prosperity that they had been accustomed to before the Crunch. Sheila wondered: If people were being this vocal and this strident in public, then what must they be saying in the privacy of their homes? In a conversation with Deputy Dustin Hodges, Sheila asked, “What do you think will happen?”

“Well, I think there’s a civil war coming,” he answered gravely.

After a long pause, he added: “It’s pretty clear there’s no way that Hutchings and his camp followers are going to somehow magically reform themselves into an honest and law-abiding government all by themselves. They’re gonna need at least a push of some sort, and I have a feeling it’ll be a stout shove. And as for the ‘peacekeeping troops’ from the UN, there’s just more and more of them every day, right? I don’t see any solution except kicking them out of the country, because they’re going to continue to throw their weight around and make our lives miserable. They’re not here to restore order or to hand out charity. They’re just here to take and take and take.”

“So what are we going to do?” Sheila asked.

Hodges sighed. After another long pause, he answered, “We just keep our heads down and we pick our fights. If we come out slugging too soon, or fight them on their terms, then we’re going to get creamed. But if we pick the time and the place, then we can do some considerable damage and they won’t know what hit them.”