Back to the main page

Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Augustus shadowrun@********.net
Subject: US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such...
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 16:12:53 -0700
Was listening to the news today, and there was talk that the US was
going to dip into their emergency oil reserves and release 30M barrels or
so... (exact quantity doesn't matter really)

Anyhow... was still working on my post apocalypse shadowrun campaign, and
was thinking... that wasn't really something I ever took into account...
that there would be a vast storage of some resources (oil, gold, etc)

Doesn't really matter where such resources are kept, but was wondering if
anbody would know of what sort of things (like the oil, like the gold) and
roughly the quantity that the US has stashed in the event of an emergency?

Just thinking because something like a massive oil reserve that survived a
nuclear attack would be about the perfect place for a new settlement to grow
from (assuming people knew it was there)... likewise a place where something
like a massive oil reserve was, that got hit, would be a devestated
wasteland from the resulting fire, smoke, environmental damage, etc...

Thanks for any input,

Augustus`
Message no. 2
From: Iridios iridios@********.net
Subject: US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such...
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 22:30:54 -0400
Greetings,

Friday, September 22, 2000, 7:12:53 PM, you wrote:

> Doesn't really matter where such resources are kept, but was wondering if
> anbody would know of what sort of things (like the oil, like the gold) and
> roughly the quantity that the US has stashed in the event of an emergency?

According to the article I recently read the U.S. has a 600 million
barrel reserve. Of course, with our daily consumption we could finish
up that 600 million in about 40 days.

The majority (if not all) of the reserve is located in four areas
along the gulf coast. Two in Texas, and I don't remember where the
other two are.

As for gold, IMO, in a post-apocalyptic scenario gold would be of
little value to any but the foolish. After all you can't eat or burn
it and it is too heavy to carry along for no reason.


> Just thinking because something like a massive oil reserve that survived a
> nuclear attack would be about the perfect place for a new settlement to grow
> from (assuming people knew it was there)...

The most likely location for a new settlement would be near a source
of food, most likely fish and other water game.

--
Iridios
--
God Is

Visit "The ShadowZone"
http://members.nbci.com/Iridios/ShadowZone

Sig by Kookie Jar 5.97d http://go.to/generalfrenetics/
10:19:59 PM/241:01:04 (1) [no thud]
Message no. 3
From: Wagemage wagemage@**.rr.com
Subject: US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such...
Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 12:30:14 -0400
>According to the article I recently read the U.S. has a 600 million
>barrel reserve. Of course, with our daily consumption we could finish
>up that 600 million in about 40 days.

Accoring to the numbers I heard (19 million barrels/day) it would last
31 days. However this is all from the news which tends to play fast and
loose with numbers like that.

>As for gold, IMO, in a post-apocalyptic scenario gold would be of
>little value to any but the foolish. After all you can't eat or burn
>it and it is too heavy to carry along for no reason.

I disagree. Gold has intrinsic value that no one ever talks about. Other
than the fact that it's perfectly suited to be a monetary system it has a
few other unique properties.
1. It is one of the single most conductive materials in the world. Very
handy if you're trying to get old equipmet to work because...
2. It is very malleable, and EXTREMELY ductile. You can work it like
lead with simpe tools, and it can be stretched into wire very very easily.
(you can get gold in sheets so thin you can SEE through them).
3. In addition to being very electrically conductive, it is very
conductive to heat. More so than nearly any other metal. I saw Julia Childs
cook with a solid gold frying pan once as an example. We don't use it for
this because it is too valuable, but once the bombs drop....
4. It absolutely WILL NOT corrode. This combined with the wiring
properties in #2, is the primary reason it is used in wiring for nuclear
reactors (platinum is also common there for similar reasons).
5. It's pretty. Which is why my girlfriend likes it.


Gold is valuable outside out current monetary system. There is a reason
that every single culture to ever walk the earth has valued it.

And incidentally, there is a whole bunch of it in the famous Fort Knox,
in Kentucky. Accoding to the US Mint's website
(http://www.usmint.gov/facts/fun_facts13.cfm) there is 4603 tons of gold at
Ft. Knox, worth roughly 40.5 billion dollars on the day I wrote this.
Message no. 4
From: Steve Collins einan@*********.net
Subject: US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such...
Date: Sun, 24 Sep 00 11:52:46 -0500
On 9/22/00 6:12 pm, Augustus said:

> Was listening to the news today, and there was talk that the US was
>going to dip into their emergency oil reserves and release 30M barrels or
>so... (exact quantity doesn't matter really)
>
>Anyhow... was still working on my post apocalypse shadowrun campaign, and
>was thinking... that wasn't really something I ever took into account...
>that there would be a vast storage of some resources (oil, gold, etc)
>
>Doesn't really matter where such resources are kept, but was wondering if
>anbody would know of what sort of things (like the oil, like the gold) and
>roughly the quantity that the US has stashed in the event of an emergency?
>
>Just thinking because something like a massive oil reserve that survived a
>nuclear attack would be about the perfect place for a new settlement to grow
>from (assuming people knew it was there)... likewise a place where something
>like a massive oil reserve was, that got hit, would be a devestated
>wasteland from the resulting fire, smoke, environmental damage, etc...
>
>Thanks for any input,
>
>Augustus`
>


Gold is stored in Fort Knox

Billions of tons of dairy Products are stored (cheese, butter, etc.) in
an underground facility outside of Denver.

There are several Government Grain Storage facilities around the country
which is where they put all of the grain that they buy from Farmers as a
form of Farm Subsidy and is just allowed to sit there. I'm not sure of
the locations of any of them however.

I know that the Governemnt stores various frozen food products in some
underground facilities as well (Fishsticks and the kind of foods you get
at high school lunches) but again I am not sure where they are kept.

Oil as has already been mentioned.

There are several military bases in the country which are essentially
nothing more than armories. There is not much of a military force at
these bases bit there are huge stockpiles of everything an army needs to
fight from Bombs to Boots to MRE's.


Steve
Message no. 5
From: Richard Tomasso rtomasso@*******.com
Subject: US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such...
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 12:42:12 EDT
> >According to the article I recently read the U.S. has a 600 million
> >barrel reserve. Of course, with our daily consumption we could finish
> >up that 600 million in about 40 days.
>
> Accoring to the numbers I heard (19 million barrels/day) it would last
>31 days. However this is all from the news which tends to play fast and
>loose with numbers like that.

An investment newsletter I read stated it would last even less time.
The news is also forgetting to report that it's raw crude oil
that's stored. It could easily take a month to reach consumers
(gee, just in time for the election).

As for other stuff. The military has weapons caches hidden all over
the country. Civil defense agencies have food and medical supplies.


> I disagree. Gold has intrinsic value that no one ever talks about.
>Other
>than the fact that it's perfectly suited to be a monetary system it has a
>few other unique properties.
>[1-5 snipped]

6. It also makes great bullets.

Nearly everything for gold also holds for silver, to a lesser
degree, and it's more common.


> And incidentally, there is a whole bunch of it in the famous Fort
>Knox,
>in Kentucky. Accoding to the US Mint's website
>(http://www.usmint.gov/facts/fun_facts13.cfm) there is 4603 tons of gold at
>Ft. Knox, worth roughly 40.5 billion dollars on the day I wrote this.

Kinda off topic, but I heard there's actually very little gold
left at Knox. Something about it being taken by the Federal
Reserve and moved somewhere else when the US Gov't ran out of
money. I couldn't find any more details tho.

_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.
Message no. 6
From: Wagemage wagemage@**.rr.com
Subject: US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such...
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 19:42:51 -0400
>> And incidentally, there is a whole bunch of it in the famous Fort
>>Knox,
>>in Kentucky. Accoding to the US Mint's website
>>(http://www.usmint.gov/facts/fun_facts13.cfm) there is 4603 tons of gold
at
>>Ft. Knox, worth roughly 40.5 billion dollars on the day I wrote this.
>
>Kinda off topic, but I heard there's actually very little gold
>left at Knox. Something about it being taken by the Federal
>Reserve and moved somewhere else when the US Gov't ran out of
>money. I couldn't find any more details tho.

Yeah I ran into a bunch of that when I was diggin up those numbers.
Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. Had about as much rampant, completely
unprovable speculation.
Message no. 7
From: DemonPenta@***.com DemonPenta@***.com
Subject: US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such...
Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2000 21:42:32 EDT
In a message dated 9/25/00 7:49:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
wagemage@**.rr.com writes:

> Something about it being taken by the Federal
> Reserve and moved somewhere else when the US Gov't ran out of
> money. I couldn't find any more details tho.

Ran out of money? EXCUSE me? Huh? When'd THAT happen?
Message no. 8
From: Richard Tomasso rtomasso@*******.com
Subject: US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such...
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 12:32:00 EDT
>From: DemonPenta@***.com
>
> > Something about it being taken by the Federal
> > Reserve and moved somewhere else when the US Gov't ran out of
> > money. I couldn't find any more details tho.
>
>Ran out of money? EXCUSE me? Huh? When'd THAT happen?

Several times. Every time you hear that the "Debt Ceiling" is
being raised, it means the Gov't's accounts are empty and it
has to borrow more money from the Federal Reserve.

Now that I think about the story, the Fed may have demanded a big
interest payment and the US Govt was stuck b/t a rock and a hard
place and had to fork over most of the gold or risk defaulting. I
can dig up more details, but I seem to recall this happening in 1968
or so.

_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.
Message no. 9
From: Richard Tomasso rtomasso@*******.com
Subject: US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such...
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 12:35:39 EDT
>From: "Wagemage" <wagemage@**.rr.com>
>
> >Kinda off topic, but I heard there's actually very little gold
> >left at Knox. Something about it being taken by the Federal
> >Reserve and moved somewhere else when the US Gov't ran out of
> >money. I couldn't find any more details tho.
>
> Yeah I ran into a bunch of that when I was diggin up those
>numbers. Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. Had about as much
>rampant, completely unprovable speculation.

There's a lot of misinformation out there concerning the Fed, from
official and unofficial sources. Some of the sources I have are
legitimate scholars and historians. The problem is no one from the
public can get into the vaults to verify the amount of gold in there.
So any conclusions are by definition speculation.

_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.
Message no. 10
From: DemonPenta@***.com DemonPenta@***.com
Subject: US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such...
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 16:46:06 EDT
In a message dated 9/26/00 12:33:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
rtomasso@*******.com writes:

> Several times. Every time you hear that the "Debt Ceiling" is
> being raised, it means the Gov't's accounts are empty and it
> has to borrow more money from the Federal Reserve.

Never heard of it?:-)
Message no. 11
From: Iridios iridios@********.net
Subject: US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such...
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 22:49:23 -0400
Greetings,

Saturday, September 23, 2000, 12:30:14 PM, you wrote:

>>According to the article I recently read the U.S. has a 600 million
>>barrel reserve. Of course, with our daily consumption we could finish
>>up that 600 million in about 40 days.

> Accoring to the numbers I heard (19 million barrels/day) it would last
> 31 days. However this is all from the news which tends to play fast and
> loose with numbers like that.

>>As for gold, IMO, in a post-apocalyptic scenario gold would be of
>>little value to any but the foolish. After all you can't eat or burn
>>it and it is too heavy to carry along for no reason.

> I disagree. Gold has intrinsic value that no one ever talks about. Other
> than the fact that it's perfectly suited to be a monetary system it has a
> few other unique properties.
> 1. It is one of the single most conductive materials in the world. Very
> handy if you're trying to get old equipmet to work because...
> 2. It is very malleable, and EXTREMELY ductile. You can work it like
> lead with simpe tools, and it can be stretched into wire very very easily.

Points 1 and 2 are only useful if you have a source of electricity,
which, IMO, would be a rare thing in a post-apocalyptic scenario.

Also, due to the malleability of gold it would make a poor replacement
for other metal parts, especially those that are part of working
machinery.

> 3. In addition to being very electrically conductive, it is very
> conductive to heat. More so than nearly any other metal. I saw Julia Childs
> cook with a solid gold frying pan once as an example. We don't use it for
> this because it is too valuable, but once the bombs drop....

Yes, it is very thermally conductive, but most people would be
satisfied with an ordinary pan to cook their food. Maybe if you
absolutely need to heat something up as fast as possible would it come
in handy, but I don't see that being a need.

> 4. It absolutely WILL NOT corrode. This combined with the wiring
> properties in #2, is the primary reason it is used in wiring for nuclear
> reactors (platinum is also common there for similar reasons).

Again, what you say is true but wiring may be useless itself if there
is no electricity.


> 5. It's pretty. Which is why my girlfriend likes it.

But if your girlfriend is starving she'll choose food over gold. Yes
it is possible to eat gold but it will quickly leave your system
without any benefit.


> Gold is valuable outside out current monetary system. There is a reason
> that every single culture to ever walk the earth has valued it.

Not every culture, I believe it was the Aztecs (Mayans maybe) who had
gold in such abundance that they freely traded it to 'visiting'
Spanish Conquistadors. And I'm still of the belief that, to a band of
starving post-apocalyptic survivors, gold will have less value than
food or a good source of fuel.

--
Iridios
--
Freedom defined is freedom denied. (Illuminatus)

Visit "The ShadowZone"
http://members.nbci.com/Iridios/ShadowZone

Sig by Kookie Jar 5.97d http://go.to/generalfrenetics/
10:36:56 PM/244:03:04 (1) [no thud]
Message no. 12
From: Gurth gurth@******.nl
Subject: US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such...
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 09:45:38 +0200
According to Iridios, at 22:49 on 27 Sep 00, the word on the street was...

> And I'm still of the belief that, to a band of starving post-apocalyptic
> survivors, gold will have less value than food or a good source of fuel.

Initially, I'd agree with you. Once things settle down a bit, though,
people will want to have an easier way to trade than to figure out how
many carrots one plumed chicken is worth. So they need something that
isn't easy to counterfeit, because they don't want unscrupulous people
forging the new-found money. Assuming they don't have working printing
presses anymore, gold would do nicely because there's a fairly limited
supply. (Become a bit more sophisticated and you turn the gold into coins,
then get rid of the gold in the coins altogether. Hey, seems you're back
where we are now...)

I can still see gold being a valued commodity in a post-apocalyptic world,
even if it doesn't have any practical value. It didn't have (m)any
practical uses until modern times, but that didn't stop everyone since
ancient times wanting to own some of it.

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
It was a warning shot that missed.
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.1: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+@ UL P L+ E? W(++) N o? K- w+ O V? PS+
PE Y PGP- t(+) 5++ X+ R+++>$ tv+(++) b++@ DI? D+ G(++) e h! !r(---) y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 13
From: Marc Renouf renouf@********.com
Subject: US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such...
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 11:19:44 -0400 (EDT)
On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Iridios wrote:

> > Gold is valuable outside out current monetary system. There is a reason
> > that every single culture to ever walk the earth has valued it.
>
> Not every culture, I believe it was the Aztecs (Mayans maybe) who had
> gold in such abundance that they freely traded it to 'visiting'
> Spanish Conquistadors. And I'm still of the belief that, to a band of
> starving post-apocalyptic survivors, gold will have less value than
> food or a good source of fuel.

You could always go the Twilight 2000 route - use spent casings
for bullets as currency. I always thought that was a nice touch.

Marc

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about US Emergency Oil Reserves, and such..., you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!