May 8th, 2013
SHTFplan.com

When we talk about Mad Max scenarios, we are talking about events where the world as we know it no longer exists. No banks, no credit cards, no grocery stores, no gas stations, and a landscape devoid of law & order.

It’s an outlier to be sure, but one that has been experienced by millions of people throughout history.

Worst case scenarios do happen. And when they do, the activities associated with the regular flow of commerce as we understand them today cease completely.

Historically, this has happened more often than not as a result of economic calamity stemming from states that take on massive amounts of debt, with the end result being widespread war and total economic destruction.

Should such events come to pass in our modern era, everything we believe to be valuable today will be redefined, and only those assets of real worth will maintain their trading power.

According to cyclical analyst and historian Martin Armstrong, the dominant objects of value during a socio-economic collapse are those goods that can be used immediately for the purposes of survival or barter.

A number of readers have asked ‘doesn’t gold survive a Mad Max event?’

Historically, the answer to that is no. Dark Ages seem to be the total collapse of all economic activity on a collective basis. This is why there are huge gaps in the monetary history in Greece, Western Europe after the fall of Rome, and even in Japan. The duration is rather consistent – 600 years.

What happens is civilization swings to its opposite – no-civilization where just enclaves emerge with little to no interaction with others.

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The Mad Max outcome is the swing back to barter where the dominant object of value first becomes food, then tools (bronze), and only after all that becomes stable, we see the return to luxury which is when gold and silver come back. You cannot eat them. They are valuable only based upon the demand of others.

If they want food, sorry even gold goes off the map during such periods. It is typically grain or in the case of Japan bags of rice.

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Historically, society waits until it is too late and then they just massacre the protesters.

Martin Armstrong via Prepper Website

We cannot stress enough that these kinds of events, where civilization has regressed to what essentially amounts to hunting and gathering, has happened repeatedly and on a cyclical basis on numerous occasions over the last 5000 years.

It will happen again. This is inevitable.

We are on the very cusp of such a frightening outcome right now. Perhaps we can avoid the same outcome as Rome,a collapse which led to hundreds of years of war and impoverishment during the Dark Ages. But the reality is that we are well on our way to repeating their mistakes.

Our country has taken on so much debt that it will require the labor of generations in order to pay it back, something that is very rapidly becoming improbable. Half of the households in the United States are dependent on monthly government distributions just to make ends meet. Those who are paying the taxes to cover these expenses are either losing their jobs or experiencing wage reductions, putting further strain on the system as a whole. Trillions of dollars in wealth are being transferred from the poor and working class into the hands of banking cartels, the military industrial complex, and elite members of the global oligarchy.

Confidence by the masses may well be lost in short order. We’re seeing pockets of this all over the world. It’s like a viral contagion. First it starts on a small scale, and then spreads uncontrollably to all corners of the globe.

Gold, while it is certainly a store of value, will often take a backseat in the midst of collapse simply because food, shelter and safety will be the only concerns that matter. This isn’t to say you should not own gold and silver to use as a mechanism of exchange, just that you need to understand  its viability as a barter tool based on the crisis at hand.

Just as it was a thousand years ago during the period following the breakup of Rome, in Argentina today farmers are hoarding  grain while their currency and country’s economy collapses.

Food is a dominant asset. Tools, whether they be firearms or plows, become dominant assets in a world where you have to depend on yourself or a small community to survive. Your resourcefulness, such as an ability to put a roof over your head, grow your own food, purify water or preserve your food for winter, will be dominant assets.

It may take a decade or it may happen overnight. But one thing’s for sure: a pan-global collapse is coming. And when it does, make sure you are in possession of the dominant objects of value. Failure to understand history and prepare for the future will mean certain doom for millions. But Mad Max scenarios are survivable for those with the wherewithal to prepare.