or
Cache your cash
This is a time of illiquidity. You may think that you have easily accessible liquid assets, perhaps from your bank or your broker. After all, they are fully insured. But chances are that the are at the other end of an internet link. But you do not bank online, you say? How about your brick ‘n mortar bank. Chances are excellent that your account is at a central location of a major nationwide bank. Connected by an electronic telecommunication link, probably satellite.
The worldwide electronic infrastructure is highly vulnerable. Vulnerable to terrorists, to rogue nations, to large nations with strategic goals such as first strike, to worldwide calamity.
Tomorrow, if the internet and satellites were wiped out by a Russian or Chinese attack by electromagnetic pulse, there is a high probability that the economy would revert to stone age barter for a significant time period. Grocery stores and gasoline stations would be depleted within days, if not hours.
It is obvious that a cache of food for several days or weeks is prudent. Water cache is more problematic, but necessary. Forget your baths, but there must be water to drink. Your electrically operated well pumps and processing stations would likely become unpowered in short order.
What about the free $10,000 insurance policy?
Admittedly, money may eventually become worthless in a long term calamity. But probably not in a shorter term disruption. However, in either case, maddening inflation will ensue at times. A 12 oz bottle of water may cost $5 or $100. But you will get thirsty; you will have to have it. Same with food.
My free $10,000 insurance policy consists of a home cache of $10,000, or at least $5,000 in small denomination bills, kept in a place somewhat more secure than under the mattress. $1 bills are preferable because the seller may not have change. Indeed, their tendency to not have change for that bottle of water you desperately need probably becomes increasingly likely as the size of the bill you offer increases in denomination.
So cache in a safe place $10,000, $5,000, or even just $1,000 if that is all you can afford. Use denominations certainly no larger than $5, but preferably $1.
More on a survival cache of food, water and a few essential items later.
