James Rawles - Survivors - A Novel of the Coming Collapse

Lars began laughing as he starting pulling the contents from the wall cache. “You boys may have heard that us Finns are the quiet, stoical type. Well, my dad-his first name was Robie-fit that description to a T. My mom said that my dad would go for days at a time without much more than grunts and a ‘Good morning’ and a ‘Good night.’ He never told me about this wall, and my mom and my brother never mentioned it, either, so I suppose that he kept it all to himself.” After a pause he added, “And since he died suddenly of a heart attack after my mom died, he never got the chance.”

It took the better part of the afternoon for him to inventory the gear. Meanwhile, Shad and Reuben used the Makita to remove other sheets of plywood throughout the bunkhouse, checking for more hidden compartments. They found none.

Starting first with the plastic-wrapped guns, Laine found four Finnish M39 bolt-action rifles, almost identical to his own rifle, except that one of them was built on an early hexagonal receiver, and they had barrels from different makers: One was a Tikka, two were made by Valmet (marked “VKT”) and the other was made by Sako. Always thorough and safety-conscious, Robie Laine had attached tags to the trigger guard of each gun that read “Grease in bore and chamber. Remove before firing!”

Inside one of the plastic bags was a zippered green canvas case that, when unzipped, revealed an M1 Carbine equipped with M2 conversion parts. Lars exclaimed, “Son of a… This thing is rock-’n’-roll.”

Shad asked, “You mean it’s a full auto?”

“Well, technically the term is ‘selective fire,’ ’cause it will shoot either semiauto or full auto.” After checking the gun’s chamber to ensure that it was unloaded, Laine thumbed the carbine’s selector lever on the left side of the receiver, explaining, “The rear position here is semiauto, but when it’s flipped forward, it’s full auto. A lot of guys converted M1 Carbines into M2s back in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, since the conversion parts were pretty widely available, and it doesn’t require any modification to the receiver.”

Shad grinned, and said, “Oh, yeah, I read about M2 Carbines once, in a gun magazine. But that’s a major bust if you get caught with it.”

Lars went on, “Yes, legally it’s a contraband gun, but given the present circumstances, I think that’s about to become a nonissue, if it isn’t one already. But just the same, I don’t think that I’ll go around advertising that I have an unregistered Class 3 gun. I’d appreciate it if you’d also keep your lips zipped.”

Shad said, “Yes, sir!” The other boys gave exaggerated nods.

In another canvas case, this one reinforced with green leather at the ends, was a Valmet M62, the Finnish equivalent of the Russian AK-47, with a tubular stock. Laine let out a whistle when he saw the gun. He knew that the Valmet was considered the Cadillac of the AK family, and very valuable.

One ammo can held eleven spare magazines for the M2 Carbine, and another had seven green plastic “waffle” magazines for the Valmet M62.

There were also various slings and pouches for magazines, and an odd-looking bayonet for the Valmet M62, in a green leather sheath. It was marked “FISKARS.” To Lars, it looked more like a filleting knife than a bayonet.

Later, after the boys went into the house to help get dinner ready, Lars was examining the Valmet M62 and realized that it, too, was selective fire. Looking closely, he saw that instead of just two positions, the safety/selector had three positions, with one in the middle for full-auto fire. He concluded that it was an original Finnish Defense Force M62, rather than a converted civilian-production Valmet. Later he told Beth that the gun had probably been smuggled into the U.S. by his uncle Aki, who for many years was an engineering officer on a Finnish merchant marine ship.

The last of the guns was a Lahti 9mm semiauto pistol with five spare magazines wrapped in brown waxed paper, along with an original Finnish military holster. The pistol had a single-column magazine and looked vaguely like a Luger. It had plastic grips marked “VKT.” Lars chortled when he saw that, and put on a deep radio announcer’s voice: “Yet another fine product from the industrious workers at Valmet.” He explained to Lisbeth that since the end of World War II, Valmet had expanded into a conglomerate, branching out to make everything from log harvesters to military aircraft. Lars had read about Lahti pistols, but he’d never handled one.

Finally, Laine began to inventory the ammunition in detail. In all, there were 1,100 rounds of 7.62x54r for the bolt actions, almost 1,500 rounds of .30 Carbine, 1,280 rounds of 7.52x39 for the Valmet M62, and 650 rounds of 9mm for the Lahti. He was thrilled to find that one of the .30 caliber ammo cans was filled not with ammo but with rolls of pre-1965 silver quarters.

It was not until the next day that Lars had the opportunity to examine the can holding the rolls of silver quarters. When he emptied it out to count the rolls, he found a sealed envelope tucked in alongside the rolls. It was marked “Lars and Andrew” in his father’s handwriting. He opened it and found a typewritten letter. It read:

My Dear Sons:

It was my intention to give you these coins when you’d both graduated from high school, but back then I had my doubts about your maturity, so I decided to hold on to them until after you earned your commissions.

I want you to appreciate these silver quarters for what they really are—not just an investment, and not just a “family heirloom.” They represent REAL money. Pardon the lecture, but you need to judge their value four ways—in terms of wages, manufactured goods, services and real property.

First, let’s look at wages. Back in “the old days”—say, before World War I—the average wage for a working man was around one silver dollar a day. One day’s wage right now for someone that works at a minimum wage job (at $7.25 per hour) is $58 for an eight-hour work day. A more typical wage for a workman with experience is around $11 per hour ($88 per day.) One dollar (face value) in 90% silver pre-1965 coinage contains 22.5 grams of silver, or 0.7234 troy ounces per dollar face value. Today’s spot price of silver is $17.55 per troy ounce. So that makes a pre-inflation dollar (a true DOLLAR in silver coin) worth $12.79. (Or just think of it as roughly 13 times $1 in face value—“13 times face,” whether it is silver dimes, quarters, or half dollars.) So, to put things in perspective, it takes $6.76 in pre-’65 silver coinage to equal one typical day’s wages ($88 in the current fiat paper money). Thus, in terms of wages silver SHOULD have a spot value about five or six times its current value. By this measure, silver is now grossly undervalued.

Next, manufactured goods. In 1964 (the last year that silver coins were in general circulation in the U.S.), a basic blued-steel Colt Model 1911 .45 automatic pistol cost around $65 retail. Today, a comparable Colt M1911 (a Series 80) costs around $775 retail. So if you were to sell $65 face value of this cache of silver coinage at your local coin shop, and they offered you 12 times “face”—that would net you $780 in the current funny money. You could then easily go buy a .45 at your local gun shop with the proceeds. The bottom line: it is not pistols that have gone UP in price. Rather, it is paper dollars that have gone DOWN in purchasing power.

How about services? In 1964, a haircut cost around 75 cents, or perhaps $1 in the big city. My last haircut cost $14. I suspect that other services are comparable, whether it is your local dentist or your local brothel. (I trust and pray that neither of you will ever use the latter service.)

Now let’s look at the relative values of silver coinage and real property. In 1964, the median house price in the U.S. was around $18,000. Today, it is around $170,000. (A 9.4x increase.) If you had set aside $18,000 face value in silver coins in 1964 (18 bags of $1,000 face value each), and held them until the present day, they’d net you around $216,000 if you sold them to a bullion coin dealer. That is enough for an ABOVE AVERAGE house. So obviously silver coins have held their value far better than paper dollars. Anyone who sits on PAPER dollars for very long—at least dollars that aren’t earning much interest—is a fool.