DAT VAULT

by Dagoonite, Somewhere in Iowa, lost in a cornfield., Sunday, March 10, 2013, 13:46 (4285 days ago) @ ZackDark

I wonder what in that vault is actually still valuable for mankind. The gold (?) in the room is obviously not at all attractive to the Guardians there, so what is?

Au contr...I give up. I can barely use English, let alone other language word things.

Anyway, if they're reproducing high-tech weapons from the Traveller, then it's still entirely possible that gold is still valuable. I remember back in the days where laptops were oversized word processors, there was a nation in Europe (which escapes me) that was making a pretty hefty profit from recycling PCs. My memory thing is foggy, but I think it was something like "get a gold coin out of ten computers."

Gold is still used in a great deal of high tech devices, but we have streamlined the process quite a bit so far less is used. That said, there's no telling how much might be handy in reverse-engineering Traveler weapons or the like. You can't expect all palladium and fun metals in everything.

As mentioned by others, it could be a place to store any metals that are found in the offhand chance that "HEY THIS IS USEFUL." Gold may be useful and collected, but only finding out later that "Yeah, but only in minute quantities."

Then there's also the fact that a society needs money. This is one thing that the Spanish anarchists (who desperately tried to disband it) quickly found out: you need a way to put value on the the work that you do. And, sadly, that money needs to have something to back it up. A precious metal with little industrial use is handy for that. (Though the feudal Japanese method of basing their monetary system off of enough rice to live by was a rather ingenious way of doing it.)

If you ever get the chance, read Connections by James Burke. It has a rather wonderful passage on how gold and the discovery of the testing properties of schist (aka touchstone) completely revolutionized money, politics, industry, warfare, science, and pretty much Western civilization.

Anyway, back on target.

There's also the fact that it's arguably pretty. If there's a ruling class that's into that, this may be their Scrooge McDuck room. I would not suggest diving in. Owie. Seriously, cartoon physics man.

Finally, that one pic gives me the most shades of Marathon out of all of them. I just look at it and grin. Some of the statues(?) in the background give me flashbacks to one certain piece of concept art...

Holy crap I use way too many words and ramble too much.