Perpetuities (was Re: [extropy-chat] WSJ: A Cold Calculus LeadsCryonauts To Put Assetson Ice)

[Robert Bradbury]

On 1/24/06, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:

> There is high risk that government revolution or other
> circumstances would make one's paper holdings
> worthless while one is in the old nitrogen bath.  Last
> time around with this topic, we discussed storing
> wealth in the form of precious metals, buried in a
> secret location with GPS coordinates somehow bonded to a
> tooth.  One could imagine that the best bet to hide one's
> gold would be on BLM land, such as that large tract out
> west of Roseburg Oregon.  If such practice as burying
> gold or platinum became common, perhaps it could cause
> cryonics to be discouraged or even outlawed.


Its far far worse than that.  Given nanotechnology (which is the most
probable path to reanimation) both gold & platinum will probably become
relatively cheap -- do the the numbers on the cost of pulling the ions out
of sea water or hauling back asteroids full of them.  Alternatively with
really cheap energy one can simply use breeder reactors or cyclotrons to
produce tons of your favorite isotopes (Au, Pt, Gd148, etc.).

The really valuable stuff is going to be the stuff which is really expensive
to produce in a nanotechnology based economy and is in high demand.  And
even after all of the time I've thought about this (~5 years) I still don't
have a clue as to what that might be.  It would probably take several years
of playing around with nuclear reaction equations and fusion reactor designs
to propose some interesting possibilities.  Even then I don't think the
guesses would hold for long with the really cheap intelligence that is going
to be available to compute alternative production methods.

Off the top of my head I might guess hafnium or tungsten.

Robert
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