Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

,Rawles over at SurvivalBlog had a link to this interesting little article. It seems someone (and I’ll give you one guess who) has discovered that tungsten is close enough in density to gold that faked gold coins and bars might pass some inspection. I forwarded the link to a buddy, and he emailed me back with a link to an outfit that has a bit more detail (ahem) about the subject. I link it not because I want to encourage you to stock up on fake gold to rip folks off. (Passing off non-valuable tokens as having an intrinsic value is the .gov’s job.) I mentioned it because I think being aware of this stuff is the first step towards protecting oneself from this sort of predation. I’m not sure about the tinfoil hat statement in the previous article about how the US Mint has bars of this stuff in Fort Knox and is quite aware of its non-gold composition. On the one hand, I wouldn’t put anything past the .gov especially when it comes to giving the impression that Ft. Knox really is full of gold. On the other hand, that’s the sort of conspiracy that if proved would cause some serious head rolling at some pretty high levels.

Anyway, my point about all this is that, just like paper currency, theres some counterfeits out there and it may pay to be extra vigilant when you’re purchasing metals.