50 years into the pandemic of liberals bankrupting us all? that's about right. It all got set into motion when the backing of the US dollar by equivalent reserves of gold or silver by the fed was stopped, and it set to float freely. Of course they had to wait until alternative forms of government such as the USSR failed, so that people fed up with the bullshit can't run to it. It was done to create more arbitrage in its value, or more like, create the ultimate arbitrage, meaning being swept up in the streets like this:
http://static.infowars.com/bin...
Ref: http://www.infowars.com/we-wil...
That happens to be the the Hungarian pengo right after WW2, but I've seen similar pictures of German Reichsmark, or, I'm guessing there are similar happenings with Zimbabwean Z$'s in the past decade in the very recent past, before that currency was canceled too and Zimbabwe switched to using US dollars internally. So the US dollar has been the major reliable reserve currency of the world, but when its backing by tangible value is stopped, that can send the entire world economy into a spiral. Of course those savvy can benefit and stuff their pockets on such happenings, such as those living off of purely arbitrage, of buy low sell high, or short sell high then rebuy low to cover the short, such as investment bankers, stock brokers, etc. Arbitrage means you do not contribute anything creative, but you make a living off of price fluctuations. Of course that has two sides to the story too, because available capital, free flow of capital is essential to prosperity, and nobody is interested in lending you their capital unless they can benefit from in in an arbitrage way, that is, the profit you create is shared with them, they get a cut of it. Investments and all that, stocks, bonds, etc, when it comes to currency I prefer an absolutely stable one, kinda like Alan Greenspan is talking about these days, abolishing paper currency, and switching to one with embedded value, such as metal, even if the coins end up small in size. Such as platinum, gold, neodynium clad into something not toxic, tungsten carbide, maybe artificial diamond money that could be used for drill bits, something of tangible value even when there is a currency fail, of greater value than mere toilet paper that paper money would be good for. Unfortunately an absolutely stable currency such as one made of silver or gold coins has issues too, lack of arbitrage, lack of interest rates, and lack of free flow of available capital that would spur the economy. Yes, if the currency is stable, and not inflating at 2-3% APR historic for the US dollar (or double digit 10-20% for Italy and Turkey much of the period after WW2), then I don't have an incentive of not keeping it dug away in a treasure chest somewhere, especially, when the rate of return on investments (such as when playing Railroad Tycoon 2 Platium or Gold) is not high enough, say 5-10%, and loaning it to someone, such as a railroad startup, could make me lose it all. Interest rates are held very low these days, mostly because most of the outstanding US debt is to China, as in China is full of factory workers ready to work 14 hr days 6 days a week, for $1/day, all they need is food and electric, and they looove to work, but the only way they can keep the factory floors moving is by lending money to the US to buy the stuff Made in China at Walmart and Sears at 2x-10x markups. So no, the Fed ain't gonna raise the prime rate because that means "free money" falling into the pockets of Chinese, which is why China is seeking a different global currency from the US dollar.
And no we in the US cannot compete with China, because us hunkies, dagos, polacks, spiks and niggas aint allowed to work for peanuts like we used to be in the 1890's of WV and PA coal mines, and meet the Chinese dollar of dollar, or more like, penny per penny, on their labor cost and outcompete them, because now our housing cost and car insurance cost and obamacare cost does not allow us to exist on $1/day, all there in an effort, or more like a daydreaming desire by Da Man who's always tryna keep a brotha down, he think he deserves to extract and collect at least as much from everyone else's productivity by simply "owning", or "hogging" of property, such as real estate (whether rental or banks "winning" the home when they fire someone after 20 years into paying a mortgage from their job, and banks get a windfall value from sheriff sales that not enough people show up to to bid), intellectual property (by forcing everyone to sign over all intellectual property at any kind of job for near minimum wage they work for, and it's an either take it or leave it and also leave the premises because there is another hungry fella waiting to take your job who has no issues with signing over any and all intellectual property they ever come up with - you know what, fuck all this intellectual property bullshit, especially physical wage labor agreements that have it)
So anyway, I, and the rest of the world, much prefers an ultrastable currency, such as the US dollar has been, and even if 0% inflation is not possible, as low as possible is welcome so I can keep money in the bank safely and reliably, but, judging from the sizle of yogurt packages at Walmart, the world has gone into a miniaturize and cut cost by all means to preserve selling at the same price, inflation is starting to go hyper as we speak, even if prices have not doubled or quadrupled in not time. I would be a great fan of a metal coin based currency, that was very small size but still inspoectable under a magnifier glass, and it was made of pure gold, platinum, tungsten, neodynium, iridium, palladium, or other precious metals like that, easy to store in a small place to carry a lot of value (such as a suitcase of dollars can only carry on the order of $200,000 or so, imagine a suitcase of mini-gold, mini-iridium dollars, I bet you could carry a whole lot more, if needed, like if you had to lug your life savings around in a zombie apocalypse, a suitcase is a lot of bulk, and it can only carry so much value in paper money, moreover that paper money might suddenly lose its "silver certificate" or "gold certificate" value if the Fed is not willing to give you that silver or gold certificate for it. Wait, we discussed this already, they stopped backing it with equivalent silver or gold long time ago, probably on purpose too. So anyway, a value embedded into it coinage precious metal currency would be resilient against sudden hyperinflation, and it would never ever be swept up in the streets, because you could take it to a jeweler or scrap yard at least. You would still need arbitrage, and because of that, the face value would always have to be higher than the intrinsic value, such as a $100 iridium-alloy coin would have a $50 or $10 intrinsic value, which should still give enough arbitrage wiggle room for the arbitrage economic bloodsuckers to live off of, who are essential for economic prosperity, such as brokers and bankers, while protecting the public and much of the rest of the world against a sudden currency crash. Of course with a smooth inflation the intrinsic value would get closer and closer to the face value until it surpassed it, such as the pre-1965 silver containing quarters have it, and the currency would be periodically replaced, long before that happened, while the public would turn the preexisting coinage into collectible items and wealth store reserves, kind of like it's done with US quarters and half dollars or any metal coinage with embedded, carried within, intrinsic value, but that kind of thing of course does not happen with paper money, nobody's as interested in collecting paper dollars from pre-1965, because, unlike a quarter with a face value of 25 cents legal tender you can buy ice cream for it if you're stupid enough because the melt down value is like $2 or $10 depending on where the price of silver stands, but paper money cannot be molten down and if it says $1 pre-1965, that's still the most it can be worth today, including maybe toilet paper value in case it ends up being swept up in the streets. I personally lived through like 4 years of hyperinflation in the early 90's, and all I can say it's no big deal, well it is, but life goes on and adapts.
As far as the main topic is concerned, pandemix and whatnot, I just figured out that the grey goo "war is evolving" crap is coming through my tapwater. Whether it's intentionally put in there (and I'm thinking that's the case, because of Obamacare and because it's been getting thicker lately) or whether it just naturally occurs, as in lake water filtered through plain green sand, unfluoridate and unchlorinated - which, there is two sides to everything, it may be best not to sterilize it or treat it with chlorine and fluoride, because, while in high doses those things are sterilizing, where they dilute down and provide a continuous less than lethal, sublethal dose environment, they strongly drive natural selection toward adapting to them, by lifeforms that survive it difficultly, and then the ones find easier ways to survive it will proliferate. This applies to all kinds of biocides, antibiotics, as life adapts, life adapted to oxygen atmospheres (for example, you an i are oxygen breathing) and in theory it could adapt to elemental fluorine gas atmospheres or surfaces where it had to walk around in molten, liquid alkali metals (kinda like the NaK coolant accidents from reactors, where someone gets sprayed by a hose that pops and dies very fast, that's only a matter of time, given sufficient time life could adapt to getting sprayed by liquid sodium-potassium alloys. (This sentence was left intentionally incomplete, hanging, grammatically incorrect, like you see it in books where they have "this page is left intentionaly blank" pages. Just for kix.)
So anyway, how to deal with grey goo coming through tapwater. I still gotta use it, what else am I gonna do?
One, in a different time, before I was born, at a different place, different world, at a TB hospital where they had to reuse glass/stainless syringes by sterilizing them in autoclaves (boiling in water in a pressure cooker that raises boiling points) a rule of thumb was cooking for 30 minutes (35-40) under an exuberantly bubbling condition. Of course that does not guarantee it, as life can adapt to anything, but it's a good rule of thumb to follow, such as when cooking soup with tap water. If you can't bring it to a vehement boil you might have to do it for 2 hrs, which is expensive on the fuel, and if you can only get it really hot without actually boiling, maybe 2 days? Of course this treatment would not clear toxins such as lead or arsenic you might be intentionally poisoned with, but it would probably kill most, or at least a whole lot of pathogens that cause pandemics.
There is always distillation, but drop for drop you're talking a huge input of energy, as the latent heat of evaporation for water is huge. Unless you have a distiller based on free solar energy, or free wind energy this one is likely going to break the bank, but it has the best potential in getting you the cleanest water from nastiest sources, including most inorganic toxins that are not volatile, such as lead, staying behind, not going over into the distillate.
I just though of a 3rd way, semi-distillation, that could save a lot of energy compared to autoclave boiling. It's based on volatile sterilizers, and because they have to be volatile, the choices are few. Chlorine gas and ammonia come to mind. You basically overdose your water laced with pathogens with megadoses of chlorine gas or ammonia gas (chlorine water or ammonia water), let it sit for a while, then distill (or vacuum distill) off the gaseous, unreacted sterilizer, for later reuse. The latent heat of evaporation of say, 3% or 5% ammonia in water is not that much, even less for 3% or 5% chlorine gas, and you might have to get ice cubes and store the liquids in a fridge, but it should be by far the most economical way to process water. And your distillation equipment can be used for either full distillation and paying the dollars for the fuel heat input, electric, gas, etc, or used with the gaseous sterilizers, by recovering most of them. Ammonia might be possible to obtain from urine by drying, then heating (creating ammonia and cyanuric acid, biuret, triuret, etc from urea, and the leftover still a good fertilizer, if anything, being leftover, biuret and triuret it washes off slower into the groundwater), but chlorine gas, and chlorine water should be a lot more economical these days, being easily generated from regular table salt via electrolysis with a suitable anode, and having a whole lot of punch per gram, compared to ammonia. Bleach in stores is relatively cheap and works well as a disinfectant, but when you need boatloads of it, DIY should be cheaper, after some initial investment. Plus you're not sending plastic jugs to landfills. If they had ways to refill bleach jugs, ehh? Life is too good yet for that, these days, but those days are coming, eventually.