This idea occurred to me several days ago. I know it's probably impractical but hear me out.

Imagine if Pre-War change such as nickels, dimes, quarters, etc. survived the nuclear devastation.

What if that spare metal could be smelted down into useable ammunition?

Depending on the coin, that's how effective or ineffective the ammo would be.

I know the idea sounds foolish but I think it could work.

Thoughts?

maybe not coins b/c you would need lots of ammo and there's only so many coins, maybe just using scrap metal items like old bikes or something you could salvage for parts that could be made into ammo since they'd be more plentiful than coins.(assuming they do have ammo in crafting)

I think that Idea would be cool, but why not open it up to all salvageable metals. It would be necessary I think to salvage metals for a bunch of different things and certainly not all metals are appropriate for every application. Another drunk conquistador conquering the governor's ball...

If we assume the Fallout world is a world in which the bomb was dropped some time in the 1950's, coins would be made of the following materials:

penny, bronze = (95% copper, 5% tin and zinc) = average melting point of 1,916°F
penny, brass = (95% copper, 5% zinc) = average melting point of 1,924.49°F
nickel, standard = (75% copper, 25% nickel) = average melting point of 2,150.11°F
nickel, war = (56% copper, 35% silver, 9% manganese) = average melting point of 1,933.20°F
dime, standard = (90% silver, 10% copper) = average boiling point of 1,785.5616°F
dime, mercury = (90% silver, 10% copper) = average boiling point of 1,785.5616°F
quarter, standard = (90% silver, 10% copper) = average boiling point of 1,785.5616°F

In post-apocalyptic times, energy sources would be scarce, so achieving these melting points could be difficult. It is possible, but someone would need the proper facilities.

Aluminum has a much lower melting point. (1220.58°F) Fire is capable of melting aluminum so maybe people could melt aluminum siding to make really crappy ammunition.

It would be cool if there were different kinds of coins in the game. Like maybe a mercury dime could be a rare, valuable coin that people could trade, much like players traded SoJ's in Diablo 2.

except sjo's became the currency,the gold in the game became worthless. it could be possible that forges survived the bombs being dropped as well as some power plants. there's isnt enough bombs to cover every square mile of the country.(unless we would use our own on ourselves) you cant go with current numbers,you'd have to go with the numbers around the cold war though. of course,only strategic cities like d.c. or large cities like pittsburgh or san fransico, or even the various military bases would be hit.

Lead is smelting on the open fire. So you don't need a forge or a power plant to craft some buckshots from old accumulator batteries. Excuse my bad English... I am a Russian bear, it's hard to type with claws.

Lead is smelting on the open fire. So you don't need a forge or a power plant to craft some buckshots from old accumulator batteries.
true but i was going with the assumption that lead wouldnt be the only metal used to make bullets,even though it's been proven to be the best metal to use for them otherwise bullets wouldnt be made out of lead now.

Hey speaking of materials.. I'd like to know about the currency system in FOOL - Will it be Bottle caps as the most used one, or aswell as other currencies such as the NCR $ & Legion coins as in New Vegas?? Patrolling the Mojave Wastelands almost make you wish for a Nuclear winther..

It has been debated but no answer has been given. All we can say is that bigger nations probably use a more stable currency than bottlecaps, like ncr etc. But it's most likely that bottlecaps is used by merchants and such.

Fallout tactics (dont start yelling about canon and stuff like that...) have a good example, BoS use their currency internally, but you can also get another form of money, ring pulls, that you could use to barter with random people outside of BoS.

Still, since we know nothing about the location, nothing can be said about the currency.

True to that ^^

.. Well it would be a little more exciting if it was more than just Bottle Caps if you follow me.. Patrolling the Mojave Wastelands almost make you wish for a Nuclear winther..

That's a good point. Actually, I have a link to a target map of where Russia was planning to bomb us had things got that far during the cold war. I don't know the original source of this image, so it's really anyone's guess as to how legitimate this is, but it makes sense insofar as the targets match up with the locations of our major cities, military bases and nuclear silos.