The Vital Question on Every Fleeing Dictator's and Oligarch's Mind

Preferred getaway vehicle

Is whether to pack gold, cash or something else entirely (i.e., diamonds, bearer bonds, highly enriched uranium) into your getaway airplane?

Courtesy of commenter Greg S. at the Business Insider, here is the gold vs. cash calculation:

Greg figured a G-5 (a popular business jet) couldn't take off with 'tons of gold'. He estimated that $1 million fits in a small duffel bag and about 100 of those would fill a G5's overhead storage bins. Here's what he came up with:

"Business is slow here, so just for fun I calculated the dollar value of gold and currency that you can stuff into a G5 and still take off with 18 passengers. The useful load of a G5 is 6500lbs and the baggage compartment is listed at 226 cubic feet.

Gold in a G5: [6,500lbs - 18*165 lbs passengers]*16oz/lb*$1300/oz = $73.4 million worth of gold (with no passengers you can roughly double the amount of gold)

Currency in a G5: 226 ft3 * 1728 in3/ft3 / 0.06891 in3 * $100USD = $566.7 million USD (you could still put more in the cabin).

No surprise that it makes sense to leave the gold at home. If you figure that 10-15% of the volume is going to go toward the actual suitcases this means that the entire baggage compartment of that jet was packed full of US cash."

However, commenter Matland calculates that diamonds may be an even better call on a space/weight for value basis:

1 carat diamond = $1,000
1 carat weight about 200 milligrams
31,000 milligrams = 1 ounce
$155,000 worth of diamonds = 1 ounce
$500 million in diamonds = 3,225 ounces12 troy ounces = 1 pound
3,225 ounces =268.75 pounds 

$500 million in diamonds = 268.75 pounds

Just leave out the fat account and bring about four duffle bags of shiny stones.