I get the vibe from most 'survivalists' that they're hoping on some level for society to fail. Most are poorly socialized and on the social and economic fringes of society to begin with. IMHO it's wish fulfillment fantasy unmoored from reality. Of course, it's a sliding scale and a slippery slope; where does prudence segue into paranoia?

+1

I take a sticky fingers approach to both gold & silver. I don't go out & buy any. If I do happen to acquire some (inherited or finding pre 1965 silver coins), it gets put away.

I'm reluctant to consider these "preppers", and think that "homestead survivalists" is a more accurate description. And, personal peeve, am getting tired of being lumped in with the doomsday crowd.

From where I've been standing, prepping is a lifestyle choice of taking the normal precautions (smoke detectors, spare tires, etc.) and adds onto them to cover the less common, but more severe incidents. The end goal is being able to handle things on your own instead of getting caught flat footed and having to rely on an already overburden emergency management system.

I'm not particularly optimistic about our current way of life continuing much longer, but have no desire to be at ground zero when things finally have to shake out.

???

Have you ever tried to carry it? It's not exactly lightweight. One of the last things I'd want in my backpack. Right up there with Mercury and Uranium.

A gold bar is 12.4 kg (27.3 lbs). It's worth over half a million USD currently. Is that heavier or lighter than the same amount of money in bills?

According to some guy on the internet who seems to have done the calculation with a bit of care, a million dollars in $100 bills are around 20 lbs. (See "joe" in https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090718165259AA6Xvwc) Half of that is 10 lbs.

So if you're bugging out on foot with half a million dollars, try to fill your backpack with Benjamins -- this is assuming US currency is stable. I'd make sure to include some small bills in case I run into a soda machine.

However, a gold bar allows you to plunk it down on a banker's desk with a great deal of drama. If you're a Nazi hunter or something, you can make a bigger statement with a gold brick than with a suitcase of money.

Some conspiracy theorists believe that aliens use gold as fuel for their spaceships, and they genetically engineered mankind to covet gold so we can find more of it for them. (We're sort of like truffle pigs, but for gold.) If the "end of the world as we know it" situation involves alien invasion, it's hard to say whether the gold would be of benefit. Maybe they'll reward you for filling up their gas tank. Or maybe they'll just take your gold and eat you -- hmmm, survivalist tartare!

Strikes me as unlikely. If we assume alien invasion, we probably can assume spacecraft. It's much easier to mine gold from asteroids than from our planet.

But super funny .

God is portable in the amounts that most us are likely to possess. Many thousands of £/$ are easily carried. High denomination paper money is lighter still, and a bank card weighs almost nothing, but the whole point of gold is for situations when paper money or banks are, or are likely to become valueless.

If you are lucky enough to have millions of dollars worth of gold, then you would reasonably have a vehicle or pack animal to move it.

And yes I have carried a modest stash of gold. 10 UK modern sovereigns worth in total about £2,500 fitted readily into a pocket. Dozens of those coins, worth say £10,000 could have been carried without much trouble.

The problem with gold is that you

The problem than become, how do you trade gold to something you can use? First of all, I and most people don't have much idea how much a gold or silver coin will be worth, without looking it up. And looking up would be to check the value in money term. But if money is worthless, then how much is gold worth? Besides, me as a simple guy and not a gold expert. How do I tell the difference between a real gold coin and a 'replica' from china. And how do you give back a form of change? I mean buying a chicken with a £/$250 gold coin seams a but problematic...

I can see how gold/silver can work if you need to move from a country in distress to a safe country. Currency of a country in economic disaster will be worthless, but gold will be valueable to exchange in a country where the economic system will be working.

Go get yourself a Kewpie doll. Fleeing a country that's in the middle of an economic collapse is the biggest valid reason to switch from fiat money to gold or other intrinsically valuable materials. There are no more backed currencies. Everything is fiat money nowadays. But, a Kg of gold or platinum is enough to tide you over for a couple of months while setting up in a new country.


There was another thread on trade goods that also touched on this.
http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=280408&page=1

Yeah, I think you're right. It's hard to see how one can buy groceries with little bits of gold. It seems to me gold is good for stuff like bribing border guards.

Does anyone have a study on how gold is used in wartime?