I've always thought stashing away gold as a bartering tool was silly. What is gold good for? It makes a good electrical conductor, so might be of some use if you were trying to barter with an electronics manufacturer (who probably wouldn't have anything you wanted to barter FOR anyway). But what is the day-to-day use for gold? Is there ANY such use? It's soft, heavy, and not well suited for anything but bling-bling IMHO. Finding somebody to barter with who had what you wanted, and wanted gold in return for it, seems like a real stretch to me. Is there anything that gold can do, that nothing else can, that is of any urgent or survival nature?

As a "universal currency" it might be OK if times are normal. But you'd have to find somebody with a scale to weigh it, a way to determine its purity, and some method to determine the current value per unit weight (which I believe is in the toilet right now). I think the chocolate and cigarettes the troops used to use would be better suited for the bartering task.