Will Gold Matter in the Post-apocalypse?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Subtitle: “And other matters related to prepper culture and human behavior in the event of a social collapse.”

Let me preface this by stating that I am not a prepper and I do not think the breakdown of society is imminent or likely in my lifetime (speaking of the US, at least). This thread was born of the following exchange in another thread:

My sense is that gold, silver, and other shinny things from the ground have long been valued as mediums of exchange, yes, but mostly that comes from living in a society that already has a tradition of using gold-based coinage, with some concept of the value of gold&etc. compared to the value of other goods.

But now that basically NO ONE knows how the establish the value of a given weight of gold, is gold really any better than fiat in the post-apocalypse? I say no.

Think about it. If someone were to approach you today and offer you an ounce of gold for your hunting rifle would you take it? Oh, and before you go running off to google the current exchange rate, the internet is down. For everyone, everywhere. Just pretend you and I are exchanging ideas by scrawling on strips of tree bark.

Frankly, if I had to give up my gun for “money” (like, say, I was out of ammo or, better yet, my gun was jammed and I didn’t have the oil to clean it and here some highwayman was holding a dull, rusty, but still very pointy knife to my throat and threatening to run me through but wanted to at least offer me something in exchange so they could sleep at night) I’d rather have a wad of bills than a (very heavy, not easily portable, and frankly pretty useless except as a paperweight) fistful of gold. Paper currency, at least, could be used as kindling. Toilet paper, too. We just don’t have an ingrained sense of the value of “gold as money.” It’d be like asking someone who grew up on Celsius, and had know idea how to convert to Fahrenheit, whether or not they should wear a coat to go outside in 50F weather. To receive a measurement of temperature stated in degrees Fahrenheit would be useless. So too with gold.

To the broader topic of this thread and prepper culture (which I hold as distinct from mere disaster preparedness), I have a general disdain for it, particularly when it seems to overlook just what exactly a collapse or breakdown of society would entail. For instance, you can have all the canned food and shotguns you want (MREs and AR-15s if you like), but if your plan is to just hang out in your cabin in the woods, know that desperate people may come upon you one day, then wait until you’re sleeping and bury a rock (aka, the AR-15 of the future) in your skull. What keeps people in general from doing that now is some combination of 1) not being quite so desperate and 2) the very social order you posit a breakdown of.

If anarchy breaks out, the laws that allow you to sleep at night won’t be worth even an ounce of gold (which, again, I posit will be worth even less than the paper those laws are printed on in this scenario). And the solar panels you’ve got on your cabin roof? How long do you expect them to last before they or the wiring or the batteries or the appliances they power break down and you’re reduced to living in the Stone Age with the rest of us? In short, for a culture predicated on the breakdown of society, I think suburbanite preppers tend to out way too much faith in the availability of technology (not just electronics, but even mechanical devices like guns). Stuff breaks.

2

It may have a edge against rapid inflation of a currency. But that is a flaw (and loss of faith) in that currency, not a strength of the commodity. That could just as easily be a needed item. We can see this today as the US has used economic warfare to destabilized the currency of Iran. It’a not gold or silver that holds a edge but anything that has value which is not paper money.

As such Gold has a disadvantage, as it is not really valuable for immediate needs (can’t eat it, thus might be refused in times of true emergencies), and a advantage as it holds it’s value for centuries. It’s something that has a long term value, however not necessarily has immediate value.

3

It could be worth holding on to if it were only a semi-severe case of social breakdown, and you anticipated a return to law and order and civliization years down the road, and that gold would become valuable again.

But if it were total anarchy, then, no. The only currency worth anything would be food, medicines, useful stuff.

4

The problem with gold is that most of us have little experience with it. If someone hands you a coin and tells you it’s a 24k one-ounce gold coin, how are you going to know that it’s not just gold-plated, or that it’s smaller than an ounce or what?

5

Gold bugs make me laugh. If society breaks down to the point where technology is done and nothing works, gold will not be helpful because you can’t eat it nor will it keep you warm and sheltered. You have to find another person who believes in the fiction of “gold is awesome” in order to continue your cute little folie a deux.

Similar point about preppers–that stuff is useful in a shortish term disaster, like the Cascadia fault breaking the state where I live. We have a bigass mountain range with few crossings cutting us off from the more tectonically quiet parts of the continent so it will be quite difficult for the trucks to get through for a while. A good swat of supplies is a great idea for coping with that.

Outside of that, if everything has gone titanically to shit the only really valuable commodity will be knowledge and ability. Someone who can fix motors will be super useful, hedge fund managers will be food no matter how much gold they can throw at the hungry masses. You can’t eat gold. Like every other monetary base, gold presupposes a given level of social cooperation and if you dip below that, well, all the bets are off. Makes more sense to learn things like how to make clothes, how to grow food, how to purify water, how to build shelter, what you can eat without being poisoned and other useful skills. If you don’t have those things no amount of gold or silver is going to make one thin shit of difference in your survival quotient.

6

Everything is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, there is no such thing as intrinsic value (of goods). Therefore, the value of gold depends on some number of people at least placing some value on it. The history of humans leads me personally to believe that there will always be plenty of people willing to value gold highly, at least until there is some way to produce it artificially (a la Star Trek, and even then there was a new substance they called “gold pressed latinum” or something which took the place of gold for the greedy).

For the record, I am not a prepper nor a survivalist. If there is an apocalypse that I by some magic accident survive, I expect that I will be robbed of all my valuables at the first opportunity and left to starve by the road. It is not for post-apocalypse that I think gold can be useful, it is for more likely events like inflation and economic depression. Since I am living on a fixed income, it makes me feel more comfortable to have solid assets that I can sell to eke out my existence when my regular income is nearly worthless (in case that should happen). I trust gold more than I trust politicians, but even so it is only a hedge, not an end in itself.

7

I expect to die as soon as the insulin ran out. I might could carry on about a month. Instead of gold I’d want to leave my loved ones with ammo that fits their guns.

8

This is what I came in to say. I have a little bit of experience in collectibles markets, and whenever somebody asks me what something is worth, my answer is always, “exactly what somebody is willing to pay for it.” I don’t say it to be snarky, but merely to point out that it takes two people agreeing on a value to make a transaction happen.

This will be true in spades after the breakdown of society. If you can convince somebody that your shiny pieces of metal are worth trading for their food, or shelter, or guns, or whatever, more power to you. But good luck.

9

I think the value of lead will vastly outweigh gold in these scenarios. Spending the money, you would spend on gold stocking up on ammo will have much better return.

One man alone in a cabin in the woods has no chance since you have other duties besides sitting up guarding your stuff (sleep if nothing else) so small bands that have an emotional reason to stick together are the most likely. Large armies need to get paid something above room and board so by the time they come back into fashion gold may have relevance. Initially, it will be small bands that do best since they can split duties and can rely on emotional connections (family or friendships) rather than gold to keep them working towards a common goal. Gold will primarily be of use trading between groups of relatively equal power but gold will require a somewhat functional economy in that group 1 has gold but is strong enough to keep group 2 from taking it while group two has chickens and is strong enough to keep group 1 from taking them and know that after they trade for the gold they can take it to group 3 and trade the gold for salt while group 3 is strong enough to keep 1 and 2 at bay. If there are only two groups then they can just straight barter without a medium of exchange and if any of them can be overwhelmed they will be.

Guns and ammunition will make your group stronger both for taking things from other groups and keeping your things from being taken. Larger groups will also have more power. Over time as ammunition supply dwindle the larger groups will gain relatively more power. Buying more ammunition give you more time to be a powerful group if you only have two rounds you’ll have to choose very carefully when to spend them but if you have 20,000 rounds you can be freer with your exercise of power. The $7,000 in gold talked about in that other threat will buy 20,000 rounds of ammunition which could level the playing field between a group of 5 and a group of 50 with just swords for years until the ammo get low. I’d certainly prefer to be in a group of 15 with 60 guns and 60,000 rounds of ammunition then a group of 150 with swords. Once you get over ~150 we start losing personal connections and then gold and paying solders will take over so we’re back to gold being important.

10

Voted “No.” I think skills will be more valuable.
Defense
Medicine
Brewing/Distilling
Not necessarily in that order.

11

Gold is a shitty currency for a standalone medium of currency. But it probably will be listed as one of a number of accepted currencys like ammunition, ciggarettes, pre fall booze and rechargable batteries. The thing with preppers is that their redoubts only have to last at best two to three weeks or up to two years depending on where they are. Deep Canadian winter, no heat plus no food and your going to lose at least half of the population. That prepper may have to travel on foot several weeks, just to get to somewhere that is selling or buying.

12

This is almost exactly what I would have written.

I’m not going to Google ‘prepper’; nor try to classify various apocalyptic scenarios. I do think the world economy is in a sort of ‘paper money bubble’; the bursting of that bubble may cause far greater anguish than the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008 yet still fall far short of a dystopia where countries like the U.S. are taken over by gun-wielding robbers.

In the economic-crisis scenarios I consider likely, most central banks will retain enough power that paper money will continue to be the standard currency. However gold will still be bought and sold, probably — in my opinion — at a price significantly higher than today’s price, as measured by paper currencies like the dollar. In more extreme scenarios, where strong governments give way to warlords and bandits, I would expect paper money to fare even less well in value, vs. gold (and perhaps silver).

13

I agree. There’s a really narrow window for gold as a currency. If society falls too far, people are only going to want the necessities of life; gold will just be a useless rock. If society recovers enough for there to be some kind of organization, then you’ll see fiat currency getting reintroduced; it’s just more useful as a means of exchange than gold is.

14

No matter how far society falls, people love to show off and gold makes beautiful jewelry. It will always have value for the better off of any group or society.

15

Well, if society falls far enough there should be enough useless circuit boards to be stripped for the gold in them–there are people making a living right now doing just that. I mean, if shiny metal floats your boat. Then again, it’s not the metal that makes the jewelry beautiful, it’s the skill of the artisan who made it.

16

the sole reason people latched onto gold as a basis for money so long ago is because it’s one of the few metals which are unreactive enough to be found naturally in native form, and which doesn’t tarnish or rust with age. Copper turns green, iron/steel turn red and flake away, silver turns black. Other than the fact that gold is found shiny and stays shiny and pretty, it’s really a pretty useless metal. it’s heavy, too soft to be a structural metal, too inert to be used in catalysts (unlike platinum,) and is only really useful in things like electronics where its corrosion resistance is desirable. the vast majority of mined gold in the world is used for bullion (bars) locked up in vaults, and jewelry. gold and silver are no different than anything else used as money, they’re only worth what someone is willing to give you for them.

I recall a side discussion on another site; some guy said “Well, I have the cows and the milk, and if you want to buy anything from me I’ll only take gold.” I replied “if society collapses into chaos and I’m hungry enough, I have guns and ammo. I’ll just shoot you and take your cows.”

17

I think it will still have some value. Its too beautiful to not. Gold fever is real.

18

You’re forgetting farming. Farming well is harder than it looks.

Also skills,like building, electrical work, plumbing and sewing.

19

Yes, a very small window. Mind you i do have a small handful of gold sovereigns, they are pretty.

Actually, I’d just buy a big bag of old silver dollars.

20

“had know idea” is my new band name.