[Jim]

Gold and selver made in to bullets I like that. The coins you have on you will be moor usefull espashaly if you can work metals make them in to soing neddels and arrow heads (ect)

[oldsoldier]

Originally Posted by sypher96792

can't afford none of that.......rather be a smarter than the average bear and trade my skill's.....yes the one's you all taught me...

You'd be suprized how cheaply you can prep. $5 will buy you several meals if done properly. A 12 pack of ramen noodles, 10 pounds of beans or rice, just to name a couple. Prepping IMO is a from of insurance. Most people insure their cars,homes,families,lives. We would not thing of not doing so ( most of us at least). So is prepping. Miss just one trip to a fast food place with your family ( $20) that will get you 3 days of emergency food for a family of 4. Again as I have said before IMO it's not a matter of affording TO prep, but rather a matter on NOT affording to neglect prepping. Having skills to barter is a wonderful thing. It will help you in the long run to hopefully extend your supplies. BUT we can't afford to rely on that alone. I have combat arms and other special skills,I'm a carpentry,electrician,plumber, fair mechanic, have some medical training among a lot of "life skills" however I'll never wish to depend soley on them. It may be weeks between someone needing my services. As for me I like to eat regularly. That's why I prep.

[archdriver]

I dont think it is unreasonable to think that in a SHTF scenario, that there will be some people with abundance of some things that they would trade or sell. crops, shelter, access to water etc. It's not unreasonable to imagine a barter system evolving. gold has always been a 'store of value' for the longest time. Coins come in 1/10th ounce, 1/4 ounce etc all the way up to the big bullion bars. and I am not suggesting that you would buy a glass of water with a bar of gold. but a handful gold coins might buy you into a community ensuring your survival. I am not a gold bug at al and I dont own any ... I am mostly just thinking out loud.

Survival is preparedness and decision making. Just as you prepare your stores of ammo , food, tools, you can also add something that might carry 'value' on the other side of a SHTF scenario.

[Guardian]

As it's been discussed, it never hurts to have a little of everything on you. Personally, I'm in Old Soldiers frame of mind, I will prep for a stay with food, water and other necessities and the skills the military gave me and use my common sense of what will work and won't work and then improvise, adapt and overcome when the situations arise that I have to deal with, because that dang ole Murphy will be hanging around for sure.

[oldsoldier]

Originally Posted by Guardian

As it's been discussed, it never hurts to have a little of everything on you. Personally, I'm in Old Soldiers frame of mind, I will prep for a stay with food, water and other necessities and the skills the military gave me and use my common sense of what will work and won't work and then improvise, adapt and overcome when the situations arise that I have to deal with, because that dang ole Murphy will be hanging around for sure.

Excellent point!! I would probibly consider investing in PM's when I feel comfortable with the level of my "required" preps. i.e. food, ammo, medical supplies, weaponry, and such. However as a subscriber to the Burt Gummer (Tremors) school of survival. " One can never have enough food,and firepower to completely cover every instance". So It'll likely be a long time before I have "enough" preps especially since I an now adding for other family.

[ullyeus]

Originally Posted by archdriver

. It will always carry value and if you truly thought a SHTF scenario was in the cards, the high price today would be peanuts compared to the worth it would bring in a societal meltdown.

I always wondered about this and just don't see it being worth anything for a few reasons....

a) People don't know what the value of gold is today, if you walked up to a person with a gold coin and asked how much it was worth I'd imagine you'd get a huge range of answers...after a major situation those ranges would even change far more...

b) It's got no useful value to it...if I needed a shovel...and was in the wild and someone came up to me and asked for my shovel in trade for a chunk of shiny but useless metal....I'd rather have my shovel than an entire block of gold....

c) People can't tell what gold is vs fake/plated gold.

d) If you go around showing off your brick of gold you might get into trouble if someone wants it

e) It's heavy/bulky

f) People may not have scales and would be unable to tell the difference between 5 and 6 grams.

g) There would be no universal standard of worth...

i) What exactly would you want to be purchasing with this gold btw? Why not just think know what you'd want...and then buy it when it's easier and more readily available?


I just can't fathom it being worth anything...I mean...how much would a shovel cost in gold after TSHTF? If someone can't reasonably explain a proper expectation/assumption then I don't see why I'd try to get some of this metal...

[TaintRight]

Gold will have useful value as the economy nears collapse. But once it collapses, I don't think it'll have as much value as a good hand tool.

As I have said, a silver coin worth $20 would be easier to use in a transaction than a $1,500 gold coin. But silver too will "lose its luster" once the SHTF.

It all depends on how bad you think things will get. At some point a 1 lb "round" of salt or 50-22 LR may be far more valuable than silver or gold.

[archdriver]

a few sliver coins of gold that are worth today $20 might be able to
buy your safety in another world.. It isnt always about what you got , it is wht the other guy has,

[SMD]

Gold won't be useful until after a major collapse or even TEOTWAWKI is good and done and the process of rebuilding begins anew. I agree with everyone who said that for preppers, basic necessities are much more important than owning some gold, but the point of owning some gold is not to get rich or even to use for trading once TSHTF.

From a micro-economic or individual perspective, look at it this way. If I offered anyone here the chance to buy something to pay off their $100k mortgage a few years from now (for example) for $25-30k now, would anyone here be interested? Buying gold should be like buying any other investment - which means you should have a goal and an exit-strategy. If you borrow dollars right now (say, take out a mortgage for $100k), when they are relatively expensive, along with some gold (perhaps 25-30k) and then wait until interest rates and mass inflation causes gold to go to $2-3k or higher, then you could sell your gold, and then pay off your mortgage with cheaper dollars that you would receive down the road. Alternatively, if you don't have any debt, then you could purchase a deflated asset class (for example real estate in a few years) with gold for MUCH cheaper than you'd be able to do it with that same gold now.

If we have something like hyperinflation (which I HIGHLY doubt - if we do, then millions of lives in the US and hundreds of millions around the world will be lost) then something like gold, though useful, still wouldn't get you as much as it would now, except for perhaps if you were to use it to purchase your freedom and escape the country as some Jewish people did in pre-WW2 Germany and some Vietnamese people did right before the Vietnam war, but that's assuming there's a safe country to go to when that happens.

[robsdak]

can't eat it, plant it, sleep under or shoot it. so of no real value to me. did i invest in precious metals??? sure, brass, lead, steel and copper.

say what you will about this scenario or that, but the fact of it is, kinda hard to kill a rabbit or deer with a silver dime or a gold bar.