A bit late to reply, but yes. If you only stock up on gold, you’re an idiot. The point is to have all that you need stocked up, food and living wise, and have weapons, ammunition and reloading equipment, and then having precious metals like gold and silver for exchange later.
The point is simple and hasn't changed for thousands of years. If you wish to make a trade for something valuable or large in amount, trading a small silver or gold bar instead of 2000 turnips and 47 barrels of dried beans. Barter is fine for small stuff but it falls on its face when amounts start to get large.
Example, 5 years after common era failure, your tractor you've kept running on home made alcohol if gasoline or biodiesel/SVO snaps in half, you need a new one. You trade one gold bar to your neighbour, he trades you a spare tractor of his and you can fix yours or use your parts to rebuild your new one. He then trades the bar to another neighbour for 6 cows, and the bar gets moved to someone else for whatever reason. No central authority has to tell anyone what that bar is “worth”, its worth what the trade is worth to the people involved. It can later make its way to apocalyptic geeks who melt it down and use it to coat their contacts and repair electronics and keep old tech working (what you guys don’t have setups for windmills driving alternators and running water pumps for water battery storage in your end of the world plans yet?)
Gold is useful beyond jewelry and trade, its thermal conductivity is second to silver and the lack of tarnishing makes it ideal for connectors. We don’t all plan to be amish in the next incarnation of society ya know.
A bit late to reply, but yes. If you only stock up on gold, you’re an idiot. The point is to have all that you need stocked up, food and living wise, and have weapons, ammunition and reloading equipment, and then having precious metals like gold and silver for exchange later. The point is simple and hasn't changed for thousands of years. If you wish to make a trade for something valuable or large in amount, trading a small silver or gold bar instead of 2000 turnips and 47 barrels of dried beans. Barter is fine for small stuff but it falls on its face when amounts start to get large. Example, 5 years after common era failure, your tractor you've kept running on home made alcohol if gasoline or biodiesel/SVO snaps in half, you need a new one. You trade one gold bar to your neighbour, he trades you a spare tractor of his and you can fix yours or use your parts to rebuild your new one. He then trades the bar to another neighbour for 6 cows, and the bar gets moved to someone else for whatever reason. No central authority has to tell anyone what that bar is “worth”, its worth what the trade is worth to the people involved. It can later make its way to apocalyptic geeks who melt it down and use it to coat their contacts and repair electronics and keep old tech working (what you guys don’t have setups for windmills driving alternators and running water pumps for water battery storage in your end of the world plans yet?) Gold is useful beyond jewelry and trade, its thermal conductivity is second to silver and the lack of tarnishing makes it ideal for connectors. We don’t all plan to be amish in the next incarnation of society ya know.