We have silver here at home and gold, copper etc because the wife makes jewelery as a hobby, so raw ingots and small bars of high grade metals are stored here in the little safe.
But the real wealth I have here is our seeds, 100's of strains of edible plants all non GMO and very old strains at that. Believe me while gold and silver are good to have and you should have some .. the ability to grow food or sell the extra seed/food you have for silver/gold/services and other needs is a good investment line for a collapse situation as well.
Your seeds are wealth. That I agree. Fresh food will be wealth. Clothes will be wealth. The knowledge of how to build and farm and care for animals will be wealth. If the society is reduced to certain levels of subsistence, gold and silver will be valuable as metals of use, yes. - and because of that will figure in barter - but no more.
What will be 'wealth' in a collapse? The spirit of a strong community of people working hard to support each other - sharing and cooperating. That will be the 'gold', that will be the 'jewels' sought after. People will seek entre to that sort of community ever before they will want a piece of gold or silver.
Where there is fear - and all the behaviors that fear begets - people will flee. Where there is fear there will be gold and silver - it won't matter. You can't eat gold and silver. But the spirit of a healthy community can sustain you. That's what will be forged and what will matter.
May never happen but ... and its the but that is always the killer... what if a disaster etc happens and you have no back up? think it over people... so if it never happens you have extra food and a good home grown diet... but if it happens well you are ready.. that simple.
I actually think this is good but not in the way likely thought. I think everyone should be independent - off the grid - solar panels, gardens - local, local, local. City and Country - no matter, all of us. This is the way of creating a new civilization. A supra-structure could exist - so there are universities and air travel, rail travel and great endeavors like space and science and culture - but the basic structure is local. Slowly - the best way - it will happen slowly. It's already happening - in good ways - not the fear-based ways.
It is my hunch that that is what will eventuate - slowly - as people are cut off from jobs and a livelihood 'in the system', 'on the grid' , they will start the path to independence. It will basically cut the super-rich off from the source of their addiction. They cannot be rich if 'we' do not cooperate. Gold and silver basically still plays into the status quo - into the fear. Fear is an extremely important commodity - it sells. Big time. There's 'gold in them 'thar hills.'
Mike is not silly as I have seen he grows his own food like I do, so a little bit of gold or silver is icing on the cake but not the thing you depend upon the most. If you do that you are already dead in a collapse situation as you can't eat the gold and during the first few weeks people are not going to sell you shit.
There is a tremendous fallacy in the historical thinking of many Americans - this idea of the individual surviving - the westward expansion borne on the scrabble of individuals. Didn't happen that way. Except for isolated pockets of severe social dysfunction (lawless towns - notorious in legend) the westward expansion of the pioneers was as successful as it was because of cooperation, mutual support and strenuous joint effort. In a disaster, we have evidence that this is exactly the way people behave - to help, aid and support. People band together - all the dystopic visions shown endlessly in film and explored in apocalyptic novels notwithstanding.
History sometimes has a lot to tell us. Humanity - or at least western humanity - has already experienced a collapse - following the unprecedented shock wave that passed over Europe with the fall of Rome. Though the term "Dark Ages" is less used these days yet a kind of darkness did fall across Europe. Literacy declined at an incredible speed and the living conditions regressed to a more primitive condition. What happened? People banded together. As long as the supra-structure existed, Roman coins came in handy. Once gone, not important - except as metal for making things. Unless you were headed out to Byzantium/Constantinople.
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