Since I’m old, I won’t survive doomsday. My scenario targeting is more for a Brazil / Argentina high inflation scenario cause by corruption of the currency. We’ve have US Dollars, we’ll have Internet, grocery stores, fuel, electricity… they will all just be costly in nominal US Dollar terms, but OK in gold terms. Also, equities will become more reasonably priced in gold terms.
When the narrative flips… when everyone hates US megacap equities, and when everyone is talking about gold, and gold mining stocks, as they were in decades past, then I will be unloading probably most of my gold and gold miners, and buying unfavored, hated, and beaten-down US equities.
Primate psychology hasn’t changed in millions of years. People always get it wrong in the aggregate. This time is not different.
It depends on the level of your doomsday scenario. In a biblical apocalyptic doomsday, gold will most likely be worthless. What can be done with Gold? Make some jewelry, plate some electronic connections? At least Silver has Commercial and Industrial uses. I agree if it’s just a matter of the lack of a stable currency, Gold should be good, but nothing has a value unless someone actually wants it. I think I’d rather have real estate and land in that scenario.
With the development of quantum computers and the use of AI software, future total Internet blackouts are pretty much a sure thing.
Quantum computers running AI software will be able to break any pre-quantum security systems in a few nanoseconds.
The ensuing quantum tech battles will create havoc and total chaos for anything Internet dependent. I think we’ll see efforts to develop Internet alternatives within the next few years.
A quantum-tech black swan event is in all of our futures.
Whatever someone would take. My position is in a true Doomsday event, Gold may not have any real value. Have you ever thought of why Gold is valuable to begin with? There was a time in history that Salt was quite valuable. Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in Salt. Food may be more valuable than gold. But, I do understand the purpose of owning Gold.
So you are telling me that after a nuclear war that wipes out the cities listed, the internet, cell phone towers…that people would be clamoring to own gold…something that has ZERO utility ?? I do not see that happening at all.
Again, we have no real world test case, but how many Katrina survivors whose city and infrastructure was decimated, were looking for gold ?
Gold only has value when you can trade it for something you need at the time. I suggest that in a major emergency (let’s use the Maui wildfires as an example), while their town was being destroyed, you could not have offered anyone gold over transportation, safety, water and so on.
If the world were to go to ‘hell in a handbasket’ (assuming that we still have handbaskets) then water, food, air, protection from the elements, security and safety are going to be the key things people will look for.
In the sort term people need necesssities. If they make it trough that, then the gold might be usefiul.
People will be in need of food, shelter, transportation and safety. The people that have those things to offer will want to be compensated for them. With the US government inoperative and no information available do you think the US dollar will have real value?
Hard currency will be the default medium of exchange and gold will be the standard with silver coins used for smaller denominations.
In-kind trading the basic essentials will be done on a user level, but people with larger lots for sale will want hard currency in exchange for them.
If not gold and silver, what would you suggest as a medium of exchange?
In-kind trading will happen on a small scale, but if mobility is required, like for safety, you can’t take everything with you. That’s when things of value, like food, shelter, clothing, safety and transportation will need to be converted to/from a medium of exchange.
The Maui and California disastrous wildfires were relatively small localized events and the US government was not in danger of being neutralized.
All of the necessities you mention as essentials require human effort (work) to obtain.
Gold is currently, and has been for a long time, the universal medium of exchange for things that require human work to obtain.
Because of it’s scarcity one of the features of gold is that it takes a lot of human effort (work) to obtain. Additionally it is physically stable, won’t corrode and is easy to measure quantities and divide into small denominations. Add those advantages to the fact that it is portable and you find gold is the logical choice for a dooms-day money of choice.
Technology has the potential to change the current scarcity of gold. It’s very likely that, barring the destruction of human life and thus man-made technology, that someone will come up with a way to create gold from scratch or devise a way to pull gold from where it currently is stored in or on our planet. When that happens gold will lose the feature of scarcity an thus it’s value as a medium of exchange for things of value.
Yes, gold is difficult to find in large quantities, which makes it valuable to some because of that.
However, if it easy to find, its value declines. Take Clarks recent report on mined diamonds vrs manufactored diamonds… Until recently people paid significantly for mined diamonds util a cheaper form became available.
As soon as something else comes along, gold has value.
As with my solar installation, having someone else do the work would have been a lot more expensive than me knowing how and doing it myself, just like prospecting. The value is in the work to obtain it.
One feature that gold has in it’s favor as a medium of exchange is it’s resistance to destruction.
You can burn a diamond and totally destroy it. You can lose gold and you can change it’s state from a solid to a liquid or (theoretically) to a gas, but you cannot destroy it.