Why Buying Bullion Is Not A Good Investment....

You do know the world has had these events in the past and during those times gold and silver again was the saving factor for many people, though at the time few had much.

The known world was disrupted several times in history. During the Mongol invasions during the 1200's it was gold paid as tribute that saved many people. I would say that period of time was a large SHTF for many people.

We can even go back in time to Alexander the Great and even the Romans. A lot of history on the value of gold and silver when thousands of people were being slaughtered.

Ever since the start of time three things ruled and they were the combination of gold, beauty, and power.

For a reason that should put this subject together for all is that in the quest for gold by the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Indians, Hittites, Chinese, and others killed for gold. And this happened during a time when gold had no value as 'money,' but was just considered a desirable commodity in and of itself.

Sure water, food, ammo, and land will be most key post apocalypse situation, but like Ed said gold and silver has always had value, regardless of the current economic situation of any past country or empire that went down the enviable road of collapse....

You don't think groups of power would not form which would kill for not only the first mentioned items, but gold and silver as well....

The only thing that has great value now which would no longer in a post SHTF situation, would be things of no PRACTICAL use such as a bulky 100 year old rare collectors car, via museum type items....

And I am sure as things began to reform, again those powers to be would flock to those items of value again in some form or fashion, as gold has always been desirable for a reason, its beauty, the way it feels in hand, that crazy look people get when they hold it, etc....

I always point to an old episode of the dead gun from years back, where in 1849 during the Cali gold rush two guys killed another group who found a huge gold nugget in the river. One tried to get away with it and steal from the other. The one guy chased him in the river, only to receive a fatal paddle swing to the head. And then the weight of the nugget in the backpack of the last surviving thief in the boat after the swing caused him to topple over board and he sank to the bottom with his riches....

Like I said look at history. For some reason everyone thinks ancient people were all farmers and did not live in cities. Except for maybe the so called cave man this was never the case. In fact many people did not grow food or could even survive on their own.

What you fail to consider is that skills and talents were not evenly distributed across the world. Of course we all should know that the world's resource were not either. Since we have a habit of bashing each others skulls we have really only done two things, trade or raid.

In any event look at Rome which was founded in 753 BC. The people of Rome really lived no different than we do today in our modern cities. A person in Rome was just as out of place in the country as some one from New York City would be today. In fact they developed one of the fist water systems to supply the city. They transport food into the city just as we do today.

Ancient Mesopotamia built some of the greatest cities but they had one problem they had no large amount of stone or wood for buildings. However they had the fertile soils from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

We all know the Sumerians of course great far more food than they could eat. Thus they traded for wood from what is now Lebanon and even metals from Cyprus.


You get my point the world back then wasn't a bunch of families living on the land by their own. But I think you knew that.

We can rule out wars if you want lets just say they never had a war. But they had other things that made even bigger impacts such as weather related, disease and even economic failure of great magnitude. I think I would call the Black Death a pretty big SHTF event.

One thing remained important during this time, this funny metal that you could not eat or even make into a tool.

We'll have to agree to disagree on what constitutes SHTF the black plague was a crisis and set the world back but it was still not an event that decimated the world or society.

By definition we have not had a true SHTF event since the apocalypse has not come and we are all here today to discuss this.

I don't know sometimes you can over define something to the point you get the results you want. However I agree that the end of the world would be a SHTF event.


A quick question for you. Who suffered the worse during the great depression in the United States?

Farmers or city folks?

That goes both ways mkfarm, you can over generalize a term to make it apply to whatever you want as well :-P

Unless you happen to have a secure and defensible warehouse on your property (god forbid you happen to be a city dweller), a widely accepted and known store of value is your next best bet once you've crammed that last case of .45ACP into your medicine cabinet, and filled your attic with second-hand MREs.

Comparing the buying power of a dead currency against what your hard bought stack of silver and, maybe, a little bit of gold might do for you and your family once a new "normal" is established? Wow. I'm just not sure how to respond.

I find it novel how people keep thinking that "today" is somehow different from the rest of human history. That we've somehow reached some exceptional point in our existence that the rules of, well, everything, simply don't apply to us. The sheer hubris of such thinking is astounding.