A Question If There's A Financial Meltdown.

This is a very good question. I have also always wondered, for those who say 'silver will be $1000 per ounce', what one might be able to buy with that $1000?

A financial meltdown would be a very bad situation, whether you have silver or not.

If silver gets to $50 an oz I'm going on a nice vacation. If it gets to $1000 an oz I'm sealing the bunker.

History proves quite the opposite. Silver and gold have always had value throughout human history, to present.


That's what's called "SHTF", not an economic collapse.

To further expand on the economic collapse. Cities will empty, think about the 25 million people around NYC, money is worthless and they are hungry they will go out west. They will overrrun all the rural populations, then you have Chicago, Atlanta, California. Without money these people will get in cars and drive up to 400 miles to get food.

In case of an enconomic collapse the government will try to stop the free fall even to the point of backing up money with precious metals, why are there still gold reserves in Fort Knox and West Point because when currency devalues You either prop it up through policy or through linkage to a precious metal.

The chances of total ruin are pretty small unless we enter into a war with another nuclear power like China or Russia. In case of nuclear war, we are screwed! Having precious metal will be meaningless as will all be dead.

Venezuela is a good example of a currency collapse, the bolivar collapsed, so the people started using US dollars. If the US Dollar collapsed a lot of countries would be in trouble but we could get Euro's or Swiss Franc or GBP. Although the dollar collapsing would be an issue as many currencies are pegged to the dollar, but they could quickly switch to other currencies.

There's an economic meltdown, where the rule of law collapses (zombie apocalypse) and there are "hard times" (Great Depression) where things are bad but people still follow laws, etc. Gold and silver are not much use in the first scenario but can be valuable in the second as they will maintain their value while other economic assets such as stocks, real estate, etc collapse. In the Great Depression, those who held some gold/silver and government bonds had something to turn to when times got bad. These could still be turned into cash since the economic system, while beaten down, was still intact.

My guess is that if you had a sack of silver marks in Germany during the early 1920s, you didn't go hungry. Collapse of paper money does not mean farmers are going to quit growing stuff. They just won't give you any for worthless 1,000,000 mark notes.

Lets hope there are always farmers!

Silver and gold have historically been used as stores of value simply because they are compact, compared to other valuable things. You can transport them easily and hide them easily, compared to an equivalent value of food, or land, or tools and weapons. They are also universally acceptable as valuable, as opposed to other compact, valuable items (like spices, gems, seashells and such) whose rarity can vary greatly depending on the local geography and proximity to the sources of those other rare things.

The use of silver and gold as a trade good isn't for a "zombie apocalypse" scenario where everybody's shooting, robbing and pillaging each other, it's for a post-apocalypse "new dark age" scenario - where governments have collapsed and technology has regressed, but everyone is nevertheless managing to peacefully coexist with each other in a generally civilized fashion. Only in such a world would having a large stockpile of rare metals be considered a "good thing".

And, for a personal opinion: in such a "new dark age", it won't be silver that'll become rare - it'll be aluminium. With no more cryolite to mine (since we'd mined it all by the mid 20th century), once we've forgotten how to make it for a couple hundred years, I doubt we'll ever be able to figure out how to make it again. Aluminium metal has lots of uses, being strong and lightweight; it's only cheap because it's so abundant. Someone owning a stash of it will probably find themselves in a more desirable position than someone owning silver, because anyone can go out and refine themselves some more silver.