And if you have gold, someone with ammo will always find a way to "trade" for it.

Just a question of how fast the ammo goes during the exchange.

Yeah. If anything, a gold coin is too much value in one piece. Like, who are you going to find with enough spare stuff to trade that would actually be worth the equivalent value of an ounce of gold?

I figure that someone with nothing but gold coin would end up with very very expensive food, and with some luck a very expensive gun of some kind.

I would expect that if I had a pile of gold, the first armed person to realize that I have that much gold would immediately shoot me to get the gold. Then the next half-crazed, highly stressed, armed individuals would take them out and the cycle continues.

Thank you! It has never made sense to me, either. Hoarding gold did make some sense back in the day when you were fleeing a local or regional calamity, or could expect to see a return to relative normalcy in your lifetime. But if global civilization collapses from climate change or similar, gold will have no practical value to a refugee or survivalist.

I have a spice rack that takes up a large portion of my bugout bag. I guarantee that when I start cooking and whip out some Saffron, powdered Sumac Berries, and Turmeric for a rice dish, and people will just want me to stick around and cook for them. Especially since I also have my, my father's, and my grandfathers BSA manuals, each of which has different pictures of various edible plants, herbs, and spices that can be found in the various parts of the world.

That's why there's a thriving bottlecap trade after the apocalypse.

Good thing I want to collect guns.

It's valuable because barter economies aren't real and don't work. All the alternatives you mention are difficult to transport, not fungible, or not scarce, so they won't work as a currency. Either we revert back to gift economies where distribution of goods happens within a community and follows cultural rather than economic rules, or the market settles on a currency for standardized arbitrary transactions between strangers that has the necessary properties of a currency.

You mean it isn't anymore?

I didn't know any of this going in, but it seems weird to me that the article kept tying the company back to this Glenn Beck guy, who seemingly only shilled for it. Is there something I'm missing?

That's a movie I never knew existed. Jeez Robin Williams has made millions of movies.