Gold as a SHTF barter good is fairly useless. You can't feed it to your children,
...ditto Federal Reserve notes....
it won't keep you warm at night,
unless carrying quantities wortthy of a cocaine cartel, neither will Federal Reserve notes - make good kindling tho (and TP)....
it won't help you get from here to there.
Same for FedRes notes.
In fact, gold doesn't do anything except sit there and look shiny.
People want it - especially women and rap singers. It is a near universally desired scarce mineral with unique properties and unversally recognized as a high density/low volume means to store and transport wealth. Not to mention its STILL used to back currency - look at the dinar.
In a disaster, who is going to trade you something useful for that gold coin when people everywhere are desperately looking for their next meal or their next fix or their next safe place to sleep at night?
You have an alternative in mind?
If you want to keep gold for use in a SHTF situation, you're gambling on three big uncertainties. First, you're gambling that our existing currency (FRNs) will someday cease to be a universal and useful trade medium.
...already starting to happen. Effectively, up until now, our dollar was "backed" by its converability into OPEC oil. The countries involved are slowly (so as not to risk their current holdings in dollars) shifting to the Euro and the islamic dinar. If they shift all the way to the dinar, it will take GOLD to get OIL.
Second, you're gambling that some new trade medium will develop to replace our FRNs (i.e. that society will develop beyond barter trading for the necessities of life, before the SHTF situation recovers).
...and through history, thats been gold, silver, copper, and such - especially when formed into units of known purity and weight - like COINS!
Third, you're gambling that the new medium will be gold and/or silver instead of something else, like say gasoline or steel or livestock.
Even those that deal oin gasoline or livestock are going to want a higher density, lower overhead(a given "worth" of gasoline is relatively large, has to be stored in some type of container, and goes bad after a while - cattle must be fed, sheltered, doctored, and moving either in large quantities is an undertaking that requires much manpower and special equipment.)
Buy a plot of tillable land. Build a hand-operated well, a barn, a small cabin and an outhouse. Buy a tractor or a mule, a plow, and a few sacks of seed. I assume you already have a rifle or a shotgun with a few hundred rounds. If the bad times ever come, regardless of what shape they come in, you'll be as safe and sound as anyone can be.
...if you don't have to move. If your tillable land is now radioactive, or otherwise unusable, or if you have parents hundreds of miles away to check on, now what?
Heck, even something as mundane as a good bicycle or a stout pair of boots will likely prove more useful and valuable in a SHTF situation than a similar value of gold.
Its not an "either-or" situation.
And if the bad times don't come (which is a very real possibility, one that SHTFers and survivalists oughta devote some serious thought to), that real estate investment will prove many times more valuable than those shiny yellow lumps. That bike will be a pleasant diversion and a good source of healthy exercise. Good boots are always good. Gold? Eh. I suppose it'll still be shiny, for whatever that's worth.
...and that gold that sank on Spanish treasure ships? It's STILL highly valuable and desireable, even now, and people risk their lives to retrieve it. Try leaving your gasoline or cattle underwater for 400 years and see what kind of shape they are in.
