Gold

Have you ever wondered why gold is an expensive and valuable commodity? Yes it is a very pretty metal, easy to work with, great for making decorative work. But the quote below from SurvivalBlog.com gives the answer...

"How rare is gold? If you could gather together all the gold mined in recorded history, melt it down, and pour it into one giant cube, it would measure only about eighteen yards across! That's all the gold owned by every government on earth, plus all the gold in private hands, all the gold in rings, necklaces, chains, and gold art. That's all the gold used in tooth fillings, in electronics, in coins and bars. It's everything that exists above ground now, or since man learned to extract the metal from the earth. All of it can fit into one block the size of a single house. It would weigh about 91,000 tons - less than the amount of steel made around the world in an hour. That's rare." - Daniel M. Kehrer

Bottom Line

A few years back one of the museums in New York City held a special exhibit on gold. They built a room the size of the world's gold cube so you could stand inside and experience the total amount of known gold in the world. It's amazing how so little gold can go a long way.

Many survivalist get excited about gold as a hedge against inflation and protection against a currency crash. Personally I wouldn't know real gold from fake, so I worry about being swindled when gold is exchanged. I'd rather stockpile food. You can not eat gold.

Yet there are times when gold can be useful. When friends of ours lived in Saudia Arabia, they discretely wore some gold jewelry. If they ever had to evacuate the country quickly, the gold would help bribe their path to escape.

Here is a recent story online about gold...

GOLD HITS RECORD HIGH ON LOSS OF FAITH IN DOLLAR: “Gold prices on Tuesday surged to an all-time high after India’s central bank bought 200 tonnes of the precious metal, swapping dollars for bullion as the country’s finance minister warned the economies of the US and Europe had ‘collapsed’. India’s decision to exchange $6.7bn for gold equivalent to 8 per cent of world annual mine production sent the strongest signal yet that Asian countries were moving away from the US currency.”