That's too funny. One can never be too prepared.
True story: A friend's grandfather was a child of the Great Depression. He was farmed out as a hired hand and abandoned by his parents. He didn't trust the government or banks. So over the years, he wrapped up all of his savings (cash, coin, gold, jewelry) in multiple, vacuum-sealed jelly jars and buried them all over his property. He worked minimum-wage jobs all of his life. He paid cash for everything through the years: property, house, cars, etc. About ten years ago, on his deathbed, he gave his wife a map to find the money. His kids had a fit, dug it all up and invested it, complaining all the while that the measly $30,000 could have been $x by now. They lost every penny of it this year in the stock market crash.
As my own Great Depression grandfather used to say, "The old man doesn't look so stupid now, does he?"
So if he would have started investing his money in lets say 1950, even if he lost 40% of the value of it this year and last, do you think it was still wise to stick it in mason jars? If he could have Forest Gumped it, it could be worth quite a tidy sum today.
A couple of years back two guys got in the paper saying they found some cache of pre-1935 dollars under some tree roots. I think the value of it in todays dollars was over $100,000 if the money was sold to collectors. Anyway, they were bragging about how they found it, got in the news papers and on TV and then it was discovered that they did a roofing job and found it hidden in the attic when they had to repair the wood beneath the shingles. If I remember correctly, they were charged with theft and had to give the money back. Some old guy had gone to his grave never telling anyone about his stash.