I have a question. If the fit hits the shan what good is gold? I know some people crave it but will grocers, gas stations, etc really take gold for payment? If you have a pound of gold how long will it really last?
In a total collapse of all law and order and economic systems...gold will be so valuable that it will be hard to spend it on basic necessities.
This should put it into perspective for you:
The experts claim that in such a predicament as I described, one old fashioned american silver dollar(morgan or peace, doesn’t matter) will buy MINIMUM a week’s worth of rations for one person and may be as valuable as buying a month’s worth of rations for a family of four.
A gold coin containing one ounce of gold will be worth roughly ten times what that silver dollar is worth. So you are looking at nearly a years worth of rations for a family, FROM A SINGLE COIN.
Where are you going to find a street vendor that can make change for something like that? It would be like trying to spend a 5000 dollar bill today at a curbside vegetable stand. And if you did try to spend one somewhere, can you imagine how fast the word would spread and how many people would be spying on you and plotting your murder?
Some people claim the best thing for you to do would be to fill up a 5 gallon bucket with a bunch of old silver dimes and stash it away in a basement closet. At 1/100 the value of the one once gold coin, it would be much easier to spend on basic necessities and likely wouldn’t attract the wrong kind of attention.
So to answer your question “ how long will it last?”. a pound of pure gold is 12 ounces troy...or twelve one ounce coins. Theoretically, that should feed a family of 4 for a decade...on the higher end of the estimate. On the lower end maybe feed one person for 3 years.