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Originally Posted by red-beard

In an immediate crisis, someone is not going to give up food, fuel or water for gold, unless they have excess.

Later, as trade re-develops, gold and silver will certainly be needed. It will be the exchange medium, along with barter. Remember, barter in a small community was used more than gold. People kept books of what they did for each other.

Thinking about things, low level labor used to be a dollar a day. So, it would take about 25 days for 1 oz of gold, or better said, a years worth of basic labor (6 days per week) was about 12.5 oz of gold. At 5 days per week, this would be a little over 10 per year which is $16,000 today, or about $8/hr.

Gold replaced barter...but hard currency was often in short supply.

We are not looking at a Mad Max scenario.