Gold, for an alien attack?

You must have heard from your parents or grandparents, in time of war, money has no value, only gold is acceptable in business transaction. However, for the new generation, a war probably is as distant as an alien attack.

There is some truth in what they said though. In fact gold has been used as money or currency for generations, directly or indirectly. Before 15/Aug/1971, the value of $35was fixed at one troy ounce of gold, under the Bretton Woods System (since 1946). On 1971 Aug 15, then US President Richard Nixon abolished this.

Since then, for the first time in human history, there is no official link between currency and real asset (eg: shell, copper, gold). Therefore, what you have today in your wallet does not have an intrinsic value by itself, it is call Fiat money. It is a form of IOU by the government, promising you that you could exchange the note for some values. Therefore its value is highly dependent on the credibility of the governments. Now you know, in time of war, the survival of the country, therefore the government is already a big question mark, who talks about credibility?

Will the greatest mankind invented wealth creation technology, called printing technology defeats the thousands year wisdom in pursuing gold? Will the aliens strike one day? This is a complicated topic, let me do more research.