Indeed survivorship bias - its survived for 2000 years as a valuable asset while nothing else has come close. Its not accidental though as you allege...gold is

Indeed survivorship bias - its survived for 2000 years as a valuable asset while nothing else has come close. Its not accidental though as you allege...gold is pretty. People were originally fascinated with it because it looked nice. So it did have some unique founding qualities distinguishing it from other commodity metals. It just also happened to be hard to find and impossible to make. You are wrong about gold being useless in a disaster. On 9/11 many gold traders in NYC stayed open...they understood the whole point of gold trading was to hedge against a disaster. History is full of countless tales of gold being accepted everywhere there is greed. As to investing gold in a fiat - most hardcore gold bugs would tell you this is wrong and you should be holding the physical metal...don't even put it in a vault. No matter what happens in society, an ounce of gold will always buy you a nice suit, a good meal and a room for the night.