It’s like a Glenn Beck dystopia come to life. The financial system as we know it collapses and your credit cards don’t work, your bank limits your withdrawals to $50 a day, and you’re forced to use other means to survive. Could it happen here?

Well, the folks at Kitco think it just might.

Behold, the Silver Survival Package!

You got that right, for the low, low price of $4,590, you can get this “Silver Kitco Cache Kit” from Kitco. 250 ounces of .999 pure silver, all in a case that’s sorta like a bugout bag for “Silver Survivalists.” (Such people exist, and by the time you’re done reading this, you may very well want to join their ranks.)

Don’t laugh: this kind of thing will come in very handy during those SHTF moments. Think about it for a half-second…

1. Silver is portable, gold isn’t.

You’re going to have to suspend belief for a moment: if you can’t actually use cash, you can’t use credit cards or debit cards, and you can’t use bitcoin, then how are you actually going to buy things?

Currently, the price of silver is $14.38 an ounce. Gold is $1076.30 an ounce. (Prices are as of December 24 market close; not only will your experience vary, you’ll have to factor in the margin that the seller needs to make. Kitco has baked in that margin on top of the overall price of its package, so you’re paying something like $18.36 an ounce. It’s a premium, sure. But stick with us while we talk about portability.) Now, imagine you have a choice: four ounces of gold (around $4500 when you factor in margins) or 250 ounces of silver.

The folks at Kitco have divided their Silver Cache Kit as follows:

• 100 of the 1-ounce coins (value of each: $18.36)
• 100 of the 1/2-ounce coins ($9.18 each)
• 200 of the 1/4-ounce coins ($4.59 each)
• 500 of the 1/10-ounce coins ($1.84 each).

Need to fill up your gas tank? I just filled mine for $28 or so; in our dystopian society where you can only pay with precious metals, that’s an ounce and a half of silver.

Need a hundred bucks worth of groceries? 5 1/2 ounces of silver.

You see the point.

Try doing this with gold. Well, the hundred bucks of groceries COULD be covered by a 1/10-ounce coin. But that’s the smallest size you could technically take with you. Best forget about that as you try to make your daily purchases.

2. The silver price is distressed, relatively speaking.

If you look at the below chart from our friends at Macrotrends.net, note that gold has always been more valuable than silver. But the real question is how much the gold/silver ratio should be.

Right now, gold is almost 75 times more valuable than silver – a pretty steep jump from a ratio of 40-to-1 in May 2011.

Silver appears to be distressed when compared to gold – and were gold to stick at relatively the same price, and silver move to a ratio that was closer to its 20th Century average of 1/47 the value of gold, that would equate to a price of $22.89 an ounce.

Even when NOT compared to gold, silver is off of its historical highs ($49 or so in nominal dollars; $147 or so in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation). There is potential for upside – beyond just the practical value of the precious metal, you could see a bull market in silver prices.

3. Silver has use beyond money. (Gold, not so much.)

So it doesn’t resist corrosion as well as gold. So what? Silver is the most versatile of the metals, and it is widely used in electronics.

Don’t believe us? Trust the folks at Geology.com.

Gold just isn’t as practical, which doesn’t help its demand. Instead, you’ll find most gold hidden in home safes – NOTE: DON’T HIDE YOUR GOLD IN A HOME SAFE AND, IF YOU DO, DON’T TELL EVERYONE – so it will remain more lucrative and will be kept out of circulation. Gold will continue to hold value, don’t get me wrong – but it will be as a means of exchange. That’s it.

Is it possible that silver’s value could go higher as a combination of money and practicality? Sure. At least that’s what we’d bet on.

So, are we buying this stash of silver?

We’re not telling. But it’s certainly worth considering.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We often will use affiliate links when there’s a product to sell and we have the chance to make some money for promoting it. It’s not the case here – the Kitco kit is something that caught our eye. When we DO run an affiliate link, we’ll let you know.