The United States has by far the largest gold reserve. The Chase Manhattan protects the gold reserves of many nations in its underground vault. These gold reserves are cared for and adjusted per the orders from each nation, mostly to adapt to trade balances. The how and why of gold reserves is a complicated formula and reasoning since no nation bases its currency on precious metals. All currencies values are based on their nations estimated wealth and their relationship to the US dollar.

A lot of people lost a lot of money in silver over the past generation. My late 2nd wife's uncle had invested most of her father's estate in silver and it went down, down, down until it was worthless. The more it went down the more the uncle wouldn't budge and sell. Then it stayed in the toilet forever. In the end the estate was liquidated to pay administrative costs (the uncle, you know, was the executor, and had to make sure HE was taken care of).

I didn't follow the situation closely but the explanation I've heard for what happened with silver was that the limited supply was being manipulated by wealthy speculators. They owned the mines and flooded the market to drive down prices, or so I am given to understand. This disconnected the price of the silver from the other market influences. Supposedly.

So I don't see ANY investment as a guaranteed hedge. If we were in a truly dystopian situation I don't know that digging up gold or silver you had buried in the back yard would represent a recognized medium of exchange. In extremis, it's just a function of who can take stuff from who, and how ruthlessly. Things like nuclear winter or total economic collapse or some sort of super-plague are bigger than me, and what will be will be. I have the means for example to install power generators and the like and make my home an island of functioning tech even if the grid goes down. But if that truly happened ... and my neighbors saw the warm glow of electric lights peeking out at night ... and noticed I wasn't getting skinny and was staying warm in winter ... how long would that last, really?

I bought troy ounce silver coins in the 90s when the economy was good for 4.00 each. In 2008 after the crash it went up to 50.00 each. Gold and silver are great assets in lean times.