Sorry to call this out, but in my eyes this is typical gold bug/doom and gloomer fear mongering to prop up your investments. The narrative is old and worn out - the evil "them" want us all dead, keep lying to everyone about everything and keep stealing from us all. So we must all buy gold, silver, guns, water etc.

I know its a populist thing to say in this context, but compare the standards of living of today with say 100 years ago for an average citizen. The progress has been dramatic.

You may have a lot of valid points short term, but the world is so interconnected these days that even though armies are getting stronger, Putin is the last one to pull the trigger on anyone outside the middle east. He's got way too much to lose and is a pretty clever guy. There's a proverb saying "if you want peace, prepare for war". Hitlery Clinton knows this first hand, their administartion and the following one have had their asses handed on plate by him a number of times.

Russia is rich in resources, farmland and pretty much self sufficient. It's business friends with China and India, there's BRICS to offload some of the US dominance. Putin is pretty cross with aggressive Nato agenda, but that's been going on for decades and he knows his way around. He anexed Crimea without bliking an eyelid - a move that caused a hypocritical uproar, even though was so easy to predict - you don't cut off an empire from a strategic naval outlet.

The really f-ed people these days are the ones in the middle east where all the "action" is. That's where the war crazies with evil sounding surnames (Wolfovitz, Rumsfeld, Cheyney etc.) get to play with their toys funded by taxpayers. That I agree with. The rest is old news, repackaged over and over.

PS.
I was buying gold when it was $650, selling at around $1100. A bit too early. It might've been around 2007 or 2008. Since then this narrative was on, pounded on by the apocalyptically inclined traders, usually pushing their views to promote their investments. It's almost a decade later, the world is still here and gold is roughly the same price as it was when I was selling it in 2010.