It's gold. All attempts so far to make it things other than gold are currently careening towards failure.

Lulz. Right. Because basing the value of your currency on a metal makes much less sense than basing it on the value of the country's economy.

So tell me, how staffed were medical care wards in the middle of the Great Depression? How stocked were the shelves?

Pretty well, overall, since we had the whole WPA thing and a variety of well run and implemented government programs and it wasn't actual anarchy.

Quite literally, yes.

Quite literally, no. Nobody wants to barter, which is why no literate society uses barter at any level aside from casual exchanges between friends. Informal currencies would come into play long before people started carrying rabbit pelts around.

This is an oddly prevalent opinion in this thread. This scenario is essentially just a second Great Depression that is somewhat worse than the 1920's.

A second great depression would not lead to anarchy any more than the first one did. The levels of available resources are infinitely greater at this time than they were in the '20s, so people would be better fed and have more options than they did now.

I notice you didn't bother to address the main point I was trying to make:

Sure, it's always handy to gain more survival skills, but most of the same skills that would make a great "clan leader" in this goofy hypothetical are the same things that would make you a successful entrepreneur or executive in our current society, so you'd be much better off buying some bottled water and peanut butter and calling it a day, and focusing on the skills that will help you advance in a non-collapse society, as that's most likely what we'll be living out our lives in.

If you're doing well now, you'll most likely be doing well post-collapse. If you're not doing well now, figure out what the issues are and fix them, don't think that somehow you'll be more of a success in a postapocalyptic society.