Both gold and silver get bought as safe havens during volatile periods, but they aren't interchangeable hedges. Silver's industrial demand component means its behavior during a crisis depends heavily on what kind of crisis it actually is.
1. Demand shocks versus pure geopolitical shocks
During a crisis that also threatens global economic growth, a recession scare, a major credit event, silver can underperform gold because the same event that's driving safe-haven buying is also raising fears about industrial demand for silver specifically. Gold has no equivalent industrial demand to worry about, so it tends to hold up more consistently in these scenarios.
2. When silver keeps pace
A purely geopolitical shock that doesn't threaten broader growth, a regional conflict without major economic spillover, tends to lift both metals more similarly, since neither the safe-haven case nor the industrial-demand case is being specifically challenged by that type of event.
3. Watching the Gold-to-Silver Ratio as a real-time read
The GSR tends to widen (gold gaining relative to silver) during growth-threatening crises and can narrow or stay flat during non-economic geopolitical shocks. Tracking how the ratio behaves as a specific event unfolds gives a real-time read on which type of crisis the market thinks it's facing.