How will this happen?

James 5:1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.

  2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.

  3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

Will it be a onetime thing, like the sun and moon standing still in Joshua's day?

Will they wake up one morning to find the gold jewelry suddenly rusted?

Will they then run into their vaults, only to find all the gold bars rusted?

Will it be like 1929, with people killing themselves over the loss?

Will it be a temporary, yet possibly worldwide, preempting of the laws of science?

Gold is typically stable, and does not easily oxidize.

The stuff that they found in king Tut's tomb was still gold, after all those years.

But, here, gold will be ruined, as well as individual and national treasures,

and any economies, based upon gold, will be destroyed.