A lengthy exercise in hand waving and obfuscation.
Money is 'the coin of the realm'. Drachmas, pesos, dollars, rubles.
Checks are not cash. Traveler's Checks are not cash. Credit cads are not cash. Debit cards are not cash.
A common scene in old movies. Somebody owes another guy money. He says to the guy 'I'll give you a check for what I owe you'. The other guy says 'I don't trust you, give me cash'.
Cash isn't what it once was as in the 'old movies' before 1971. Before that date, someone could take their paper money into a federal reserve bank, demand, and receive silver for it. Paper money has only been an IOU that the federal reserve is not required to redeem since 1971. It only has value because others accept it as having value... sorta like the personal check the guy in your post wanted to pay with.
I haven’t handled notes or coins in several years. Literally every single cent I earn, and every single cent I spend, is electronic records.
Cash is dead to me. I still earn money, and still spend money. But cash is as much a part of my life as Dodos and Passenger Pigeons.
Money and cash have very little relationship in modern economies; Cash is just the minuscule fraction of money that people have as physical tokens - it has a tiny number of minor uses, mostly in the ever decreasing number of situations where electronic transfer of wealth is impossible or impractical; and a lot of problems, not least of which is a lack of security.
So far so good. But how will you feed yourself when the internet is attacked by Russia/China or blown up by an electromagnetic bomb? IMHO its only a matter of when this happens.
You will either starve, resort to stealing, or borrow from someone smarter than you are having real physical money that food producers will exchange.
In the event of such a massive disaster, having money would make little difference.
You can’t eat dollars, and you can’t exchange them for food at an empty supermarket.
If civilisation collapses, billions will die.
Fortunately, that’s not likely to happen. Are you taking steps to protect yourself from being hit by a meteorite? It’s a risk in the same order of likelihood as the destruction of electronic banking.
I am always amazed at the level of paranoia demonstrated by Americans. Europeans aren’t that paranoid, despite (perhaps because of) the fact that they have actually seen real disasters.
Or is it a wish fulfilment fantasy of the libertarian gun-toting survivalist who wants so desperately to be able to say “I told you so”, but hasn’t thought things through at all? Do you really think that dollar bills would be useful for anything other than toilet paper in the scenarios you outlined?
To add to this, I sincerely doubt that many people have enough cash on hand to make a difference, even if it didn’t become worthless in some cataclysm.
I typically have a fair amount of food at home, because we buy in bulk whatever is cheap. That’s a useful hedge against short term problems in getting things from the shops.
If a cataclysmic disaster wiped out electronic spending options, but left my bank account untouched, there would be nothing to stop me from goto the local bank branch and drawing out some cash.
If, as seems more likely, the disaster wipes the bank’s computers, then nobody can withdraw cash, any more than they could swipe a credit card or use Apple Pay.
So then it comes down to how much cash you keep in your wallet, or in your home. I am guessing that the answer is ‘not much’, for the vast majority of sane people.
Keeping your money in a bank is smart. It’s also indistinguishable from using electronic money - you don’t imagine that the bank has a stack of bills in a box with your name on it, do you? A modern bank has no record of accounts and balances, other than on its computers.
There’s about $7 Trillion in notes and coins worldwide, in all currencies.
‘Narrow money’ - that $7 Trillion, plus money in easily accessible bank accounts (checking or current accounts), totals around $37 Trillion.
‘Broad money’ - that $37 Trillion, plus savings accounts, fixed term deposits, stock trading accounts etc. totals around $90 Trillion.
So there’s at least five times the ‘narrow’ money as there is bills and coins; The vast majority of which is electronic.
Notes and coins are a trivial afterthought to the world’s money supply - and are concentrated in the Third World, so they’re even more trivial in major economic powers, such as the USA.
Cash is dead. It’s just not quite stopped kicking yet.