Some cash at home

First of all, the framing: this is operational continuity. Being able to buy bread if payment systems go down. It says nothing about where to put your savings, and this site takes no position on that.

It works if the power, the telecommunications network or the card system goes down. It is on FEMA’s official list, which explicitly includes cash or traveller’s cheques ^[400]Build A Kit — Basic Disaster Supplies KitFederal Emergency Management Agency · 2026 · official documentView source ↗Accessed on 9 September 2026, and on SENAPRED’s, which puts “dinero en efectivo” —cash— verbatim among the items of the family kit ^[956]Prepara tu Kit de EmergenciaServicio Nacional de Prevención y Respuesta ante Desastres · 2026 · official documentView source ↗Accessed on 9 September 2026. That two state agencies in different countries agree is the closest thing to institutional evidence this measure has.

It does not work if the outage lasts weeks, or if the problem is confidence in the currency. Banknotes only work as long as someone accepts them.

Evidence. Medium and institutional. It is worth being precise about the most-cited case: in the Iberian blackout electronic payments did indeed fail, but there is no primary source quantifying how much cash was used ^[1105]2025 Iberian Peninsula blackoutWikipedia contributors · 2026 · webView source ↗Accessed on 9 September 2026. The recommendation rests on the official lists, not on a measurement of that episode.

Cost. Low, with two real costs that get forgotten: the money tied up and the risk of theft or loss.

What it does NOT solve. Absolutely nothing specific to AI. Not concentration of power, not job displacement, not loss of control. Nor what actually failed in the Iberian case, which was power for medical devices.