Living on an active tectonic plate along the West Coast changes how one must look at emergency preparedness. Most regional advice focuses heavily on the standard accumulation of canned rations and emergency supplies, but a critical logistical blind spot exists for most households. Jay and I have completely relied on electronic transactions for the entirety of our daily lives for decades now. I carry a solitary, folded twenty dollar bill in my wallet as a symbolic relic, but the rest of our financial footprint is entirely digital. I really didn't remember who is on a few of our Canadian bank notes.
Few people in modern society actually envision a total disruption to that seamless daily routine. It is a fragile baseline. If a significant seismic event interferes with the local electrical grid, the immediate consequence will be the total disappearance of ATMs and point-of-sale terminals. Cash becomes the only viable currency when the digital architecture fails.
I had set aside a dedicated, little cash stash for just such a circumstance a while back. That emergency fund sits securely inside a hidden, fireproof box in the apartment alongside our vital personal papers. However, I recently took a closer look and realized a major flaw in the makeup of the bills. What earthly good is a hundred dollar note going to be when one is trying to purchase basic necessities like broccoli and carrots from a local vendor? In a real crisis, merchant registers are going to run out of small bills within hours.
I visited our uptown bank branch this morning to systematically break down those large denominations into a beautifully distributed stack of highly usable smaller bills. The teller probably thought I was running a highly suspicious garage sale. Thanks to this bout of financial micro-management, I feel like a wonderfully dutiful, silver-haired Boy Scout. If the "Big One" finally hits the coast, I might be sitting in the dark, but at least I possess the exact change required to bribe my way onto a outbound ferry or buy a single, 4-liter jug of whole milk.