See below for where BTC comes into this.

The Fed is not the only disaster hanging over users of USD. The US is pretty much the only nation that does not harden it's grid against a natural solar EMP such as hits the US every 100 years (last two in 1859 wiping out telegraph lines in Eastern US and in 1929 wiping out railroad signalling in Western US).

While alarmists like to say we are "overdue" for another, that is the gambler's fallacy. It's an average frequency of once a century, but like flipping a coin, the odds of the next flip aren't affected by a previous streak.

In any case, we are talking 1% chance for any year or 1-.99¹⁰ ~ 10% for any decade. The chances of avoiding this catastrophe indefinitely approach 0%. I.e. unlike other threats, this is something certain to happen but we don't know exactly when (like the 2nd coming of Christ).

There is also a risk of high altitude nuclear EMP - which is even more destructive. But I'll ignore that for this post.

While no one is directly harmed by an EMP, the two Congressional studies determined that a solar EMP would kill 90% of Americans within a few months because of dependence on our electrical grid and communications. It will take a year for the civilian grid to be restored. Military equipment is shielded, but their operations get 99% of electrical power from the civilian grid.

Higher Latitudes like Canada get more frequent, but less powerful solar EMP hits. They get one every decade. Their stuff is shielded.

Both Obama and Trump issued executive orders to start shielding US power grid. They were ignored. And the Federal Govt doesn't really have that authority anyway - so they amounted to suggestions.

SO - for year fiat USD will be inaccessible. It may even be wiped out (depending on how well central banks shield their records). Cash will still work, of course.

Also, BTC will be inaccessible. It may even be wiped out. (You *do* have a cold wallet on paper, don't you?) But it doesn't have to be. This is why Bitcoiners should also be avidly into mesh networking and amateur internet links. Is your BTC node accessible over Cjdns or other IPv6 mesh vpn? An EMP is localized - it will not disable the whole world. In fact, the next one might hit Europe or Russia instead of the US. It's a roll of the dice.

So if you have, e.g. amateur links reaching to Canada or Mexico, and you've shielded (stored in a faraday cage like grounded steel garbage can) the necessary equipment, you can reach the rest of the world through a global mesh VPN like Cjdns or Yggdrasil. There are also non IPv6 mesh networks like Reticulum that use lower bandwidth channels like shortwave radio, letting you connect directly to the rest of the world. This would at least let you tell other Nostriches about your trials and tribulations through a relay that supported any of these mesh networks.

Unfortunately, that does not let you buy groceries. Or anything. To spend Sats you need to buy something from someone else also still connected to BTC. To spend USD, you need cash.

Bottom line. PLEASE - won't anyone set up a non-ISP based mesh link with me? I have experience with Wifi links, but these require line of sight. I have an SDR but haven't done shortwave since highschool and have forgotten stuff, and would need guidance. I dropped ham radio when the US govt banned the use of encryption by ham licensees. Obviously, I wouldn't care about a license in the event of this certain catastrophe.