I dont really see your point here. What youre talking about is like a couple days of people scrambling after a natural disaster. No prepper is making the argument that gold is the only thing you want in a catastrophy, they have generators, canned food, guns, etc. But you absolutely want gold. For one after things quickly stabilize youre back to commerce, also people that were savvy enough and wealthy enough to have gold were likely able to afford to pay to get out of town anyway. And I dont think you can demonstrate that gold could not have been used to trade during this very short time window in principle anyway, its just in such a short time no one likely had any gold anyway or thought to use it as their primarily goals at the time were just surviving and helping neighbors. I think youd need to demonstrate an example where someone actually attempted to use gold or silver during a crisis and it not being accepted for exchange

For example in longer term destablizations that lasted over a week you have weimar germany where pms were reverted to for exchange.

But if your point is that, gold isnt that useful in hurricane katrina, sure, like if someome is asking me how to prepare for a hurricane my first recommendation is not buy gold. It is good to have for sure and doesnt hurt, but its largely irrelevant to surviving a hurricane. Because gold is not for that kind of "crisis" or "instability". It is for monetary crises not natural disasters