[bumby]

Perhaps a dumb question, but how much does the ability to acquire new money factor into this?

I’d assume it’s more work to dig up and purify gold ore than make linen paper. Wouldn’t this mean some currencies are inherently more stable?

[freehunter]

I imagine in this situation the tribes would eventually develop their own currency as they rebuilt and became more complex. The video game Fallout, for example, uses bottle caps as currency even though they aren't making new bottle caps anymore. But given enough time in the game's universe as more people come out of their shelters and return to the surface world, they'd realize that this increasingly rare currency isn't going to last forever. And then they'd start minting new coins or printing new papers.

Gold and silver works great for newer and less technologically advanced civilizations, because it's easier to smelt metal than print new US Dollars on speciality linen paper. It would be easier to lose the ability to smelt metal and then later regain that ability than it is to lose the ability to print USD and try to regain it. But once you reach a certain level of technological sophistication, minting fake gold coins becomes easier than printing new USD and people start to trust the currency less.

So I guess yes, precious metals would be easier to rebuild civilization with because it could be more easily reproduced as technology advances. But no matter what I think every civilization would abandon precious metals as they progressed, because counterfeiting becomes very easy very quickly.