Given the relative practicality of disruptions of various types there were a ton of sensible things you could do for a few hundred dollars that weren’t really wasted money anyway. You didn’t need to fill rooms and load up on the automatic weapons and ammunition.
This is such a US thing. A rifle for hunting and self-defense, sure. Piles of fully automatic AK-47s that chew through 600 rounds per minute, not much.
And the old trope about ammo becoming currency, has this ever actually been a thing anywhere?
There's an interesting paper from WW2 about the shadow economy of a prisoner of war camp, fuelled by imports of Red Cross humanitarian parcels. Cigarettes became currency even among non-smokers. I'm not sure what the equivalent goods would be now.
