Isn’t this what happened during the Great Depression? Exactly what you described except instead of “scribbles in a database” it’s people’s physical money in banks. This is literally where the term “bank run” comes from
The depression certainly had unrest, idk how great but it happened in the 1930s so I would expect things would be much worse if something like that were to happen today.
A bank run comes from people running to the bank to withdraw all of their money from their accounts to keep it as cash and essentially bankrupting a bank, causing shockwaves in credit markets.
It's not really the same thing as the money suddenly nullified which I think the original commenter is describing. A better analogy might be to say it's like everyone waking up and seeing their 401k suddenly says 0$.
Different in that that wasn't a case of losing records.
It was the delicately balanced house of cards that is fractional reserve banking all of a sudden crashing down, and pulled back the veil to temporarily reveal to everyone that money isn't real, and even though we remember who all has what, it only works if the masses don't look behind the curtain.
The depression certainly had unrest, idk how great but it happened in the 1930s so I would expect things would be much worse if something like that were to happen today.