No such thing as a safe bank. If one of those started to fall...no matter how much FDIC coverage they said they had—there would be too much carnage to matter.
At that point, use the checks to start the fire to heat your house.
It’s all a house of cards.
It wouldn’t be too hard to engineer a run on a bank if one had the resources. Hire a lot of extras to line up before opening at a bank near a major media center then call in a tip. Would have been piss easy to pull off back in late 2008.