By The Ready Store

While most states in the U.S. have emergency plans built into the system, not many have plans for economic collapses. That is, until now!

Wyoming introduced a bill this week in the House of Representatives that would create an emergency plan in case of an economic collapse in the United States.

House Bill 85, would allocate about $16,000 and needs two more House votes before heading to the state Senate. It would create a panel composed of state lawmakers, the director of the Wyoming Department of Homeland Security, the Wyoming attorney general and the Wyoming National Guard’s adjutant general to investigate issues such as raising a state army, dealing with disruptions in food supplies and establishing a state-issued currency. (Read the TIME article.)

The bill is being pushed by State Representative David Miller. He states that the $15 trillion of national debt and recent protest movements have sparked his interest in creating this bill.

Miller said he didn’t anticipate any major crises hitting America anytime soon. But Wyoming, which has a comparatively good economy and sound state finances, needs to make sure it’s protected should any unexpected emergency hit the United States.

“Things happen quickly sometimes — look at Libya, look at Egypt, look at those situations,” Miller said. “We wouldn’t have time to meet as a Legislature or even in special session to do anything to respond.”

Miller said the task force would look at whether, in the event the dollar loses value entirely, Wyoming should issue its own state currency or rely on old U.S. currency that would still have value.

While Miller said that doomsday scenario is unlikely in the short-term, the dollar has been losing value for years, and a gridlocked federal government has been unable to deal with enormous budget deficits.

“If we continue down this course, this is the way any society ends up — with a valueless currency,” he said. (Read the Caspar Star-Tribune Article.)

This isn’t the first time that a state has proposed creating it’s own separate currency in case of an emergency.  Last year, South Carolina introduced a bill that would create it’s own currency based on the gold and silver standard in case of a collapse of the Federal Reserve.

Similar bills were introduced in Georgia, Virginia, Montana, Missouri, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, New Hampshire, Washington and a few other states.