New Horizons Zero Balance by Brian Bailey

At 8:17 UTC, every bank balance on Earth disappears.

Not stolen. Not transferred. Gone.

Daniel Cross is standing in a Montana gas station when his cards stop working. Within hours, banks close, stores empty and frightened people begin fighting over whatever they can still carry home.

The official message says the disruption is temporary.

Daniel knows better.

As the financial system collapses, money becomes meaningless and the systems built around it begin to fail. Daniel, his wife Rachel and their daughter Lily must survive the panic, the shortages and the brutal winter ahead.

Survival is only the beginning.

In the years that follow, scattered families form communities, rebuild roads, restore trade and create new rules for a world where wealth can no longer be measured by numbers on a screen. But rebuilding civilization means facing theft, violence, murder and the difficult question of what justice should look like when the old authorities are gone.

New Horizons: Zero Balance is a grounded post-apocalyptic novel about survival, community and ordinary people building something new after the world discovers that money only had value because everyone agreed that it did.