Okay, I understand what you mean now. Is there some important technical difference between resurrecting an old chain and “starting a new chain with a pre-mine that matches the distribution of the old chain”? In my mental model these are basically equivalent, but admittedly I only know how the bitcoin specification works on a high level of abstraction.
The answer to that question might not be relevant, because either procedure could restore some part of the value to the owners of the original BTC, which was my essential point.
I think I covered that specific point when I said “The reason why (I think?) it’s rational to resurrect an old chain is the reason why it’s rational for them to keep running the main chain tomorrow: The people maintaining it have a vested interest in maintaining it.”
The security comes from the robustness of the code, and the large volume of miners. I don’t think that the USG has the power to permanently damage either of these.
BTW, I don’t think this is true. ETH doesn’t have value other than as a medium of exchange. Sure you can burn ETH to have a computation performed for you, but when you do that you’re actually paying for services from the miners (albeit indirectly). Unlike commodity money, if no one else valued ETH, then ETH would be completely worthless to you: you couldn’t burn it and have computations performed for you.