We discussed how the larger government functions may cease to operate, or at a very basic level (perhaps just units of the US military). This will result in the following:

• Food, specialized medical supplies, and gasoline/fuel quickly become unavailable. Most vehicle transportation is halted.
• If enough critical workers leave their jobs, public utilities (water, sewer, and electric power) go down leaving people in the freezing cold and dark with no clean water.

Just losing the electric grid will cause this, since everything is driven by motors and pumps.  Is this too pessimistic? Maybe, but even if the effect is temporary it will be the worst thing to happen in our lifetimes.   At the very least we should be prepared to ride out this situation for a period of time, to stay alive.  Unfortunately, the majority of people do not this seriously and won’t make preparations. This leads to speculation as to what the response would be at the local and individual level.

Ideally, people would stay home, break out the supplies, and let things get back to some semblence of normality. Instead, they will likely be forced to leave in search of those fundamental items or end up as casualties. I suspect many will try to get to some relief center, if it exists.  As I mentioned in the Guns ‘N Ammo post, the lack of transpo and supply will limit how far people can travel foraging. Whether they start going door to door and/or turning violent is anyone’s guess. In any case, trouble would probably come from neighbors or those in walking distance. Here’s a few things to contemplate (and I sure don’t know the answer):

• Would normal people start breaking into houses and killing the occupants for provisions?
• Being armed and having some perceived authority, would the local gendarmes do this? Some of this went on in Katrina, so it’s not unprecedented.
• Would people band together for mutual support, and would they then try to overpower other people or bands?
• Would local government attempt to confiscate private property in the guise of the common good?

People are generally fairly adaptable and tend to lend support for others, even in desperate circumstances.  There’s not much data on how this might play out, other than in wartime (seige of Leningrad, 1944 Holland, Germany). In those cases, a central government still existed and the country was fully mobilized with Red Army or Nazi troops in place to put down any lawbreakers.  Bottom line is now, here in the US, we don’t know.  But we can guess at some likely scenarios, then prepare to them.  Here’s my shot at it:

Emergency begins. For a short time, people behave and can carry on in a somewhat normal fashion (as in a hurricane recovery).  As food runs out, stores are looted, first in urban areas then suburbs. Grocery, convenience, home improvement, gun stores cleaned out. As those supplies are depleted, what government is left tries to setup distribution centers/shelters. People go those, there are way too many for the limited supply and they are overrun. At this stage, they either return home to scrounge or wait for relief. Neither option is workable, and thirst and/or starvation sets in.   Time frame and casuality rate depend on the situation, could be weeks, months, or years and fractions a percent to near-100% respectively.  Recovery depends on the ability to sustain a population from whatever is left.

Thinking about this makes me realize there’s no way to know what you’d be faced with, you just have to plan for a potentially long term crisis.