I think the immediate deaths would all be from people who need electricity to run medical devices.

Followed shortly by people who require refrigerated medication.

Followed by elderly who die from exposure to extreme, unconditioned temperatures.

and that would be in the first, oh, say… week or two.

Then, with fridges full of rotted food, your first major death wave will occur as masses of people lose their absolute goddamn minds in panic and fear and start food riots/try to rob from others/raid big industrial farms/neighborhood gardens/etc, which leads to mass deaths from starvation, exposure, exertion, desperation, and gunshot.

Which will even out after about a week or two.

Then you settle in for the slow burn. 3 months out you’ll have another, comparatively small wave of deaths from people who run out of non-refridgeration requiring medications.

Then another slow burn until manufactured canned goods run out in stores and scavanged homes until a wave of starvation.

All in all, I’d say you’d probably be over the bulk of the mass deaths after 6 months, and with a significantly reduced population… Which will be to the benefit of the survivors, since less people per mile will make farming/hunting easier, and life safer… because while raiders/thieves will always be a overarching concern and safety issue, at this point, most of the desperation should have passed along with most of the desperate.

There will also be, for at least a generation, possibly two, the lingering unspoken understanding that more people than anyone would ever care to count only survived the famines and fall by eating the long pig.

About six weeks.

After my medications run out, then about one or two weeks and I die. Period.

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There is a book that describes exactly that: Ashes, Ashes by Barjavel.

It’s a classic of French science-fiction literature and I recommended everyone to read.

It was written in 1943, it describes a parisian dystopian society in 2050 where all the electricity suddenly stop overnight. Even thought the book is 80 years old it is surprisingly accurate in some aspect.

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However long it would take me to find a tank of nitrogen to strap to my face for happy sleep time.

Hard to say.

The biggest challenge would be to get out of the city and make the trip to my family’s farm safely. It would take about a week on foot/bikes using less known roads with all the supplies/weapons that would be crucial.

If I could get to the farm, rest would be fairly easy. I can farm, fish and and hunt. Heating works with wood. Fresh water is not a problem, nor is refrigeration with an ice cellar. My family has an old mill that we could restore to get flour and I think I could retrofit it to produce hydroelectricity in a year or so.

I’d trade access to electricity to get horses and other farm animals.

Almost every neighbour is related to me, so forming a defensive alliance should be possible.

I have the gear and the knowhow to make things work, it’s the not-getting-killed part at the start that’s hard.

If given enough notice to store water and fill 3 good coolers with ice, longer than 2 weeks - we lost power for 2 weeks with a hurricane once and had an electric well pump so no water either. Had set up a system with one cooler allowed to be opened, the others not often. By 2 weeks the water that we’d filled the tub with (for washing not drinking - water with a little bit of bleach) was getting questionable.

Like you, I think the biggest issue would be people.

Way longer than your average person but I’d start running out of supplies after few months too. I have food stocked up for few months, 90 litres of drinking water and a water filter, 120 litres of diesel plus what I have in the tank, enough fuel to run alchohol stove for few months aswell and I have a fireplace to keep myself warm basically indefinitely.

It’s kind of scary to think that even me whose somewhat of a prepper would run out of supplies quite quick. What does that mean for the average person who doesn’t even have a jug of water stored up.

Also, this is the kind of discussion that would fit well on !zombiesurvival@sopuli.xyz

If property rights are still enforced in the turmoil probably indefinitely. Doesn’t mean I’d enjoy it, though.

I come from a place where survival agriculture was the norm well into the 1980s. Would have to start having cows and pigs again, need to work out a salting station, which we haven’t had for a few decades. I remember soap making was a mess. We got rid of our wood-fueled kitchen at some point, so that’s a problem until society settles back in enough to start selling those again. We’d probably have to go back to setting up a corner for a fireplace in the meantime. That’s before my time but it should be possible.

There’s a fantastic book series based on exactly this: The Change Series. This is a double storyline with the Emberverse series in which the present time beginning in March 1998 loses electricity and “most forms of high-energy-density technology” due to “The Change”, which occurs at 6:15 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, March 17, 1998.

The companion series, which was written first, is the Nantucket Series, in which the island of Nantucket is transported back in time to 1250 BC due to something called “The Event”, the same Event that caused The Change. But— they got to keep all their physics intact.

Medication would run out so probably about a month.

There’s a book I read about this. I don’t remember the title, but it was written by some US senator or house rep, probably had a ghostwriter. It was about that, some enemy of the US, maybe it was China or Russia, detonated a bunch of nukes high in the atmosphere, causing the US’s electronics to be fried.

Assuming they did their research, the book had people survive for years, but definitely addressed how hard it would be. There was looting & rioting, the family had to eat their dog eventually, and there was a massive change in the importance of trust & community. I think it was like 3 years later that the reconstruction reached the small town, and it ended along the lines of “and then there was more work.”

It was a decent read, 7/10.

This question reminded me of the Dr Stone anime. The premise is that a wave turns everyone into marble, several thousands years later a young scientist is unfrozen and uses science to restore society to its former state.

Also, I wonder what the effects of long term exposure to EMP would be to life on earth. Since most neurological systems use electromagnetic waves maybe they are impacted?

Another interesting question would be if there would be a way to work around the EMP. For example, would a Faraday cage work to allow electronics to work inside it? Or maybe electronics are improved to work under the effect of EMP? Like how the CPUs have bit correction algorithms because of random bit flips that occur due to solar flares.

Last but not least, in such a situation my plan would be to go as far away as possible, since there will be food shortages, being in an area where you can forage for food or hunt animals would be a priority. Then, I would probably die eating something poisonous. If I survive long enough to set up a farm, I would probably survive the next 10 years or so until I die of old age at 35 the new average life expectancy.

Probably immediately. That’s kind of the plan, actually. Why would I want to live in such a world where physical might makes right?