Ask Lemmy

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.