I agree that a few weeks without power in an urban area
is going to effect crime but I’m sure it would take
somewhat longer to cause the kind of societal upheaval
depicted in TWD. The exception might be if the issue
was caused by some devastating event like a storm or
earthquake (or zombie outbreak?).
lol....
im thinking the dead walking might just throw a curve ball to cause some slight upset
OR
no unemployment benefits....
to be fair no unemployment benefit might be worse...
Most people only have about 3 days of food in their pantry. And most grocery stores now operate using just in time (JIT) inventories, so it wouldn’t take long for stores to be emptied of food and other necessities.
And if the power goes out, that would affect a lot of people who are dependent on medication (insulin, for example), because there would no longer be a way to refrigerate or manufacture it. And once things start to get bad, people will stay home to take care of their own families - they won’t be working at nursing homes, etc. for very long.
“One Second After” by William Forstchen does a pretty good job of describing societal disintegration after an EMP attack. “Lights Out” by David Crawford is another good one.
TWD is a bit different in that they live in a world where the dead come back to “life”. And this is an alternate universe where they never had zombie movies or anything like that, so they had no idea what they were seeing or how to deal with it. I could see a lot of people going mad in this type of situation where you see your loved ones die and then come back as zombies.
I could see where it wouldn’t take long for some crazy dictators (like the Governor and Neegan) to take power.