My power was out 24 hours and my mother’s 5 days. Upper-middle class blue staters in our neighborhoods and they coped well and cheerfully. Worst was a couple I only read about, who had a generator: “Doesn’t the power company know they are costing us money? We have to eat out every night.” Heck, my mother ate peanut butter sandwiches and heated canned soup on a Sterno can before she came to stay with us.
If it’s long enough that the high crime areas get hungry, it will be a different story. I read one town of 25,000 only had 5 registered handguns; it’s not the kind of place that has a lot of unregistered guns either. I’d rather live surrounded by armed rednecks when it all goes up (and intend to move there soon.)
All armed rednecks are not the same. Most are shirt-off-their-backs sorts, regular church attendance tends to foster this. But, some have an outlaw mentality that goes back centuries, the root of bootlegging, NASCAR and clannish mountain feuding. Not all or even most of these would be a potential problem, just the ones who have progressed to the drug trade, a logical leap for them given their history. These will go feral on you due to a minor traffic incident, let alone TEOTWAWKI. They’re to be avoided.
“If it’s long enough that the high crime areas get hungry, it will be a different story.”
That’s the problem...if it’s one geographic area and the rest of the country is fine, then it’s not an issue. However, if the whole country goes lights-out (i.e., EMP) then it’s something entirely different, and it will not be pretty.
Unless those rednecks know you and feel friendly towards you, you’re going to be on their list eventually. You’re the outsider and they’ll turn on outsiders if you look like a supply of goods they’re running short on.
I have several aunts and uncles, all in their mid to late eighties. They weathered the storm well.
But if I have to hear about the great depression, and then how cold it was in Europe in 1945, I will just sit in the dark and cry.
On the other hand there were children dropping their elderly parents off at the local shelter because the parent had lost power, but there was no room for them in the kid’s house.
Those people should not be allowed to have power.