When “superstorm” Sandy hit a few years back. I lived in NJ. I had everything you could need for TEOTWAWKI.
Naturally, my block never lost power. That was a miracle.
However, all of our friends and family were without electricity so our home became a small refugee camp. All day, people were coming in and out to grab hot showers, Mrs DoodleBob was cooking hot meals, and just sitting to warm up. Eventually everyone would head back to their powerless homes though everyone had a generator for necessities (you know, powering iPhones, computers, etc…).
Things were ok. Nobody died.
After about three days, I noticed the lines at the gas stations were getting longer and longer. It turns out most people had generators, but only two days worth of gas. Obviously, without gas there was no generated electricity, the fridge and food would go down, sump pumps wouldn’t work, and other Small but Nasty Things would arise.
There were reports of fights breaking out as people started barging into queues, stories about angry crowds of people who waited hours only for the station to run out of gas, and the start of a general breakdown in civilization.
Then, I heard people were strategizing about driving 100 miles away (where the situation wasn’t dire) to load up on gas. But there were no gas cans available on the shelves. People were buying gas cans online at ridiculous prices. THE topic of conversation was, gasoline: did you get any, which stations still had some, do you have any extra cans, can we drive to this or that station together, etc.
You could run scenarios, about what would be the next step down…would people start targeting and robbing homes if they heard a working generator (generator noise=gas), would strangers come knocking in MY door for a hot shower, and so on.
By about day 4 or 5, power was restored and the good citizens of Soprano Nation went back to being whiny RINOs.
Had we gone another few days without power being restored, we’d have gone full Blade Runner.
That experience also made it crystal clear that we'd be sitting ducks on that island, in the event of a major emergency. We wound up moving the following spring (the NY unSafe Act was the last straw for us). But Hurricane Sandy was a serious eye opener for me.