“If a person was having a heart attack how would they get to the hospital? Cars and ambulances use fuel that must be pumped - that takes electricity. Generators run on fuel... again, fuel that must be pumped after being transported to a station. How would that happen?”
What will happen is a matter of degrees at the beginning. People who have bad heart attacks and can’t get to the hospital will die. Hospitals could last a period of time if they already had extra fuel for generators and used them to keep medicines cool/cold, like insulin. Some people could walk to a hospital that is close.
Hospitals would become emergency first aid due to wounds/accidents and medicine for illness and it takes place on the ground floor. I don’t see operations happening anymore. I say this because that is what happened to our regional hospital after Ike when their generator would not come on. The emergency room did not shut down although the hospital part of the hospital did.
These are all individual cases meaning some people could be helped. I don’t see any hospital keeping open after a month. By then, doctors and nurses who live within walking distance to the hospital won’t be there and supplies will be gone.
You said, “Isn’t the estimate that over 90% of the population will die the first year if the grid is down?”
I have read that and this drill may allow them to come up with a more accurate count of what may happen in terms of the death count. Lack of water will be the first killer of millions. If they don’t take that into account, their number means nothing.