| It's an interesting thought experiment! What would happen if electricity ceased suddenly. If there was no electricity where I am at, the apartment would soon start to cool down. It is right now something like -6°C outside. I think it would take some days to cool down to that level. Electricity keeps my food refrigerated and frozen, both at home and in the shop. Well, I should put the frozen food out on the balcony (and cover them up so that they don't melt if the sun shines during the day). Kitchen oven and stove, and water kettle run on electricity. There would be very little cooking going on! Not to mention that electricity is needed to pump water from the ground level up to the apartment. So I should to fill all available containers with snow and take them inside to melt (before the apartment temperature drops below freezing). Seems like loss of electricity would mean loss of heat, water and food in rapid order. It's difficult to imagine this loss to be very localized, so my neighbours would likely be suffering the same, perhaps the whole suburb. Without apartment or street lights less reliable members of the community might try to take advantage of the situation. Perhaps not, it's not a particularly restless environment. More resourceful members might come up with solutions to problems, but I can imagine the situation to be quite chaotic. Without communication channels I can't ask if a friend or family member can support me, or if they need support. Or indeed if it is safe to move, and if so, how and where. Lack of street and even apartment lights might be a challenge to many and make traffic overall quite a bit more dangerous. I don't know how reliable electricity would need to be. But some reasonable level of access to electricity is definitely more important than nice to have. |
I mean, I lived this during finals week in college. During the day solar heating helps some. At night, with good insulation in the home it'll take some time to match outdoor temps, and a winter rated sleeping bag helps at night. One of my idiot roommates was using a sleeping bag as a comforter and complained at how cold it was on night 1. After I pointed out what the zipper was for, he reported it was toasty warm on night 2. You can do the same thing without a zipper, its just slightly less effective.
Also helps: the water heater runs on gas. So you can take a warm shower. In the dark, since most bathrooms have no windows, just exhaust fans. But the furnace, while it needs gas to heat, required electricity to move air. I'm not sure why, but water mains don't usually freeze despite the usually cold winters (though indoor plumbing requires certain precautions in the cold).
Cellphone towers usually have some batteries and backup plans in these situations, which was less useful back then before data plans existed, but meant you could still reach friends in case their power was on.
Finally: emergency generators are a thing. So as long as it isn't so cold that diesel freezes, emergency services will be available to the community in a school or something. In cold climates there are enough of these that in the lead up to the ice storm that caused the mess there were PSA campaigns to get them tested and vetted ahead of time -- if you just energize the lines without installing a cutoff switch, it can kill line workers trying to repair.