Hint: you'll need guns. Lots of guns.
Cities are stocked with food and water for few days, but once the supplies are gone, you'll have waves of hungry and desperate people radiating from cities to nearby farms and villages.
Cities are stocked with food and water for few days, but once the supplies are gone, you'll have waves of hungry and desperate people radiating from cities to nearby farms and villages.
I've been trying to work out a way to organize neighborhood-level basic essentials storages on the cheap, so that people in that kind of situation can afford to take care of themselves until the power comes back on. Food is pretty easy, but water and sanitation are a bit more problematic so far.
[1] - just calories to make it over the hump, this is not health food. Ingredients are white flour, white sugar, vegetable oil, and some white rice for the people who can't do the wheat products. Add vitamin pills to prevent deficiency diseases and you can stay functional for a long time at about $0.30/day.
Everybody assumes that in an end of the world scenario that we all end up fighting for food, however the better plan, and to be honest the one that served society well in the past, was that we become farmers. Without tractors we'll have plenty of farmland that needs manual labour.
It would be nice if it was codified into law that our fallback plan was to redistribute farmland. Then there is no need for roving biker gangs fighting for the last can of tuna. We'll just step away from the now dead computers and pick up a hoe.
Saying that 90% of crops would fail is kind of an over statement. Organic farms that don't use fertilisers are quite successful. The issue is planing and sowing, all of which the extra man power can assist with. Instead of a tractor you have people.
All that's needed is a plan, where farmers us the extra labour until machines can be gotten back on line. No need for a lawless society.
Cuba is an interesting example of a place that had to rapidly adopt a low-power lifestyle, and they actually seem to have done it with grace. There might be a good case there to study for clues about what works. They have the advantage of not having to contend with long, cold winters though, which is a critical difference for most of North America.
I would imagine that secretly farmers want other local farmers to not do as well, so that there is less competition for their produce, however you'd know better than me.