What happens when the lights go out? It's likely that you've experienced a power outage that lasted a few hours, but few people have experience with days or weeks long power loss.
On our Northern Ontario farm we were affected by the Northeast blackout of 2003 (click here to see the Wikipedia article). While that blackout was fixed within 2 days, it did make many people stop and think. On our farm we already had several generators, and the ability to switch over to them. Since we lived on well water and a septic system, the power outage had nearly no affect on our life. We switched over to the generators and started them every few hours to pump water, cool the fridge/freezers, and cook food. Since this happened during the summer, heating was luckily not an issue.
We have also gone through several blackouts during the winter that were just as long (or longer), but much more localised. Again, they had little impact on our day-to-day living.
We now live on our catamaran and provide all our own electrical power. This means that we are not affected by grid blackouts, with the exception of cell phone service and grocery shopping.
Our internet is via Starlink satellite. Large scale power outages could affect our internet availability as the ground links lose power. The risk of this will hopefully lessen as Starlink launches more laser-interconnected satellites, allowing the signal to bounce from satellite to satellite until it's able to reach an operating ground station.
Our short-range communication is via VHF radios. We also have a maritime HF radio that allows us to communicate across the globe. As such, local, regional, or geographic power outages have nearly no affect on us.
But for those who live and rely on the power grid, a total grid collapse can have many far-reaching effects.
The video below is a realistic and thorough examination of how other systems of infrastructure (like roadways, water, sewer, and telecommunications) depend on electricity and how long each system could last under total blackout conditions.
This video is #11 on a playlist about the electrical grid, it's durability, and it's fail points. Watch them all here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTZM4MrZKfW-ftqKGSbO-DwDiOGqNmq53