Who is likely to die because of a prolonged power outage? How long does it take?

My antagonist is going to cause a widespread blackout to flex on the protagonist, but the unexpected consequence is that some folks are going to die as a result. This will cause the protagonist to escalate far beyond what the antagonist thought was more of a prank.

What members of society are most vulnerable in a power outage and would die as a direct consequence of the loss of power? I'm specifically not looking for secondary mechanisms such as lawlessness or slipping and falling in the dark. How do they die and how long does it take?

For example, hospitals have people who are kept alive only through ventilators, or dialysis machines, but they have backup generators to keep that running. People don't really do that at home, do they?

I can think of some possibilities with the elderly- people who might be using an oxygen machine at home, or people whose electric heaters stop working in the dead of winter.

The only thing I can think of for younger people are things such as not being able to call 911 in an emergency, but in that case the real cause of death is the emergency and the loss of power just exacerbates the problem.

A few different ideas would be great, because I don't want to write that 12 elderly folks all died in the same way.

posted over 4 years ago

David‭

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