My prediction is the inter-mountain (Mormon) west will survive the best. They’ve been preparing for this for the last 150 years and a large percentage of the population has a year or 2 of food, water, and other supplies.
Moving 74 million people several hundred miles south in a matter of months (assuming power went out in the summer and winter is coming) would be the most massive migration of humans ever attempted in a comparable time frame. Literally nothing like that has ever been done before. And to add to the complexity of that immeasurably-complex operation, you’d have to do it without computers or cell phones, or traffic signals, or functioning gas stations along the way. About 73.9 million of those people would have no way to communicate with anyone farther away than the sound of their own voices.
Surprisingly, a majority of the population don’t have relatives in the southern states that they can de-camp upon. And what happens to the southern families when they are suddenly crushed under the weight of their northern sponges.
The assumption that everybody in the country has the means, method, money or mother-in-law to move is monumentally mistaken.
I agree. And probably the more rural parts of this area. Salt Lake City would fare better than most similar-sized cities, but still wouldn’t do as well as the more rural parts of the region.
Many of those who have a “years supply of food” have hard red wheat* sealed in 5 gallon plastic buckets. You have to grind it, and most of all- *cook it. * Good luck with that.
- and jars of honey. Honey and wheat.
So sleep outdoors, or be uncomfortable.
They’ll do whatever needs doing or not do much. The goal isn’t to keep business as usual going, it’s to prevent people from dying needlessly.
And, as noted, the emigration is going to happen no matter what, because people aren’t going to stay and freeze, regardless of whether they have prospects in the warmer regions or not. So anyone trying to keep business or schools running in the North is going to be SOL. Once people can move back, then the state of business and schooling will resume.
On the other hand, there’s going to be just as many teachers-per-student in the South after the emigration as before it, so I would expect schooling to continue. Computer typing classes might take a cutback, and teachers might have to do a lot more reading to the class, rather than giving them handouts, but that’s fine.
Again, all that’s needed is that food continues to get distributed. If the government can accomplish that, everything else is a bonus.
I know a lot of people with hand grinders for that very reason.
Water too. People need water. And lots of your typical water service requires electricity to run.
What do you do with the flour? No power, how do you cook it?
I’d make sourdough bread. Water, salt, and flour (and time) are really all you need. Pour some honey on it 
Fire pit in the back yard? There’s probably a decent supply of propane / charcoal grills that could be improvised to cook food for a little while (days or weeks, until your fuel source ran out) at least in more rural / suburban areas. A few people have “solar ovens” that would probably work ok if the weather was decent. I have a wood-burning stove (and some wood) 
It might last me 6 months if I really stretched it and was careful about when I burned.
Charcoal and wood wont last a week in most areas- a month max. That’s my point.
A years worth of wheat is useless.
The honey is OK, I guess.
And I agree with that point.
Agreed, but I think you may have overestimated how many people have a year’s supply of wheat. Most of the Mormons I know (and I know a lot) don’t have a year or two’s supply of food in 5 gallon buckets of hard red wheat (though there are a few), but they probably have several months worth of canned goods. Some have freeze-dried food (seems to be the newest trend) or hundreds and hundreds of MREs.
True, I didn’t consider that. I’m not sure whether the sorts of power needs for that would be attainable through basic power generators, or if something more massive is needed. I had thought that water movement was largely dealt with through gravity, as it wouldn’t be practical to push water through an entire city with a single motor?
As a temporary measure, boiling and filtering water from lakes, ponds, fountains, pools, etc. might suffice for a little bit. Ideally, that would be enough to allow something to be set up to allow water to start pumping again. I’ll admit that I have no idea how practical that is. But it would be a fairly decisive point for the US’s ability to recoup.
Maybe so. But that was a thing when my buddy worked as survival supply place. They had a special deal of so many buckets of red wheat and so much honey (honey prices were watched very carefully there, trust me) and sold as a “years supply of food”. As far as he knew, this was marketed to and sold to Mormons.
Freeze dried seems to be the new trend in the survival magazines, but again- *needs cooking. *
MRE’s are fine- they dont have to be cooked*- but are a LOT more expensive.
- they can be eaten cold (dont taste very good then) or get the water powered heaters.
My survival suggestion to people was get the unleavened crackers sold below cost right before Passover* and jars of peanut butter. Some cans of fruit and you’re good. Cheap, tasty- and boring as hell.
Matzo- stays “good” for a really long time. Hardtack, for all intents & purposes.
I don’t know all the details of water systems, but to give you some sense: across the street from me, buried about 15 feet underground, is a massive 72" pressurized aqueduct that’s sort of a main backbone to the water supply on this side of the county. I’m not sure how big of a pump you need to move the volume of water it would take to require a 72" pipe, but I’d imagine it’s huge, and probably can’t be run by the sort of generator I could throw into the back of a pickup truck.
Another reference point: the city of Flint, Michigan has been in the news lately for their inability to supply safe drinking water to their residents. According to this page, the city joined the Karegnondi Water Authority. They’ve got a pipeline map (that’s currently under construction), showing what’s necessary to bring water from Lake Huron to the city of Flint. They’ve got pump stations every couple of miles, with diameters around 60". And that’s just to get the water to the treatment plant. I don’t know what sort of process it has to go through once it gets there, but I imagine at least some of it takes electricity (and chemicals, of which they have a finite supply). Then they’ve got to push the treated water out to the water mains running all over town. I imagine a good many more pumps are involved on that side of things. The natural gas suppliers and sewer companies are probably facing similar challenges. There just aren’t enough generators to go around.
I believe pretty much all freeze-dried food is freeze-dried already cooked. It doesn’t need to be cooked again, it just needs water added to it. However, a lot of the freeze-dried meals are intended to be eaten warm (like most of our meals), so they taste a lot better if you add warm water to them, even though they’re perfectly safe and nutritious to eat at room temperature or cold.
I believe it is in a lot of places (think of all the water towers you see around), but even there, they have electric pumps pushing water into the tower to keep it filled. When those pumps are not working, the residents have whatever water is in the tower, and once they’ve used that, it’s gone. http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-do-water-towers-work says, “… most [water towers] are built to hold approximately one day’s water supply.”
That’s one reason we looked into getting solar backup - well, for our household, obviously we aren’t going to run the cell tower system ourselves! It solves the fuel problem.
You get a set of solar panels - we have a trio of them that one person can move/reposition if needed - and a deep cycle battery. It’s not going to run a household day and night but if you are careful about what you choose to power it’s enough to run our well pump (solves the water problem), a very small refrigerator, a few lights, recharge batteries for other people…
Of course, there’s then the issue about security - we live too close to an urban area to really be safe. We’d probably head out to some friends we know and band together for mutual survival.
I’m the most southern positioned of my relatives. I live just outside of Chicago.
But, you know, people did live way up north and survive before electrical power and the internal combustion engine became ubiquitous.
My solar panels could run a hotplate… pancakes, anyone? Dumplings?
That, and I learned how to bake things in a campfire a long time ago.
That was my experience back in the 1970’s when I used to backpack.
Some things, like freeze-dried fruit, we’d even eat straight out of the bag. You have to be careful with that, though, because if you eat a lot and then drink water it will expand and give you a heck of a tummy ache.
True, but few have solar like that.
Wood will go very fast.
We also forget about raging wildfires due to newbies cooking with fire and no way to put them out. No fuel for fire-trucks or choppers.
This article “US power grid could be knocked out by a handful of substation attacks, says report” from a couple years ago states that there are 55,000 substations in the USA. Too many for a terrorist attack to get them all.
However:
They don’t give a list … I imagine Bonneville is one of them.