People can adapt, but the real question is how quickly. If you go from virtually 100% grid availability to a complete long-term outage, many people won't be abl

People can adapt, but the real question is how quickly. If you go from virtually 100% grid availability to a complete long-term outage, many people won't be able to adapt quickly enough and will die, especially in large cities. Depending on how long the outage is and how many people die, civilization doesn't necessarily collapse. But the adaptation process isn't going to be fun. If you only go to rolling blackouts, people will most likely manage, except for those with certain health conditions. But that's a very different scenario, since it implies that there's continuous control over the grid.