I think that if electricity were truly out for a couple of years that you might want to rethink that statement. ;-) I'd much rather that we plan ahead and harden the infrastructure (with backups in storage) than have to live through it as a lesson learned.

For most people (including myself, a fairly prepared guy/family) this would be an unspeakable loss. The collateral damage would be so significant, it would make all other previous natural and unnatural disasters look like a walk in the park in comparison. Think about power/heat outages on the east coast of the US. Now multiply that to most of western civilization, and for good measure extend it from 1-2 weeks to 5-10 years. Wow. Massive civil unrest and crime, starvation, exposure - truly it would be TEOTWAWKI. Fun stuff I'm sure.

Anyway. I digress. :-) Shouldn't this whole thread be in the LongTerm/Natural Disaster forum?