In '98 I moved into my current house in suburban southern NH. It was Thanksgiving weekend and there was a blizzard that weekend. We were without power in our new house for two weeks. Yes, blackouts happen and sometimes they last a bit. The seem to last shorter periods of time in more urban situations. I think that has something to do with urban areas haveing more dense infrastructure and repair facilities. Anyhow, our new house was designed for wood / electric heat so we simply kept the wood stove stoked and melted a bunch of snow (our water is an electrically operated well). About the end of the first week our elder daughter, who was 4 at the time, asked if we could go home now. There was no social unrest to accompany our blackout. On the contrary the neighbors pitched in together and we had some fun with chainsaws clearing downed trees on each others property together. A great way to get to know your neighbors - and great neighbors to have.

OTOH our blackout covered large area and small population - reverse the ratios and do that to an area that is more dependant upon the grid of public infrastructure and you may find people in greater need. All of my neighbors had the ability to take care of themselves for the entire blackout. No-one showed up at the shelters. Our town opened the highschool and staffed it for a shelter but everyone stayed home.

I can imagine if the nearby urban area had to be evacuated due to some sort of terrorist or hazmat situation that accompanied a breakdown of infrastructure then certainly our resources would have been overtaxed as a community and in that situation there verywell may be looting and rioting and other nasty social breakdown. Reports of such are commonplace in large earthquakes and hurricane situations which hit urban areas. Read up on hurricane andrew for an example.

I prepare for infrastructure breakdown and social breakdown. I have a woodstove and a bunch of stored water and canned goods etc for infrastructure breakdown. I have EMT training and current experience, Ham radio eqpt and experience, firearms and training for social breakdown.