Note there is not now any one kind of environment, there are environments.
Even now some places approximate "Mad Max" while others are placid resorts.

Some urban areas have extreme violence under "Normal" conditions, with virtual combat an everyday occurrence.
Look at some police blotters and it is apparent.

In any normal disaster quite a range of conditions exist.


One can imagine that in some catastrophe; some will exist in near normal conditions initially, others will face immediate extreme challenges and misery.

My main point is that for any given local geography (a small radius of 1 or 2 miles) you can have a disaster quotient hypothetically for example 1 to 10.

1 - being near normal or like the present, 10 - being extreme survival challenge.

Where the center is one question, how many 1's and 10's another (size of the tails).

Presently we live in a highly networked,high complexity, fragile society.
Things like just in time inventory leads to high efficiency, but also many single points of failure.
Most people have no idea just how much potential there is for cascade effects (i.e. one system's failure causing another systems failure). Remember when a communications satellite caused many credit cards to not work.

When regional events (Katrina, Tsunami's) occur in isolation, the resources can be marshaled to help.

A global problem would be different, there are only a small number of MRE's and such to distribute. If a major event caused a nation wide problem.
There will be a distribution of outcomes for any given area, some more self sufficient others utterly dependent.

Help from outside (by definition) would not be coming, the U.S. military will not be dropping off MRE's by the helicopter load.

Law enforcement works when only a small number of people need to be restrained.

Lastly you can't know in advance how bad it will be for a given location, for some Mad Max may an apt description.

I sure wouldn't think this program painted a dark scenario at all, it was very even handed even optimistic.
It may well be a lot more adverse.

People on this site will likely do well along with people in maintenance type professions or farmers.
People who presently are highly specialized will have a hard time adapting with some individual exceptions.

"apocalypse." is a religious term not a practical one, past collapses, die offs and disasters were survived by some individuals.

One thing the show got right was self organizing groups would spontaneously form. Plenty of past history to support this.