How long can you go without clean running water?
All American water supplies rely on huge electric pumps to clean and distribute water through the system. Even people with wells required the electric pumps to pump the water out of the ground and into the house.
Millions would die in a very short period of time.
Less than a day, water is no longer coming out of the taps. Sewage is no longer leaving the house.
In three days every crumb of food is bought or looted from every store in town.
Less than two weeks every bit of perishable food is consumed.
Within a month everyone that relies on a monthly supply of life extending medication would have exhausted their supply.
Tens of Millions dead.
Look at the Nursing Home disaster in Florida.
Less than six months every bird, fish, deer, possum, dog, cat, horse, cow is slaughtered or hunted to exhaustion. Rats will be the meat source.
Casualties escalate on an exponential scale the longer it takes to fix the grid.
Remember, almost every car, truck and train would also be inoperable. Every factory would be unable to produce without electricity.
Fresh water just needs to be boiled. The main problem in most rivers and lakes is just biologics and chemicals/toxins not so much. My last neighbor still had a well with a handpump. Almost never used so it had be primed first to get water. There’s rainwater collection too.
People WILL find a way to survive