re: Congress warned that NoKo could take out power grid, killing 90% of Americans

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What the hell

people lived without electricity for thousands of years

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Yes, but they never had electricity in the first place and their economies weren't built around it. For one, their populations were more sparse and agricultural. Cities weren't nearly as large and congested as they are now.

People used outhouses and dug wells. I think we could manage the outhouses OK, but we'd still have to be careful about diseases. No anti-biotics are going to be produced without electricity, so you'll have to ensure you stay as sanitary as possible. That's going to be more difficult without soaps and alcohols, etc.

As for the wells, that would be difficult too. There would be water shortages and most people would resort to drinking out of streams (and perhaps boiling it) and hoping for the best. Boiling will kill most pathogens, but it's time and labor intensive. You'd need fire to do it, and that takes firewood. And the larger the amount of water, the more energy it takes to boil it, etc..

Going back to farming for a minute: How many people would be able to farm without electric or gas powered farm equipment? And even the ones that could do it, how would they feed all the people in the cities? Their crop yields would be nothing like they are with modern irrigation, pesticides, and specialized equipment. They wouldn't be able to scale their operations up to export food to the cities.

I think the 90% figure is way off, but I do think tens of millions would die. We'd probably see the elderly go first. No AC in the summer would kill many of them off. And many of them would die from basic bacterial infections that could be easily controlled with medicines that can no longer be produced. Elderly people have weaker immune systems and they would be dying of all kinds of basic stuff that is easily controlled when the grid is working. So most of us would probably be saying goodbye to grandma and grandpa.

Furthermore, more women would die in childbirth (just like the old days). More infants would die (just like the old days). If you get cancer, you're fricked. If you have a heart attack, you're fricked. Hell breaking a bone could frick you depending on how bad it is.