[Homer]

The drought always felt a bit contrived from my position. Kind of like they needed a way to keep the badness going.

The big killers I could see would stem from a disruption of petroleum based society, leadership casualties, and a loss of population and resource control. The final straw was the Mexican invasion, which finally destroyed any progress made towards addressing the above.

Society in 1997 (and now) runs on petroleum. That's everything from a lack of petrochemical feedstocks for fertilizers to fuel for the firetruck coming to put your jury rigged chimney fire out. Systems just grind to a halt until alternative sources can be found or production restored; think the last harvest scene in Threads. Coal, burning trash, etc. hydro might answer some requirements, but they lack the ability supplant the omnipresence of petroleum. That said, there's going to be "islands" of (relative) better off (NW PA/W NY, ARK-LA-TEX, OK, etc.) where some oil still flows, and things limp along with shortages.

The strikes and chaotic post-strike environment prevented a smooth succession of leadership. Cannon and Chico's history have done a great job of showcasing the effects of disruption of leadership across the nation on unity of effort. Despite having a shell of a plan in place, with national caches, evacuation plans, and prepared refugee areas there was no one in authority post-strike to ensure execution and more importantly adjustment. While a functioning NCA was able to execute a series of strikes against the USSR, there was no corresponding authority to conduct a concurrent campaign to mitigate (control seems unachievable) the effects of damage and ensure the "islands" were identified and connected into what remained of a national web. Or, for that matter, to conduct triage of surviving populations and allocate resources.

Both of the above feed the problem of population and resource control. In the post-attack environment, the challenge of marrying vital sectors of the population up with the resources needed to rebuild elements of the national production, distribution, and storage networks was unmet. Instead, both Cannon and Chico's history show the effects of uncontrolled groups of refugees consuming resources that could be better used else where. Functioning leadership protecting the productive "islands", determining distribution of resources on a state and national level, with the wherewithal to either enforce order or enforce a blockade of non-essential areas was required for effective management of the crisis.

People die in dribs and drabs due to the failure of the above. Without an effective means of providing the resources of a petroleum based society, there's less of everything to go around, and fewer ways to keep what there is; so people starve, die for lack of soap and bacitracin, or freeze. Lack of effective leadership lets the crisis continue and deepen- nobody is making the calls to stop throwing good money after bad and resources (food, fuel, security forces, spare parts) are squandered (Just look at what's lost when SUBBASE Groton is overrun). Finally, by not adjusting plans to protect and reallocate what was left to surviving industry resources were squandered in ineffective sectors or responding to ancillary threats (imagine a full court press to muster enough production to properly process and distribute the 1997 harvest or if the response to the Mexican invasion had been handled by not denuding the country of remaining military forces).

Just my thoughts