Yes and no. Natural disasters are contained to a region. Imagine a completely undefended attack that bricks all Windows, Linux and Mac OS computers computers worldwide at the same time. It could be all routers. All chips made in say China.
So many people would starve because food couldn't be delivered in the efficiency it takes to feed the population. You've seen grocery stores wiped out during hurricanes, and those have several days lead time to prepare. We are much more dependent on technology than a lot of people realize.
I honestly don't think anyone in a 1st world country would starve, if that happened. It sets you back 20 years, the processes and technology to deal with that are still in place. And it's a lot less than 'entire eastern seaboard has no electricity'.
I dunno. We're a seriously automated country. Food processing and refrigeration plants are designed around robots and those robots are controlled by (hypothetically) bricked computers. Even if we had the volunteers, the floor just isn't designed to hold them, it's designed for 2 ton hunks of metal that don't move anymore. How do you feed 320 million people? 20 years ago, we had around 50 million fewer. How do you deliver the food to them when automated fuel pumps no longer work and security systems no longer open doors and gates? What happens when the water purification plants stop? I mean our society is built around Just-In-Time delivery; what happens when almost every node in that system fails?
So many people would starve because food couldn't be delivered in the efficiency it takes to feed the population. You've seen grocery stores wiped out during hurricanes, and those have several days lead time to prepare. We are much more dependent on technology than a lot of people realize.