this meme that the 1800s were shit and horrible and everyone died because nobody had iphones and washing machines is terrible. The only death and suffering that would happen in this scenario would come from adapting to the new way of living, and even then the only people who are likely to die are the old, the sick, and the feeble, all of whom wouldn't be able to live in a society that didn't enable them anyway.
Sorry to be blunt, but you're missing the point by so much, it just betrays a total lack of understanding of economical, social and infrastructural realities of even our current times.
Tracer Tong's ending is a new Dark Age of Technology, without any communications, no organization or state power beyond a very local level, a complete wiping out of the entire economical system and no perspective to fix any of this anytime soon.
The whole point is that it creates a blank slate on the level of the pre-industrial era in terms of technology and a political system even more primitive and small-scale than that. The very immediate results of that would be
apocalyptical.
The only death and suffering that would happen in this scenario would come from adapting to the new way of living, and even then the only people who are likely to die are the old, the sick, and the feeble, all of whom wouldn't be able to live in a society that didn't enable them anyway.
This is some of the edgiest shit that I have ever read and it is complete and utter nonsense. This specifically shows that you have not thought about this properly or simply lack perspective to truly understand even just a fraction of how the world that you personally live in actually works. Again, sorry to be so blunt, but holy shit, mate.
"The death and suffering [...] would come from adapting to the new way of living" as you call it means deaths in the
billions. Not just the weak. Not just the old. Not just the feeble.
Populations of entire nations would starve to death, freeze and die of sicknesses that we consider minor inconveniences. And here's the kicker: I am talking about
first world nations here, where next to everyone would die, no matter whether they are young or old, strong or weak, healthy or sick.
With a complete implosion of technology on the scale that Tracer Tong suggests, you're looking at an instant breaking down of every single aspect of life. No communications and no transportation means everyone will run out of food and supplies in very short time and this would be final. Means of productions will simply cease to exist. Means to transport these products if they somehow can be produced will simply cease to exist. Means to buy for these products if they somehow can be transported will simply cease to exist.
Beyond those that depend on medicine or specialised regular medical treatment (such as people with diabetes or who need dialysis), you'd very soon have masses of regular, healthy people die as well. They might not die due to a lack of iPhones, but they will die from a lack of access to electricity, clean drinking water, food, central heating and so on. There's things that you take for granted all around you and many of these things help you survive on a daily basis and you most likely never even realized it. Point in case: Toilets. Without the ability to pump water into the tank, you're stuck without a means to flush it. Same goes for waste and garbage disposal. Welcome to the world of Tong, where every street is now a designated shitting street. Enjoy the spreading of sickness, parasites and the contamination of what little drinking water you might find in the open.
Just hope the end of DE doesn't go down anywhere near autumn, or you'll have a shitton of people unceremoniously freeze to death, once their central heating fails due to technology as a whole breaking down.
Many nations simply lack the ability to produce sufficient amounts of food for their population and buy that from abroad - and this is when they have full access to modern technology. Now imagine trying to feed a nation without tractors, the access to fertilizer, seed and most likely even the tools and workforce to work the fields without modern machinery. The global ability to produce food would plummet to a pre-industrial level that could support maybe a billion while it still has a post-industrial overpopulation of almost 10 billion people... and this is assuming that the production of food can even continue unhindered on a meaningful level while everything else goes down the shitter.
You will have a few areas that might be able to produce food for the immediate surroundings and will only face the massive, insurmountable issue of transporting that stuff somehow and then the enormous inconvenience of a highly inefficient barter system. Other places will just enter a very short, very severe famine and become depopulated. Just think of metropoles like New York or the several hundred kilometer long stretch of densely urbanized land going all the way from Fukuoka to Tokyo.
Up till now, I have neatly ignored that people would not behave rational, responsible and considerate in such circumstances - they'd go completely nuts: Without organized police forces and everything I've jest described, we're looking at a complete implosion of social structures too. Sooner or later people will beat each other to death with bricks over a clean pair of socks or a roll of toilet paper. There would be riots that would kill thousands if not millions.
Then there's the likelihood of armed conflict, cause everyone will assume the wiping out of global communications and the downfall of technology was an act of a foreign nation. Sure, you might not see nukes flying (on a large scale, at least), but angry soldiers with machineguns running the last few working vehicles to cross a border, pillage food and supplies and slaughter those that they consider their foes would be unpleasant to say the least. And once these guys realize that nations have pretty much gone the way of the Dodo, that they will never get a paycheck again and that there is no truck carrying food, booze and porno mags going to come their way ever again... well, I think you can guess where this is going.
And then there's stuff like nuclear powerplants blowing up cause it's kinda hard running them when everything goes down the shitter. Do you expect maintenance workers to keep up their work when they run out of spare parts, have no means of calling for help, have no access to food and water and so on? Hell, by this point, they might be too busy beating someone to death with a brick to get a clean pair of socks to waste their time with such willy-nilly work as preventing a meltdown.
Every aspect of infrastructure would suffer, degrade and at some point fail: bridges, dams, levies, roads, canals... Over short or long, you're looking at tremendeous levels of destruction by time itself.
This is what "adapting to the new way of living" means. Global pandemonium.
So yeah. Tong Ending is worst ending.
tl;dr: With a complete breakdown of communications, the downfall of modern technology and the inevitable implosion of all aspects of society and modern life as we know it, it would cost billions of lives. To suggest that it would only shortly affect survival of weakened and old people while humanity adapts to this new situation is an utterly laughable ida and divorced from reality to such a degree, it actually owes reality alimony.