ventilator

Respiration becomes hard or even fails, and patients need ventilators to survive.

Finally, patients begin a several week period of supportive care, which can include muscle relaxants to stop spasms and ventilators to prevent suffocation.

Even an outage of this length can completely upend your life if you, for example, depend on medication that must be refrigerated or electrically-powered medical equipment (like a ventilator or dialysis machine).