Breed claims this is about people who refuse to accept help. But is this true?
Yes. For example, I worked at a housing site that SF acquired during COVID for the purpose of getting people off the streets so that they could "shelter at home". This was actual housing, too, not merely a shelter bed.
The refusal rate was over 70%, most of which were no-shows. So they added incentives like free Uber rides to the building, Safeway gift cards just for showing up, etc. Still, the overwhelming majority of people who were referred to us by the city never showed up.
Fritz Leiber's short story "A Pail of Air".
This story portrays the effects of the most terrifying natural calamity I have ever encountered in fiction: Earth being ejected from the solar system. In any other disaster there's still hope because even though humanity might die out, life on Earth would eventually recover. Not so in this case. Without the Sun we're fucked. Even the air freezes (hence the title).