I’m curious if this has actually happened to someone to great dramatic effect
Personally, I’ve had episodes where I was tripping and lost access to the knowledge of passcode but luckily my sort of muscle memory saved the day but its not always a sure thing which was scary at the time
It depends. If everything is stored unencrypted on the drive it’s pretty easy to reset passwords or boot to a USB and access everything. If it’s locked down hard you could be SOL. The worst I’ve seen happen is the loss of family photos with people who had passed away so they were irreplaceable.
It would be such a mindfuck honestly. Like all your billing, auth, files, apps, gone. Like I feel like its plausible you could literally end up on the street
Probably not. It might be a pain in the ass but realistically you’ll be able to work with banks/utilities/work to get access back. As long as you have access to your email as well you can likely recover your accounts. Files are likely the biggest risk, remember to keep regular backups and even this can be recovered.
This is why you should keep backups, which, for me, includes physical printouts of access data stored in a safe location. That’s also helpful if something should happen to you.