How exactly does a bunch of people locking their coins up in storage for staking power the coins network in the absence of mining?
Whenever I look up PoS it is always some dandy article about how whales can invest their capital and collect interest out of thin air and it never explains how the coin can operate without any miners left to power the blockchain. What am I missing here?
Thing that confuse you is, that you think that computer power in PoW is runing PoW blockchains. It does not computer power in PoW only calculates and solves blocks. Same as stacking does in PoS.
Nor PoW blockchain nor PoS blockchain could not run with internet and your computer run by electricity.