If the whole grid goes down, yes you won't be able to feed it.
If a wire goes down on the little branch on your street, or if they're changing the transformer that feeds your house, you very well MIGHT be able to feed it - and fry the lineman.
It is a VERY real risk. And both the power company and the linemen are really worried about it.
(When I hotted a circuit in my house after the goose hit the wire up the street and they heard me start the backup genny they dropped what they were doing and came over to ask me to be sure not to backfeed the line. I had a nice discussion with the linemen and showed them how I was A) aware of the issue and B) had taken steps to avoid zorching them, after which they went back to work.)
A grid-tie inverter senses the grid condition and cuts off its feed on the grid side if there's an outage. But the model whose documents I examined will keep feeding a separate distribution panel for the loads you want to stay hot during an outage. You rewire your importand loads to the secondary panel, leave the ones you want off in an outage on the main panel, and it all just works.
(The inverter in question also keeps your batteries charged off the grid and that feeds the protected loads though the inverter when the sun is down and the wind has stopped. Don't know if it leaves the loads dead or cuts them over to a line connection if the main inverter circuitry fries, the batteries die, etc.)