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When the blackout happened, my parents were driving home from another city hours away. They stopped for gas to refill, and discovered that all gas stations ever
by mabbo 8y ago
When the blackout happened, my parents were driving home from another city hours away. They stopped for gas to refill, and discovered that all gas stations everywhere were out of power, and therefore could not pump gas.
My mother told me later how suddenly terrifying the situation became.
There is no power. Your car may not have enough fuel to get home to your kids. We do not know when there will be power again. It may be in an hour, or next week. You are 100 miles from home- a distance that used to be an inconvenience but suddenly might be an impossibility. The phone system may not be working either, or may not for very much longer. You have whatever money you're holding in cash right now to pay for your needs.
We are dependent on our technology in ways we cannot even see.
(They pulled into the driving running on the last fumes in the tank, fortunately)
- doughj3 8y agoThe movie "Live Free or Die Hard" explores this idea in the context of terrorism - the plot revolves around a "fire sale" in which transportation, transcommunication, and power/utilities are effectively shut down. It is a Die Hard film though so it's not quite based in reality.
- all_usernames 8y agoWhen the Tubbs Fire happened north of the SF Bay last year, it cut off the few Internet links to the Eureka area in Northern California. ATM machines were down as a result, as were the phone lines. If you were stuck somewhere without gas, and without cash, you were really out of luck. This kind of thing can happen at any moment and yet how many people are really prepared?
- dfsegoat 8y agoFact: 70% of residents in the 3 counties (Napa, Lake, Sonoma) had FULL telecom outage (no internet, phone, cell) for 2-3 days. Power was out for 2 days at our house. When your entire profession and skillset is based on the internet, and computers, etc. -- and those things simply cease to exist for all practical purposes - that is a bad feeling.
- candiodari 8y agoIf they're petrol stations, why not just hook up a generator and charge 5% more ? Or, you know, 50%. (sorry about the start of the video, but it shows the type of equipment you'd use for this sort of situation) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiuNVTLHqEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiuNVTLHqEc
- pjc50 8y agoPresumably they (a) don't have a genset of sufficient power (b) don't have the required hookups to disconnect from the mains and plug the generator in and maybe (c) aren't keen on running a generator next to the "switch off engine" signs. (The nearest petrol station to me is automated, so there would be nobody to do this anyway!)