If not enforced mechanically, it's really easy to forget though. The last time I needed to power my house with a generator, it was because the power went out du

If not enforced mechanically, it's really easy to forget though. The last time I needed to power my house with a generator, it was because the power went out during a horrendous thunderstorm at 3am. We have a sump pit with a battery-powered backup, but when I checked on it right after the power went out I discovered the backup couldn't keep up with the volume of water coming in (it had been raining for hours already, and we ended up getting over 6" of rain that night). I had less than 10 minutes from being awoken at 3am to having to have the generator up and running to prevent our basement from getting flooded. And of course, we had nothing but flashlights and there was a thunderstorm raging outside (where I obviously needed to set up the generator). It would have been way, way too easy to forget one the many critical steps (and critical order of steps) in that scenario to use a suicide cord safely.