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579 points todsacerdoti | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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lljk_kennedy ◴[] No.44287646[source]
> One of my nightmares is waking up one morning and discovering that the power is out, the internet is down, my cell phone doesn’t work

I dunno.... as I get older, this sounds more and more idyllic

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ndr ◴[] No.44287653[source]
I see the sarcasm but you're likely not simulating this hard enough. This is what happened in most of Spain and Portugal during the recent power outage and it wasn't pretty.
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camillomiller ◴[] No.44287686[source]
It also wasn't so incredibly nasty, though. There were disruptions and some arrests, but the large majority of people were in the streets socializing, dancing, doing impromptu things they wouldn't be doing on a work day.
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killerstorm ◴[] No.44287782[source]
Cooking, refrigeration and water pumping depends on electric power. It can definitely get nasty if it lasts for more than a day
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BLKNSLVR ◴[] No.44287937[source]
This is one of the reasons I'm looking at extending my solar system to add a battery and islanding, so I can have a regular resupply of some amount of power/electricity for the necessities in case of extended outages.

I'm not sure how far into "prepper" that makes me. I don't have a store of canned food or weapons or a generator. I started down this track to keep my home lab (on which I self-host a bunch of stuff) online / protected through outages.

Additionally, the city in which I live has an ad-hoc amateur WiFi setup which connects over several kilometres. I used to be a member a long time ago but, ironically (in this context) getting fiber internet meant I kinda lost interest. It's one of those things that had just never gotten back to the top of my priority list: https://air-stream.org/

Feels like they're ahead of game on this topic.

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ta1243 ◴[] No.44288447[source]
Solar+battery is great for a few weeks locally with no power, or a couple of days nationally.

It's terrible in a society-collapse way - makes you a target.

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antisthenes ◴[] No.44289130[source]
> It's terrible in a society-collapse way - makes you a target.

A target for what? People to come charge their phone at your house?

Why would you be a target if 50%+ of population have solar setups?

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ryandrake ◴[] No.44290739[source]
If society actually suffers a sustained "collapse," access to electricity won't even be among your top-20 problems. You're going to be more worried about how you're going to obtain water, food, and protect yourself from the roving looters and/or warlords that will immediately spring up in the absence of law and order.
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1. 20after4 ◴[] No.44292390[source]
For folks with a private well, electricity is the key to fresh water. At least for a while.