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> 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

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.

The power grid went down in a large area of the US about 20 years ago. The biggest issue I saw was the gas pumps didn't work. Cars were lined up, many abandoned, just waiting for the power to come on some they could get gas. I was in college at the time, but home for a few days. I heard rumors that the power was on west of us (where my school was), so I just started driving west, hoping I found where the power was on before I ran out of gas. Thankfully, that worked out.

But if the power, and the gas stations, don't work anywhere. It won't take long before we start running out of food and other utilities start to fail.

It’s absurd that we don’t require gas stations to have generators on-site. They have all the fuel they need to power them right there!!!

Now nobody else can get more fuel for their generators when the gas stations don’t have power either.

This was a big issue during the power shutoffs during LA fires this year.

Gas stations are private businesses, and they typically make almost nothing on gas, most of their margin is in the c-store.

Requiring every single one of them to invest in a 5-6 figure power backup solution with hundreds or thousands in yearly maintenance costs, so they can sell their lowest margin product to accommodate those who can't plan ahead during a disaster that happens maybe once in a decade event is pretty absurd.

> and they typically make almost nothing on gas, most of their margin is in the c-store.

It's hard for me to imagine gas station convenience stores doing enough volume for this to make any business sense.

Movie theaters have a similar model. The movie gets you in the door, but it’s very low margin. They make almost all their profit on the concessions.

While I can count on one hand the number of times I walk into the store at a gas station in a given year, I know others who buy things on a daily basis, to the point that they’re on a first name basis with everyone there and the employees start asking questions if a few days go buy without a visit.