Last week we lost power for 2 days.
One thing I noticed, people went outside and talked to their neighbors more.
Have you all seen similar when the power has gone out?
Nah. I go out and turn on the generator. I have no neighbors. I can talk to the birds and beasts. They don’t usually talk back, tho’.
A couple of years ago, we lost power for about two days.
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A huge ComED generator truck parked in front of my apartment building after a few hours. I’m sure people didn’t like losing the parking in this very busy urban area, but I was glad to at least get the backup power on. This was spring, so i didn’t need heat or AC, and I only live on the 4th floor, so not having an elevator wasn’t a big deal
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I"m quite glad the laptop is always charged, while I have a battery back up charger, I’m glad I was also able to use the laptop to charge the iPad.
30 seconds after the power goes out, my generator kicks on and I go back to sleep.
Falling from empire-building warlord to random schlub working a normal job has been a difficult transition. Nobody likes losing that much power. I try to compensate by posting pedantic screeds on message boards to re-inflate my ego and prove to myself I’m still special.
We lost it for 11 days once and 4 another time. Now I have a generator.
I noticed the one convenience store that did have a generator became the hopping place. There’s a spring that discharges through a pipe a few miles from here, and during the long outages people line up to fill jugs. Gas stations without generators close, and ones with generators sometimes run out of fuel. The night sky has more stars, but the night sounds are dominated by the generators.
We lost power for a week after Hurricane Sandy. There were a lot of people out and about in cars – including me. We weren’t hit as hard as the Shore, but there was plenty of damage in Central NJ.
Due to flooding, downed trees, and streetlight outages, there was a lot of stopping in the road and parking lots to chat with fellow motorists about open routes, people who might need help, and what stores were open. I did a lot of downed tree road clean-up around my 'hood with my Jeep’s winch and chain.
We could also get radio info in the cars, charge phones, and not run down our batteries. I had three cars fully gassed-up the day before the storm in case we had to evacuate us and the doggies.
Nope, I haven’t noticed that. With the town ordinances requiring all buildable lots being 2 acres or greater, there just may not be the population density to encourage that, power on or not.
What I have noticed, though, is that my ears still ring when there’s no power. So much for the theory that tinnitus suffers are hearing an electrical hum.
We lost power for 2 weeks once. It sucked, we had to read books. To this day I get nauseated at the sight of a book.
First thing that happens is everyone says Ooh.
Yes, I noticed the neighbor thing. Also, when there is a car crash out in the street by my apartment, everyone goes out and meets their neighbors.
I still flick the damned light switch when entering a room, and then laugh at myself. And then do it again 15 minutes later, and laugh again.
The longest we’ve ever been without power was maybe 8 hours…I don’t recall any major behavioral changes in myself or my neighbors.
I notice the house gets really hot or really cold. I used to go check on the elderly couple next door but she passed away and their daughter now lives there with her father.
When we lose power after typhoon the first thing I notice is how fucking miserable Taiwanese summers are without air conditioning and fans.
The second is how cranky people can be when there are no AC or fans.
I remember when we lost power. My parents had fallen ill and they were resting in the basement when it happened.
I left my parents in the basement and made my way to the Sheffield Royal Infirmary, where there was no electricity, running water, or sanitation, or supplies. While I was absent, looters killed my parents and were executed.
A month after the attack, soldiers dug to the town hall basement but found the emergency staff had suffocated. Without the manpower or fuel to bury or burn the dead, an epidemic of communicable diseases such as cholera and typhoid began to spread. The government authorized capital punishment and convened special courts to sentence and execute the new class of criminals. As money no longer had any value, the only viable currency was food, given as a reward for work or withheld as punishment. As a result of the millions of tons of soot, smoke and dust in the upper atmosphere, a nuclear winter occurred dropping temperatures up to 25 degrees. By July, without running water, electricity, or basic sanitation, Sheffield became uninhabitable, overwhelmed by both homeless and corpses, with food in desperately short supply.
My sister Ruth, along with thousands of other survivors, defied official orders and left the city. Many survivors collapsed on the road from radiation poisoning. Other survivors in rural areas were ordered by low-flying government light aircraft to return to their homes. Once Ruth reached Buxton, the police assigned her to a room in a local house; however, once the policeman left, the home owner threw her out at gunpoint. At an outdoor soup kitchen, Ruth was identified by Bob, a pre-war acquaintance who worked with Jimmy. Ruth and Bob continued traveling together, surviving on whatever food could be scavenged, including the raw carcasses of radiation-poisoned livestock.
Ruth took part in the yearly harvest, accomplished using the last remaining petrol, supplemented with raw human labour, but the crop yield was low due to the nuclear winter. Ruth gave birth to her child in an abandoned barn. The government retained contact with the population through radio broadcasts, but in practice the army relied on rifles and tear gas to control the population.
Millions of people around the Northern Hemisphere died due to radiation, fallout, bombs, or the cold.
A year after the power outage, sunlight began to return but food remained scarce due to the lack of equipment, fertilizers, and fuel. Damage to the ozone layer meant that sunlight was heavy with ultraviolet radiation, increasing cataracts and cancer.
Ten years later, Britain’s population had fallen to medieval levels of about 4 to 11 million people. A VHS cassette of Words and Pictures was played to children. Other survivors worked the fields using primitive hand-held farming tools. Few children had been born or raised since the attack. They spoke broken English due to the marginal education system and the breakdown of family life. Prematurely aged and blind with cataracts, Ruth collapsed in a field and died, survived by her 10-year-old daughter Jane. By this time, the country was beginning to recover, with resumption of coal mining, limited electricity production, and some steam powered mechanization derived from 19th century technology. The population continued to live in near-barbaric squalor among the ruins and barely tenable subsistence farming.
Three years after Ruth’s death, Jane and two boys were caught stealing food. One boy was shot in the ensuing confusion. Jane wrestled for the food with the other boy and they had sex. Months later, Jane found a makeshift hospital and gave birth to a stillborn child. Jane, on looking down at the baby, started screaming.
So yeah, it sucked balls.
Huh. I probably wouldn’t have noticed that.
The power rarely goes out for more than a couple of hours at a time here, so I surf on my phone and check the electric company’s website for an estimate of when the power will be back up. I have a couple of radios and a small digital TV that run on alkaline batteries so I can keep informed and amused.
We have gone without power for over three weeks twice due to hurricanes. Most times it is awful hot but one time there was a cold front behind the storm so it was not too miserable. We have generators now so as long as there is fuel we can have power. My husband is an electrician and can rig it so it will feed the entire house including mini spilt air conditioning.
We take electricity for granted until we don’t have it.
The nobles I THOUGHT I could count on suddenly turn out to be “away” when I come to call. Next thing I know, the peasants are all up in my grill, and me without a “friend” in sight. Very disheartening.
#timonyofathens
About 2 1/2 years ago, my area lost power due to windstorm. One thing I did notice is you could see more stars in the sky at night.