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Comment by venning | Hacker News Reader

Two things about this incident have always struck me: How incredibly calmly New York City handled what movies tell me should be a riot-worthy moment; and how I have never met someone who wasn't living in the Northeast at the time who is aware that this occurred (I mention it off-and-on).

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Chicagoan here (W suburbs). Not only was I aware of it, I used it to justify a $40,000 natural gas generator installation at my home (I'm a work-from-home radiologist, so outages are unacceptable [and also need back-up internet, of course]). Also have a full disaster-management plan and supplies in place. I got plenty of jeers from neighbors and colleagues when I had everything installed. Kept us going during a several-day outage during a heat wave about 5 or 6 years ago. We hosted 3 families for almost a week, with always-on AC, refrigeration and basic lighting.

Couple shorter brownouts since then. Nobody laughing at me now.

(PS: I'm not advocating for general installation of these things, as they are a major investment. But this was in my threat model.)

Now days you could install a battery system (e.g. Tesla Powerwall) and solar, instead of the generator.

This would probably come in significantly cheaper than the $40k, and pay for itself over time through reduced energy bills.

I would love redundancy and resiliency on a household if not neighborhood level, but I am afraid that such resiliency would be expensive.

We're all terribly vulnerable should anything happen on a regional level.

It didn't last long enough to be a bother for most people. It was basically a party. A few more days and it would've been Super Dome at MSG.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003#New...

"most of the restaurants in lobbies gave out free food to guests. Since most perishable items were going to spoil anyway, many restaurants and citizens simply prepared what they could and served it to anyone who wanted it, leading to vast block parties in many New York City neighborhoods. Any ice cream in frozen storage also had to be quickly served to any and all passers by."

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