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Comment by nancyminusone | Hacker News Reader

It seems so strange to me to remember that seemly most people don't have a generator. Of course,where I live, everyone is on a well, so no power means no water, which means you can't flush the toilet. There's so many generators around that our current generator is one someone else threw out in the trash.

I was watching 8-bit guy on youtube cover his experience through the Texas snowstorm a few years back, when he offhandedly mentioned that before that, he pretty much had no power interruptions at all within the last decade.

I was stunned. 10 years? We're lucky to make it 10 months.

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Living in Germany which is a relatively small country by size, it is stunning to hear about all those story about long going power outtakes. Never heard of that before.

Experienced a relatively large outage a few weeks ago. I think I had one every ten years or so. Happened at 8pm. Online monitoring system (Mobile Internet is able to run on backup power for a day) said it would be fixed by 11pm, but it was actually fixed at 9pm. I watched Netflix on my tablet for the time being.

Needles to say, there's no big market here for such generators.

> ...it is stunning to hear about all those story about long going power outtakes.

Do remember that the ~2000 mile eastern section of the US is exposed to Atlantic hurricanes. Germany gets nothing like those. Additionally, US states exist in a large variety of climates, so the country as a whole has to deal with both freak heat and ice that Germany rarely faces.

Also remember that Germany is more densely populated and (until very recently) far richer than many of the US states that seem to be unable to plan for generally-uninterrupted power supply. Looking at the size and population of the various US states [0] might help put some of this into perspective.

[0] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...>

Folks here in Spain felt much the same way up until about 2 weeks ago. Quite a mild power cut by hurricane-zone standards, despite the wide area affected, but that still means a lot of folks having to be rescued from elevators, and so on

I have never been in a situation where I would have bothered setting up a generator even if I had one. The longest power outage I’ve ever had was a few hours and even that’s only happened a handful of times in my life. The most recent one was last year, but before that it was probably a decade.

Yeah. Most people don't have a generator because they're on the grid, and no power is not life and death for them.

If it _is_ life and death, sure, get a generator.

In February, 2021, it was close to life or death for millions in Texas. We probably still don't know how many died.

This is overly exaggerated. Access to electricity is a must for a minority of people with medical need but it doesn't account for millions of people in Texas.

The key points for survival is access to non contaminated water, shelter and food. Lack of electricity is only an annoyance.

I rescued an elderly lady and her grandson who had no power for two weeks, the first week of which saw temps near 0F at night and below 25F during the day. No heat, nothing like parkas, no firewood for chimneys or firepits. I suppose the grandson could have figured something out. I'm sure the lady couldn't have. I don't know how many such households there were.

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