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Comment by jmuguy | Hacker News Reader

I hope its strictly an American fantasy to think you're driving out of anywhere when something like that happens.

Buy a bicycle.

Following Hurricane Sandy, many were left without power and ultimately even gas was strictly rationed. So it's not out of the ordinary to imagine an event like that happening.

https://www.nj.com/news/2012/11/sandy_gas_ration_12_counties...

This is a good point, Florida EV drivers have already found that EVs are more resilient in a natural disaster because the grid infrastructure supporting the fast chargers comes back online much faster than service is restored to gas stations.

EVs that have Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) capability are also useful in a natural disaster: You can use the EV as a big battery on wheels to power some electrical appliances - e.g. keep a fridge going or a light on, until the grid is back.

This is a good point for sure. I can run my house for most of a week off my Lightning. I wish my Model 3 had the same ability, maybe some day this will be a standard option on all EVs. It's such an obvious use case for a huge battery on wheels.

In Phoenix we all live in the shadow of the Palo Verde nuclear generation plant. And once on the radio I heard some pundits discussing contingencies if PV should glitch out and have a life-threatening disaster. And they matter-of-factly said, "you're gonna be walking." And that would be the truth; in a full-scale evacuation of a city like Phoenix, the freeways are not built to accommodate traffic like that, and yours truly has no car anyway, so I would be packing light and walking in the opposite direction, and/or ignoring the orders, to meet whatever fate awaits.

But I bet there would be a lot of bicycle and vehicle theft going on, in such an event.

Strictly an American fantasy, that you're left on your own in the face of any kind of disaster.

AFAICT americans are left on their own in the face of any kind of disaster. But, to be fair, in Europe we don't (yet) have the kinds of disasters that they have, so I can't say if europeans are left on their own or not.

Oh yea, that's what I meant, sorry for not being clear.

And we do have all kinds of disasters, but the state not only effectively intervenes, but also supports the aftermath and reconstruction. In America there are some crazy examples of towns just being left straight out abandoned afterwards, because tehre's no such thing as government reconstruction support.

I know I have a problem with "suspension of disbelief" but I find it always weird in those dystopian movies where they all drive monster trucks on an apparently endless supply of scavenged fuel and spare parts. But I'm positive exactly this Hollywood spirit is what fuels (pun intended) most of those hyper-optimistic answers.

I love disaster movies and they ocassionally lean into the idea of traffic being kind of bad in the event of a disaster. Deep Impact had a protagonist escaping biblical level tsunamis on a dirt bike.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NoBikesInTheApoc...

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