alt Hacker News> > It is socially irresponsible that as soon as a service goes out that you are immediately in an emergency. You should not offload basic resiliency on to emergency services.
> Sure, but that's not a remotely accurate description of a house without a backup battery or generator.
I don't mean it as one. Resiliency is my end goal, and "a reasonable amount" at that, not "I can reboot civilization from the zombie hordes with just what is in my shed". If you are already resilient with just a house and what it will naturally do without power, hey, great. A battery opens up options, but if it is not worth it, it isn't worth it.
It should be a social expectation that you can survive a reasonable 2-3 days without power and whatever other service outage you have without having to immediately hit the stores or drawing on emergency services. I do not care exactly how you achieve that. I don't care if you're carrying on like nothing happened in a well-lit house with AC on full blast or if you're eating beans out of a can and drinking bottled water. I just care that people should be expected to be at least a little resilient, for all sorts of pro-social reasons, that if you have your additional needs like an oxygen machine or necessary medicine that you have the buffer in place, and so on. (Which does imply certain perscription practices keeping you on a short leash are in violation of this, but that's another discussion.)
I mean, it's also a selfish expectation to be able to survive a couple of days without services. As a general rule, people prefer not to die.
My point is just that a cheap battery backup does not have a significant effect in the resiliency strategy for most people.
I am certainly not a prepper, but even viewing that scene from the outside, it is absolutely rife with what I would call "preparedness theater". Things you can buy (it's always about buying stuff) that would save you in some imagined horrific scenario but where the odds of the scenario happening in just the right arrangement where that object helped are infintesimal.
Like, yes, if your car drives into a freezing cold deep lake and you are somehow too incapacitated to open your seatbelt but not too incapacitated to use a knife, then keeping a dive knife in your glove box next to the ceramic "break windshield" thingy might be worth it, but you're more likely to win the lottery than have that happen.
There is a set of people whose brains are wired such that they are easily nerd sniped into obsessing about these sorts of things. When they do, they are also compelled to share it and spread it like some kind of mind virus. It takes a certain amount of mental discipline to not fall down every one of those rabbitholes. I believe the author telling the world to arrange joint battery buying parties for friends is well along that path of crazy.
Don't waste time and money organizing a joint battery purchase for your friends. Keep some non-perishables and a few gallons of water in your house. Fill your gas tank before it gets all the way to empty. Learn how to cook and some basic first aid.