Saying that we as a society have become too dependant on electricity is so oft repeated that it has become cliché, but I’m going to say it again anyway. The night before last, we had a long-lasting blackout in my area. By long lasting, I mean about 6 ½ hours. Not nearly as bad as being stranded for days, but longer than the average one-or-two-hour outage.
I’ve trained myself to sleep with a constant hum—a fan or my trusty bedside noise machine. Trying to sleep in silence doesn’t work for me; the other night proved it. As soon as the electric cut out, I sat upright in bed. Promptly, I grabbed my cell phone and set the alarm clock to wake me up for work the next morning. Good thing too, because the backup battery in my regular alarm clock failed.
I spent that dreadfully silent night worrying about such things as “will I wake up in time for work?” and “will my tuna salad I packed for lunch stay fresh now that the fridge is in-op?”
This serves as a stark reminder that we as a society are so dependant upon electricity, computers, and technology that we all but cease to function without it. I’m not one to decry progress and say life was better in the nineteenth century. I don’t harken back to the “good ol’ days.” We need to always focus on improving our technological infrastructure and having reliable backups (like diesel generators and hard drive rescues) in place for when failures occur.
On an end note, I'd like to know what caused the outage in our suburban area south of Buffalo. It couldn't have been weather related, and it took over six hours to fix. Must've been bad.
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