Tuesday, September 13, 2022

More Blackout Chatter

 I noticed this from last night....N-TV (commercial news)....had a segment to talk over what you need to have in your house in the case of a massive long (10-day) blackout.  

What they cite...comes from the German government itself (Federal Office for Disaster Control).

Personally, I thought this was way overboard and unnecessary to consider some blackout lingering for ten days.  If it were that bad....people would just up and leave the affected area.

Why N-TV brings this up?  Well....the various companies have reported now that from 2022 alone.....around 650k heaters have been sold (way over the norm), and they know that Germans already had one or two heaters in the house already.

But they pointed one key issue....that rotating area-by-area blackouts were probably going to exist, and one region might go down for six hours and be relieved with fresh/new power....coming from another region, which is forced to linger for six hours itself.   I know....it's an odd scenario to pose. 

Are Germans prepared for events like this?  In my village, I'd say the majority are prepared for a five-day situation and could easily manage their way around it.  The fact that restaurants and pubs would be harshly affected?  Well, that's another entirely different problem. Same for bakery operations, and clinics.  They would all have a problem in giving any basic service. 

In the past month, I'd say off commercial and public TV....I've heard the blackout term used forty times, and it's become a regular news discussion item.

All of this worth the amount of chatter going on?  

If you said that there was going to be three blackouts per week....all lasting one to two hours, I think most Germans would accept as not being a big deal, and just living with it.

If you went and said there were going be a nightly blackout around 8 PM, for an hour....it'd probably aggravate a fair number of Germans after the 10th consecutive night of power out around the same time-frame.

Finally, if you went and said there were going to be twenty hours a week of blackouts, with no rhyme or reason to the times.....then it'd go to a hot-topic situation for the political folks to handle.  

Funny how this topic never dissolves or lessens.  

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