this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
641 points (98.5% liked)

World News

48866 readers
1407 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 6 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Gas is terrible until the power grid goes down in the middle of winter.

Electric should definitely be the main go to but we should all have gas hookup for a backup heat source in my opinion.

[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 5 months ago (2 children)

That's excessive compared to the extremely low risk of a blackout in developed countries (excluding the United States which has regular blackouts). To illustrate:

US households spent 5.5 hours without electricity on average in 2022. Excluding major events like hurricanes, the number drops to 2.1 hours.

German households spent a whopping 12.2 minutes without electricity on average in 2022.

A portable gas heater, blankets and a camping stove are completely sufficient for the average person considering most longer power outages last for a couple of hours at worst. Exceedingly rare longer blackouts will always have a government aid program, such as a heated gym with free food, near your location.

The only one's who should really prepare for blackouts are:

  • the government
  • people who live hours away from civilization with very limited infrastructure connecting them
[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 2 points 5 months ago

We were without power for almost a week during an ice storm a few years ago. There was no government shelter that I ever heard about. We had to stay at a friend's house.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Breaking news: some countries have higher and lower population densities.

[–] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Until you discover that the gas infrastructure and your home heather need electricity to function. You better have an old fashion gas stove as backup that you can use until gas pressure drops too much. You could get bottles of gas and a camping heater but every year people die because they use these indoors and get CO poisoning so be careful.

[–] spacesatan@leminal.space 5 points 5 months ago

Are you sure you're not thinking of generators? All the popular propane heaters in the US have CO shutoffs. There's not really a point to using a heater outdoors in the first place unless it's one of the huge ones that take a 20 pound tank and very obviously shouldn't be used indoors.

[–] socsa@piefed.social 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Trust me, I would love to get ride of gas, but my stove does work fine without power. Also, utilities generally don't go down because of weather, since they have backup power on site.

[–] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Normally they should have backup, but places like Texas saved a few bucks on backups and their maintenance so their gas lines went down too. That was in the 2021 power crisis. Deregulations and increasingly weird weather is a bad combination.

[–] madame_gaymes@programming.dev 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

If only there was some sort of invisible power we could harness from a large ball of fire 🤔

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oh like a nuclear reactor? Wish those where still a thing...

[–] Litebit@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

he is talking about fusion reactor, specifically not fission.

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 2 points 5 months ago

Well why can't we have both? Lets make boiling water sexy again.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] madame_gaymes@programming.dev 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

There are these things called batteries, and they don't have to be made from Lithium.

Also, you could take it literally and burn wood to harness the warm energy surrounding it on a winter night.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee -2 points 5 months ago

Batteries are expensive, and having a solar array and battery bank large enough to power your home all winter would be prohibitively expensive.

This is why we ideally have a wide range of energy sources. It's usually raining and windy in winter.

[–] Bytemeister@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Gas heating doesn't work without electricity. Thermostat is electric, blower fan is electric. Modern furnaces even use electric ignition instead of running a pilot light.