Comment by ssl-3

In one scenario, with offsite backups ("in the clown" or otherwise): "We had a fire at our datacenter, and there will be some downtime while we get things rolling again."

In the other scenario, without offsite backups ("in the clown" or otherwise): "We had a fire at our datacenter, and that shit's just gone."

Neither of these are things that are particularly good to announce, and both things can come with very severe cost, but one of them is clearly worse than the other.