Comment by thelastgallon

7 hours ago

And your gasoline pump works perfectly fine without power? Or the refineries?

Gasoline is much easier to store (you can keep a reserve in your cellar) and much easier to carry and trade than electricity.

  • You can store it but not very long, thats btw one reason why its not useful for private people to participate in wholesale/corp market: Even if you would get a small fraction discount for ordering large amount, you cant store that large amount long enough in your basement before it gets unusable (esp. Diesel).

  • Do you keep gasoline in your cellar? my understanding is that it goes bad relatively fast, so be careful to keep cycling it yearly at least.

    • It did last 3 years in my lawnmower. Well it is gone now since I switched it to electric.

  • African continent is probably the last place in the world where this is relevant, and they are on track to fix it.

> And your gasoline pump works perfectly fine without power?

Most decent emergency / contingency plans will have the fire department, police or whatever local group show up at one or two designated gas stations to provide power, or require these stations to have on-site emergency power.

  • If your refinery is taken out, it might take years to rebuild it.

    • If it was that easy, Ukraine would have already brought Russia to its knees.

      Because the Russian government is still telling themselves they can win and don't even bother trying to negotiate with Ukraine but instead the USA, this must not be the case.

  • > Most decent emergency / contingency plans will have the fire department, police or whatever local group show up at one or two designated gas stations to provide power, or require these stations to have on-site emergency power.

    this is just nonsense.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Iberian_Peninsula_blackou...

    while traveling i got caught up in this. no restaurants, no credit cards working, no grocery stores, no cell connection, no navigation with phone, no gas station. the goddam list goes on. fortunately this was less than 16 hours.

    • As a local, it was actually rather fun. And my kid was amazed. For a traveler it must have sucked, though (and also for some people with special needs, and in places where it's actually common, etc.).

  • As someone who has actually lived through multiple major catastrophes where fuel couldn't get delivered for days and electricity was out for days, when the pumps stop working there is no gas. Don't assume the gasoline the police and fire department have will be there for you. It's there for the first responders. They don't have infinite supply. Their supply is extra expensive to handle compared to when things were working. You've now got many thousands of families all trying to get to the two or three operating fuel stations...trust me they're not open to the public! When you're out of gas, you're out of gas.

    Meanwhile, those with solar panels not reliant on grid-tie, they can continue to charge their vehicles.