Why I was off line for several days

There was a very severe thunder storm three days ago, which resulted in power failure affecting more than a quarter million people. Trees were down all over the place, knocking down power lines and four electric substations were knocked out by the storm (and three people died in the storm). Hundreds of traffic lights went out, leading to massive traffic jams during the extra long rush hours.

The electric company took days to get people back online. My house and home office went dark on Sunday at about 3pm, and electric power was not restored until Tuesday at 11:20 pm. The Internet connection went down with the electric supply. So, even with a battery powered laptop, I was off line.

I am reminded that without electric power we d0 not have electric light nor air conditioning, and the fans and air purifiers in the house don't work. Neither do clocks, the refrigerator, freezer, stove and microwave (fortunately some local shopping centers had power, and we could eat out, and we could buy ice and store food in ice chests.). There was of course no television, but our radios work on battery power. The telephone land line went out before the power returned (making it impossible to get the updates on the expected return of power), but we our cell phones. I am impressed how much we depend on household technology, and on the resilience of the technology system due to the complex redundancy we can afford in our wealthy country.