Originally Posted By: gulliamo
There are a lot of comments on this thread about how "a big city is not a good place to be in the event of a disaster" or how everyone should have car chargers and solar panels.

Here is my perspective as a resident of NYC who has also lived in very remote areas (e.g. a single, level B road leading to home).

1. The city has as many pros as cons in time of disaster. When the home in BFE doesn't have power for a week almost no one cares. When the road is flooded and trees are down very few people know. When there is a disaster of any kind in NYC we have the attention and aid of most of the world.

We also have doctors and specialist of every kind on hand. I have 300 families in my building. This includes everything from doctors to stone workers. Post disaster everyone helped each other.

The news loves to report the disruption in peoples lives but they rarely show the armies of locals who were up the next day, self-organizing into groups to clean up, gather food, money, coats, blankets, cook, haul trash/water, etc. I've seen this on many occasions. The news loves to report the looters but didn't cover countless people who shoved money into my 12 year-old's hand as he was collecting coats & blankets outside the local fire station.

2. An inverter does nothing but take up space when one doesn't own a car. A solar panel does little without a yard and even less without a window that regularly gets sun. The space under the bed? Yeah, that's where the couch is. lolz (loft beds). The good news? We can walk to 100's of local diners.

I'm not trying to start an argument. I'm simply providing another perspective to point out that while there are cons and people could be (should be!) more prepared there are many positive aspects to city living as well and many people have different priorities.


As one of the people who made the comment about a big city being a bad place to be, thanks for your firsthand perspective. I am glad to hear that your experience has been of people generally helping each other rather than causing problems. Maybe the city isn't as bad of a place in a disaster as we often think, at least if you have a good bunch of neighbors which it sounds like you do. And your point about "BFE" not being so great is also a good one (I never said that was ideal either!). Hope you're doing well.
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