Shut-down

I drove up to the university yesterday to teach, and was surprised to see large numbers of people standing around outside. Then I heard the fire alarm ringing in the science building - must be another fire drill. Then I learned that the power had gone out - again. The second time in a month. The science building is always evacuated when the power goes out for biosafety reasons: fume hoods stop working, toxic chemicals can make their way into the air, and who knows about various biological organisms.

It was a sunny day, so I sat around outside with everyone else. Ran into a friend and talked for a while; ran into students and chatted, handed back assignments, and speculated on the cause of the outage.

I realized how dependent we are on centralized power systems, and energy supplies in general. Would it be possible to design buildings that could be used even with no power? To decentralize power provision so fewer people are affected when the grid goes out?

I also thought about our social response to an outage. Students still wanted to go to class - they were concerned about their learning and getting their work done. Everyone followed the rules, played nicely together outside, didn't protest. How fortunate I am to live in a country where people respond peacefully to disruptions. Of course - greater and greater instability over a longer period of time might begin to drive changes in responses. All the more reason to focus on building strong social bonds to help people pull together when what we're used to disappears.