21
Update: I was watching a news segment about a power outage in Cleveland and realized people keep saying 'grid failure' when they mean a single transformer blew.
This matters because conflating a local fault with a systemic collapse fuels fear about infrastructure that's actually pretty robust, and I know because my cousin works for the utility company and showed me their outage map data from that night.
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
troychen17h ago
Yeah, the "grid failure" thing is wild. It reminds me of when my local news called a downed tree branch a "major ecological disaster." People start picturing the whole eastern seaboard going dark because one substation had a bad day. Your cousin's map data probably shows how small these things usually are, but that doesn't make a scary headline.
2
singh.harper17h ago
So what's the actual cost of this fear-mongering? Like, does constantly crying wolf make people ignore real warnings when a big failure actually happens?
2
charles72017h ago
Remember that time I yelled "spider!" in my own kitchen and it was just a piece of fuzz on the floor? Now my roommates don't even look up when I point at the ceiling. That's the cost right there. When every small hiccup gets called a total meltdown, the real alarm bells just sound like noise. People get tired and tune out, which is super dangerous when a true crisis hits. We're basically training everyone to ignore the warnings.
7