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▲ 80fj0348i 10 hours ago

In large areas of the US if your AC goes out during the summer you can be dead within a day or two. There's many deaths of elderly people annually when their AC failed and they didn't have the mobility to leave for a cooling center before they passed out.

https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/heat-waves-and-annual-death-ra...

▲alt227 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Thats crazy to me. I would never live in an area where electric power is required just to exist and not die.

▲ifwinterco 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not so much the temperature per se, it's the fact modern houses are designed around AC and American houses in particular are basically giant wooden garden sheds.

In a traditional house with thick brick/stone walls and large roof overhangs you'd be uncomfortable but a lot less likely to die

▲27183 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It would be smart (assuming a properly insulated and air sealed house--which to your point is uncommon in the US) to build an insulated room with a dedicated hvac zone in the center of the basement or somewhere similar that is basically your "safe room" for such a situation. Would not take much to cool it and has the advantage of being maximally distant from the exterior walls to in case you are worried about radioactive fallout ;)

▲80fj0348i 4 hours ago | parent [-]

For most people their car would work fine, of course not everyone does drive. Sometimes cities will open "cooling centers" (school gyms, event venues, etc.) for those cases.

▲27183 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It takes a large amount of fuel to keep a car cool (or warm) compared to a properly insulated interior room in a properly insulated house. Cars have almost no thermal insulation to speak of, just sound deadening material, and they're made of thermally conductive materials.

▲80fj0348i 11 minutes ago | parent [-]

Yeah but people already own them and you can drive to somewhere else that has AC where you can hang out.

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