I was in blackout and parents haven’t even texted me

[Stopeatingcrispsanddips]

I live in one of the countries where there was a power cut, it was frightening at the time and still feels a bit unsettling. My parents haven’t even WhatsApped us to see how we are (they still live in the U.K.)

Is this normal?

Yes it was!!!

My parents would have likely been on my back the minute the news came out but if they didn't I would have texted myself along the lines of "can you imagine?! Etc etc but we are ok". But we do have family WhatsApp with ongoing conversation between parents and siblings.
How often do you text/speak?

This thread is nuts. Competitive understatement from people who clearly gave no idea what was going on.

Do you know this to be true because you live in one of the affected countries? When my internet goes off, it takes bloody ages for the wifi box to reboot. And it only does so when the electricity to my property is back on.
If the internet came on intermittently, that means the power came back on intermittently. Which would have been long enough for the powers that be to ensure any messages about it not being a cyber attack or the apocalypse could be delivered to the news agencies.

We are in the schengen area. We can drive from Spain to Portugal whenever we want without intervention from bnorder control. People can drive from Lisbon without border control to the Algarve. Cities I am sure were gridlocked. The major roads were not. But hey - why take for granted someone who was there is telling the truth.

I guess the answers to the thread explain why no contact - people here didn’t realise what was going on. I def hadn’t realised the no news no internet totally cut off thing AT ALL. I can see both why they weren’t in touch, and why that would be upsetting given what happened. But - tell them! Then they will most likely respond as you wish they had originally!

But you said you were "a child of the 70s", to explain that you experienced the regular power cuts then…

Wow - Spain got their power back way before we did in Portugal. Maybe they had better comms than we did. Our power comes from Spain so we were the last to get it back. We had 12 hours without power. And ffs no one said we were running around like headless chickens. Fuckwit.

They possibly thought you may not have been able to charge your phone, and thought best wait for you to text them.

Thing is, it's a power cut. And while power cuts are a pain, they are unlikely to cause you to be in any danger or harm. So not sure why they need to find out if you r ok. I presume they assumed you were fine, just maybe without electric.

You do sound a wee bit dramatic.

As I said before, we were in Seville when the power went out so yes I know what I typed is true. And no, there were no reassuring messages when we briefly had internet at the start.

The power cuts in the 1970s were completely different. They were scheduled with a start and end time and people could prepare and buy candles. People still had coal and gas fires that would still work during the power cuts and landlines still worked so they weren't cut off in the same way. It was a Government strategy to save fuel, during a period when everyone was reliant on coal, to mitigate the impact of the various miners' strikes during the 1970s. A total power blackout in two European countries with no warning and still no explanation is very different.

They didn’t know it wasn’t a cyber attack at the time though. They still don’t know definitively what caused it. In fact some Spanish politicians, at the time, were speculating that it was a cyber attack.
Regardless, it still would have have been nice for the OPs parents to send a message to their daughter, who they presumably care about, to ask if she’s ok. My parents manage to do that even when we’re not in the middle of a 12 hour blackout.

It would be unusual for my family not to be in contact in these circumstances but we talk every day.....as your usual communication pattern is every week or two I'm not sure.

This is a bit harsh. People may not keep up to date with every country but they tend to keep up with the one their kids live in.

These are Schengen countries aren't they? No border controls to speak of

They didn’t know it wasn’t a cyber attack at the time though. They still don’t know definitively what caused it. In fact some Spanish politicians, at the time, were speculating that it was a cyber attack.

This. ☝️

This thread is nuts. It was a crazy day with no panic but quite a lot of speculation and a realisation as to just how dependent we are on technology- personally I’ll be making sure I always have enough cash on me to pay for a restaurant meal when on holiday!

It does make them an idiot if they used the fact that they didn't know about it because they hadn't watched any TV or gone online as proof that the blackout event in two countries was a completely insignificant event.

Not really. I work in defence:/FP as my day job. Things like this happen frequently and have happened to friends/colleagues frequently. When I was overseas, we frequently had power cuts for days because it was a war zone - but we didn’t panic. Why? Because we were adults who didn’t feel the need to over/dramatise everything

You say you are a child of the 70’s so you must be around 50ish so parents around their 70’s, have you messaged them to make sure they are ok, maybe something has happened to them.

Stop reading the Daily Mail. Water supply was not affected.

It would take weeks of power grid interruption before water purification systems are affected. Backup systems with generators come into place.

I’m addicted to the news and only saw this yesterday when the power came back…I only read the headline (assumed, wrongly I now realise) that there’d been a bit of a power cut somewhere in Europe.

Honestly OP, it’s hardly made the news here really, and without your post which made me look into it further, I’d never have realised what a big thing it was.

Hope you’re ok 👌🏻

Eh? Some people have other things to do in their lives than be glued to their devices waiting with bated breath for a news alert. It’s not ‘lack of awareness’, it’s called living life. Try it sometime - when you can drag yourself away from BBC news 😜

Yes it was all over the news.

Yes I would have texted any family member living in the area - partly because I am nosy.

There. was. no. water.

I've never read the daily mail
I do however have family in Spain.....who had no water.
They were not the only ones.