Ironically, here in the car-dependent suburbs, neighbors do actually come out and socialize when the power goes out for an extended period of time. They're certainly more social than the stranded car-free strangers in the picture.
We just had a major severe tornado-spawning thunderstorm blow through here that knocked out the power in the county for 3 days before the lines got put back up.
While nobody had power at home? Everyone just migrated to the local supermarket/cafe/general store where they had generators running and outside tables, and socialized there for the week while using up stock that otherwise would have spoiled. And the only way they got there? Was because they had cars.
Busses were practically useless because the sheer number of downed trees and lines (or just hanging low) prevented them from using roads that regular cars and even those gawd-awful jacked up pickups could easily swerve around and under. And EV users were out of luck.
Independence from set routes and set timetables means when those get shot to shit by emergencies? You have viable option "B"s. The personal ICE vehicle remains superior in that regard to anything else you can think of.
Like they complain about not having a sense of community and not having opportunities to meet friends which would be resolved by having neighbors to talk to.
The problem is, they don't want
small town neighbors to talk to.
Like the aforementioned ones at the general store this week? They'd never "stoop" to hanging out with such people, they think wrong, vote wrong and drive the wrong kind of vehicles.
They want small town amenities, like a populace resourceful and respectful enough to break out personal generators for public use during a major outage, but, they want them in concert with cosmopolitan neighbors and the progressive vanity politics of same and would have a conniption at the first red ball cap sighted in the crowd and demand he be kicked out, even though it's HIS generator in the back of HIS pickup that's powering the place......
