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From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Disaster Planning
Message-ID: <1989Oct27.163853.5927@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <103@farcomp.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 89 16:38:53 GMT

In article <103@farcomp.UUCP> shibumi@farcomp.UUCP (Kenton A. Hoover) writes:
>... Often, power gets knocked down, and the local telco
>must fall back on their own, limited battery resources to run the phone
>system.

The telcos have about as much faith in the power company as in the Easter
bunny.  The battery resources are indeed limited, but they are backed up
by emergency generators capable of running the system for days.  The telcos
may have problems with damaged cables and massive call congestion, but the
system keeps running.  For the most part, only the military is more paranoid
than the phone company.

>However, computers, provided there is power and phone service running
>them, still continue calling other USENET sites, relaying mail and news.
>Each connection costs a phone call...

Let us look at numbers.  The only real expense of those phone calls is the
contribution they make to congestion.  How many Usenet sites were trying
to call the Bay area after the quake?  Be generous and call it 1000.  Now,
how many *people* were trying to call the Bay area after the quake?  Right.
Numerically, our contribution to the problem is insignificant.
-- 
A bit of tolerance is worth a  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
megabyte of flaming.           | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu