ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses everyday habits and their interruptions and analyses the ways in which Finnish individuals and households reconstruct the effects of electricity supply interruptions, or blackouts. While directly affected by blackouts, ordinary people have typically played quite a limited role in these matters. The chapter seems to support the view that people are generally passive about their energy supplies and risks. Many people simply accepted that electricity blackouts can happen, especially when they were caused by perceived "acts of nature". The chapter provides a new angle to the contemporary discussions about energy systems and risks. Some might view such fatalism and even excitement about blackouts as a non-rational risk response. Some blackouts were hence reconstructed as more serious than others. Confronted with difficult actual harms, another, almost opposite, risk response to fatalism emerged: many people wanted to prepare for blackouts using, for example, wood stoves and fireplaces.
