I just found this video on YouTube where they discuss the Scout Traveler and Terra designs. I thought the folks here would enjoy it.
Expert Car Designer Analysis of Scout Traveler and Terra
- Thread starter BeerParty
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From all of us at Scout Motors, welcome to the Scout Community! We created this community to provide Scout vehicle owners, enthusiasts, and curiosity seekers with a place to engage in discussion, suggestions, stories, and connections. Supportive communities are sometimes hard to find, but we're determined to turn this into one.
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Yes, that is good. I also like this one from a guy deep in the IH Scout community. Totally different background, making many of the same design points. His whole video is worth watching, some overall reaction then the design part starts about 31:20.
Is this new or was this the one from like last November? I feel like I watched this.
The video I posted was from last October (published Oct 31, 2024). I found it when I was looking for something else on YouTube (I guess the suggestion algorithm knows what I like
) and I did not see a link to it anywhere on the forums. So I thought I would share it here in case anyone else who had not seen it would like to watch. I am sure 99% of the people here don't need to be convinced that the Scouts are a good design, but it was fun to watch a design engineer explain some of the aspects of the Scout design.
lol this guy is hilarious. He keeps saying he's not a fan of EV because of the "practicality" and "inconvenience" of it, like he doesn't live in a house with electricity or something
My dude, you can literally refuel your electric Scout from an outlet in your barn. I'm betting you can't drill, separate and refine your own gasoline out there. To me having to drive a fair distance to get to a gas station is way less convenient and practical than just plugging into your wall.
People are so used to the status quo they have trouble imagining a different way of doing things. I'm glad the Harvester brings people like this into the fold because he will quickly find that running on electrons is far more convenient and practical than running on gas. He just lacks practical experience with EVs as many people do.
It's a common misconception that EVs are for "city" folk but not practical if you live in the country. The reality is pretty much the opposite. People that live in the country almost always have off-street parking where they can charge up a vehicle. They also drive greater distances than urbanites so would benefit most from the fuel savings. It's people that live in cities in apartment buildings that will actually have the most difficulty transitioning to electric since off street parking and overnight charging infrastructure will be a challenge for them.
Anyway, great video and I'm glad the diehard Scout fans are in support of the new Scouts.
I liked it too and remembered they tweaked the color at the time. I like it but as an architectural designer it bugs me sometimes when people critique something after the fact. They don’t know the confines the original designers had to deal with but I thought that review was decent. It’s always easier to sideline quarterback than to play the game so I think, as you said, it’s a great design from a new group of people recreating an American iconThe video I posted was from last October (published Oct 31, 2024). I found it when I was looking for something else on YouTube (I guess the suggestion algorithm knows what I like
Honestly it’s one of the best “Bug Out” vehicle options if people take the time to think about it.lol this guy is hilarious. He keeps saying he's not a fan of EV because of the "practicality" and "inconvenience" of it, like he doesn't live in a house with electricity or something
My dude, you can literally refuel your electric Scout from an outlet in your barn. I'm betting you can't drill, separate and refine your own gasoline out there. To me having to drive a fair distance to get to a gas station is way less convenient and practical than just plugging into your wall.
People are so used to the status quo they have trouble imagining a different way of doing things. I'm glad the Harvester brings people like this into the fold because he will quickly find that running on electrons is far more convenient and practical than running on gas. He just lacks practical experience with EVs as many people do.
It's a common misconception that EVs are for "city" folk but not practical if you live in the country. The reality is pretty much the opposite. People that live in the country almost always have off-street parking where they can charge up a vehicle. They also drive greater distances than urbanites so would benefit most from the fuel savings. It's people that live in cities in apartment buildings that will actually have the most difficulty transitioning to electric since off street parking and overnight charging infrastructure will be a challenge for them.
Anyway, great video and I'm glad the diehard Scout fans are in support of the new Scouts.
If the poop hits the fan you can run it off of stored gasoline in the frunk or rear carrier, and can charge it with a solar generator if the grid is down and you can’t run pumps at filling station or use EV chargers.
The only thing more convenient than that would be an on board thorium reactor.
Also, holy crap that rear storage area is a lot bigger than I initially thought!
The problem with all these doomsday scenarios that people come up with is that gas goes bad after a while. If you really want to be resilient you'd be best to have your own solar generation that can be islanded (ie made to work without the grid connection), and an EV. Then you'd be free to drive as much as you'd like without having to depend on anyone else for your mobility.
I can get into the whole 'why bugging out is a terrible idea' thing if you'd like but I feel that's not relevant to Scout other than to say bugging out just means you're a voluntary refugee. In a crisis you'd be much better off staying put somewhere that's familiar, that has stores of food (like your house) and that has a community of people you know to help each other out.
All these notions of the grid going down and society quickly descending into chaos are silly and juvenile. I've personally lived through three "grid-down" events where the grid went down for at least a week and at the time we had no idea when it would come back. There was never any looting or mass panic or any other nonsense like that. People came together, had BBQs to empty out their freezers, shared what energy resources were available, helped each other and checked in on the elderly and infirm. It was quite the opposite of what most preppers seem to think will happen.
Anyway the point is you can't refine your own oil but you can quite easily generate your own electricity. So to me having the biggest battery possible is more of an asset than having a vehicle that still depends on someone being able to refine petroleum.
Thats a pretty arrogant and uninformed take, but youre entitled to it.
Katrina was real. It happened. There was looting. There were also people desperate to escape or find clean water and food. They were being shot by civilians and local police (who tried to cover up multiple instances). It wasnt a Tom Clancy fever dream.
Danziger Bridge shootings - Wikipedia
On the morning of September 4, 2005, six days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, members of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), ostensibly responding to a call from an officer under fire, shot and killed two civilians at the Danziger Bridge: 17-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison. Four other civilians were wounded. All of the victims were African-American. None were armed or had committed any crime. Madison, a mentally disabled man, was shot in the back. The shootings caused public anger and further eroded the community's trust in the NOPD and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina overall.
The NOPD attempted to cover up the killings, falsely reporting that seven police officers responded to a police dispatch reporting an officer down, and that at least four suspects were firing weapons at the officers upon their arrival. On August 5, 2011, a federal jury in New Orleans convicted five NOPD officers of myriad charges related to the cover-up and deprivation of civil rights. An attorney for the U.S. Justice Department described the case as "the most significant police misconduct prosecution [in the U.S.] since the Rodney King beating case". However, the convictions were vacated on September 17, 2013, by U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt due to prosecutorial misconduct, and a new trial was ordered. The Justice Department appealed the decision to vacate the convictions, but a federal appeals court agreed that a new trial was warranted.
On April 20, 2016, the five former officers pleaded guilty to various charges related to the shooting, and in return received reduced sentences ranging from three to twelve years in prison. Three of the officers are white and two are African-American.
10-year sentence in race-based post-Katrina shooting
A white man who spewed racial epithets before and after a shotgun attack on three black men amid the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in federal prison.
apnews.com
"The shooting happened roughly three days after Katrina hit the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast. Power was out, levee failures had flooded most of New Orleans and emergency resources were strained.
Bourgeois fired a shotgun at three black men who were trying to evacuate the area, wounding one seriously. Prosecutors said that he and others had discussed shooting black people and defending the Algiers Point neighborhood of New Orleans from “outsiders” after the storm. Before and after the shooting, his conversations were punctuated with racial epithets. And, his original indictment said, he told one African-American neighborhood resident: “Anything coming up this street darker than a brown paper bag is getting shot.”"
"During Hurricane Katrina, as investigative journalist A.C. Thompson’s work documented — and subsequent federal indictments charged — authorities again crossed far over the line. According to one indictment, in the chaotic days following the flooding, police officer David Warren shot an African American man, Henry Glover, because he might have been picking up some stolen goods. Glover’s brother and a good Samaritan took the bleeding man to a nearby school in their car, but rather than helping the gunshot victim, the U.S. attorney alleges, police there beat the men who transported him and then incinerated the car, reducing Glover, a father of four, to a few charred bones. The officers charged with killing Glover, burning his body and covering up their actions have all entered pleas of not guilty."
We helped families that relocated to Texas after that event and it sounded like a warzone.
Just last year armed groups threatened and harassed FEMA workers because of conspiracies circulating on social media.
Witnesses saw an armed group harassing Helene aid workers in a small Tennessee town, sheriff says
A sheriff says witnesses reported seeing a group of armed people harassing hurricane relief workers in a remote Tennessee community last weekend.
apnews.com
"William Parsons, the man accused of making the threats in North Carolina, said he believed social media reports that FEMA was refusing to help people, but that he realized that wasn’t the case when he arrived in hard-hit Lake Lure, a small community about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Asheville.
During a phone interview with WGHP-TV, the 44-year-old Parsons read aloud a social media post he made that said “We the people” were looking for volunteers on Saturday to “overtake the FEMA site in Lake Lure and send the products up the mountains.”
Parsons, of Bostic, explained that he believed FEMA was withholding supplies and that his post was a call for action, not violence.
“So we were going to go up there and forcefully remove that fence,” he said, but he found a different situation than he expected in Lake Lure. He said he wound up volunteering that day in the relief effort, but law enforcement officers cast doubt on that claim Wednesday.
Capt. Jamie Keever, of the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office, said in an email Wednesday that a soldier called 911 on Saturday after someone overheard Parsons making a comment that “he was going after FEMA and was not afraid of law enforcement or soldiers.”
Keever said Parsons was arrested at a Lake Lure grocery store that was a site for a FEMA bus and a donation site for relief efforts.
“It does not appear Parsons was involved in any relief efforts at the time and if so why was he armed,” Keever said. “I think based off of his statement he was prepared to take action with his firearms and take the donations.”"
If you actually believe in climate change youll know these events will continue to grow in scale and frequency. We have also seen the effects of misinformation and social media on social issues and events. Its juvenile to be so quick to dismiss uncomfortable history and facts that dont align with your worldview.
While "Bugging Out" may have a negative connotation because of conspiracy theorist and doomsday preppers, there is a very real precedent for climate change and general natural disasters leading to hostile and dangerous situations beyond the inconvenience of losing power for a few days.
Ill also add that gasoline can be stabilized for up to 12-24 months depending on a variety of factors, but sure, it does indeed go bad eventually. At the same time unless you are investing 6 figures in a solar array, you would be hard pressed to charge your vehicle's battery to full and actually use that larger battery capacity in a short amount of time, assuming a weather event doesnt disable it.
Oh I definitely believe in climate change and know that severe storms will only be getting worse. I was speaking about my own experiences with natural disasters and long-term outages.Thats a pretty arrogant and uninformed take, but youre entitled to it.
Katrina was real. It happened. There was looting. There were also people desperate to escape or find clean water and food. They were being shot by civilians and local police (who tried to cover up multiple instances). It wasnt a Tom Clancy fever dream.
Danziger Bridge shootings - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
On the morning of September 4, 2005, six days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, members of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), ostensibly responding to a call from an officer under fire, shot and killed two civilians at the Danziger Bridge: 17-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison. Four other civilians were wounded. All of the victims were African-American. None were armed or had committed any crime. Madison, a mentally disabled man, was shot in the back. The shootings caused public anger and further eroded the community's trust in the NOPD and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina overall.
The NOPD attempted to cover up the killings, falsely reporting that seven police officers responded to a police dispatch reporting an officer down, and that at least four suspects were firing weapons at the officers upon their arrival. On August 5, 2011, a federal jury in New Orleans convicted five NOPD officers of myriad charges related to the cover-up and deprivation of civil rights. An attorney for the U.S. Justice Department described the case as "the most significant police misconduct prosecution [in the U.S.] since the Rodney King beating case". However, the convictions were vacated on September 17, 2013, by U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt due to prosecutorial misconduct, and a new trial was ordered. The Justice Department appealed the decision to vacate the convictions, but a federal appeals court agreed that a new trial was warranted.
On April 20, 2016, the five former officers pleaded guilty to various charges related to the shooting, and in return received reduced sentences ranging from three to twelve years in prison. Three of the officers are white and two are African-American.
10-year sentence in race-based post-Katrina shooting
A white man who spewed racial epithets before and after a shotgun attack on three black men amid the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in federal prison.
"The shooting happened roughly three days after Katrina hit the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast. Power was out, levee failures had flooded most of New Orleans and emergency resources were strained.
Bourgeois fired a shotgun at three black men who were trying to evacuate the area, wounding one seriously. Prosecutors said that he and others had discussed shooting black people and defending the Algiers Point neighborhood of New Orleans from “outsiders” after the storm. Before and after the shooting, his conversations were punctuated with racial epithets. And, his original indictment said, he told one African-American neighborhood resident: “Anything coming up this street darker than a brown paper bag is getting shot.”"
"During Hurricane Katrina, as investigative journalist A.C. Thompson’s work documented — and subsequent federal indictments charged — authorities again crossed far over the line. According to one indictment, in the chaotic days following the flooding, police officer David Warren shot an African American man, Henry Glover, because he might have been picking up some stolen goods. Glover’s brother and a good Samaritan took the bleeding man to a nearby school in their car, but rather than helping the gunshot victim, the U.S. attorney alleges, police there beat the men who transported him and then incinerated the car, reducing Glover, a father of four, to a few charred bones. The officers charged with killing Glover, burning his body and covering up their actions have all entered pleas of not guilty."
We helped families that relocated to Texas after that event and it sounded like a warzone.
Just last year armed groups threatened and harassed FEMA workers because of conspiracies circulating on social media.
Witnesses saw an armed group harassing Helene aid workers in a small Tennessee town, sheriff says
A sheriff says witnesses reported seeing a group of armed people harassing hurricane relief workers in a remote Tennessee community last weekend.
"William Parsons, the man accused of making the threats in North Carolina, said he believed social media reports that FEMA was refusing to help people, but that he realized that wasn’t the case when he arrived in hard-hit Lake Lure, a small community about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Asheville.
During a phone interview with WGHP-TV, the 44-year-old Parsons read aloud a social media post he made that said “We the people” were looking for volunteers on Saturday to “overtake the FEMA site in Lake Lure and send the products up the mountains.”
Parsons, of Bostic, explained that he believed FEMA was withholding supplies and that his post was a call for action, not violence.
“So we were going to go up there and forcefully remove that fence,” he said, but he found a different situation than he expected in Lake Lure. He said he wound up volunteering that day in the relief effort, but law enforcement officers cast doubt on that claim Wednesday.
Capt. Jamie Keever, of the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office, said in an email Wednesday that a soldier called 911 on Saturday after someone overheard Parsons making a comment that “he was going after FEMA and was not afraid of law enforcement or soldiers.”
Keever said Parsons was arrested at a Lake Lure grocery store that was a site for a FEMA bus and a donation site for relief efforts.
“It does not appear Parsons was involved in any relief efforts at the time and if so why was he armed,” Keever said. “I think based off of his statement he was prepared to take action with his firearms and take the donations.”"
If you actually believe in climate change youll know these events will continue to grow in scale and frequency. We have also seen the effects of misinformation and social media on social issues and events. Its juvenile to be so quick to dismiss uncomfortable history and facts that dont align with your worldview.
While "Bugging Out" may have a negative connotation because of conspiracy theorist and doomsday preppers, there is a very real precedent for climate change and general natural disasters leading to hostile and dangerous situations beyond the inconvenience of losing power for a few days.
Ill also add that gasoline can be stabilized for up to 12-24 months depending on a variety of factors, but sure, it does indeed go bad eventually. At the same time unless you are investing 6 figures in a solar array, you would be hard pressed to charge your vehicle's battery to full and actually use that larger battery capacity in a short amount of time, assuming a weather event doesnt disable it.
I think the difference here is that I don't live in the US and don't fear being shot because that's not really a thing here. We appear to have very different societal responses to large natural disasters. I'm very aware of how fortunate I am to live where I do.
We live in very different countries and our cultures are very different. One of the many many reasons I'm happy I don't live south of the border.
Also, about the solar array, when I priced one out for my house it came out to about $20k CAD all-in. That would be enough solar to run my house (with a battery which itself would cost $12k) and it would be plenty to also charge my EV. So nowhere near "6 figures". All in I was looking at about $32K CAD for the complete system. If I wanted to I could also supplement it with some more DIY solar on the carport and back deck which would add several more kW of generation capacity for just a couple thousand more.Thats a pretty arrogant and uninformed take, but youre entitled to it.
Katrina was real. It happened. There was looting. There were also people desperate to escape or find clean water and food. They were being shot by civilians and local police (who tried to cover up multiple instances). It wasnt a Tom Clancy fever dream.
Danziger Bridge shootings - Wikipedia
On the morning of September 4, 2005, six days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, members of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), ostensibly responding to a call from an officer under fire, shot and killed two civilians at the Danziger Bridge: 17-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison. Four other civilians were wounded. All of the victims were African-American. None were armed or had committed any crime. Madison, a mentally disabled man, was shot in the back. The shootings caused public anger and further eroded the community's trust in the NOPD and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina overall.
The NOPD attempted to cover up the killings, falsely reporting that seven police officers responded to a police dispatch reporting an officer down, and that at least four suspects were firing weapons at the officers upon their arrival. On August 5, 2011, a federal jury in New Orleans convicted five NOPD officers of myriad charges related to the cover-up and deprivation of civil rights. An attorney for the U.S. Justice Department described the case as "the most significant police misconduct prosecution [in the U.S.] since the Rodney King beating case". However, the convictions were vacated on September 17, 2013, by U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt due to prosecutorial misconduct, and a new trial was ordered. The Justice Department appealed the decision to vacate the convictions, but a federal appeals court agreed that a new trial was warranted.
On April 20, 2016, the five former officers pleaded guilty to various charges related to the shooting, and in return received reduced sentences ranging from three to twelve years in prison. Three of the officers are white and two are African-American.
10-year sentence in race-based post-Katrina shooting
A white man who spewed racial epithets before and after a shotgun attack on three black men amid the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in federal prison.
"The shooting happened roughly three days after Katrina hit the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast. Power was out, levee failures had flooded most of New Orleans and emergency resources were strained.
Bourgeois fired a shotgun at three black men who were trying to evacuate the area, wounding one seriously. Prosecutors said that he and others had discussed shooting black people and defending the Algiers Point neighborhood of New Orleans from “outsiders” after the storm. Before and after the shooting, his conversations were punctuated with racial epithets. And, his original indictment said, he told one African-American neighborhood resident: “Anything coming up this street darker than a brown paper bag is getting shot.”"
"During Hurricane Katrina, as investigative journalist A.C. Thompson’s work documented — and subsequent federal indictments charged — authorities again crossed far over the line. According to one indictment, in the chaotic days following the flooding, police officer David Warren shot an African American man, Henry Glover, because he might have been picking up some stolen goods. Glover’s brother and a good Samaritan took the bleeding man to a nearby school in their car, but rather than helping the gunshot victim, the U.S. attorney alleges, police there beat the men who transported him and then incinerated the car, reducing Glover, a father of four, to a few charred bones. The officers charged with killing Glover, burning his body and covering up their actions have all entered pleas of not guilty."
We helped families that relocated to Texas after that event and it sounded like a warzone.
Just last year armed groups threatened and harassed FEMA workers because of conspiracies circulating on social media.
Witnesses saw an armed group harassing Helene aid workers in a small Tennessee town, sheriff says
A sheriff says witnesses reported seeing a group of armed people harassing hurricane relief workers in a remote Tennessee community last weekend.
"William Parsons, the man accused of making the threats in North Carolina, said he believed social media reports that FEMA was refusing to help people, but that he realized that wasn’t the case when he arrived in hard-hit Lake Lure, a small community about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Asheville.
During a phone interview with WGHP-TV, the 44-year-old Parsons read aloud a social media post he made that said “We the people” were looking for volunteers on Saturday to “overtake the FEMA site in Lake Lure and send the products up the mountains.”
Parsons, of Bostic, explained that he believed FEMA was withholding supplies and that his post was a call for action, not violence.
“So we were going to go up there and forcefully remove that fence,” he said, but he found a different situation than he expected in Lake Lure. He said he wound up volunteering that day in the relief effort, but law enforcement officers cast doubt on that claim Wednesday.
Capt. Jamie Keever, of the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office, said in an email Wednesday that a soldier called 911 on Saturday after someone overheard Parsons making a comment that “he was going after FEMA and was not afraid of law enforcement or soldiers.”
Keever said Parsons was arrested at a Lake Lure grocery store that was a site for a FEMA bus and a donation site for relief efforts.
“It does not appear Parsons was involved in any relief efforts at the time and if so why was he armed,” Keever said. “I think based off of his statement he was prepared to take action with his firearms and take the donations.”"
If you actually believe in climate change youll know these events will continue to grow in scale and frequency. We have also seen the effects of misinformation and social media on social issues and events. Its juvenile to be so quick to dismiss uncomfortable history and facts that dont align with your worldview.
While "Bugging Out" may have a negative connotation because of conspiracy theorist and doomsday preppers, there is a very real precedent for climate change and general natural disasters leading to hostile and dangerous situations beyond the inconvenience of losing power for a few days.
Ill also add that gasoline can be stabilized for up to 12-24 months depending on a variety of factors, but sure, it does indeed go bad eventually. At the same time unless you are investing 6 figures in a solar array, you would be hard pressed to charge your vehicle's battery to full and actually use that larger battery capacity in a short amount of time, assuming a weather event doesnt disable it.
So for the price of an affordable new car I could be completely off grid if I wanted to and charge my EV for "free" as much as I want.
I can appreciate that why you view things the way you do, and wish that we could expect the same behavior from ourselves in times of need.
Our history and current social trends just arent there to support that hope.
We dont need get into a political debate, but I still feel very strongly about being able to evacuate my family if the need arises.
We live in a former "Red Line District" in a rural East Texas town. We are the only "white folks" (Im French and my wife is a Spaniard) on our street and unfortunately racism is still alive and well here. At the time it was one of the only houses we could afford for our growing family, but we have been blessed with amazing neighbors and have been welcomed by the community with open arms.
That being said I would be deeply concerned about people coming here and harassing or looting in our neighborhood and have discussed ways we could fortify it with neighbors if the need arises. If things got to that point I would try to get as many of our vulnerable people as I could to a safer area.
It feels insane to type out those words but we cannot depend on our local officials, our community, or our federal government to save us from ourselves in desperate times.
We may be "neighbors" but we are indeed worlds apart.
I am glad you are fortunate enough to avoid this dumpster fire.
Worlds apart indeed. Wow I can't even imagine what that must feel like. It's certainly not something I've ever experienced here. I'm sorry that's your reality.
Like I mentioned earlier, I've lived through three major crises, two were weather-related and one was because of a tree branch in Ohio apparently.
The tree branch was the East Coast blackout in the early 2000's. We, along with almost the entire eastern seaboard lost power for about week. At the time we had no idea what caused it, how long it would last, when the power would come back, but through radio we were able to learn that it wasn't just our city or province but it was a big chunk of the US as well including New York. It happened at the start of rush hour and random people went into busy intersections and started directing traffic to help ease gridlock. After a day or two and once we all realized the extent of the blackout we started having street parties and block parties all over the place to use up the food in people's freezers and fridges. Restaurants started providing free meals to use up their perishable supplies. I remember Baskin Robins giving away ice cream. People generally came together and helped each other. Public transit still ran and here in Ottawa we are fortunate enough to be close to Quebec which managed to keep its grid up so there were no fears of running out of fuel. The power came on about a week later and life resumed. Thankfully it was in August so life was a bit easier to deal with when there was no power.
In 1998 I lived through the Ice Storm. We lost power for about two weeks that time. Again, everyone came together. The military set up shelters in local school gyms so people could stay warm. During that event I was manning a ham radio to coordinate farmers with the military. There was a need for generators to run milking barns so that necessitated a lot of coordination. I also volunteered to distribute firewood so people could heat their homes and barns. Again, there was no general lawlessness or looting. It was communities coming together to help each other. I remember in one small village CN deliberately derailed a locomotive at a level crossing and used it as a powerplant to send electricity to as many farms as they could. That was cool and not a thing I knew you could do!
The most recent one was more local to my city (population 1 million), it was a derecho which is a fun new type of storm for our region. Thanks climate change! It was described as basically a tornado on its side. It did tornado damage to the entire city instead of just a swath of it. That one was bad, roofs and trees were down all over the city. There was a lot of damage to local infrastructure as you would expect from a tornado but spread across the whole city. I went to go check on my elderly parents but was blocked by a downed tree. So I jumped out and started sawing it up. Some other neighbours also came out to help and it was interesting because when I arrived some people were just standing there looking at it. When I went to go deal with it they told me don't worry, the city will come. I replied "do you hear all the sirens everywhere? The city is busy with other emergencies, we can deal with this one ourselves" and I started chopping. When we found out the city was still trying to restore power to the water treatment plant and hospitals after two days we knew we'd be in for a long one so I used my EV to run our fridges and stuff and then ended up using it to run my neighbour's fridges as well as my in-laws.
Anyway yeah, my experiences differ quite a bit from what you describe so I'm thankful that I live in Canada for sure.
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