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A lot of the things american do make surprising sense once you realize the situation they are living in.
I used to think preppers were weird. Why the fuck would you need this shit? I haven't ever been at a store that hasn't been pretty much fully stocked (until that one covid rush, but never before).
But america is big, and in some areas it is not uncommon for stores to be partially or completely out of stock somewhat regularly, whenever there is a big storm or hurricane approaching. It can also happen that the stores don't get restocked for a while when that happens. In most of europe, that simply doesn't happen.
Another thing is electricity. My homeserver had far over a year of continuous uptime (since the day I got it), because we simply do not have power outages where I live. I don't think there was one since I was born. The only exception is it being turned off because some maintenance is being done on the house, which you know in advance.
If power outages were a thing that could reasonably happen a few times a year, I'd get a battery to bridge them as well. If it was a realistic possibility that once a year or twice a year stores were empty due to some hurricane and I couldn't get food for a week or so, I'd stock up too.
But those things do not happen where I live, so I don't. I don't think americans understand that these things simply aren't a part of european life when they try to make fun of europe and I don't think europeans understand that as a result american behavior makes a lot more sense when they try to make fun of americans.
