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In the movie A Quiet Place, the Abbotts are using electricity to power up their light bulbs, cameras, speakers and other electrical equipment.

But it is obvious that the monsters have destroyed most of human civilizations,

  • Lee Abbott has been sending SOS to every country's emergency frequency but no one has responded.

Given the monsters have got super-sensitive hearing, I would imagine they have attacked all power stations and all electricity generators as well, so here comes the question:

  • Where do they get their electricity from?

Below is a chart I pulled from Wiki showing Electricity generation by type USA 2014:

enter image description here

  • All electricity generation methods involve heavy machinery and regular maintenance, e.g. lots of noise will be generated.
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    Haven't seen the movie, but I assume it's set in the modern day. Solar panels are completely silent, and relatively common nowadays.
    – Flater
    Mar 30, 2018 at 10:30
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    @Flater, yes, but they will need regular maintenance too, staff are needed onsite. It is not possible to generate electricity silently even with Solar. The background is, human civilization has been under attack for a few years already. And for solar panels, they are normally installed not far away, but none is seen in this movie.
    – Yu Zhang
    Mar 30, 2018 at 10:33
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    They are commonly installed on the roof of a house. It's not impossible to place them somewhere else; but the location of the solar panels is the main focus here. What matters is that your assertion (that energy generation always makes a noise) is not correct.
    – Flater
    Mar 30, 2018 at 10:48
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    Maybe members of the group take turns on stationary bicylces that turn small generators.
    – M. A. Golding
    Mar 30, 2018 at 21:22
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    @YuZhang What? My roof has had 5 kW of solar panels sitting on it since 2013. They do not make a sound, do not require maintenance staff, and have not had any maintenance performed since they were installed. They produce double the amount of energy the house actually consumes, and with the addition of some batteries would be entirely capable of meeting my energy needs 24/7 and in complete silence.
    – aroth
    Apr 21, 2018 at 2:57

4 Answers 4

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Solar Energy has been mentioned as a very quiet (not totally silent) source of energy. You can hear inverters humming, however, this constant low level noise seems to be the kinds of noise they ignore. They seem to react more to distinct changes in noise. FYI - You need inverters to turn solar's DC current to "grid compatible" AC.

Hydro-power could be easily produced and the noise would be covered up by the rushing water (as shown when they go on their favourite pass-times of fishing and waterfall-shouting). In fact, I was wondering why people aren't all living by rivers or housing up in hydroelectric plants!

Finally, wind power could be produced, the main noise here would come from high up so the creatures might well leave it alone. You don't see them constantly chasing after birds.

At 13% of the USA's current electricity mix, it should easily cover the new post-apocalyptic national load with, let's assume, 1% of the original population. Further, we can assume there is no heavy industry, server-racks, aircon or big cities to power.

There is the issue of maintenance and load balancing but we can maybe assume that this is can be automated to some extent.

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  • "You can hear inverters humming" - Not always. Depends on the inverter model/build-quality and capacity, probably.
    – aroth
    Apr 21, 2018 at 3:01
  • For humans. We're talking about a fictional supersensory alien-monster. All of the grid level inverters I have been around have hummed at human audible level. Granted, I don't hear my own solar panel inverter, but it's in my insulated loft.
    – josh
    Apr 21, 2018 at 6:15
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Solar panels.

Here's a screenshot from the movie showing solar panels.

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    Upvote as I had just seen this movie, and this screenshot illustrates how the Abbotts were likely generating electricity - and I had not noticed the solar panel detail.
    – sonnik
    Jul 5, 2018 at 22:18
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Generators below the ground.

The screenwriters talk about this in an interview about the original script. It didn't make it to the final cut due to time limitations.

Since you’ve thought about every aspect of this world, you probably have an answer. How is the family getting their electricity?

Scott: In the original draft, and they never really did anything with it in the final film, we had written that they have underground generators that are basically underneath the ground so they’re not producing any audible sound above ground. That was the idea behind it.

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At the 25:40 mark. There is a shot in the movie with a bunch of solar panels on the barn roof in the background.

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  • If you have access to a digital copy, then adding a screenshot would be good. Without it the timestamp is useless
    – KharoBangdo
    Jun 21, 2018 at 4:48
  • I think it is a bit unfair to call it useless. It is useful if you had a copy of the film. I know this is moot since the screenshot has been subsequently post in another answer, but it is worth saying.
    – Brandon Barkley
    Jun 2, 2021 at 16:26

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