I am sorry but I already addressed your arguments as well. And I don’t agree. Are we men(or women) or mice. If you don’t smell gas then there is nothing wrong with taking steps to protect your home. The modern version is to be a snowflake coward. That is not how it always was. You have some personal responsibility, and a delay in securing your home while it is reasonable could result later in serious injury to your neighbors or emergency personal. Not just the loss of your home. There is an odor that has been deliberately added to NG. So you can smell it. And in this case I can guarantee that no one is coming to secure your home for hours or even days.
If you are not able to shut off the main then every appliance is Required by law to have its own shut off. Those are very easy to shut off and require no tools.
I was at a friends house several years back. There were only women there at the time. Outside on a deck attached to the house- they had a gas barbecue grill with wooden doors underneath. The propane was in there. The grill was being used and suddenly the was a loud bang. The doors blew open and flames were shooting out from a pressurized gas line.
The women were terrified and ready to just run. I immediately went out side and turned off the propane tank. The flames went out. And those women were very grateful, and thought I was so brave. But I rationally theorized that there was almost no danger of a pressurized Propane tank exploding from a external flame in that short a time. But if action was not taken immediately then very bad things could occur. The house could have burned to the ground. Fireman could be injured fighting the fire.
Do you think I did the wrong thing?
I’m talking about the stopcock on a gas service.
If you do not know what you’re doing you can actually cause a gas leak especially if the stopcock is an older plug design. If it hasn’t been operated in awhile, you can dislodge the packing and cause the core to leak.
Also on the older styles there is no positive stop on them. Meaning if you don’t turn them exactly 1/4 turn you could have blow-by.