This is good to know. The cord will contain normal wires. I'd be running five fixtures total in tandem with one another... three of those
fixtures would be using one power cord, while the remaining other two would be using a separate power cord.

As long as you don't exceed the current rating of the cord you should be fine. Three 2x F30T12 lights should be fine for most cords out there, unless the cord you have has really thin wires for some reason.

Is it bad to wire up three two-lamp ballasts on one power cord? (3 hot wires connected to one hot power supply wire, 3 neutral wires connected
to one neutral power supply wire.) Dumb question, I know... but I'm just wondering if this could prove to be a bad idea.
I know of course that two ballasts can be used with one power cord, but I'm not completely sure about three.
I'm wanting to wire up three F30T12 fixtures with one power cord, all of which will be grounded.

I'm in the process of going through all pages of his survivor articles.

I looked through  his surviver sections and the only atlas alpha 8 which he had was in London.

Well at least the the atlas alpha 3 from the 60s was common

I remember going past this one not too long ago. If I had to guess it seems like an M400A2 in a sea of LM Unistyle 400s.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/G5dZ8fqKEu1PsQTu7

So far, as much as I hate to say it, these storms have apparently killed 20 people, based on what I'm reading in the news.
Those news stories are new, some of which have popped up only around 20 minutes ago.
Damage images are beginning to pop up online and the images I'm seeing so far look to be significant. The storms continue to move closer
to Alabama at a fast clip, and we've still got plenty of daylight time left. I really hope those people heed those warnings.

In some cases, there were 4 pin PL CFL lamps that used external starters and preheat fluorescent ballasts such as the 9 inch 18W PL-L for F20T12 ballasts and the 36W PL-L for F40T12 ballasts except for some lead-lag 2 lamp ballasts. Usually, they are used on programmed start electronic ballasts. Interestingly, Japan has been manufacturing and using a wide range of 4 pin CFL lamps that used preheat fluorescent ballasts and external starters. In many cases, they were often operated with a simple choke ballast on 100V mains, but some used autotransformer ballasts.

Oof, that sucks. Lets hope it's the lamp or cap.

IIRC Mike Barford's website has a couple of other atlas alpha 8 locations in his survivors section. I'll try and find them.