Any Generators, Power Banks, Solar Panels, etc…?
Edit: So I’m gonna answer my own question. I’ll probably freak out and would have zero generators to deal with it. Heater is Gas, but I don’t know if gas would work during power outage. Cooking, well there’s a butane burner stove. I have 3 10000mah batteries, but they have 60% efficiency due to power loss during transfer, so its effectively 6000mah, enough to roughly charge my 5000mah battery once, 3 batteries is 3-4 charges. Then I’d be bored with zero entertainment, along with all the food melting and going bad, very not fun 🙃
Did two weeks after Helene. Generators, UPSs, and self-hosted services kept us entertained and the security cams powered up. There was some rationing for three or four days until the gas stations got power but we were ready. By the second day we were running the air conditioner at night to sleep and didn’t miss any football games on tv.
I have a wood burning stove with peltier device powered fans to distribute the heat.
It gets hot enough to boil water so I can cook on it.
And I have about 4 days worth of continuous fire firewood.
So assuming that I couldn’t just hop in the car and drive somewhere else I guess I would be okay for about 4 days.
I’ll be ok for a bit. My chest freezer will be good for several days, and my family room has a gas heater that doesn’t need electrical. Also gas stove top doesn’t need electrical, and I have a propane grill so cooking is set. For entertainment, I have books on kindle that should be good a couple weeks
Fridge, car, phone good for a day or so until batteries are used up - do we still have cell service? I’d try digging out my camping gear but hopefully didn’t leave fuel with that.
We have excellent power reliability here. I don’t think it’s gone more than 2 hours in the last 20 years
Solar power on the roof, powerwall battery backup, and 3100 gallons of rainwater. All electric appliances here. We could go weeks without power.
I take it you live somewhere that’s fairly sunny year round? We had a visit from a door to door solar salesperson stop be recently, so I dug in a little. We get a little over 6 peek solar hours in the summer, but come winter we’re down to around 2. Our energy use last month was about 25 kwh/day. There’s basically no chance of us generating all of that :( Add in a third of that being my plugin Volt, which charges at night, and it’s really not looking good for generating all our own power.
San Diego, so yeah except for " winter."
As Hurricane Helene recently reminded me, pretty much nobody is prepared. Even the people/my family members who like to think they’re prepared. Nope. Didn’t really help.
We lost power for at least a week after Helene. There were plenty of people that weren’t prepared and freaked out, but by and large, I saw people pitching together to share fuel, food, water and company. It was a tough time, but it was nice seeing the kinder side of humanity.
When I first moved into my house I did try to create an emergency kit but with a lack of serious thought. A few weeks ago, the plastic water jugs had degraded enough to spontaneously start leaking. So yep, that’s why you don’t do that
That’s because the best preparation is a strong knit small commune worth of people (20-100) with diverse skills, good planning and community coordination, that’s set up somewhere away from disaster prone areas with plently of arable land and abundant natural water.
The above is way more difficult than the average American plan : one nuclear family of various ages, a shelf of canned goods, way too little water, a propane stove, and a gun.
About a month. We have a supply of water and since it’s winter stuff will stay frozen because I can put it outside in the shed. Plenty of wood to cook over. But after a month I’m screwed on that end. I do have a natural gas tank for a grill but the grill doesn’t work. So if I can find a grill to use that will extend my time.
The only problem: toilet. Not sure if water can keep going if there is no power at the water plant and water treatment plant. Maybe they run by solar.
Heating the house. There is a way to use the wood to heat the house. But it won’t be pretty. I don’t need to heat the whole house. Just a part of it.
I’m downhill from a water tower which I guess is good. However I live in a major metropolitan area with water pumped from 100 miles away. So I can’t imagine that working
When they built a new tower, they were talking 1/2 supply, so I guess that
I guess that just depends on the area and how fast water towers are filled up/drained by the locals. I have no idea.
Long enough to where if power hasn’t come back by then, it’s not coming back at all. And at that point, power isn’t going to be the biggest problem.
Water heater holds ~40 gallons and that’s easily drainable. Worse comes to worst, there’s a creek at the back of my property.
You could probably get a couple of Life straws for that Creek and buy yourself several weeks of drinkable water.
Not worth IMO. There’s already a couple weeks of water in the water heater. If I end up needing the straws, water is only gonna be the first of many problems and most of them I won’t have solutions for.
I was always told that the thing to keep track of is 3 minutes 3 days 3 weeks.
3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food.
The longest power outage I’ve ever done was 2 weeks. The town kept the water and sewer going, we kept warm with a kerosene heater. My current house has a natural gas heater. I don’t keep like gallons of water stored up but I have a camp stove and a gas grill, I can cook if I need to, and we have three vehicles fueled and ready.
I’m prepared for basically any natural disaster that leaves the state government in power. If it’s so bad that the governor isn’t around to give a press conference than I’m either also already dead or I’m going to be the guy that flies an F/A-18 into the alien’s superlaser.
If you have a water heater you have a supply of drinkable water in the 40-80 gallon range, not counting what is in your pipes
I don’t know if I want to drink what will roll out of my water heater’s drain. I don’t think it’s been drained since installed and I’m kind of afraid to do it.
It is less than a day until my home becomes unusable. I need the heating every day because it is winter. The heating runs on gas, but it also needs electricity.
This cannot kill me because the car is still working and the next town is only 10 minutes away.
Power outages around here are very rare, and usually shorter than 6 hours.
Why is no one talking about water?
I got a generator and some fuel, some rice and beans. Should last a couple if weeks. I feel like it us unrealistic to plan for longer. If there is a society wide collapse, it really doesn’t matter how much gas you have in your generator.
I’ve got beer. The legend is all those IPAs were originally created to survive months long voyages
Used to love losing power during ice storms as a kid. Sure, I couldn’t play Bassin’s Black Bass on SNES, but my dad would stoke the fireplace and light up the extremely dangerous kerosine heater that smelled fucking awesome. Then we would chill with my mom on the couch and read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
That kerosine heater never did blow the family up…
In theory pretty good. I have solar that does about 80% of my daily use. Battery backup islanded to the solar for the fridge and freezer and the electronics in the gas water heater. Plus a few outlets in each room. I’ve got a gas range and induction burner so I can cook two ways.
Pretty much comes down to water and food. I’ve got about 4 days of water and maybe a month of food. If the water keeps flowing I can boil it as needed.
I live in a pretty dense urban center (São Paulo), so I just guess the emergency departments on the city are going to take care of us while the energy come back. I have the privilege to live in one of the nicest neighborhoods here, so our infrastructures is well maintained.
Been there, done that. I am currently in the home I inherited from my grandfather, and so I have a lot of old-fashioned things like a gas stove and a non-electric refrigerator. Only communication would be any issue.
careful with catalytic fridges, they will kill you. make sure you install monoxide sensors everywhere around it.
I’m way ahead of you on that one. Thanks.
Non-electric refrigerator? Like an old fashion ice box? How do you like using it?
Yes and no.
People tend to forget even ancient peoples had ways of preserving food. The Romans would either dig a ditch and dump their food in it and it would keep their food preserved due to the elements, or they’re keep smoke from a fire flowing over it, with the smoke keeping bacteria from forming (in fact, if I am not mistaken, the second of these works better than refrigeration for some things, since it is easier for bacteria to adapt to the cold in semi-sealed containers than where the air is actively harmful).
Even after electricity, this was all still common for a while (and people still do it now), but they would specialize it more (instead of, you know, digging some improvisedly crude ditch) and this is where the idea of ice storages in peoples’ basements came from. The setup all just kind of came with the home. Where most people have maybe two refrigerators, the pre-refrigerator containment area like my second refrigerator, which helps because the area where I live is prone to some challenging stuff.
I think more like a camper fridge. Runs on a small pilot light.
I could go up to six weeks without power or if there was some event that caused significant social unrest, provided I’m not murdered. I made it a habit during the first Trump admin to have an emergency food and water supply, largely because he really isn’t a terribly competent leader, and then when COVID hit and people bought out everything everywhere, it just reinforced the importance of having supplies on-hand.
