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1mo ago

You have a sudden power outage affecting your entire city/town, how prepared are you, and how long will you "survive" not having electricity?

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 🙃

101 comments

I'm literally dead in about a week. All of my heating, cooking, and refrigeration are electric, and I have no backup supply or the means to safely add a backup. So I'd have no food, very little water, and I'd freeze to death.
- Try downloading this guide and following some of the advice in it. It's Sweden's emergency preparedness guide.
  https://www.msb.se/sv/publikationer/om-krisen-eller-kriget-kommer-pa-engelska/
- Damn, its scary how everyone is so reliant on the "grid" to survive. 😖
  
  That's how cities work - a 300-home apartment building isn't going to have 300 generators on the balconies and expect each family to maintain one - it has a single grid connection with specialists to maintain the electric.
  
  I'm on the grid, but I didn't come from it.
  If anything hits me too bad, I'm not beyond living in a car or just straight leaving the area entirely.

I have a fireplace, a spring, and laying hens. I'd be fine, just incredibly bored.
- I... um... What's the spring for? 🤨
  
  Water spring, not metal spring.

We live in a large straw bale house in the country. We have a generator (and a dozen large gas cans which we rotate by filling our van then refilling the gas cans) which runs all the lighting circuits, the fridge and freeer, our propane in-floor radiant heat, water well, and our propane tanlkess DHW. We also have a wood stove in the center of the house that we can use to heat the house very effectively and more than a winter's worth of good, dry hardwood in an enclosed wood shed. We have ample supplies of food and other necessities.
Durign major weather events we leave our front door unlocked and our friends and neighbors know that they can come, bringing bedding and just find an open couch or floor space.
We'll be fine for a good long while
- My God in Heaven, you live in a Norman Rockwell painting.
- You built your house out of hay and people seek safety there? I'm getting real big bad wolf vibes and a trap situation from this.
  
  Straw bale construction isn't hay, and its characteristics will probably surprise you: https://www.familyhandyman.com/article/straw-bale-construction
  Straw bales have up to three times the R-value of conventional home insulation, along with excellent soundproofing and fireproofing characteristics.
  
  Not hay, straw, but yes.

My family probably wouldn't make it past 3 weeks. We are dependent on rechargeable electronic insulin pumps. Pumps last 3-5 days. Can be recharged on a laptop, maybe 2-3 times. Can recharge in the car a few times. Our real problem is no food.

Got an old wood stove that's not really in use, but could be used for heat and cooking. Not entirely sure if could get dry wood quickly, but it probably get it to burn. I've done many a campfire with freshly collected wood.
I'm also vegan, so most of my protein sources are legumes, which are either canned or dried, ie shelf stable. I buy those as well as rice and other shelf stable things in bulk because there's only the tiniest little shop nearby and i try to stock up whenever I get to borrow a car. What I currently have would probably last me a month of normal eating, so i guess like two if i ration.
If I can shop for things, I could go on indefinitely. Thinking about it, it sounds kind of nice to literally not be able to work on my thesis and get to read and draw a bunch.

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.
- 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.
  
  This is what I keep telling my family members who have fallen down the prepper rabbit hole. They keep buying the freeze dried food and bulk dry goods and water filtration things and I ask them "do you know your neighbors? Do you have a garden? Do you have your own well?". They buy into the marketing hard but I don't think they have any idea what it would actually be like to lose access to infrastructure.
- 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

I've got 5000w worth of generators, two wood stoves, water heater and stove are gas, and we have about three months worth of food in feezers/pantry (we stocked up right before covid lockdowns and have kept up with it since). We would probably be good for a while, but we have a lot of family in the area that would shorten that by a bunch.
- Hey cousin! Crazy apocalypse, right?

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.

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.
- 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.

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..

Probably indefinitely, as long as there was food and a source of unfrozen water that can be purified. I've gone camping in temperatures down past -20f for days on end. The cold sucks, but will not kill you as long as you're dressed for it, have a sleep system/shelter to keep you warm, and have enough food to fuel your body. Fuel/fire is downright luxurious in the cold, but not strictly necessary unless you have inadequate insulation from the cold and your body can't keep up with the heat loss.
- Same here. I have cold weather sleeping bags and appropriate clothing. I've got light weight cooking gear and water purifiers. I'll be grumpy but otherwise fine.
  
  Until you run out of food and the region has been overhunted/fished/foraged. This is why I need to expand my garden and do more indoor hydroponics. Last year we started growing sprouts and herbs and it was awesome but we've been lazy this year.
  Sprouts are an excellent sandwich topping btw, way better than lettuce. We were doing alfalfa and mung beans (lol, mung).
- Yeah as long as we can retain access to food and water we'll survive. But if either of those stop we're going to die and basically can't do anything about it.
  
  Could flee or fight depending on the circumstances.

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."
- Same. 14kW system on the roof, 2800 gallons of water storage refilled from well with electric pump. 4xPowerwall batteries for storage/backup, all electric appliances/hvac.
  We can theoretically go for weeks as well, assuming moderate sun.
  Central Texas, 260+ days of sun here.

No problem, happens all the time here. We have had "loadshedding" and random outages for years, so we are well prepared. All the lights in the house is solar, and I have two solar charged power banks (2kw units) for the computers and fridge (if required, the fridge can last two days or so without power, but this is only a problem on overcast days, which is not too often here (South Africa, near Hammanskraal)) recently we have been without water for days at a time, but for that I have 5000 liters of water and solar pressure pump, gas geyser in one of the bathrooms.

You'd hear me shout, "again?! Damn it".
I got a bunch of antique lamps and a wood fired stove. I also got a generator for the fridge and freezer. So I'll be fine until the cannibals come knocking. If the town runs out of gas I'll just cook everything and invite everyone.
- Can confirm, the last time the power went out I heard someone shout that from a long way off. They must have a superpower to project their voice round the world

Former communist country, business as usual even though it's been a while since.
- Even in the US if you grew up in a rural area, power outages were a part of life and being a distance from a city meant you kept what you needed on hand.
  I spent many summer nights playing board games by candle light.

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.

Our generator will kick in within 30 seconds automatically, and has enough fuel to run the entire house for about 2 weeks.

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.

I'm living in an apartment on the 8th floor. Heating is geothermal heating (from a big geothermal plant owned by the city I live in). So no heating in winter. My second worry would be the food spoiling in the freezer. I'd probably move everything down into the car to drive to my family's place (that's a bit of work, 8th floor, no elevator) and then notice that my car is trapped inside the garage below our apartment block due to the electric garage doors not opening. I'd probably get some help from other people in the house opening them by hand (might involve dismounting of the electronics box).
In other words, in case of a longer city-wide outage I'm screwed.
In case it's a shorter one and my electric window blinds in the bedroom are still closed, I wouldn't worry and find someone to screw.

Got a gas stove, gas water heating and hybrid car. Could probably survive indefinitely assuming I can still shop, if I can't then I would die even with electricity. Hell, i would be forced to finally revive my reading habits and work on my book backlog, maybe it would be a little good.

Probably pretty long. There’s plenty of wood and propane, dry food, and salt to preserve things.

Depends if we can shop. We've got a couple weeks of canned food longer in rice and pasta and a gas hob so cooking isn't a problem. Could work through the fridge and freezer in a week before it all went off. Got plenty of books, boardgames and camping gear so we'd be able to keep warm and entertained. I need to get some more solar options ideally some big panels for the roof. Our heating is gas but I suspect that it wouldn't work without electricity. Luckily our living room has a gas fire.

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 guess that just depends on the area and how fast water towers are filled up/drained by the locals. I have no idea.
- 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

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.

I will eat my neighbors raw if I have to.
- Is your neighbor rich? A literal "Eat The Rich" moment?
  
  No I am admitting to possible cannibalism.

I think I'd be able to macgyver enough to get by for some weeks
The only prepper thing I have is an alcohol camping stove.
I have ~250Ah worth of charged lead-acid batteries in the garage. The only way to charge them would be my car.
I have a 50 liter compressor fridge/freezer that runs off 12V. It draws maybe 4Ah, so perishables would do fine.
Heating is en electric heat pump, so that's a no go. I have an inverter ready to hook up to the circulation pump to keep pipes from freezing. The Mrs has an obscene stash of tea candles, so I guess I'd pop some of those under some radiator pipes to heat that circulating water.
The water tower in town would dry out in a day or two. We've got a well with our neighbours for watering, but it's drinkable. I'd have to borrow the inverter for the pump to fill up jugs.

Not connected to the grid. For my personal electricity use I'd be fine indefinitely with solar.

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
- we still have cell service?
  Cell Towers should have a backup battery that last like maybe a few hours? But people might be calling each other in response to the blackout so the networks could get congested and you might not be able to call.
  
  In the two decades I’ve lived here, we’ve never had a power outage long enough or widespread enough to affect cell service.
  I don’t even care about calling - who does that anymore? But data is more important in day to day use. I can entertain myself without it, but I’m not sure I still have a working radio receive broadcast TV, so I’d have no way of staying informed
  But it is an interesting question - do cell towers also have redundant or special service or be prioritized for restoral of service in an emergency?

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

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.

Solar + home battery, might need to ration it occasionally, but I'd be pretty OK.
- If you're going to be in your home for ~10 years and you have a roof that can reasonably accommodate, solar is worth looking into. Especially if you already have investments and you don't want to put everything you have in the stock market.
  
  Make sure to check your sun rose first as well.
  I live in a geodesic dome and so it is not a good match for solar but even if it was I only average like four and a half hours of sunlight a day because of tree coverage on my neighbor's properties.

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.

Not long. Maybe a few days to maybe a little after a week. We have plenty of canned goods, but who knows how long they'd last (from being eaten, not going bad). My family has a couple propane tanks, so that's the only reason we'd last a little while. Also, I'd be screwed because I go to routine appointments every once in a while to make sure my blood ain't too thin or thick because I'm on blood thinners. So fuck me, I guess.

Storm Darragh took our power out for a week or so, and towards the end we had to top our batteries up with a genny, as the solar wasn’t quite cutting it with the lack of sun and bad weather. Not too bad though, there’s about 10 of us using the power, though we live a fairly low-impact life

A week or two, probably.
I have two wood stoves built for heating when the house was new in the 19020s. I don't use them, but I happen to have a lot of scrap wood in my basement, so I can in a pinch. One of the chimneys are used for network cable runs, so they'll be destroyed in the process though.
In addition to the usual dry goods and stuff I have loads of leftovers from the Christmas dinner. Only needs reheating, which I can do on one of the stoves or this camping gas grill I have.
And if I need power for something critical, I have a 200Ah battery in my garage and an inverter I can hook up. The battery used to be part of the emergency power system of a ship, but it was removed due to drifting too far out of spec with its mate (24V system). So now I use it as an emergency start battery for my car.
- The 19020s 😲 You from the future?
  
  Worse, he's from the 90210s and his name is Shannen Doherty.

We have 2 cars so could load up everyone human, dog, and cat and go somewhere else, so I guess theoretically a lifetime.
Longest blackout I've experienced was 2 weeks and my WHOLE house was electric, well pump included. It was getting sketchy by the end, so I guess at least a couple of weeks here, longer if there is safe water.

my 800 gallon propane tank is more than half full. Since I switched everything but the generator to natural gas last year I can probably go several months if I can get food.

My fiancée will be dead within two days

Gas heaters work during an outage, but they use electric fans to distribute the heat.
We have solar panels, so we'd be good during the day, not so much at night.
- Mine doesn't have a pilot light, and instead uses electric arcs to light the gas. So I would be even more out of luck.

Tons of food in the fridge that would do fine outside with current temps. House is gas heated. I'd say we'd be good until we ran out of food. Probably a month or two including stuff from the pantry. Stove top and oven is also gas.
Very little electricity though, but you dont need that to survive. I'll play with my tools if I get bored. Would suck without much light
- My house has a gas-fired boiler. In theory, I should keep heat during a power outage, right?
  In practice, the circulation pump needs electricity, so the house gets kinda chilly during power outages.
  Hmm, I should see about getting a backup battery for the boiler.

I have a small 2kw military surplus generator that's big enough to power my fridge, oil fired heating system and my computers. If I need to power a microwave or toaster oven, I can unplug the fridge or turn off the heating for a few minutes without an issues. The generator only uses about 3 gallons a day and with the heating oil tank, I have enough fuel for around 100 days. For those that don't know, diesel fuel and home heating oil are the same thing. Heating oil and offroad diesel have a dye added to indicate that it has no onroad tax applied.
A bunch of macho men gave me shit for only getting a 2kw generator when they had 10 to 15kw generators, but I know what I need and will enjoy not having to wait in line for fuel at the gas stations when there's a wide area blackout.

our heat is electric. building was built in the 70's during the energy crisis. wed be fucked. it needs massive renevation but if I could ever get the economic ducks in a row and do that I would like to have a batter system.

I recently moved, so not as well as at my old house which had solar and a whole house battery. We had several times where we lost grid power for a few days and it was annoying but basically fine. I had to turn off most electronics but we could keep the fridge and other important things going. The oven was gas so and I had a propane grill so cooking was sorted.
Now I’m in a five plex where everything except the water heater is electric and I don’t have my grill. I do have a small camp stove and a few fuel canisters. Mostly importantly I have a big camping battery and solar setup to run our CPAPs and keep the phones charged, plus a weeks worth of camp foods in our emergency bin. So, we’d be ok enough for a week.
EDIT: Water isn't big of an issue as you might think. In most places, municipal water will continue to work for several days from gravity alone, and often has its own backup power systems or is on a different supply from the city. At the old house we also had a backup 55 gallons in a long term storage drum with treatment tablets and a calendar reminder to swap it out on schedule. I never ended up using the water in an emergency but it's cheap insurance.

If one likes to think about this kind of questions then !zombiesurvival@sopuli.xyz might be a place you enjoy as well.

It's not really possible in a tiny apartment building where we have virtually no control over utilities (besides paying for them). I have a bunch of candles and some canned food but that's it. Maybe 2-3 days

checks camping and hunting gear in closet
Yeah I'm good.

I can probably survive as long as water is available. I assume, heating (gas) will fail, but then the house temperature will only drop slowly and a sleeping bag with some blankets should keep us alive. Food? Tough, I don't keep much food and most of what i have is refrigerated. But then things don't spoil instantly. I would first eat what's in the fridge, then from the freezer, then whatever is kept at room temperature.
I guess two weeks. The real problem is all the other people and no functioning police, fire brigade, ambulance. I don't grow my own food or hunt, so this will be practical problem, but I'm more afraid of all the other people who are also desperate.

It stays above freezing during the day here.
So, considering the house is dead, I'd probably pile into my car, grab a second car battery and tie it in parallel to my current one and just get some heated blankets and run them and the car when it gets too bad at night, then let the voltage rise back up while the car is running on occasion.
It's not ideal, but I'm poor and I wouldn't freeze. As for cooking, etc, I can get inventive with a propane tank.

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.

Sucks. 2 charged laptops, one almost charged 10 Ah power bank, although it's old. My phone shows 58%, which under normal use with internet can be 2 days, far longer if left offline in standby of course, not... (checks, with a hard swallow) 8 hours of screen time. I also have a hand-crank radio + power bank, but I am not sure how much that can generate.
OK-ish, not ideal. Depends how long it'll take.

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.

101 comments