Prepared at home

[Scots_Charles_River]

I had a power cut today for an hour. It was cold and I still had gas. So could keep warm if it lasted longer. Candles were lit etc. It was so quiet in the house and street, quite pleasant. My nieghbour paniced and keft with her baby to her Mum's ten minutes drive away.

Main problem was heating. Certainly made me think what I need to use. I am going to re-stock non foods.

Nick

 

[British Red]

Not the cheapest solution...but cosy


esse cooking by British Red, on Flickr

 

[Scots_Charles_River]

Certainly would be warm. I was going to start a BBQ fire in the garden and get the neighbours round but power came back.

 

[British Red]

Unless you live on takeways, most people will have enough food to last three or more day. Be it rice, pasta, spuds, or tins and tings, the main thing is to be imaginative in cooking them. All foods can be done on a tranga/gas cooker, just as easy as on the home stove, given time and organisation. If you need to bug-out, that is the time to think about dried food and preparedness. I feel those Rat packs are the answer for that. Variety and portability, plus no need for additions other than a plate/mug/bowl to eat from if sharing.

Most home bakers/cooking people have stuff that can be stretched to make more meals if needed , so there is no need to buy into extra food, if you plan to stay put for a few days or a week.

True.

Now try shutting the water off for a week!

Red

 

[ex-member Raikey]

I had a pwer cut today for an hour. Candles were lit etc. It was so quiet in the house and street, quiet pleasant.

thats the 1st thing i noticed last time we had an outage,.....

very pleasant actually,..to sit and listen, even the street lamps were out,...total blacknees but for our 4 head torches!..ha

i saw cutains twitching when i fired the genny up tho, actually got a guy knocking on the door asking how we had power and he did,nt,...

impacted to me that we (the prepared) should keep our comforts fairly hush if ever it went long term,...

he wasnt being agressive, but the seed was there,.....

or am i being a paranoid survivalist nutter?..

 

[Justin Time]

I've always had a well stocked kitchen, comes of growing up in a scottish village which would get cut off by snow every winter. A couple of years ago I got hit by a nasty bout of flu and was knocked off my feet. Once I started to get a bit better I found that my stocks were useless because they needed thinking about and cooking. It was embarrassing have to phone up the ex and ask her to buy me some ready meals. So now I make sure I've got a selection of tins that just need heating, energy drinks etc, stuff that I wouldn't normally bother with but will at least save my dignity....

 

[Pandabean]

The end of last year was when we moved into our new house and when the snow came, the power did go down, all be it for a couple of hours, the other thing is if the power goes out so does the heating, it may be oil fired but it still works from an electric timer. So I have been thinking of getting a wood burning stove back into the house, but I keep putting it off, mainly due to cost. I quite enjoyed the power cut, may seem strange but in a way. Managed to get out the stoves, cook dinner and read a book.

 

[forestwalker]

True.

Now try shutting the water off for a week!

You mean the gravity fed pipe from the basin up the hill, the one that is filled from a cold spring? Could happen, but it would just mean I had to walk a 100 m to a small stream and fill a couple of buckets.

Ok, in a flat that is not the way to do it. Having a bottle of purifying tabs or a pump filter would be handy, in addition to -- as others have said -- perhaps 10 big bottles of water (figure 3 L/person/day for a minimum, just food and drink).

 

[British Red]

Up hill? I just reach into the well, or the underground cistern

Its increasingly uncommon here to have private water which I find odd. Lots of people think about home generated power as ecologically sound but never even consider home extracted water. Yet 50% of the industrially processed chlorinated stuff is pumped for miles to only end up leaking out of badly maintained mains pipes. Very odd.

Red

 

[forestwalker]

As John I live out in the countryside, so I have a certain level basic preparedness. Water comes without power, so I'm fairly confident on that Just Working (and a failure is manageable, since pretty much all water around here is drinkable). Heat is not too bad, the woodstove is our normal stove this time of year, the boiler/furnace is trickier. It takes no power to run (just firewood, of which we have 35 m^3 stored), but the circulating pump for the radiators really needs to run in order for things to work properly. I really should get a small generator and rig things such that it could run the pump and perhaps the freezers.

Tons of candles, a few paraffin lanterns, etc will mean that we can see.

Food; if the weather is cold enough I could just build a simple cache and transfer food from the freezers there, but in summer that would be harder to arrange. I suppose I'd have to start Operation Cold Smoke and dry a lot of moose. We buy rice in 10kg sacks, same for potatoes, so basic food is no problem.

So basically I'd be able to pretty much ignore power cuts and such for a couple of days, and manage fine almost indefinitely with a bit of added work.

 

[ged]

Its increasingly uncommon here to have private water which I find odd. Lots of people think about home generated power as ecologically sound but never even consider home extracted water. Yet 50% of the industrially processed chlorinated stuff is pumped for miles to only end up leaking out of badly maintained mains pipes. Very odd.

Maybe not so odd. Last I heard, at least around here, if you take water from a hole in the ground and wash your car with it, you're breaking the law!

 

[_scorpio_]

personal water supply sounds good. now all i need is an natural spring in the garden

 

[British Red]

Maybe not so odd. Last I heard, at least around here, if you take water from a hole in the ground and wash your car with it, you're breaking the law!

I guess you aren't in the UK then, because there is no law preventing water extraction up to 20,000 litres daily in the UK (2003 Water Act)

Red

 

[ged]

I guess you aren't in the UK then, because there is no law preventing water extraction up to 20,000 litres daily in the UK (2003 Water Act)

Ah. No, I'm in the UK, but the last I heard was in about 1978 when I was building a house in Oxfordshire. The council got all shirty with me, mostly because I'd knocked their legal department into a cocked hat with a planning appeal, partly because in the process most of them got the sack, and particularly because I was using water that I was extracting from the foundation excavations -- some of them were just being bloody-minded and lost no opportunity to make life difficult for me after I won the planning appeal. They even made me change the shape of the house, to which Roy, the architect who'd designed it said, "But it doesn't fit on the plot!". Anyway we managed to make it fit in the end.

 

[sandbender]

"...A member here runs http://www.theselfsufficiencyshop.co.uk/

(No connection - just a happy customer)..."

They sell Low Voltage Fridges!

 

[Scots_Charles_River]

I didn't break into my 'boot supplies', no not edible polish, but could have. US MREs and UK Rations.

It was the cold really. My house is a wee 2 bedroom one with an open plan lounge but the heat goes straight up the stairs.

My neighbour and I were gonna light his chimenea BBQ.

If it had lasted till 7pm as the phone mesage said, I would have just driven 5mins to the local Cinema, that would have killed 2 hours.
It was -6 last night and still -2 at 8am when scraping the car.

Nick

 

[forestwalker]

Maybe not so odd. Last I heard, at least around here, if you take water from a hole in the ground and wash your car with it, you're breaking the law!

But that is not because of the water, but because of the stuff that is on the car, and in the detergent you use.