Very minimal. Candles, flashlights, a batteried radio. I do have 3-4 gallons of distilled water for my CPAP, so that may be useful.
Also, my vehicle’s fuel tank never gets much below half-empty.
mmm
And for many, getting a generator is solid insurance against ever having to use it. Sell it, and you can expect a week without power in the freezing cold.
We’ve only used ours for a total of about 3 hours in the past 3 years. Memories of days without power due to ice storms in pre-generator times are still vivid.
While there are a certain number of extremely hardcore preppers who are still BOB enthusiasts they aren’t as favored as they used to be. For the most likely situations you’re better off staying put unless something like fast-moving wildfires are an issue in your area (and for those areas they are a very sane precaution). Personally, I prefer to see people equip their homes and vehicles before they start on the BOB’s.
Ah, yes, we know its cousin quite well: the Snowblower Effect.
That’s good to know. I thought it would be twice that. Of course, there’s no telling in this area.
I’m in the Boston area, there are few places where the “trades” are more expensive.
I’m also in the Boston area…the generator was $1500, and it was roughly another thousand dollars to get the box rewired, an external port added, and add a home surge protector.
I’m the last place on a dead end road. When the power goes out and it’s just one pole or transformer down someplace, they’ve usually got it back on within a couple of hours. When there are poles down all over the place – they start with the fixes that’ll get the most people their power back fastest. Then they clean up the rest, very likely more or less in the order of the number of customers affected. So far, when it’s been that situation, the closest problem’s always been somewhere where it took down something over a thousand customers, and the longest outage since I’ve been here was 18 hours, a couple of weeks ago. But if in a situation like that one of those poles is ever down on my road, it’s going to be a lot longer.
This, mostly.
I don’t shop very often; I like to have a good selection of food to choose from; and I put up produce in season to eat over the rest of the year. So there’s a whole lot of food in the house at any given time. Also batteries, as a number of things in the house use them.
I like a wood stove for heat, and consider the central-heat oilburner as backup. So there’s generally also a good supply of firewood. And while it doesn’t have an oven, the wood stove does pretty well for stovetop cooking; when it’s going anyway there are some things I cook on it anyway, why use the electricity?
Some of the flashlights would be around anyway. The number and style of them has to do with storm preparation, though. So does the Sunjack solar charger, which can charge phone, iPad, and a headlamp – though it only works in temperatures significantly above freezing, and charges veeerrrry sllllooowwwly if hung inside a window. Two battery packs are kept charged, though, and will charge iPad and phone at least once.
When the well turned out to be producing only about a quart and a half a minute into a 30 gallon reservoir, I had a new well put in – and had a hand pump put on the old one. I’ve lived places where 30 gallons every 2 hours right outside the kitchen door would have been a luxury, and know how to manage. I keep a few water containers full, especially when a storm’s expected, and a 5 gallon pail in each bathroom for flushing, so I probably won’t have to go out in a storm in order to do the pumping (and also hope not to have to schlep the refilled toilet pail upstairs to the upstairs john!).
When I first got that hand pump, people teased me about it. A couple of years later, we were on the fringe of a major ice storm. Power was only out for about 10 hours here; but a significant number of people in the closest large city didn’t get their power back for two weeks; the teasing stopped for quite a while. Those of you in cities – take note!
The freezers are out in the unheated back hall and are fine in cold weather. I don’t have a good refrigeration backup for hot weather, though. Sometimes they start handing out dry ice; and my neighboring dairy farms have generators, though whether they’d have extra room in their freezers at any given time is a good question.
And the insurance company has gone back to only letting me renew prescriptions when they’re within a few days of running out. I wouldn’t keel over immediately for lack of them, though; and neither would the cat who’s currently on prescription meds, though in his case insurance isn’t an issue.
I don’t know what yours is like – but a lot of the ones I see in catalogs appear designed to cover the wood on all sides of the pile pretty much down to the ground. Unless you go through your wood really fast, don’t do that; just cover the top and maybe the windward side. If the wood can’t breathe, it’ll rot; a stack of any size needs good air circulation, even if it’s well seasoned.
Yes, it’s covered all around to the ground. You can see it in this video I posted Saturday.
Pull at least one of the sides up to the top of the pile. The more sheltered long side, preferably.
If the cover won’t do that, take the whole thing off and fold it around so that you can get it to cover just the top, hanging over a bit on the edges.
– nice little greenhouse! Polycarbonate?
There are vents on each end of the cover.
Yes, the greenhouse has an aluminum frame and polycarbonate panels. I sealed all of the panels (messily) with clear silicone. A landscaper we know built the 8’x8’ foundation out of 4x4s and filled it with gravel. I made cable tie-downs with turnbuckles to keep it from being blown away in the occasional gales.
I wouldn’t think that would be sufficient, but maybe it is.
I’ve never had a disaster more than a few hours without power. No frozen lines thank goodness. But the things I have on hand sound pretty much like yours.
In our present digs, not much. We have the usual flashlights, a heater if the heat goes out, fans if the AC goes out. When we had our own place in Portland, we had the RV in the driveway in the case of a severe problem. We used the RV generator to keep the freezer running when we had a 3-day power outage, as well as a few lights upstairs. As a preventative measure, we had additional earthquake bracing put in the crawlspace and a sump pump put in in case of any possible flooding. And I don’t let my gas tank get below half.
I keep plenty of beer on hand, always.
Practically none. But I keep multiple flashlights around the house in known locations that I could get to even in total darkness. The new ones are the rechargeable kind that seem to keep their charge a really long time, and then there’s a battery power pack that can recharge the flashlights, my phone, my tablet, my Kindle, and even start my car in an emergency. I have an old camping lantern with a lead-acid battery that seems unkillable, no matter how long I let it sit. I charge it once every couple of years just for fun. Plus a bunch of candles.
Other than that, I got nuthin’, but if zombies invade, I have about half a dozen old baseball bats including a nice Louisville Slugger and a T-ball bat that has a remarkable resemblance to a police night-stick.
In all seriousness, I do tend to keep the fridge fairly well stocked, and canned goods on hand in the event of a worst-case power failure scenario. But realistically, in most environments, I think the most you need is flashlights, both a landline and a cell phone to access 911 services, and a car that works. If absolutely everything fails, then as the old saying goes, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. You can only plan for so much without getting ridiculous.
Some of it depends on where you live. Quite a lot of people live where a hand water pump and a wood stove aren’t possibilities.
We have bug out bags. Thanks to Son-of-a-wrek and his prepper mentality. I just gotta grab that and insulin. And my med bag. 5 cats, 3 dogs.
Comfy blankie. My tablet, my 2 phones, ah, maybe need my kindle. That book I’m reading. Better grab my chargers. And the other flashlight that stays in my bedroom. Oh my moms jewelry the baby books. Oh, shit. Dog and cat food.
Weather emergency we have a tornado shelter. My house may land on it. I would die down there.
Nope nope I ain’t going in that storm shelter. Think I’ll just stay here. Put the kids in the shelter. I’ll be fine.
We do have a whole house generator. If the log walls don’t smash us into pancakes we can watch TV and have cold drinks.
In case of Zombie apocalypse I think I’ll just start taking head shots til the ammo runs out.
Then RUN!
The disaster most likely to strike around my home is an earthquake/landslide that cuts us off from outside resources and possibly cuts off electricity and county water for several days or perhaps a little longer.
Assuming no serious injuries, we’d be fine, even before the solar panels now being installed are active. We have plenty of non-perishable food, candles and flashlights, some water and options for getting more (a river runs along the edge of our property; the stove is gas so we could boil and filter to meet our needs), pretty decent basic first aid supplies, plenty of books to read - even a good supply of cat food for the kitties.
We’d be fine, although the lack of internet would probably give me the DTs after a few hours.
I have a couple of backpacks filled with backpacking gear including stoves, fuel and some food.
For home supplies, usually have at least 25 pounds of rice, a big bag of flour, bunch of canned stuff. We could probably go a month on thin boring rations if we had to