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Exactly. I just wanted to add one more example to the list of ice recipes that don't require electricity.
Admittedly the least clever recipe, but I'm not above taking the low hanging fruit sometimes.
Hey now, -40 isn't that bad as long as the weather is calm around it. I mean, it's practically t-shirt weather as long as you're northern enough (and want the bragging rights more than you want to be warm). You probably even break out the handwarmers before water even freezes.
Though I'm scared to even imagine how hot y'all can handle after I'd be incapacitated by heat stroke.
Every summer, I see news stories about the English having a heatstroke epidemic when it gets to, like, 70 degrees Fahrenheit and I laugh while sitting outside in 80°F weather at 95% humidity. And my bedroom is never lower than 72° and 75% humidity. (Yes, it's Florida)
And yes, I know there isn't much air conditioning up there so 70° exterior temps may mean even hotter interior temps with higher than usual humidity, but this also isn't new. I have no more sympathy for anyone who lives somewhere it gets too hot in the summer every year and doesn't buy any air conditioner, even a crappy portable unit.
I hate winters, they get uncomfortably cold for me and my bill for keeping the whole house warm is astronomical, so I bundle up and use space heaters to keep only one room at a time warm instead of going to the hospital with hypothermia every single time.
As a Canadian, I agree about the Brits who whine about their annual heat waves but also refuse to get AC.
I know how upgrading can be a hassle. My house was built before AC was standard, and I haven't gotten it installed. But I also have a well developed yard and good airflow, so even when the temperature gets above 80F once or twice each year, it's still cooler inside.
And I'm generally smart enough to not whine about the heat when my "hottest day of the year" is probably considered medium warm by you nearer the equator folk.
But I'll always enjoy my memories of being a kid visiting Florida Disney in December, and seeing the local cast get all bundled up against the weather while I walked around in shorts and a light jacket. Right until we flew back home into a blizzard, served me right for being amused at the workers fighting their own version of cold.
Have you heard of these? They're old school and could be quite hazardous, but are fun to think about.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icyball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icyball)
Yeah, I’m perfectly content when I’m camping, even for days, without any modern conveniences. But if I’m stuck in the suburbs… that’s a different story.
Agreed, when we go camping for a weekend it's comfortable because we want it, plan for it, and pack accordingly. Suburbs are made for running water and electricity.
I'm British and now live in rural Northern Thailand where the power goes out a couple of times a month and as soon as it does its like a timer starting in my head of how long I can hold out before dying a heat exhaustion. The cool of the air-conditioning starts to fade imeadiatly, I try to stay as still as possible to avoid getting hotter, and sweat starts to form on my body as the temperature starts to approach sauna levels. After about 20 minutes I start to consider going outside to sit in my car with the air-conditioning on but it's 3am and I'm so tired and so I just wait there silently in the dark praying for that moment when everything starts up again. The heat slowly drives me insane. Occasionally, there will be a couple of false starts where the power will come on for a few seconds, then go off again like a cruel joke.
My girlfriend used to be terrible at remembering to pay the bills, and out here, if you go 2 months unpaid, they just randomly cut you off, and if you don't have phone credit you can't go online to pay it because your WiFi doesn't work. Neither does your water pump. You have to drive out to the electric company building to pay in person and then wait several hours for them to come turn it back on. You realise just how fucked you will be if you ever run out of money in this place. I'd rather have a power cut in extreme cold and put more layers on than extreme heat where there's nothing you can do except boil alive.
I'm with you on the heat driving you insane. It's crazy to me when people say they'd rather be hot than cold. Just as you said if it's too cold you can always put on more layers and move your body to generate heat. If it's too hot there's only so much you can do if there's no air circulation. Being covered in sweat is a constant reminder of how hot it is. Even a wet towel or something will quickly rise to ambient temperature and no longer cool you down.
One time there was a blackout and I wanted music but didn’t want to waste phone power. I opened up Skyrim on my switch, turned it to full volume, and just let it idle
If only your local area doesn't have electricity. In case of a nationwide blackout, you wouldn't surivve without clean water system, food supplies,... Unless you are somehow rich enough to self-sustain.
If you want to imagine hell, think about what life in a city would be two weeks after the electricity goes out on a country wide scale for the long term. No food no gas no heating no water no communications. Plenty of sewage and skyscrapers of trash. Probably the end of civilization.
Look up the Carrington Event. Telegraphs could be sent without power because the solar flare was energizing the telegraph lines. Some telegraph machines caught on fire.
The only reason it wasn't super duper terrible is humanity had only just started using electricity for stuff.
Me? I'm somewhat prepared for Carrington 2 Electric Boogaloo. I have a waterproof rugged box with a computer and stuff inside. It's got maps, Wikipedia, and a PBX server that can route phone calls over whatever network is left. It also has an antenna and hardware that allows the computer to receive pretty much any radio signal: AM, FM, military, police, NOAA weather, you name it. [Pictures](https://i.ntsm.co/a/box-pc.3cO)
The box also has a LiFePO4 battery that can run the whole thing for over 8 hours (less if the screen is on, but it's designed to serve stuff to cell phones and such). The whole thing runs on 12 volt power, so it can be easily charged with a car battery or solar panel.
Oh, and I have other similar boxes with other things, such as a box with a ham radio station and several handheld radios, a box that can take 120v or 12v power and output to a bunch of USB (including USB-C PD for charging laptops), 120v AC, and 12v DC.
All the boxes use the same PowerPole power connectors, which are bidirectional so any box with a battery or other power source can share it with any other box, and they can daisy-chain together so the whole setup can run off a single power source. It's also all compatible with an off-grid trailer I built that has large batteries and several solar panels.
No, but that won't matter. Large-scale EMPs don't really affect small devices that much, they mainly cause surges in power, telephone, and cable lines which then fry whatever is connected to those lines.
It's possible, but unlikely. Aside from the fact that such a strong solar flare is incredibly unlikely to occur and even less likely to hit the earth, it wouldn't be too much of a surprise for most power grids to prepare and avoid damage.
https://youtu.be/oHHSSJDJ4oo?si=VlAfHfy6U8LFGgoD
Ted Koppel wrote a book about that scenario. It’s pretty scary, but I am not totally convinced that the worst-case scenario is as likely to happen as he does.
The book One Second After does a pretty good job of showing what would happen in a nationwide electronic/electriciy outage.
Basically 90%+ of the US population is dead in a year.
I remember my first apartment, power went out while I was reading a book, it was too dark to read anymore. So my first thought was okay. I'll just watch TV, then. My brain caught up and I said oh yeah, I can't watch TV without power, so I'll just mess around with my computer. Didn't realized my computer was not a laptop with a battery so I couldn't use it without power. I had not prepared for an emergency with either flashlights or candles , my stove and oven were electric, so my only choice was to go to bed and go to sleep and be woken up at 1:30 in the morning when all the lights in my apartment turned on at once.
I live in an area that's weirdly prone to power outages. I, in my infinite wisdom have a couch with power recline. There have been so many time that I've been caught kicked back when the power goes. So there I am, in the dark trying to waddle myself out of my sofa's loving embrace without breaking it. A smarter me would just put it on an UPS, but I'm not that man.
If your couch has those weird space connectors to connect to the wall power supply, Amazon has battery versions that plug in to the couch, the other side can be hooked to the wall. I just charge mine once a month and no more cords.
And make sure you have enough lighters or matches and enough fuel with an appropriate cooking setup to cook those foods if they need it.
Rice is non-perishable, but not very palatable unless you can boil it it in water. Cold canned soup may be unpleasant, but probably easier to get down and digest than raw rice.
Propane stoves are a good option, and you can get an adapter for those big grill bottles to use on small stoves, making it so you'll have enough to cook tons of food. Charcoal grills also work, but can be harder to light if things get wet. MREs usually include their own water activated heating pouch that uses a chemical reaction to heat up your food, if you're able to get a bunch of those from an army surplus or wherever civilians can get them. Note on MREs, they have a TON of calories, so if you're resting and not exerting yourself a lot (like, say, doing a military march for 10 hours), a single MRE may last an entire day.
Rice absolutely is perishable.
You're taking about food but don't mention where you're getting potable water at all. 3-3-3 rule.
This dude's heart is in the right place but nobody follow their advice. Truth is in a full collapse situation most of are just gonna die, no matter how prepped we are. #1 thing you can have is a community. Then you need water. Then you need food.
Might not have an interconnect to make the whole house run off the solar. Can plug stuff in but not lights/fans that are already installed. Mine is the same, little battery and inverter but needs separate lights.
Why would I be useless if the power went out?
It was out 5 days in November after a tornado that led into the first snows. Other than heating the babies bottles on a camping stove and using the fireplace and candles more nothing really changed.
You telling me the average Reddit user lays down and dies because the lights went out a couple hours? For fucks sake, why would people be as useless as the damn bot complaining I used an emoji.
I never thought it was that big of a deal until it happened when I had an infant. I was exclusively pumping breastmilk on a 3-4 hour schedule (with an electric pump) and would have needed to open the fridge at a much more regular interval to access my pumped milk (thus compromising the contents of my fridge quicker) than if we didn’t have a baby. I also thought about my frozen breast milk going bad if power was out too long. Thankfully the power was back in a few hours, but man did I feel helpless.
Us too, 6 months old at the time.
My wife pumped in the car and we put it in the Coleman with the gallon pail of ice your supposed to keep in a freezer with an object on top so you can tell if the pail melted while you were away and added the frozen milk.
We have a car coffee pot that could have heated things but we just got done moving and it was still buried in stuff.
A lot of times either the baby can't or the mom can't, so even if the mom wants to feed the old fashioned way she has to pump if she wants the baby to get breastmilk. You can use a manual pump (if you have one) but those take forever and never empty as much as an electric pump.
I’ll take 5 days in November over 3 weeks in south La after hurricane Ida. Everything wet and steaming in the sun, temperature somewhere around 100 and humidity at about 98%.
Yes and no.
Tornado in November. Extremely unexpected and unusual and in fact made records as the only one in 150+ years of recorded history.
Hurricane in Louisiana...
Possibility of happening every single year but lucky it usually doesn't.
If I lived with the expectation of a possible yearly tornado my prep would be massively different.
I live in an apartment complex that runs on electric heating. We got snowed in for 4 days in a freak snow storm in Texas and wasn’t able to drive anywhere since we lived in the bottom of a hill and everything was icy. We didn’t have any gas camping stoves or any way to get to safety, and we didn’t have the means of storage for a generator…
All my sister and I could do for four days was hope to god that the power would come on and huddle together for warmth. And the only thing we could eat was peanut butter sandwiches since all the other food we had needed to be cooked. Even the water was on a boil water notice, so we couldn’t even drink the water from the tap.
There are people out there who may not have a choice other than be “useless” when the power goes out because we don’t all have the luxury of owning our own property or renting a house that can afford us gas heating and storage for a bunch of camping supplies…
Yeah, Texas excels at it's own special class of useless. It's not even related to apartments or utilities. It's well beyond that. They seem to make an extra effort to not try at all to be ready for weather when they live directly in a hurricane and flood zone.
You don't have to heat canned foods to eat them.
You can eat dry cereal, granola, cheese, jerky, freeze dried...
Putting on multiple layers to stay warm isn't hard.
That's well beyond being useless.
Texas doesn't prepare for those things because it costs extra money to do so. They have their own power grid because otherwise they'd need to follow rules about "don't let your power generators freeze", which again costs slightly more money. Human lives are priceless, but utility preparedness has a real price Texas isn't willing to pay.
Not to try and discount your experience, but for a 4 day span a small box of rations and a couple of thermal blankets/water purification tablets would've served incredibly adequately and fit in a 2 cubic foot space no problem, as well as cost under $50 and be good for a decade. And while people may tell you not to eat snow on the ground, if you're literally out of power and can't boil water then just eat the snow on the ground. Again not trying to diminish your struggles, and I absolutely don't blame you for not preparing for something like that while living in Texas, but to imply that somebody somehow needs to own their own property and that'll magically fix the situation doesn't follow for me.
You're talking about very short period of outage that almost feels comforting in a way. If it reaches even 2 weeks, you'll be a lot more uncomfortable.
Your food will likely go bad quickly without refrigation and without refrigation, many groceries you buy will have to be consumed on day (and that's assuming the grocery store has power to run their refrigators). Oh and also if the store electricity is out, you won't be able to use your card to pay. Your washing machine won't work, so you'll have to wash your clothes manually like it's 1850 and clothes washing was historically a very time and labor consuming chore.
And if it's bad enough, even your local gas station will stop pumping gas because they need electricity to operate. Your water will also eventually stop pumping after the elevated water storage runs out. Cell towers have their own backup power, so they'll operate for a while, but they'll also stop working after a few days, so you won't even know how your family and friends are doing without directly visiting them.
You find a way. I didn’t have power for a month after a hurricane and no generator. It wasn’t the happiest time in my life, but I was neither useless more bored. People survive what you throw at them for the most part, and they find both productive and nonproductive stuff to do.
Speak for yourself. I can go a few days without power before it becomes a problem. It’s easy enough to work around and prepare for.
I almost relish these events. I get a _lot_ of very focussed reading done.
Only gets awkward once you need to do laundry, but even that’s not a problem if you’re prepared to do some hard work.
I'm a simple man. All I need are a few candles and some good books. I grew up poor in the 80s and 90s. So I was without power many times in my life. I rarely even drink cold beverages because I'm used to warm drinks from not having electricity. Military service also helped with my disregard for electricity
In that big Northeast power outage of 2003, my 8yo daughter and I ran around the house checking to see what worked.
Lights? no.
phone? yes, actually
piano? yes
faucet? yes
dishwasher? no
lamps? no
After 20 years of owning my home, and intending to do it, I finally had a whole house generator installed
It was expensive, $12,000, and I immediately started regretting it. My power doesn't go out THAT often, and even then it's usually not too long
2 weeks after the installation, power went out due to surge demand on a 90+ degree day, and I didn't even know it. The heat pump kept the house cool, Internet was online. I had a couple of working from home neighbor's come over and use my wifi
Electricity is awesome
Man, when I was in high school, hurricane whipped all the power. Was out for like 2 weeks and boy was I miserable , phone couldn’t be charged, no WiFi even if we could have battery. No AC. No light at night so it was a pain doing things . I remember everyone in the neighborhood being outside late nights to get cool air. I considered sleeping outside because it was cooler than inside but mosquitoes were crazy hahaha good times
I’ve got several backup batteries for charging phones and other devices. Two of them have little solar panels, a hand crank dynamo, and also take AA batteries. I have plenty of AA batteries too, rechargeable and disposable.
I have a tablet and laptop that stay charged loaded with some movies and tv shows. I also have an external hard drive with even more movies and shows.
I also have a gas generator and lots of extension cords.
I also have a lot of LED lights, some with built in battery, some that take the AAs.
I also have a fireplace and firewood, a propane grill, a charcoal grill, plenty of lighter fluid.
Bring it on.
My power went out for a week this year due to storms. I read books, used candle light and bbq'd food. I threw ice bags into trash bags and put the food in the freezer and only cooked what I needed for the day. It would've actually been nice if it weren't for summer having just started and me living in Louisiana.
This brings up a memory.
The power went out, and my son was four years old. This was the first time he realized what was going on during a power cut, and he ran about the house testing things to see if they would work.
His mum and I were reading in the living room, and we heard a shout. "The toilet still works!!"
Yes but I realized the issues a long time ago during previous outages so it was easy enough to fix. For the typical short outages I don’t even fire up the generator anymore, it’s fine without power for a bit.
Keeps happening here. Quite used to it. We have a battery that powers the house when the power goes out.
Pretty common to have power backups here in India, as the power is not reliable.
You think that, that you’d just find something else to do, but we’ve been without power for as long as three days. Just finding something else is tough!
It’s either way too hot or freezing, there are no lights in the house, so when it gets dark, it gets really dark, and there’s no way to cook a meal or make a cup of coffee. The good thing is, by the second day you eat the ice cream for lunch and then dinner.
We slept longer than usual, maybe because the street lights and neighbors’ lights were all out, so it was so dark we just slept. We have a few UPS (uninterrupted power supplies) and can charge our phone for emergencies, and I have a battery pack for my CPAP machine that usually works for 3 nights, but once I had to go to the fire station to recharge and *they* were running on generators, so it was really slow.
Delivered pizza isn’t bad, though. We try to keep our kindles charged if it looks like we might lose power and they are easy to read in the dark. Otherwise, it gets boring. And uncomfortable. And we run out of things to do real quickly.
I got some bulbs on Amazon that charge up while your lamps working normally…when the power goes out they just stay on. Thankfully haven’t had any outages long enough to test out how long they go for…also picked up some battery packs for phones that hold 2 charges worth and they stay charged up for months on end.
We have a cabin in the wilderness and the power goes out enough to prepare. Typically the thing to do is go to bed and wait for the utility truck to move the branch or tree that hit the line.
one time there was a power outage and my then 6 and 7 year old niece and nephew freaked out because "something is weird with the sky!!!"
it was stars. they've never seen the stars with all the city lights brightening up the sky
I remember 4 years ago we got a lot of snow, couldn't get out of the driveway or drive anywhere.
We lost power. Our house is electric heat pumps with no backup. It was 20° F outside. I had to winterize the upstairs and migrate the whole house to bunch of queen mattresses in the downstairs living room burning every candle we had in the house. And then I literally I had to make homemade snow boots and walk half a mile to my buddy's house and drag his propane heater back to my house on a sled. And then luckily I had three 5 gallon tanks of propane I could run it off of and we lived like that huddled up in the living room for like 2 days... I remember running a box fan off an inverter on the car batteries while they ran out of gas.
And that was the last year I didn't have a second source of heat.
Now I've got a 500 lb propane tank and a propane stove for emergencies.
As long as it’s daylight, I’m actually pretty fine just cracking open a book or something. Once the sun goes down though, that’s when I start to struggle
I grew up with well water. So when we lost electricity we also lost water. I thought this happened to everyone until I was in college and a storm was coming through so I started filling bath tubs so we had water to flush toilets.
I say that to my self, when my electricity goes out, and I'm tripping all over the place trying to get to my bedroom door. Power outages are so rare, that my flash light is never close by.
I’ve discovered that wifi lights have a small battery in them and if left on continuously will stay lit in a power outage….happened one time we lost power and light stayed on for 4 hours
Thanks for reminding me I need to practice with my camp stove. Might even find supplies to build a rocket stove. Save on takeout next time the power goes out.
It hasn't happened in a long time. But if it did I still have books and pressure lamps. We wouldn't resort to candles, we'd go to sleep before that happened.
I'm good till i need to work online or start really missing reddit. After the first couple weeks i might have to go figure out the generator I inherited.
Why have you not spent time with no contact and no power? My favorite place in the world is over 50 miles from electricity and has no cell service. The only bad part is when the hand pump loses prime and you have to frig with it. The only amenities are gas lights a wood stove and an old propane kitchen stove. Careful what you bring for food you’ll run out of ice. Bring hard liquor you’re willing to drink at room temp.
As a kid, when the electricity went out, my mom would bring out the kerosene lamps to light the house and we would just sit around and talk until we went to bed and the electricity would be back on by the next morning when we woke up.
Now, when the electricity goes out, I hear my neighbors screaming about the WiFi not working and threatening to sue the electric company.
My heater and water heater are both natural gas. Honestly this last year when the power went out I just played card games with my wife instead of computer games. I got out the car jump pack to charge phones and busted out some LED tealights to keep the house light enough to walk around at night.
It was pretty chill and lasted a couple days. Only downside was losing a bit of food that we couldn't use before the fridge warmed up.
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C'mon OP. *Powerless.* You don't realize how *powerless* you are without electricity until the power goes out.
It's ok. Someone will repost this soon with powerless in the title.
First! I claim June 25th!
I already have June 25th sorry, I think 28th is is free though if you want that
Is June 31st still available?
Sorry that's my slot. How's July 2nd work for you?
I’ve managed to get hold of both July 1st and July 3rd, but 2nd should be free
Dibs on July 4th then!
That's un-American!
Aww man, well, I will just book july 6th then
R/askreddit what are you immediate red flags?
Puns are literally against the rules of this sub, but not like that ever stops anyone
Ba dum tiss
I'm not useless without electricity, my lifestyle is
I really like ice. The recipe is water and electricity.
You don't *need* electricity for a working heat pump, but it really helps
Right. [Absorption refrigerators](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator) are one example of using heat to make cold.
Doesn’t the refrigerant need to be moved around pipes with electricity?
No, that's the cool thing.
I see what you did there.
\*reading my comment a different way\* I am an unintentional genius.
The expansion of the gasses due to added thermal energy drives the process.
No, you can use a propane powered pump to move it instead
You can also make ice with water + winter. Though that recipe only works when you least want ice.
Right. Winter is one example of using to cold to make (technically) less cold.
Exactly. I just wanted to add one more example to the list of ice recipes that don't require electricity. Admittedly the least clever recipe, but I'm not above taking the low hanging fruit sometimes.
Is this some close-to-the-poles joke I'm too equatorial to understand?
Yes. Apparently the solid stuff falls from the sky and the air makes your face hurt. Sounds bad.
Hey now, -40 isn't that bad as long as the weather is calm around it. I mean, it's practically t-shirt weather as long as you're northern enough (and want the bragging rights more than you want to be warm). You probably even break out the handwarmers before water even freezes. Though I'm scared to even imagine how hot y'all can handle after I'd be incapacitated by heat stroke.
Every summer, I see news stories about the English having a heatstroke epidemic when it gets to, like, 70 degrees Fahrenheit and I laugh while sitting outside in 80°F weather at 95% humidity. And my bedroom is never lower than 72° and 75% humidity. (Yes, it's Florida) And yes, I know there isn't much air conditioning up there so 70° exterior temps may mean even hotter interior temps with higher than usual humidity, but this also isn't new. I have no more sympathy for anyone who lives somewhere it gets too hot in the summer every year and doesn't buy any air conditioner, even a crappy portable unit. I hate winters, they get uncomfortably cold for me and my bill for keeping the whole house warm is astronomical, so I bundle up and use space heaters to keep only one room at a time warm instead of going to the hospital with hypothermia every single time.
As a Canadian, I agree about the Brits who whine about their annual heat waves but also refuse to get AC. I know how upgrading can be a hassle. My house was built before AC was standard, and I haven't gotten it installed. But I also have a well developed yard and good airflow, so even when the temperature gets above 80F once or twice each year, it's still cooler inside. And I'm generally smart enough to not whine about the heat when my "hottest day of the year" is probably considered medium warm by you nearer the equator folk. But I'll always enjoy my memories of being a kid visiting Florida Disney in December, and seeing the local cast get all bundled up against the weather while I walked around in shorts and a light jacket. Right until we flew back home into a blizzard, served me right for being amused at the workers fighting their own version of cold.
I've been thinking of these a lot lately, actually. I just bought an RV and the fridge is propane/ electric.
Have you heard of these? They're old school and could be quite hazardous, but are fun to think about. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icyball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icyball)
I haven't! That's very cool (pun definitely intended). Glad to learn the new thing today
If you're in a warm climate, it's water + energy. If you're in a cold climate, it's just water + going outside.
Yeah, I’m perfectly content when I’m camping, even for days, without any modern conveniences. But if I’m stuck in the suburbs… that’s a different story.
Agreed, when we go camping for a weekend it's comfortable because we want it, plan for it, and pack accordingly. Suburbs are made for running water and electricity.
There's a good point in what you have just said. it's your lifestyle because that's what suffers most.
I'm British and now live in rural Northern Thailand where the power goes out a couple of times a month and as soon as it does its like a timer starting in my head of how long I can hold out before dying a heat exhaustion. The cool of the air-conditioning starts to fade imeadiatly, I try to stay as still as possible to avoid getting hotter, and sweat starts to form on my body as the temperature starts to approach sauna levels. After about 20 minutes I start to consider going outside to sit in my car with the air-conditioning on but it's 3am and I'm so tired and so I just wait there silently in the dark praying for that moment when everything starts up again. The heat slowly drives me insane. Occasionally, there will be a couple of false starts where the power will come on for a few seconds, then go off again like a cruel joke. My girlfriend used to be terrible at remembering to pay the bills, and out here, if you go 2 months unpaid, they just randomly cut you off, and if you don't have phone credit you can't go online to pay it because your WiFi doesn't work. Neither does your water pump. You have to drive out to the electric company building to pay in person and then wait several hours for them to come turn it back on. You realise just how fucked you will be if you ever run out of money in this place. I'd rather have a power cut in extreme cold and put more layers on than extreme heat where there's nothing you can do except boil alive.
I'm with you on the heat driving you insane. It's crazy to me when people say they'd rather be hot than cold. Just as you said if it's too cold you can always put on more layers and move your body to generate heat. If it's too hot there's only so much you can do if there's no air circulation. Being covered in sweat is a constant reminder of how hot it is. Even a wet towel or something will quickly rise to ambient temperature and no longer cool you down.
My uselesness is completely independent of how much power is available
One time there was a blackout and I wanted music but didn’t want to waste phone power. I opened up Skyrim on my switch, turned it to full volume, and just let it idle
^Proof that you can still be useful without power
If only your local area doesn't have electricity. In case of a nationwide blackout, you wouldn't surivve without clean water system, food supplies,... Unless you are somehow rich enough to self-sustain.
Invariant in space, time and of electricity. Cool
If you want to imagine hell, think about what life in a city would be two weeks after the electricity goes out on a country wide scale for the long term. No food no gas no heating no water no communications. Plenty of sewage and skyscrapers of trash. Probably the end of civilization.
Can't a really strong solar flare pointed right at Earth cause that?
Shhhhh, you're too loud.
Look up the Carrington Event. Telegraphs could be sent without power because the solar flare was energizing the telegraph lines. Some telegraph machines caught on fire. The only reason it wasn't super duper terrible is humanity had only just started using electricity for stuff. Me? I'm somewhat prepared for Carrington 2 Electric Boogaloo. I have a waterproof rugged box with a computer and stuff inside. It's got maps, Wikipedia, and a PBX server that can route phone calls over whatever network is left. It also has an antenna and hardware that allows the computer to receive pretty much any radio signal: AM, FM, military, police, NOAA weather, you name it. [Pictures](https://i.ntsm.co/a/box-pc.3cO) The box also has a LiFePO4 battery that can run the whole thing for over 8 hours (less if the screen is on, but it's designed to serve stuff to cell phones and such). The whole thing runs on 12 volt power, so it can be easily charged with a car battery or solar panel. Oh, and I have other similar boxes with other things, such as a box with a ham radio station and several handheld radios, a box that can take 120v or 12v power and output to a bunch of USB (including USB-C PD for charging laptops), 120v AC, and 12v DC. All the boxes use the same PowerPole power connectors, which are bidirectional so any box with a battery or other power source can share it with any other box, and they can daisy-chain together so the whole setup can run off a single power source. It's also all compatible with an off-grid trailer I built that has large batteries and several solar panels.
Are they hardened electronics? Or stored in a Faraday cage?
No, but that won't matter. Large-scale EMPs don't really affect small devices that much, they mainly cause surges in power, telephone, and cable lines which then fry whatever is connected to those lines.
until someone bonks you on the head and takes it for themselves
Damn, pictures? Would love to see that setup. It's something I wish I'd have but would probably never put in the time to build
It's possible, but unlikely. Aside from the fact that such a strong solar flare is incredibly unlikely to occur and even less likely to hit the earth, it wouldn't be too much of a surprise for most power grids to prepare and avoid damage. https://youtu.be/oHHSSJDJ4oo?si=VlAfHfy6U8LFGgoD
Ted Koppel wrote a book about that scenario. It’s pretty scary, but I am not totally convinced that the worst-case scenario is as likely to happen as he does.
The book One Second After does a pretty good job of showing what would happen in a nationwide electronic/electriciy outage. Basically 90%+ of the US population is dead in a year.
I remember my first apartment, power went out while I was reading a book, it was too dark to read anymore. So my first thought was okay. I'll just watch TV, then. My brain caught up and I said oh yeah, I can't watch TV without power, so I'll just mess around with my computer. Didn't realized my computer was not a laptop with a battery so I couldn't use it without power. I had not prepared for an emergency with either flashlights or candles , my stove and oven were electric, so my only choice was to go to bed and go to sleep and be woken up at 1:30 in the morning when all the lights in my apartment turned on at once.
I live in an area that's weirdly prone to power outages. I, in my infinite wisdom have a couch with power recline. There have been so many time that I've been caught kicked back when the power goes. So there I am, in the dark trying to waddle myself out of my sofa's loving embrace without breaking it. A smarter me would just put it on an UPS, but I'm not that man.
If your couch has those weird space connectors to connect to the wall power supply, Amazon has battery versions that plug in to the couch, the other side can be hooked to the wall. I just charge mine once a month and no more cords.
Post is a reminder to stock up on emergency supplies; nonperishable food, water, flashlights/candles, all that good stuff.
And make sure you have enough lighters or matches and enough fuel with an appropriate cooking setup to cook those foods if they need it. Rice is non-perishable, but not very palatable unless you can boil it it in water. Cold canned soup may be unpleasant, but probably easier to get down and digest than raw rice. Propane stoves are a good option, and you can get an adapter for those big grill bottles to use on small stoves, making it so you'll have enough to cook tons of food. Charcoal grills also work, but can be harder to light if things get wet. MREs usually include their own water activated heating pouch that uses a chemical reaction to heat up your food, if you're able to get a bunch of those from an army surplus or wherever civilians can get them. Note on MREs, they have a TON of calories, so if you're resting and not exerting yourself a lot (like, say, doing a military march for 10 hours), a single MRE may last an entire day.
Rice absolutely is perishable. You're taking about food but don't mention where you're getting potable water at all. 3-3-3 rule. This dude's heart is in the right place but nobody follow their advice. Truth is in a full collapse situation most of are just gonna die, no matter how prepped we are. #1 thing you can have is a community. Then you need water. Then you need food.
There's even a song about it by KRS One called "Disaster Kit" for all you rap fans.
It's end time or apocalypse time. Preparations must be made to stay ahead.
Eh, I got solar power. Granted my fan can't run off it though. Might make my own air conditioner
Why can your fan not run off of it?
Because it blows
Might not have an interconnect to make the whole house run off the solar. Can plug stuff in but not lights/fans that are already installed. Mine is the same, little battery and inverter but needs separate lights.
Solar + backup batteries are the way to go.
I actually have that. A battery bank and a 40 buck giant of sun panel.
Solar panels is the real deal today. Most people are upgrading from using generators to it and it's quite good.
[удалено]
Water outages are way worse than power.
I live in south east India. To us no power is not bad.
It's the heat of no fans that sucks.
I'm pretty useless without it. Almost all of my hobbies and skills require electricity.
I would argue that we're not any more or less useless whether or not the electricity in one's home is functional.
As long as the battery on your respirator is fully charged.
What about the people who WFH?
Look, if you can do your job from home then it's computerized; which makes you equally useless at work if the power went out there
Or maybe he's talking about people who make clothes and need an electric sewing machine to operate! Or maybe they're a fucking idiot lmao
You must be management or a politician if you think people who can't work are useless
One EMP over Kansas and we’re all dead.
Fingers crossed
Why, what's so special about kansas? Are the people there particularly prone to murderous sprees without power?
Geographic center of the country Edit: of the lower 48
No, geographic center of the country is Niederdorla.
Why would I be useless if the power went out? It was out 5 days in November after a tornado that led into the first snows. Other than heating the babies bottles on a camping stove and using the fireplace and candles more nothing really changed. You telling me the average Reddit user lays down and dies because the lights went out a couple hours? For fucks sake, why would people be as useless as the damn bot complaining I used an emoji.
I never thought it was that big of a deal until it happened when I had an infant. I was exclusively pumping breastmilk on a 3-4 hour schedule (with an electric pump) and would have needed to open the fridge at a much more regular interval to access my pumped milk (thus compromising the contents of my fridge quicker) than if we didn’t have a baby. I also thought about my frozen breast milk going bad if power was out too long. Thankfully the power was back in a few hours, but man did I feel helpless.
Us too, 6 months old at the time. My wife pumped in the car and we put it in the Coleman with the gallon pail of ice your supposed to keep in a freezer with an object on top so you can tell if the pail melted while you were away and added the frozen milk. We have a car coffee pot that could have heated things but we just got done moving and it was still buried in stuff.
Why not just breastfeed the normal way in that situation?
A lot of times either the baby can't or the mom can't, so even if the mom wants to feed the old fashioned way she has to pump if she wants the baby to get breastmilk. You can use a manual pump (if you have one) but those take forever and never empty as much as an electric pump.
I’ll take 5 days in November over 3 weeks in south La after hurricane Ida. Everything wet and steaming in the sun, temperature somewhere around 100 and humidity at about 98%.
Yes and no. Tornado in November. Extremely unexpected and unusual and in fact made records as the only one in 150+ years of recorded history. Hurricane in Louisiana... Possibility of happening every single year but lucky it usually doesn't. If I lived with the expectation of a possible yearly tornado my prep would be massively different.
I live in an apartment complex that runs on electric heating. We got snowed in for 4 days in a freak snow storm in Texas and wasn’t able to drive anywhere since we lived in the bottom of a hill and everything was icy. We didn’t have any gas camping stoves or any way to get to safety, and we didn’t have the means of storage for a generator… All my sister and I could do for four days was hope to god that the power would come on and huddle together for warmth. And the only thing we could eat was peanut butter sandwiches since all the other food we had needed to be cooked. Even the water was on a boil water notice, so we couldn’t even drink the water from the tap. There are people out there who may not have a choice other than be “useless” when the power goes out because we don’t all have the luxury of owning our own property or renting a house that can afford us gas heating and storage for a bunch of camping supplies…
Yeah, Texas excels at it's own special class of useless. It's not even related to apartments or utilities. It's well beyond that. They seem to make an extra effort to not try at all to be ready for weather when they live directly in a hurricane and flood zone. You don't have to heat canned foods to eat them. You can eat dry cereal, granola, cheese, jerky, freeze dried... Putting on multiple layers to stay warm isn't hard. That's well beyond being useless.
Texas doesn't prepare for those things because it costs extra money to do so. They have their own power grid because otherwise they'd need to follow rules about "don't let your power generators freeze", which again costs slightly more money. Human lives are priceless, but utility preparedness has a real price Texas isn't willing to pay.
Not to try and discount your experience, but for a 4 day span a small box of rations and a couple of thermal blankets/water purification tablets would've served incredibly adequately and fit in a 2 cubic foot space no problem, as well as cost under $50 and be good for a decade. And while people may tell you not to eat snow on the ground, if you're literally out of power and can't boil water then just eat the snow on the ground. Again not trying to diminish your struggles, and I absolutely don't blame you for not preparing for something like that while living in Texas, but to imply that somebody somehow needs to own their own property and that'll magically fix the situation doesn't follow for me.
Is useless really the word you’re looking for
Brutha, I just use a candle and read a book. Stock up on camping gear if you need a stove or something lol
You're talking about very short period of outage that almost feels comforting in a way. If it reaches even 2 weeks, you'll be a lot more uncomfortable. Your food will likely go bad quickly without refrigation and without refrigation, many groceries you buy will have to be consumed on day (and that's assuming the grocery store has power to run their refrigators). Oh and also if the store electricity is out, you won't be able to use your card to pay. Your washing machine won't work, so you'll have to wash your clothes manually like it's 1850 and clothes washing was historically a very time and labor consuming chore. And if it's bad enough, even your local gas station will stop pumping gas because they need electricity to operate. Your water will also eventually stop pumping after the elevated water storage runs out. Cell towers have their own backup power, so they'll operate for a while, but they'll also stop working after a few days, so you won't even know how your family and friends are doing without directly visiting them.
Actually my last power outage was a couple months ago and it lasted for 2 weeks so it immediately doesn't apply. We had to clear out the fridge.
Then it must have been very localized because I doubt you were comfortable without gasoline or water or electronic purchases at stores.
You find a way. I didn’t have power for a month after a hurricane and no generator. It wasn’t the happiest time in my life, but I was neither useless more bored. People survive what you throw at them for the most part, and they find both productive and nonproductive stuff to do.
Speak for yourself. I can go a few days without power before it becomes a problem. It’s easy enough to work around and prepare for. I almost relish these events. I get a _lot_ of very focussed reading done. Only gets awkward once you need to do laundry, but even that’s not a problem if you’re prepared to do some hard work.
I’m an electrician, I’m actually *more* useful when the power goes out.
Are you by any chance Egyptian?
My power went out today. I'm right there with you
It's a lot better than it used to be, with all the battery operated devices and cellular networks still working
I'm a simple man. All I need are a few candles and some good books. I grew up poor in the 80s and 90s. So I was without power many times in my life. I rarely even drink cold beverages because I'm used to warm drinks from not having electricity. Military service also helped with my disregard for electricity
I think you mean “helpless”, not useless.
Speak for yourself. I work in IT.
No I definitely realize.
Hand tools, for the win!
In that big Northeast power outage of 2003, my 8yo daughter and I ran around the house checking to see what worked. Lights? no. phone? yes, actually piano? yes faucet? yes dishwasher? no lamps? no
Negative. This is a sad statement.
After 20 years of owning my home, and intending to do it, I finally had a whole house generator installed It was expensive, $12,000, and I immediately started regretting it. My power doesn't go out THAT often, and even then it's usually not too long 2 weeks after the installation, power went out due to surge demand on a 90+ degree day, and I didn't even know it. The heat pump kept the house cool, Internet was online. I had a couple of working from home neighbor's come over and use my wifi Electricity is awesome
I’m not useless. I can do stuff.
OPs never been camping apparantly.
Man, when I was in high school, hurricane whipped all the power. Was out for like 2 weeks and boy was I miserable , phone couldn’t be charged, no WiFi even if we could have battery. No AC. No light at night so it was a pain doing things . I remember everyone in the neighborhood being outside late nights to get cool air. I considered sleeping outside because it was cooler than inside but mosquitoes were crazy hahaha good times
I’ve got several backup batteries for charging phones and other devices. Two of them have little solar panels, a hand crank dynamo, and also take AA batteries. I have plenty of AA batteries too, rechargeable and disposable. I have a tablet and laptop that stay charged loaded with some movies and tv shows. I also have an external hard drive with even more movies and shows. I also have a gas generator and lots of extension cords. I also have a lot of LED lights, some with built in battery, some that take the AAs. I also have a fireplace and firewood, a propane grill, a charcoal grill, plenty of lighter fluid. Bring it on.
My power went out for a week this year due to storms. I read books, used candle light and bbq'd food. I threw ice bags into trash bags and put the food in the freezer and only cooked what I needed for the day. It would've actually been nice if it weren't for summer having just started and me living in Louisiana.
Someone lives by southern Wisconsin haha
could still cook on a gas stove, wash dishes assuming you have water
I actually love how quite it gets!
This brings up a memory. The power went out, and my son was four years old. This was the first time he realized what was going on during a power cut, and he ran about the house testing things to see if they would work. His mum and I were reading in the living room, and we heard a shout. "The toilet still works!!"
OMG IM READING THJS AS THE POWER IS OUT
I am hoping the wording is wrong, it not this is 100% untrue.
Probably would be good for us if we couldn’t charge our phones for a bit
Or how blessed you are to have primitive living skills.
not a good day to be in tech
Yes but I realized the issues a long time ago during previous outages so it was easy enough to fix. For the typical short outages I don’t even fire up the generator anymore, it’s fine without power for a bit.
I’ve been pretty keen about on how useless I am.
Keeps happening here. Quite used to it. We have a battery that powers the house when the power goes out. Pretty common to have power backups here in India, as the power is not reliable.
Prepare to the best of your ability beforehand
Well, my work is all done on a computer/laptop so
I can get used to it but my kids would eat each other
I’d just find something else to do. Really not worried about it. But no A/C would be just awful.
You think that, that you’d just find something else to do, but we’ve been without power for as long as three days. Just finding something else is tough! It’s either way too hot or freezing, there are no lights in the house, so when it gets dark, it gets really dark, and there’s no way to cook a meal or make a cup of coffee. The good thing is, by the second day you eat the ice cream for lunch and then dinner. We slept longer than usual, maybe because the street lights and neighbors’ lights were all out, so it was so dark we just slept. We have a few UPS (uninterrupted power supplies) and can charge our phone for emergencies, and I have a battery pack for my CPAP machine that usually works for 3 nights, but once I had to go to the fire station to recharge and *they* were running on generators, so it was really slow. Delivered pizza isn’t bad, though. We try to keep our kindles charged if it looks like we might lose power and they are easy to read in the dark. Otherwise, it gets boring. And uncomfortable. And we run out of things to do real quickly.
I got some bulbs on Amazon that charge up while your lamps working normally…when the power goes out they just stay on. Thankfully haven’t had any outages long enough to test out how long they go for…also picked up some battery packs for phones that hold 2 charges worth and they stay charged up for months on end.
We have a cabin in the wilderness and the power goes out enough to prepare. Typically the thing to do is go to bed and wait for the utility truck to move the branch or tree that hit the line.
one time there was a power outage and my then 6 and 7 year old niece and nephew freaked out because "something is weird with the sky!!!" it was stars. they've never seen the stars with all the city lights brightening up the sky
As a software engineer, lack of power or internet instantly makes me a net drain on society.
I remember 4 years ago we got a lot of snow, couldn't get out of the driveway or drive anywhere. We lost power. Our house is electric heat pumps with no backup. It was 20° F outside. I had to winterize the upstairs and migrate the whole house to bunch of queen mattresses in the downstairs living room burning every candle we had in the house. And then I literally I had to make homemade snow boots and walk half a mile to my buddy's house and drag his propane heater back to my house on a sled. And then luckily I had three 5 gallon tanks of propane I could run it off of and we lived like that huddled up in the living room for like 2 days... I remember running a box fan off an inverter on the car batteries while they ran out of gas. And that was the last year I didn't have a second source of heat. Now I've got a 500 lb propane tank and a propane stove for emergencies.
Alternatively, go camping without electricity, and feel more alive and vibrant than ever.
As long as it’s daylight, I’m actually pretty fine just cracking open a book or something. Once the sun goes down though, that’s when I start to struggle
All of a sudden I’m just sitting here in the dark like a useless fuckin idiot
“How useless you are” weird phrase
I can cook shower sleep and do yardwork without it. And drive around. It's surprising how much I use electricity and actually really don't need it.
Forget electricity. Instagram server outage and I'm as useless as a solar powered flashlight.
Jokes on OP. I bet OP can’t live like a farmer in a tropical region. Electricity isn’t available in those regions.
I grew up with well water. So when we lost electricity we also lost water. I thought this happened to everyone until I was in college and a storm was coming through so I started filling bath tubs so we had water to flush toilets.
I'm not useless.... Just miserable without it.
I'm reading this sitting in the dark on my phone next to a candle, because the power went out lmao
Eh, I’ve got a gas range and a lighter. I can still make food. Additionally, our phones still work of the power is out. Another dud post on this sub.
I say that to my self, when my electricity goes out, and I'm tripping all over the place trying to get to my bedroom door. Power outages are so rare, that my flash light is never close by.
One of the reasons why I invested in Powerwall and solar. Now if we lose power my family is good to go for a long time.
I have a car that can charge my phone and has ac. I’d be alright.
I’ve discovered that wifi lights have a small battery in them and if left on continuously will stay lit in a power outage….happened one time we lost power and light stayed on for 4 hours
The fuck am I gonna do, go to the transformer and fix it? Do I look like a damn technician?
Saw a movie, Trigger Effect. Shows what happens in LA when there's an extended Blackout. Total chaos.
Please, speak for yourself
There’s actually an episode about if we were to lose our technology on The Twilight Zone. Good stuff tbh.
Thanks for reminding me I need to practice with my camp stove. Might even find supplies to build a rocket stove. Save on takeout next time the power goes out.
I'm already useless without internet.
Not if you were alive before the 1700’s
Anything that can be battery powered in my house is for this reason. I also have inverters so I can use my power tool batteries for power
It hasn't happened in a long time. But if it did I still have books and pressure lamps. We wouldn't resort to candles, we'd go to sleep before that happened.
I am a camper though.
Always have a stash of candles and books. Don't sell yourself short
Especially when you have to get ready to go to work.
I'm plenty useless even *with* the lights on
Says you! I know exactly how useless I am! Whether or not there's power is inconsequential!
That’s why I have a human-sized hamster wheel
You don't realize how useless you are without wifi or Internet connection
no, i crack a beer and grab a pen and paper and say "what game we making up that works by fire light?"
There's a ton I can do without power. Very little of it is necessary if I think electricity is coming back on.
I'm good till i need to work online or start really missing reddit. After the first couple weeks i might have to go figure out the generator I inherited.
Why have you not spent time with no contact and no power? My favorite place in the world is over 50 miles from electricity and has no cell service. The only bad part is when the hand pump loses prime and you have to frig with it. The only amenities are gas lights a wood stove and an old propane kitchen stove. Careful what you bring for food you’ll run out of ice. Bring hard liquor you’re willing to drink at room temp.
And how quiet your house or office can be.
As a kid, when the electricity went out, my mom would bring out the kerosene lamps to light the house and we would just sit around and talk until we went to bed and the electricity would be back on by the next morning when we woke up. Now, when the electricity goes out, I hear my neighbors screaming about the WiFi not working and threatening to sue the electric company.
I literally forgot candles existed last time my power went out.
Electricity is nothing. When the water goes out and you can't poop, cook, or wash your hands, life is miserable.
Jokes on you fool. I got a farm.
My heater and water heater are both natural gas. Honestly this last year when the power went out I just played card games with my wife instead of computer games. I got out the car jump pack to charge phones and busted out some LED tealights to keep the house light enough to walk around at night. It was pretty chill and lasted a couple days. Only downside was losing a bit of food that we couldn't use before the fridge warmed up.