Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

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

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

Did two weeks after Helene. Generators, UPSs, and self-hosted services kept us entertained and the security cams powered up. There was some rationing for three or four days until the gas stations got power but we were ready. By the second day we were running the air conditioner at night to sleep and didn't miss any football games on tv.

I have a wood burning stove with peltier device powered fans to distribute the heat.

It gets hot enough to boil water so I can cook on it.

And I have about 4 days worth of continuous fire firewood.

So assuming that I couldn't just hop in the car and drive somewhere else I guess I would be okay for about 4 days.

Solar power on the roof, powerwall battery backup, and 3100 gallons of rainwater. All electric appliances here. We could go weeks without power.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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..

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.

It is less than a day until my home becomes unusable. I need the heating every day because it is winter. The heating runs on gas, but it also needs electricity.

This cannot kill me because the car is still working and the next town is only 10 minutes away.

Power outages around here are very rare, and usually shorter than 6 hours.

Why is no one talking about water?

I got a generator and some fuel, some rice and beans. Should last a couple if weeks. I feel like it us unrealistic to plan for longer. If there is a society wide collapse, it really doesn’t matter how much gas you have in your generator.

I have a fireplace, a spring, and laying hens. I'd be fine, just incredibly bored.

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.

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.

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.

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