Are you prepared for a long term Power Outage?

If the power goes out in your home and does not come back on for an extended period of time are you prepared? If you answered no then my question to you is why not?

The preface for this entire website is survival when we have nothing to rely on but ourselves. Not only surviving in a post economic collapse but also surviving tough times. We all should be prepared for hard times if nothing else. A power outage, especially in the winter can be the hardest experience of your life. If you lose the ability to financially power your house or worse… your electric company loses that ability are you prepared.

The grid events that effect it should be a big concern when preparing for disaster. Events such as solar flare, or an EMP attack could knock out electricity over large areas of the country only to not have it return for 10-to 20 years or longer! Natural disasters and the ever changing weather can leave you with out power for weeks or even months. At times even a mild storm and revert your home into a page from the dark ages.

Right here in NY I have lived through storms as a child where the power was out for over a week or more. Why my parents were not prepared I will never know. But to live with out prepping for that possibility is asinine, even more so when small children are present. Even if you live in a warm climate the problems created from a power outage can become expensive and time consuming.

Good luck keeping your food cold. Your food will spoil in the warm weather, your medical device power supplies will eventually fail, cell phones and laptops will no longer be able to access their charging stations,  sump pumps will stop pumping and your well will run dry. Lets just forget about staying cool in the summer with that A.C.. Our lives and power are intertwined in this current generation and far to many of us are dependent on sources that we can not control. Such as the National Grid energy supply here in the North East.

Compounding problems with the economy and energy legislation only leave the door open wider for the risk of hard times. Once again, why risk when we can be prepared. I guess you have other options as well. If the power went out for a prolonged period of time you could just move elsewhere to survive be it a family members house or community shelter but why subject your family to that. I think we should also take into consideration that most of the people we know would probably in the same situation and the last thing I would want to do is have to rely on someone else for aid when they are facing the same struggle I am.

Also we must keep in mind in the face of a crisis such as a flash flood, snow storm, nuclear disaster or civil unrest we may not even have the option of leaving our home. We can also suffer brown outs and black outs due to government regulation that I find very interesting. I intend on creating a separate blog post about that in the future. Energy costs can absolutely skyrocket!

If you have not figured it out yet this post is pushing towards the need of a backup generator to power your house in though times. Most backup generators including the one I have while great still depend on fuel to run, which may or may not be available at reasonable price or even at all during a economy collapse. So you see the problem there… we will only have power for as long as we have fuel with many of our backup generators. Pushing us to yet again be dependent on something we have no control over. I was not alive during the gas crisis of the 1970s but I do understand that not only could this happen again easily enough but it could magnify to a larger scale. With that said in the future I would love to have some sort of solar powered backup generator. But until then what I have will have to suffice.

My recent purchase was the 4,000 Watt 212cc Portable Predator Generator. Its relatively quiet and I can power the important aspects of my home for around 10 hours on a few gallons of gas. Now do not think I am trying to sell this generator because I am not. My goal is something much nicer. Its just the one I happen to have for the time being. Attached is a image I took from the manual and it shows the average watts used for various items I may

Usage Chart

need to use in or around my house such as lights, my heat source, refrigerator, stove, etc etc. As long as I do not abuse or overuse my generator I can power my necessities for around 140.00 dollars in gas (by our current gas price of 3.85) each month. This also opens up another sub category in regard to living off of the grid if need be, and that revolves around the option of storing large quantities of fuel properly which I will get into in greater detail another time. Now a gas generator is not a cure all to me, but it may be the key between survival and death if god forbid we are ever in the midst of a real disaster.

We should never forget the bitter cold if nothing else can kill easily enough. We can rattle off 100 scenarios but why bother. Just go buy something today and in a perfect world hopefully you can forget about it and never need its use. But if that time comes, better to be prepared than in a jam.

As I mentioned before its important to have a backup source of power to aid us, be it for its short term or long term capabilities. I hope this post can shed some light, spark a few additional cells and point people in the right direction. As I learn more I intend on sharing more and I hope to update this topic frequently as I feel passionate about it.