What do you all do to be prepared for long term power loss?

[FPGT72]

Where I live is remote but I do have electricity. Nothing else. Been here 43 years. Longest outage in all this time - 28 hours. I belong to an electric Co-Op. They have outages - scheduled 2X annually. One in the spring - one in the fall. Two hours each time.

If there were ever a two month outage - it would be due to something a whole Hell of a lot more serious than lack of power. Something like - Yellowstone volcano going off or the like.

No more chicken for the kid here. It's going to be fresh meat - like it or not.

The longest I was out was several years ago after an ice storm. We did not get power restored for 14 days. We ran on a generator for that entire time. It was really just 4 houses that had to wait that long, everything else got restored fairly quickly. Our propane tank was full so hot water was a non issue. At the time we ran on a 4kw Homelight generator with a Robin engine, I still have it. Now the house has a standby gen, but back then we did not. We had just moved in that year....still had stuff in boxes. One of those "we will get to it things that got moved up".

My initial plan was to be able to shutdown the generator and save propane and use solar for the "important stuff". Now knowing what the likely SHTF thing will be, I doubt I will run the gen all that much. The propane will become very valuable.

We learned quite a bit during that outage, and we had access to town where everything was "normal". I can only imagine if town was down that long, let alone two months. People will loose their minds.....more then they already have.

 

[fatjay]

In 15 years we've lost power for more than a week 4 times, the longest was 20 days. I have a cheap chinese durostar generator from amazon I bought in 2015 and it has thousands of hours on it by now. We lose power once a month and it's been amazing. It runs 24/7 during outages with me going to fill up the tank every 8 hours.

I'm putting up solar panels to get off the generator and building out battery storage as we speak.

 

[JasperFrank]

If I know a storm is coming, first thing is to fill both bath tubs for flushing water and sponge baths. Then only use the tap for drinking. We have two 50 gallon pressure tanks. The selection of canned goods makes a big difference in how much water we needed. We didn't run out of drinking water. Addiction to cigarettes WAS an issue.

 

[shooterdon]

What I struggle with is that I could not do just that.

Some think of Jesus Christ of carrying a sword to kill his enemies and justify that "sword", but I do not.

No different than how Muslims interpret the Koran IMO as far as killing others.

A very long time ago as a grunt working, I stopped to help a old lady shoveling her driveway (I could have gotten in a lot of trouble for doing so).

I stopped to help this older woman because I remembered what my mother had told me, to treat people like my mother would expect me to treat her and my father if I saw them in need.

When I saw that old lady working to shovel her driveway, I couldn't help but think if that was my own mother, so I stopped and helped her and did her driveway.

What I have learned in business is do what it right and let the chips fall where they will, and generally, it will work out.

When I give a bum panhandling on the street $20, I don't care if he buys drugs, it's what my intent is, NOT his (generally I offer to buy them food in person and see where it goes...).

When it gets to the point that I say no to everyone in need, in my own line of thinking as a Christian, I'm ready for Heaven as I know what Heaven is to myself and I'm done with being an arsehole

Perhaps when you lose a son, it gives you a different perspective and being more at ease joining him instead of fighting for your life at all costs so you can breath on this world to give yourself another day

For myself, my own God judges you on your own actions even if you can't how everything plays out 100 years from now...

Sig,
First my sincere condolences for losing your son. We lost a 4 YO granddaughter and know what it is like.

As to equating killing during a SHTF scenario to Muslims killing others as directed in the Koran, I see those as vastly different. Unlike a Muslim, I do not believe everyone must accept my religion or die. I will kill if I need to but not do it the name of my God. He does not direct me to do so.

God has already granted me eternal life and I do not fear death as much as I fear the painful journey to get there. When God is done with me, He will call me home. Until then, I believe he wants to me stay alive to do His work and protect those I love as best I can. Maybe using my skill set to kill looters and raiders is part of His plan?

 

[ruffdog]

Throughout history, many wars were fought because people thought the supreme being warranted it. If SHTF there won't be just two sides, there will be TOO many sides and most people won't really know which side they are really on. As someone said....it will be bad. I know many good people and I would like to work WITH them through hardships.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

They would need a generator to power the pump that replenishes the delivery trucks, as I understand it.

That part I couldn't do much about, other than bringing a generator, having never seen the process. Then again, it's probably very similar to when filling a tank from the delivery truck.

If it gets that bad the last thing a propane delivery driver is going to give a crap about is delivering you propane. They are going to be at home with their families trying to sort their own problems out.

 

[BruceSH]

If you are talking about being out that long it will get quite bad. Most people can't feed themselves for 3 days let alone 3 months. IMHO a gas generator will do nothing but draw attn to yourself. Not generally a good idea.

We have 6 close(r) neighbors. 3 of them are "salt of the earth" people. 3 of the 6 are also habitual dope smokers. I am not a fan of the smell of burning marijuana but could put with it in a pinch. The issue is that if life became difficult due to disasters or the Chinese landing here to repo reclaim "their" land, I could not depend on my glassy-eyed neighbors for anything above a basic level of assistance.

 

[FPGT72]

Throughout history, many wars were fought because people thought the supreme being warranted it. If SHTF there won't be just two sides, there will be TOO many sides and most people won't really know which side they are really on. As someone said....it will be bad. I know many good people and I would like to work WITH them through hardships.

That will depend on just how bad it is, and you will not know how bad it is till it is on top of you.

There are so many.....not so good.....things that will really come to the top when people start to run out of food.

You say "many good people". Well help too many and even the most "prepped" person will die, and all around him will die. Just where are you going to draw the line with your last 10gal of fresh water, or those last antibiotics. I have a feeling when it comes to "many good people" when you have a family member with dysentery going on day 3 those antibiotics you have horded will go to that family, and you "working WITH" those good people will go out the door.

It is harsh, very harsh, but the world is going to be unforgiving and brutal. Knowing where to draw the line going in is going to be key. And with what the op put out, several months, that would be enough to do it. Cold hard choices will need to be made.

And I do think it is coming.

 

[HawkinsHollow]

I too think it is coming, but not the catastrophic SHTF scenario that everyone is worried about. Although it could happen, and that scares the crap out of me. I think economies are going to collapse and life is going to get MUCH MUCH more uncomfortable for all but the richest 5%. SO yes, I am preparing. Nothing crazy but I have food stores, guns/ammo, water storage, generators, fuel, wood heat, contingency plans, have people I can trust and fall back on. Could I be doing better? Yes! But something is better than nothing as far as I am concerned.

 

[drssg]

A 22KW generator running 100% of the time will use approximately 3 gallons of LP per hour, and I could be wrong about that so someone can check me on that, but I do know I raised my hand in class to double check the usage (we have a 500 gallon tank) and all I know is when I did the math on the loads and usage of LP, no way could I justify it for the amount of time without power.

Our 22KW generator uses a little less than 2 gallons of propane per hour. That's a rough estimate, based on the gauge reading before and after 24 hours of operation. It's not a cost-effective approach to generate electricity, but it sure is nice to have.

We had a 3-day outage after some local tornadoes, and it also coincided with a heat wave. We had an old dog at the time that didn't tolerate heat well. Without the generator, we would have needed to take him to someone else's house until the power was back on. Even that was impossible for a while, because large trees and downed power lines were blocking the road in both directions from our house.

Truth be told, I've also become a little wimpy about dealing with the heat. The dog made a convenient excuse for me to enjoy my expensive AC.