Six Days in the Dark

As someone who lived through a flood caused by a hurricane, without power for 10 days, I have first-hand experience with FEMA.

Some fat-ass government worker showed up with a tablet, checked a bunch of boxes on an electronic form to gather statistics on all the damage, gave us some information on government-backed loans, then left. This about 2 or 3 days after.

I will never forget how absolutely useless FEMA was.

A few years ago, I purchased a "solar backpack" because I thought the idea was really rad, and I live in Phoenix, so the thought of trekking through the urban jungle with a solar panel on my back and perpetual, unlimited sun power to my laptop and two phones, that was irresistible!

So the reality was like this: really awesome power bank included with decent backpack. The power bank has plenty of connectors and adapters to plug into virtually anything. Power bank is juicy enough to power a laptop for a couple of hours, or a smartphone for all day long. Rugged construction there.

The backpack is kind of unwieldy but has some nice pockets and it's totally electronics-aware. You don't want to stash a drink or food anywhere in this thing. There are plenty of grommets for threading the cables you'll need.

The solar panel is like the worst feature of this "solar backpack". Of course, imagine the low surface area you'll get on a backpack. Now imagine how long it takes to charge a quite beefy power bank with that. It took me 3 weeks of all day long, in the clear winter sunlight, with a zero load, to go from zero to about 90%! Three weeks!

So clearly this solar power source is inadequate to keep a device going without discharging completely by dawn. But I certainly do appreciate the power bank, and I do keep this around for emergencies, and I basically just plug it into the wall until it's full, then I stash it away and I don't worry about it for several months.

The cost was also not terrible. I think the entire backpack set cost $300 or less. Not bad for a good durable backpack plus power bank, really; nevermind the solar component.

I hadn't looked into those battery pack things before, but that price is ridiculous. Around here, you can get a generator which will power everything you need in an emergency for about 1/10th the price.

They definitely don't make any sense for home battery storage, but the vast majority of even electrical engineers couldn't build something as reliably portable as these things. We used one of the bigger ones on a film shoot to power pretty much everything but the camera out in the field (literally in a field) and I wouldn't have even considered a DIY option. Even something as simple as weathersealing is surprisingly hard to get right and I doubt most even experienced electrical engineers could achieve these absurdly fast charging rates safely.

Yeah. Most people don't have a generator because they're on the grid, and no power is not life and death for them.

If it _is_ life and death, sure, get a generator.

I have never been in a situation where I would have bothered setting up a generator even if I had one. The longest power outage I’ve ever had was a few hours and even that’s only happened a handful of times in my life. The most recent one was last year, but before that it was probably a decade.

Living in Germany which is a relatively small country by size, it is stunning to hear about all those story about long going power outtakes. Never heard of that before.

Experienced a relatively large outage a few weeks ago. I think I had one every ten years or so. Happened at 8pm. Online monitoring system (Mobile Internet is able to run on backup power for a day) said it would be fixed by 11pm, but it was actually fixed at 9pm. I watched Netflix on my tablet for the time being.

Needles to say, there's no big market here for such generators.

Could you tell me more about why the car shouldn't be used as a generator, why an engine might not warm up at idle, and how you kept jelly at room temperature? Thanks

We buy meat in bulk and so it's really expensive to lose our freezers. We also lose power for a few days every year or two. It's worth it for us to have a generator to allow us to work and keep the food from spoiling. Plus we start eating the freezers food right away. Shelf stable food is the last to eat because it lasts the longest.

They are much more convenient than a generator (at least the portable generators that are typically used in these situations).

You can move it around inside where you need it instead of running cords all over your house, they won't kill your whole family with CO2, and you can run them during a storm.

Yeah this was an uncomfortable read. That guy write as if he is the only one in his family able to plan and act and as if his wife and kids are some kind of useless piece of shit.

His wife probably knows better than him what is really valuable to keep in case of emergency: food in cans instead of 2 additional power hungry fridge and freezer. Whike I am not into child labour, non toddler kids won't lose their childhood if they have to provide manpower, help and learn about responsibilities during a specific event once in a while. On the contrary these can be good teaching moments.

Maybe he means cash. It is good to have some cash ($100-1000) for outages of credit cards, or just needing cash.

Am I alone in thinking it's a bit silly to be concerned about breathing in 6 extra days of naturally occuring radon, of all things?

It's cool that we can get these air sensors things, but they sure give people who worry about numbers some additional ones to worry about.

I would guess the biggest stressor is having kids. Also wanting light to be able to see at night, which we've become accustomed to. And wanting communication to the larger world which we've become very accustomed to (and we can bemoan this as much as we want, but still can't deny it's a thing).

Then not wanting to waste the various stocked up food in the fridge/freezer. You could forgo this and consider it lost, but since you're already trying to tackle the general problem, it adds to the motive.

Other possible stressors that don't seem to be in play here are needing heat in the winter or needing cooling in the summer. Personally I'd rather not freeze to death, or even have to huddle under blankets hoping for someone else to rescue me. And an outage not in the winter is a great time to practice.

In general, problems compound so when faced with such a situation that lops off a huge amount of normalcy, the understandable instinct is to try to right the situation lest you fall even further. Camping is great and all, but you're still relying on the option to come back to full amenities and pay off the accumulated debt.

Puerto Rican here in the states when hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico.

I spent $600 for a box to be delivered to family which only had batteries and battery fans.

It took my family 6 MONTHS to get power.

My sister would alternate what she did every day.

Some days, she would leave in the morning to go get gas. The line was ALL DAY. Only thing she was filling was the car up. If the temp was too high, because of my grandparents (90’s), they’d just sit in the car to cool off. They’d take the time to charge the phones.

The next day, she’d hit a supermarket. Again, a line all day, to be hopefully let in, and buy whatever is left. I mean, WHATEVER is left (if anything) because the ports weren’t open and nothing was no food being delivered. She would buy expired food, food that clearly had been too warm, then cooled down again, etc.

That and then she’d hit the more rural areas to see if anyone had fruits or anything they were giving out.

The currency at one point was ice. Cause it can keep your food safe and getting it wasn’t easy.

Cellphones were down most of the time. When they came up, they were overloaded. Then antennas would run out of gas and they’d go down again.

At 3 months, I was finally able to get my mom, my sister, and my grandparents out. Before, we’d buy tickets and flights would get cancelled. Every single day we’d go in.

When they made it to us, I took my sister to help buy groceries for my mom and grandparents.

Seeing her walk in, and when we reached the back of the first aisle, she just couldn’t hold it back and fell down crying because of the food. ‘The food’.

Seeing a woman in her mid 20’s crashing into the floor and crying just cause there’s food after being 3 months without it is sad. That being my sister was, heart breaking. Other people came, my wife explained a bit. A few stayed and talked, tried to calm her down.

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I applaud the author for taking action. For preparing. But let’s also understand, this is 6 days, and he could have drove his family anywhere else with that money. Find the cheapest rental or hotel and put everyone in a room there. That’s it.

From the reading, the hard part is keeping the kids entertained and food. He lost some. He could have used bags of ice.. but a cooler, drive 2, 5? hours and fill it with bags of ice. The fill your fridge and gift the rest. Repeat in one or two days. Only open to fill a smaller cooler for the day.

But he needs a jackery, solar panels, a generator, and $350 worth of groceries. Would $100 have sufficed for a bit and left stuff for others?

For me, while rainy funds are good, after disasters back home the most important part is community. They’re the ones helping each other. But I see nothing about it.

I was thinking the same. I was on a week-long biking trip with no power. No big deal.

When in college, no one bothered to pay the electric bill and we were without power for a week or so. Candles and the acoustic guitar came out.

A radio with batteries is always going to be a good idea to have in case of an emergency. A camp stove and lots of dried ramen will keep you from starving.

Also, the authot mention sharing power from his newly purchased generator but doesn't seem to take account of mutualization of resources and solidarity.

Peopke can talk in a neighbprhiod and plan accordingly. Not everyone need a power generator, more than one family can cook from the same gas stove, etc etc

Even when total devastation happen, the radius tend to be limited and unless you live in a small island you can always find food/water and medical supply within a day of walking/cycling from the epicenter if no one is injured. When the DANA brought devastation in an area around Valencia in Spain, people would tak their bike from the main city to bring essential medical supplies to people living in places that weren't drivable too. So sure I always keep several liters of water and a few days worth of non perishable food at home, as well as a portable gas stove and a water filter I bought for hiking trips, but I would have no issue relocating me and my family for a while if needed. Adults and teenagers can easily carry 50kg worth of stuff with something as simple as a bicycle they push by hand, like people in congo do with much more capable chukudus. Electricity would be the least of my concerns.