How About High Quallity Magnetic Induction Light for the Post Apocalyptic World?

How about it? I would love to see Surefire, Malkoff, or a custom shop come out with a super high quality battery free light which is self charged by shaking or cranking for the post apocalyptic world. No more worrying about keeping a stash of fresh batteries which, no matter what, will only get you so far.

Granted these lights wouldn't have the output of their battery counterpoints, but the upside is that you would not have to fret over batteries for the rest of your miserable post-apocalyptic life. Okay, I doubt the big quality producers will bother with this but are there any custom makers out there that might be interested in coming up one?

It really depends on the Post Apocalyptic scenario you have in mind IMO. For example: without food,water, gasoline & electric I don't think any flashlight would be of much help.

Right now, I think that flashlight still kinda falls under the perpetual motion machine kind of thing which is impossible.

Tracker II said:

How about it? I would love to see Surefire, Malkoff, or a custom shop come out with a super high quality battery free light which is self charged by shaking or cranking for the post apocalyptic world. No more worrying about keeping a stash of fresh batteries which, no matter what, will only get you so far.?

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Look at those contradictory words. It cannot be charged if there is no actual battery.

ico said:

Look at those contradictory words. It cannot be charged if there is no actual battery.

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Light for life uses capacitors. 50000 charge cycles (90 sek charge time). No battery.

i,m sure it is possible, crank dynamo charging supercaps, it has been done, in parts by different brands. i see plenty of crank lights with small nimh cells, and there are lights powered by supecapacitors, no one yet merged all of this thec into 1 product. pbly cuz there is no market for it now. but i don't see why it would be imposible.

The main trouble here is that, honestly, there just isn't much market for it. Most end-of-the-world scenarios don't really require very much light. Let's compare a shake light to a light with appropriate mode settings. Let's say I start at the low end:


I buy one supercapacitor with a 50000 cycle life, and a quality shake-charger (That will presumably last, say, 500 shakes per charge. Do they even make shakers that last for 25 million shakes? How do I test that?). Then I stick an LED and a switch on. But I'm not done. It needs good circuit design. It should probably be made durably. It should have nice gaskets or be permanently sealed. It ought to have a switch to last millions of cycles. It sounds to me like my parts count is up above $200 per unit in a small run.

What is the output of this? My own shake-light with inductive charging runs a dinky 5mm LED for about five minutes with thirty seconds of shaking. My output estimate tells me that I get about 5 mW out for five minutes, or .12 watt-hours per minute of shaking. That means that if you shake the light for half an hour, you'd charge an Eneloop. Not bad! But this just trades too-dark for tennis elbow. And don't drop this unit too many times. Even at $200 per unit, after TEOTWAWKI, your warranty is miles away from S*** creek looking for water.

Even if you spend all the money in the world, things break. One light is not enough. One power source is not enough... One supercapacitor is not enough. I'll bet you a half-moldy can of apocalypse beans that if you can't find a spare flashlight or extra cells in the apocalypse, a flashlight wouldn't save the day either.

I'm in the market for this idea, but until then, I plan to use rechargeable batteries and a GoalZero solar charger if the post apocalyptic world arrives.