POWER OUTAGE PRACTICE - Saturday March 29th

Just a reminder that Saturday night is your Earth Hour opportunity to test your power outage preparation skills - At 8:30PM your local time, turn off anything and everything that requires mains power, get out your flashlights and lanterns, and dig in for an hour of blackout entertainment.

When the power goes out, do you know which lights you'll use in which application in your house? Or who will get which light? Do you know where the local news station is on your radio? Have you actually practiced/tried any of these things? Now's your chance! For an hour you can turn everything off and see what actually works and what doesn't in practice. If you value *being prepared* and want to know ahead of time what to do the next time the power goes out, this is the crash course you've been waiting for. I'll be relaxing with my family under the ceiling-bounced warm-tint glow, listening to some entertaining talk radio..

Some ideas for your one-hour power outage:

The Battery-Powered Radio: Once you're in an actual power outage, there's no TV or internet to get updates from - How many people are affected by this outage? Is the cause over, or is another problem headed your way? Are there special instructions for staying put or evacuations? If you have a battery-powered radio and you know where your local news station is, you can remain informed up-to-the-minute without skipping a beat. You might get better reception in one area of your living space than another, or one station might provide more updates than another; you won't know until you experiment - it's a good thing you're doing a practice power outage to find out!

When you've found your news station, you probably won't want to listen to it nonstop for this drill, so tune around, see what's out there. There are lots of talk and entertainment shows you probably don't know about, and over on the AM band, you can receive stations from many hundreds of miles away, see what's playing in other states. You can have the radio on in the background while you're doing anything else, so find something fun and enjoy.

Board/Card Games: Been a while since everyone sat at the table and played a game? A lantern or ceiling-bounced light and it's on! (Don't forget the physical copy of the Scrabble dictionary..)

Fondue: No utilities needed for a steno burner; grab some chocolate and some fruit/cookies/whatever and dip in. Everyone feels a lot better about power outages once you get chocolate involved..

Glow Sticks for the Kids: A few minutes in the dark will show you how completely useless glow sticks are for just about anything (something I learned during an actual power outage!) but kids love 'em and are endlessly entertained by them. A fine distraction since they're cheap and don't last that long anyway.

Family Photo Album: A nice quiet time to flip through family pictures by the lantern/EDC light.

Stargazing: You'd be amazed how much better you can see stars just by having your own local lighting out, and not everyone has time/realizes you have to sit out for at least ten minutes before your eyes truly adjust. Be sure to keep count of satellites and shooting stars.

One out of every seven people on Earth in 4,100 cities will be taking part, join in!

Thanks for the reminder! I had forgotten about this event.

Admittedly since my kids have flown the homestead, I normally use my flashlights of all kinds even in the house & outside(animals in backyard) after civilian twilight (-6deg below horizon). I do not listen to talk radio, nor do I watch TV. However with my UPSs, I can keep my Internet up/running for several hours. Hmmm, maybe in the spirit of Earth Night, I suppose I should turn off my router.... That leaves my battery operated shortwave receiver. Maybe I should tune in to the former Mystic Star frequency of 6.812 MHz or perhaps search where it went to. Satellite comms are not the only 'modern' answer. Even airliners still have HF radios for trans-Atlantic/Pacific comms just in case! HF is still 'it' for long distance comms!

For one HF propagation forecast:
http://www.hfpropagation.com/

Here in Wales UK i will join you for an hour and switch all the stuff off and rely on battery power for my radio and lighting.

I will be out at that time tonight, but maybe I will do it Sunday night. Sounds like fun.

hmm, It's saturday night here and at 8:47 the power went off across the whole town. No joke. Are you sure this was optional or mandatory? LOL

I'm currently using my laptop, with the wireless router running on my UPS. The battery on the laptop will go out before the UPS battery will.

Flash lights involve those generic EVEREADY floating LED 6 volt lantern. I've got an adapter that holds 4 D's and is shapped like a 6V battery. Run time on the label says 55 hours, but that's using the 6 volt battery, which probably uses F cells. It's still not very bright, even with the 6v battery, but it's bright enough for inside the house, so i guess it trades brightness for run time. If i need to venture outside, I'll use my D maglite, powered by Fuji brand, made in japan, alkaline batteries. Got 3 or 4 mini mag with xenon bulbs, and my EDC LED 2AA mini mag if i need em. Plus about 6 of those cheap 3AAA led flashlights, that have those 9 leds with the tailcap, that i get free every time for shopping at harbor freight. An energizer LED headlamp, i'll use tonight, when i try to finish the book i'm on "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley. AAA solitare, and a few black and decker spot lights. one is 4AA and the other i 4 C's. got a few more lights if i need em, just can't think of them right now.

For radio, got a grundig, SW,LW, MW(AM),FM radio. I can use my scanner for NOAA weather station. Got another cheap like am/fm radio i can use for the weather station if i need it. Freq. is 162.400 Mhz. Also can use my GMRS/FRS hybrid radios for weather or to communicate with. few more GMRS/FRS radios that don't have NOAA weather capability. Got 3 handheld CB's also.

Entertainment? no one to play games or anything with, enjoying my time on the laptop while i got it. Got books to read, and can use the radio. When i get done with the books, i'll use my AAA powered MP3 player, hooked to my 2AAA fm transmitter, and tune my radio to the FREQ. of the transmitter and listen to the podcast of my favorite talk shows when i go to sleep and while i sleep (I have to have noise in order to fall asleep, and most of the time to stay asleep) I do this everynight, except when the powers on, i use my TOSHIBA boombox that plugs into the wall as the radio. Probably step outside in a bit and see what's on the ol' shortwave band. See if i can find the stations from china or germany again. Can't understand em, but it's nice to know they're there. Sometimes i'll run into a english speaking station or two from over seas.

Got lots of canned food and MRE's. Probably dig into some salt and pepper chips here in a bit.

LOL don't remind me of glow sticks. I bought some one day and when i bent it to turn it on, i apparently bent it one time to many. Not to mention the fact that i was twirling it by the string (had a latch on the end, to tie string to) I was twirling it like a helicopter rotor and from spinning it and cracking it, it flew everywhere around the room. Was easy to spot to clean up, cause it glowed.

Don't have to worry about batteries. I've got plenty stock piled. EXP. dates rand from 2018-2023.

Still got 63% left on my laptop. I'll probably shut it off went it gets around 15-20%


Nice post, BTW. It really gets one thinking of what they have to "get by", and to remind others of stuff they may need to pick up for a future power outage. Still, it's mandatory right now for me to use them, since the power is out now. Probably someone drunk hit a power pole again....

I don't need to practice tonight - we had the real thing for a few moments due to a storm in the area. My PD32 is in my pocket right now and I've got other lights ready in case the power drops again.

Earth Hour 2014 has concluded in this part of the Planet. I took a walk in my suburban neighborhood starting about 2045. I was disappointed. Only 3 houses could be identified as using portable lighting instead of flipping the wall switch. Not sure how to count the one house that had the TV on, but no room lighting. I guess that is no different than those of us that were using our laptops with a UPS keeping the Internet up. I suspect that most people in this area did not even know that Earth Hour was tonight.

Board games with chocolate cake and Mike's Hard Black Cherry Lemonade while the radio played salsa/tropical Latin jazz under the ceiling-bounced warm tint glow, fun stuff.

Some other folks who participated:

Shanghai, China:


Petronas Towers (Earth Hour top):


Brandenburg Gate:

In the spirit of this last night, the Mrs. and I read via ceiling-bounced lighting. 005 cranked way down low on level 1 as a nightlight later in the evening. No TV for us, the only thing really running were the cellphones charging.

Eiffel tower, Paris.

I didn't participate in this event, but I have a natural gas generator that kicks in whenever the power cuts out from the grid. Does running that count?