POWER OUTAGE PRACTICE - Saturday March 28th

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!

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When home, I ceiling bounce w/ neutral tint at night,, been doing that for several years now.
gives a mellow lighting to the room

We have power outages at least a couple times every year, the longest ever in some really terrible conditions, was less than 24hrs..
{no heat, no water, can't open fridge/freezer,, but the worst is no fan to sleep w/ at night, I gotta have a fan}

radio, radio, radio

Cool... hadn't heard of it. Thanks for the heads-up!

Take it easy,
Bob

Ya but in the spirit of Earth Day are we supposed to even use flashlights? They are electric and even rechargeables produce toxic waste when worn out....and if we light a fire it's got to use fuel and may contribute to global climate change.

Besides...the last episode of Black Sails is on!

The Dutch already had their practice

Many Dutch ppl already had their practice: there was a mayor power outage yesterday morning in the Netherlands. Affecting 2 entire provinces (Noord Holland, and Flevoland), ~1 million households or some 2.7 million people. For reference: that's about 1/6 of the entire nation's population. Has been said to be surely in the top 3 of biggest outages in this country ever (even parliament members were asking questions ).

From what I read, cause was a botched up maintenance job at one of the main power distribution stations (380 kV network). Back in operation about an hour later, but as usual took much longer to restore power throughout the entire affected area. Shops / restaurants / gas stations closed, airport flight schedules disrupted for many hours, same for trains, traffic lights, newspapers printed elsewhere, quite a few Dutch websites offline (!?), etc, etc. Just goes to show how dependent on electric power modern society has become...

Probably not too many flashlights were used, since it was in the morning daylight hours. Myself didn't experience any of it, since I live outside the affected area.

Some coverage by the BBC here. Local news site had several reports, see this one (Dutch).

Re: The Dutch already had their practice

"mayor power outage" sounds interesting! lol

Gotta love Earth!

About 10,000 residents in one of our small local towns lost power a few days ago due to a loose birthday balloon. So never know when you need your lights ready!

http://www.katc.com/story/28606332/birthday-balloon-to-blame-for-abbeville-outage-power-now-restored

It's always good to check your lights. Top off the batteries, make sure they are in their proper location, etc. I actually do this along with changing the battery in my smoke and CO2 detectors, when daylight savings time changes. It's the single only useful thing I have found with daylight savings. Otherwise, it only serves to be very annoying.


Sent from my iPad using Candlepowerforums

Here we go, everyone report in!

Six new spare Sanyo 18650's just arrived from bladesmith3, fully charged and ready to go, Captain Halo. :twothumbs

~ Chance

Thanks for the reminder.

My "power" just came back on. After turning off the last of my house lights (I started a few minutes late), I headed to the coat closet to grab a jacket to see how many neighbors are participating. While putting on said jacket, I immediately dropped my light, which wasn't turned on. I hadn't set up area lighting yet, so luckily I had a spare light so I didn't need to feel around on the floor for my primary.

While I didn't learn anything new, I did confirm that my 3XAA Coleman LED lantern is far from ideal. The brightness difference from min to max is inadequate, and the hot spot from the LED is annoying. It's worked relatively well on a couple camping trips, the only time I've used it. I've been planning to try out a Siege Lantern, and this exercise will speed up that purchase.

I confirmed that a tail standing 6P with Malkoff tail cap running a Malkoff M61 219 delivers ample light to fix a snack and wash a few dishes.

Gah! I missed this last night :fail:

However, there will be an "earth evening" here tonight to make up for it. I recently got some new flashlights - what a perfect opportunity!
It's 12:40 here right now in Tokyo, and I'll start my earth evening at 19:00 (and keep it going until I sleep!). The weather is fairly mild too, so I wont miss my heating. I think I just heard a flashlight roll slightly in anticipation.

Sorry to say I completely forgot about Earth Hour. However, I don't really feel guilty after the many self-imposed blackouts I've had over the years. It's been a while, but as soon as my wife leaves town for a few days again I'll be sure to bring out the lanterns, flashlights, and portable radios.

Geoff

Earth Hour number four tailstanding my Quark Mini AA Warm with Sony ICF-B05W combo; cozy diffuse lighting with local college radio playing old pop-country (Nancy Sinatra followed by First Aid Kit, good combo!) Needed to grab a fresh Eneloop for the light and took me a few minutes to find the case - lesson learned, keep the batteries in a ready-to-go location.

Grizzman said:

I immediately dropped my light, which wasn't turned on.

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Tritium!

Grizzman said:

I confirmed that a tail standing 6P with Malkoff tail cap running a Malkoff M61 219 delivers ample light to fix a snack and wash a few dishes.

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Definitely prefer tailstanding over any lantern, especially once you get warm tints involved.

zipplet said:

The weather is fairly mild too, so I wont miss my heating.

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80 degrees F/27 C here, I missed the cooling..

My primary nightstand light has trits, tailstands, and has output and beam pattern that makes it it very useful for indoor usage. I wanted to spend some quality time with my latest purchase, a QT2L-X. It works well in a tactical role with pants incompatible with the Malkoff MD2, but its inability to tailstand makes it a rather poor choice for EDC duty.

I also greatly prefer tailstanding to lanterns, but wanted to see how well it would work. In addition to the 6P in the kitchen, I tailstood an MD2 w/ M60WF in the bathroom on low, and a 4000K TorchLAB triple in the bedroom on low.

I still haven't started my "compensatory earth evening" yet, but this thread has made me realise that I need to get hold of a decent radio. In the event of a disaster here it would be quite important. I'll take a look next time I'm at my local electrical store.

I will probably be using some tail standing lights as I don't own a lantern, in combination with a diffuser cone for my thrunite T10S.

Well we made it. My wife wouldn't let me turn off all the power. She pulled the ole sick baby excuse on me. So me & my 12 y/o daughter went outside in the back yard and pretended we had no power. May sound stupid, but I showed her how to change a battery in a light in dark by feel. So now she knows how to change the battery by checking which way is positive by feel. I explained reverse polarity and some lights & electronics can be damaged.

We used headlights and I showed her how to set up the cotton picker solar station, in case power outage lasts til the following day. And the coolest thing is we started charging some AA's using salt water using the G-MAG. If you don't own one of these devices, it is super cool and goes everywhere I go camping. It is one of the reasons I like the AA SF Outdoorsman so much! All you need is salt & water and you can charge 6 AA's in a few hours.

So, we had fun and my daughter seemed to enjoy learning & pretending we had no power.

Am I the only one who's getting more & more turned of, whenever encountering "survival" in some product to keep your batteries charged?

Okay, I know being prepared does make sense. But both in daily life, and when push comes to shove, especially in the case of extended outages when a storm (or a meteor :duck: ) hits, there's a loooong list of things that's more important / useful to have than charged batteries:

• Pre-stored drinkable water, eg. for when some idiot in an excavator diggs through a main water pipe
• For when that runs out: means to filter / purify say, rain water (or worse: surface water)
• Ehm... food :laughing:
• ...that doesn't go bad when the fridge goes out for a week+
• Fuel to cook that food (where necessary)
• Tools to make fire, to do that cooking (among other things)
• Pocket knife, bottle / can opener
• A small toolset to make emergency repairs
• Blankets, clothes etc for when it's cold outside & heating goes out
• First aid materials
• Portable radio, to help stay informed about what's happening
• In case large scale unrest breaks out: ways to put up some self-defense. In the form of training, (self-defense) weapons, or both
• Etc, etc, etc
• Having most of the above in reach, so you don't need to travel far when SHTF

Sure, at some point you need light to see what you're doing, or to check what's going on outside. But managing to keep your phone charged etc, won't do any good when mobile networks go down, emergency services can't make it to your location, or don't show because they're overwhelmed elsewhere. And if things get really bad, lighting up your place like a christmas tree would just attract beggars, looters & robbers.

So let's face it: just a few (reliable!) lights per person will do. Especially if they come with a few low modes. Then a relatively small stash of batteries can go a long time.

Beyond that, collecting lights is just fun & games. Not that I disapprove of that as a reason... :devil: lovecpf Just cut out "survival" bs from product descriptions, for people who are already likely to have dozens of lights & 100+ batteries ready to go.

(note this 'rant' is mostly aimed at the companies advertizing gear like the above)

RetroTechie is fired up. lol
Ironic you don't like the "Survival" terminology, but posted a list that most would interpret as a survival list.

So, I guess your beef is really with the survival marketing, not the survival principle?

You mentioned cell phones, however, not everyone uses cell phones in survival situations. The product above & solar gear are perfect for charging batteries for small portable Ham Radio Gear. Which rely on a mobile network. If a person needs or desires to communicate, batteries & charging them is a important element to that plan.


For me: Survival is more like a product tag. How one uses a survival item depends on that individual. I would gander that most folks would never really need it in a true life & death survival situation. But personally, having been several days with out power, and the only forum of outside communications was ham radio. Having a way to keep it running day and night is a sound idea. Would I survive with out it?? Sure, but what fun would that be?

So bottom line, it may boil down to a persons definition of survival.

As for advertising, "survival" sells along with "tactical", "digital", "turbo", "HiDef" and the list of keywords goes on and on. I don't blame them at all for using those terms.

Good idea to be prepared. I noticed this thread several days ago. Last night came and went and I forgot about it!

No worries,,,,,,,I am prepared at any moment and as far as my torches and battery powered radio,,,,,,,,,,,I have that covered,maybe to an extreme!

I have 38 torches. About a half dozen have been designated for illuminating certain rooms! I would NEVER want this to happen but if the power was out for a few weeks I would still have enough battery power. Everyone of my torches have their own batteries,,,,,,,,,,,something that will change in the future,,,expensive and not that economical! I also have a a dozen or so cr123's and a dozen or more AA Alkaline.,,PLUS CANDLE POWER!,,,More than a dozen candles.

Before I excite you[more like bore you!] with this I will say this has NOTHING to do w/ saving money and EVERYTHING to do w/ being a flashaholic and using my lights[I feel guilty if I don't!]

-BST has now been designated as a tail stand torch to illuminate kitchen.
-TN12 on low under family room lamp.
-BC40 used to tail stand on dining room table sometimes.
-S10 on low illuminating glass vase w/ flowers and blue rocks at bottom,,looks beautiful!
-S20 used on ml/low in bathroom early in morning when light bothers eyes!
-$ store light used to illuminate my Jimi Hendrix watch for my daily 40 minutes stretching which helps w/ several disc herniations! Several of the exercises are timed.
-No name light to light up my flashlight laboratory when checking voltages, charging/changing batteries ect.

:shakehead :shakehead :shakehead


My primary EDC's for navigating the CONDO.

1.D25C2vn
2.SC62

Backups:

1.SENS CR
2.PD12vn


The only thing I would really miss if their was an extended power outage is the Computer! Phone and TV are not that important to me.

Str8stroke said:

Ironic you don't like the "Survival" terminology, but posted a list that most would interpret as a survival list.

So, I guess your beef is really with the survival marketing, not the survival principle?

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Yep. People may laugh all they want at the "prepper" crowd, but they may well be the ones laughing if things go south. Regardless of how much they're overdoing it.

So indeed my beef is with stuff being marketed as "survival" gear, when it's way, way down on the list of things you'd need when it actually comes down to survival situations. Not that a thing like the above might not be useful. But if the house is flooded in 5 ft. of water, hand me a rubber boat & some dry clothes first, please. And something to eat. :laughing:

As for advertising, "survival" sells along with "tactical", "digital", "turbo", "HiDef" and the list of keywords goes on and on. I don't blame them at all for using those terms.

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Survival gear is gear targeted at a very specific purpose (although useful for many purposes). "Tactical" is even more specific (referring to combat / defensive uses). "Digital" is a very specific technical term. Sure we're used to marketing abuses of all of those terms. But that doesn't mean those abuses aren't abuses...

For me: Survival is more like a product tag. How one uses a survival item depends on that individual.

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For me, survival is more like a skill set. And a state of mind to go with it. Tools etc (especially "survival" gear) is just things that may be used for that purpose. For the record: I wouldn't count myself among the prepper crowd. But still: having some stuff to be prepared for unexpected events (and knowing how to use it!) is a good thing.