A. Jacobs said:
We wish to prepare for emergency - such as power outage because of
earthquake or hurricane or flood.
When power goes out we want:
1. lighting - battery powered florescent lights seem to be best?
2. phone - charge cell phone battery and direct line phone
3. laptop computer battery charging
4. get to watch TV - may be off the air when cable goes out. So TV tuner for
the laptop computer
5. Microwave to cook simple stuff or boil water.
How can we get power source from - car battery?
Any small and simple electric generator to charge the car battery?
12VDC to 115AC convert? 400 watt sufficient?
This is what we come up with in our meeting of brain storming.
The biggest discussion were about the spoiled food in refrigerators.
Your comments and suggestions please.
Your responders so far seem a bit too much upstanding citizens to have
mentioned a decent gun with lots of ammo. In a true disaster situation a
gun with ammo would be far more valuable than any of the above mentioned
equipment and toys. With a gun you can take what you need, defend what you
have, and protect yourself against other armed looters/unsavory characters.
Depending upon your circumstances, you may want to organize and lead a gang
of other people in similarly dire circumstances as your own. A leader is
expected to be strong, and possessing a gun with the knowledge to use it
would surely help (along with natural and acquired leadership skills). A
well organized squad of armed guys is a far more formidable force than a
single person acting alone. Aside from being formidable, a team of guys can
actually do things, useful and productive things not normally possible for a
single individual. With good leadership and some decent creativity you can
really do pretty much anything, especially if the entire resources of a
whole city are available for looting. Realize that resorting to illegal
activity isn't likely truly necessary in most cases, there are usually many
ways to skin a cat.
That said, I would disagree with those who claim the microwave is a waste of
energy and it is better to just use the fuel for cooking directly.
Conventional BBQ grills and whatnot are horrendously inefficient in terms of
fuel use. Most of the heat ends up just getting wasted since the grill
isn't insulated, nor was it designed for efficiency. A microwave is very
nice since it directly concentrates all of the heat straight to the food.
Note that heating a meal up in a microwave will not cause your whole kitchen
to get hot, whereas heating that same meal with a conventional stove likely
will tangibly increase the ambient temperature. Granted a generator isn't
very efficient (20%???), but the microwave itself is quite efficient at
converting electrical to heat energy right at the food (70%???).
Additionally, if you tried to cook your food with something like gasoline
you are liable to inadvertently poison yourself. If you've got a propane
grill with fuel, I would use it, but if not, I would not try to improvise
with gasoline, I would use wood first. Gasoline is far to valuable as an
automobile and generator fuel anyway.
Also, I would suggest not drinking or consuming alcohol in your food if
things really are desperate. Alcohol is a powerful diuretic, it will
dehydrate you, thus wasting valuable potable water. Use high concentration
ethanol for cleaning and disinfecting things, but don't directly consume it.
In my mind, by far the most valuable "item" you can stockpile is
information/mental preparedness, not actual objects (such as the laptop
computer). Obviously some amount of potable water is indispensable, but
with enough information and creativity non-potable water can often be
converted into potable water, and besides, chances are you probably have a
decent amount of potable or semi-potable water already sitting around in
your water heater and toilet tank(s). Just don't squander invaluable and
irreplaceable resources in times of emergency.
