~patches~ > wrote:

>We live in an area where the power goes out quite often during storms.
>Yesterday a storm blew up and I knew it was going to be a dilly. I was
>planning a pot of chili for dinner

Sorry you had to go through the mess, but it sounds like you made the
best of it. After a couple of past disasters and before the y2k
scare, I became a sort of "survivalist". The main reason the power
issue came to be number one is that my house is built over a spring.
(Kicks self in butt a thousand times). We keep a large supply of food
and several hundred gallons of water available at all times (spent 2
weeks without water - not fun). Anyway, the spring issue forced me to
commit funds that I really didn't want to let go of. I installed a
fairly large solar system to power auxilary water pumps, amateur radio
gear and I wired 12 volt fluorescent lighting fixtures throughout the
place. I have inverters in case the need for 110 arises (charging
batteries, etc). Besides the normal flashlights and candles and
whatnot, I felt the need to further supplement lighting. I got a
baygen windup lantern, the solar powered lighting and a number of
Krill electroluminescent lightsticks from www.kriana.com. Go for the
Standard green 180. Once your night vision is going, it will
illuminate a 30 by 15 foot room with ease and run 180 hours on 2 AA
batteries. For the heat and cooking needs - there's the fireplace,
gas grill, charcoal grill, 2 Kerosene heaters (great for heating
soups, beans etc as long as you leave the lid on to keep the kerosene
taste out). Coleman style backback stove, coffee-can chimney stove,
standalone propane burner. If all else fails, I could dig a pit and
build a plain old campfire. All I'm saying is, yeah, you're right,
cooking without power in winter is no fun - on the other hand, I hope
any disaster happens in winter because the issue of food storage
becomes a non-issue. So far it's all been in hot weather and it was a
real pain. The other point is that you'd be amazed how resourceful
you become when you're forced to do so, even if you haven't planned at
all. I think most people (as long as some sort of "home base" is
still intact and not completely washed away) have sort of an inate
problem solving and survival capability. BTW, if you DO happen to do
the planning and preparing like we did, you absolutely MUST do test
runs on everything. I found some huge problems in the original setup
we had. OTOH, you can live a long time with extra clothes, a few
2-litre bottles of water and some canned green beans if that's all you
have available. The worst aspect of huge disasters like the one we
just witnessed is that no matter how much people planned, it was all
washed away and useless. You can only"do what you can do and no
more".

--
The Doc says my brain waves closely match those of a crazed ferret.
At least now I have an excuse.