(Continued from Part 3.)
7. ELECTRICITY
Prepping for electricity was only on one of the top-10 lists I could find, and wasn’t mentioned at all even on most of the lengthier prepping lists. Of all the things we take for granted in our daily lives, electricity has to be one of the most common. If the Schumer hits the fan, there’s no need to step back to the 1800s and punish ourselves by living electricity free when there are some inexpensive, easy-to-use modern-day options. Too many preppers haven’t gotten past that 1800s mentality and modernized their thought, a conclusion I came to after seeing that every single prepping list I saw has candles or oil lamps on their top-10 or top-25 lists. That and the fact that typical top-10 lists fail to mention electricity altogether.
Of course, the best all-around solution is to have a complete solar-panel setup with storage batteries. The most commonly thought-of source of electricity is a gasoline-powered generator. Since a set of roof-top solar panels isn’t feasible for most people due to the expense and other factors, and since a generator isn’t sustainable (though still important for Week One), there’s a third way to provide some electricity for the long term.
A portable power station (PPS), often incorrectly referred to as a “solar generator,” is the most practical way to provide at least some electricity after the SHTF. While limited, they can cover some of the more basic needs such as lighting. Even the smallest inexpensive 300-500-watt versions can provide lighting as well as charge laptops and other rechargeables. With that said, the larger the PPS we have the better off we’ll be. One of the most important functions of electricity in a post-SHTF lifestyle will be for lighting. The majority of other tasks can be done manually but there is no substitute that comes close to the 12-volt LED lighting that a PPS can provide. Also, we’ll need to charge our laptops which will be necessary to access the next item on this top-10 list, our SurvivalBlog archive stick.
My recent articles on post-SHTF lighting discussed how to light our homesteads in the event we wake up one morning and discover we’re living in electricity-free Teotwawkiville. The first article (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) clearly demonstrated why candles and oil lamps are hopelessly impractical, expensive, underwhelming, and unhealthy compared to the amount of light an inexpensive a PPS, charged by a single plug-and-play solar panel, can provide. PPS’s are 12-volt and the smaller ones are light enough to be carried by a child. They also have a built-in inverter to change the 12-volt DC power to 120-v AC which almost all our current plug-in devices use. For the die-hard prepper, two is one and one is none so more than one PPS would be the way to go. They’re small enough that a backup can be put into a Faraday cage.
Please don’t take my word about the need of a feasible lighting system for a TEOTWAWKI lifestyle. Do a realistic weekend test using candles and kerosene lamps. Be sure to continue doing your everyday activities and provide enough light to comfortably see what you’re doing. While these lighting methods may have worked for our ancestors and groups like today’s Amish, they were able to replenish their candle and oil supplies on a regular basis so they didn’t have to worry so much about how much they used. If the grid goes down however, to provide just a year’s worth of light you’ll need many drums of kerosene and pallets of candles in your preps to get the job done. Lighting is probably the single most important area where we need to leave the Dark Ages behind and modernize our thinking.
Let me put things into proper perspective. By this time next week for $500 you could own a PPS, solar panel to charge it, and a selection of LED lights. With these, you can in all likelihood light your home for 5-10 years. You’d not only be good to go for TEOTWAWKI, but you can also use them for various things in the meantime. With oil lamps however, you’ll need to spend $1,800-$3,600 for two to four 55-gallon drums of lamp oil, find a safe place to store them, then start saving your money so you can afford to pay for Year Two lighting. Or, you could just skip the oil lamps, spend the $1,800-$3,600 instead on a really nice PPS, plus a backup PPS, plus a Faraday cage in the event of a EMP, and be in great shape on Day One.
A PPS can also charge laptops, without which we can’t access the SurvivalBlog Archive Stick which is the next item on this top-10 list. Cell phones take very little electricity to recharge and while we won’t be able to use them for communication after the SHTF, we can still use their many useful apps.
Along with a PPS, we’ll want to have many of the low-wattage devices that will make life in a grid-down world so much easier. Most of us already have a good start on this with phones, laptops, small appliances, freeze alarms for plumbing, fans, and a wide assortment of lamps and lights.
With a $300 PPS and a $50 plug-and-play solar panel, we can supply enough electricity for 5-10 years to power all of these low-wattage items. Some preppers will gladly spend that much on their 13th firearm, yet have no means to provide low amounts of power for such important things as lights and laptops.
And what about ham radios? I don’t know much about the topic but I’ve gained from reading SurvivalBlog that they can serve a great purpose after the SHTF. How will they operate without a source of electricity? A PPS can provide it.
Best of all, whether the Schumer ever hits the fan or not, PPS’s can be used around the homestead right now to run power tools when we’re working on that project on the north 40, or that camping trip for those who don’t like to go overboard on the roughing-it part, or for charging a cell phone during the week-long power outage due to a hurricane of ice storm.
For more money, we can go all out and buy one of the larger portable power stations which will allow us to do much more after the SHTF: wash (but not dry) a load of clothes, run an electric wheat grinder, a drill press, a blender, etc.
As discussed, to provide electricity for the post-SHTF homestead a full-blown solar-panel system is not required but to power some of our simpler off-grid devices, we’ll want a PPS.
Now for the blurb on solar panels. Those with even a small solar-panel setup will be infinitely better off than their neighbors who don’t. With even a small 3,000-watt grid-tied home solar-panel setup, many aspects of our daily life won’t even have to change if the grid disappears. A simple setup like the one I installed myself has only seven wires to connect and none of the complications or expenses of buying and maintaining expensive storage batteries. For those with DIY skills, perhaps it’s an option to consider. One thing never mentioned in solar-panel discussions is that, as with many other expensive items, the components don’t have to be purchased all at once. Once the inverter is installed, solar panels can be added on as finances allow.
The often-heard but incorrect complaint many have with grid-tied solar panels is that, as a safety feature to line workers, they no longer provide electricity when the grid goes down. While that’s true in most situations, there’s an easy workaround.
My 3,000-watt grid-tied system has no storage batteries and yet even if the grid fails, it will still provide enough electricity for most of the things I currently use electricity for. It keeps working because I have the right type of inverter. Most inverters don’t have this option but the SMA SunnyBoy inverter I have (there are also a few other brands) will keep the electricity flowing grid or no grid. If the grid goes down, it’s as simple as turning off the main breaker in my breaker panel and flipping a switch on the inverter. Depending on how sunny it is that day, I can use up to 1,500 watts of electricity from my solar panels. (The newer inverters can supply up to 2,000 watts.) The outlets in most homes are designed for 1,500 watts so almost anything that plugs into those outlets will run from my solar-panels even when the grid is down as long as the sun is shining. It doesn’t even need to be clear blue skies.
I tested using my grid-tied solar panels in this way during a ten-day test of my preps where I shut the electricity off at the power meter, so I can attest to its feasibility. As an extra safety measure, a transfer switch can be used to prevent the utility line and solar-panel line from being connected at the same time. In a TEOTWAWKI situation, the inverter can be hard wired into a breaker panel to supply the whole house and shop.
When the sun is shining, we can run the washing machine, operate many power tools, heat water (using a 120-volt element), run the well pump to top off the water-storage tank, microwave cook to save propane, charge batteries for all our electric devices, watch a DVD, freeze-dry garden produce, and the list goes on. If we survive TEOTWAWKI to the point where small communities are beginning to reform, think of the services we can offer to others. In a grid-down world, electricity can be one of the more valuable barter items.
If you DIY your own installation, a solar-panel setup can pay for itself in an average of seven years and as little as 4-5 years in some of the New England states where electricity is so expensive. If you can wire an electric water heater and have some basic building skills, you can install your own solar panels. For those considering installing grid-tied solar panels, be sure to buy an inverter with this off-grid feature.
Again, a complete solar-panel system is NOT required to provide electricity after the SHTF. A PPS will do a more than adequate job for some of the most important jobs such as lighting and laptop charging. But if you have even a small grid-tied system and a SunnyBoy inverter, you’ll be miles ahead of the crowd.
8. SURVIVALBLOG ARCHIVE STICK
Anyone who’s traveled to a foreign country where they don’t speak the language wouldn’t dream visiting there without their Lonely Planet guidebook. Yet many are preparing for TEOTWAWKI without a similar guidebook. Knowledge is power! While you could travel in Cambodia for a month without a guidebook, it would certainly be an adventure but it wouldn’t be life-threatening. If the SHTF and the grid becomes history, a guidebook in the form of the waterproof SurvivalBlog archive stick will be, despite the worn-out phrase, worth far more than its weight in gold. Information-wise, the archive stick contains just about everything, and I mean everything, you’d need to know so you can make the best of a totally new life that none of us will be completely prepared for, no matter how many buckets of rice or boxes of Band-Aids we have.
After The Day, how many basic situations will we be unprepared for simply because they hadn’t even crossed our minds to prepare for? How much easier and more efficiently can we jury rig certain things or develop certain skills by reading about someone else’s experience with it, or someone’s how-to article? Why waste precious time and irreplaceable resources when SurvivalBlog articles and a PDF library can show us how others accomplished it?
From the archive stick, we can read an article and 15 minutes later know how to proceed. How to get water out of our 250’ deep well without electricity? A stray Guernsey cow wanders out of the woods onto our homestead after the bad guys killed our neighbors and ran off with their food. NOW what?! And what about that abscessed tooth? Instead of using an ice skate and a rock like Tom Hanks did in Castaway, the archive stick has a PDF, Where There is No Dentist, which clearly explains how to do it cleanly and neatly with a pair of channel-lock pliers, and how to treat it afterwards. Ouch! Try not to think about it! I have yet to find the instructions on fixing cavities with a Dremel tool and JB Weld but it’s probably in there somewhere. I’ll keep looking.
What about those critical skills we’ll need to get through Week 1: How to defend the homestead if we didn’t learn before the SHTF? What to do with all that food in the freezer before it spoils? What if your mother-in-law is eating more than her ration of 2,000 calories per day? It’s all on the SB archive stick. Okay, maybe not the mother-in-law part.
While the archive stick can be one of our most important resources in a TEOTWAWKI situation, it’ll just be a useless collection of electrons encased in a small metal case unless we can somehow charge our laptop to be able to access all that information. If you can’t, the archive stick should make a nice pocket-watch fob so all won’t be lost.
Perhaps a few extra archive sticks would be good for adding to the barter box. Saving your old ones when upgrading to the newest version would be a good idea.
[JWR Adds: I don’t want to sound self-promotional, but… The new 20th Anniversary edition of the waterproof USB stick archive will be available for ordering in late January, 2026. Please mark your calendar. I expect them to sell out very quickly.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 5.)
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