What is your plan for no electricity?

There are many reasons that one may lose electrical power in the city: weather, car running into a power pole, random explosion, and zombie attacks are among the most likely.  The question one must look at, is what is your response going to be?  As we're in the city, we don't use firewood to heat; we're just not set up for it right now, and I hate cleaning up firewood mess.  This may change over time, but right now, we're heating with natural gas.  The ugly part of natural gas and radiators is that the recirculating pump is electrical.  One of our tasks for 2011 is to put a back up battery and an inverter to the recirculating pump so we can have heat during a power outage.  (we'll cover what to do if the natural gas gets cut off at a later post)

While thinking of batteries, we also thought how to recharge them, and solar really seems the obvious choice.  Currently, we're experiencing a ten-year snowfall, so the solar would be buried under snow, but if the solar were hooked into a rechargeable battery bank, some temporary coverage of snow wouldn't be an enormous issue.

We cooked oatmeal (gas stove) so to not open the refrigerator.  This made me think of foods that might go bad, and the root cellar would help considerably in that matter.  Our other options that we have been practicing this last year are canning and dehydrating food stuffs so there is no refrigeration needed.  The chest freezer would have to be adapted to utilize an inverter and battery bank.

Hot baths and showers are a luxury, but not a necessity.  We've camped before and cleaned up with water warmed on the fire.  You don't need a lot of water to get clean.  That's a modern luxury that can really be cut back on.

I think the greatest luxury we will be looking for is a new head for the treadle sewing machine.  S.D.'s hobbies can all be done without electricity.  I really enjoy sewing and using the treadle machine would make that doable with the electric out.

We'll be looking into keeping on hand: lamps, lamp oil, matches, candles, flashlights and batteries, too.  Plastic insulation on the windows is a must, especially until we get new windows.  We also follow the Victorian habit of closing off unused rooms to conserve heat.

Think about it, zombies don't need electricity.  They may take it away.  How are you planning on getting by?