Early this morning, as I was sitting down at the computer for the day, the entire village I call home these days lost power. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Having left to find an alternate workplace for the day, I am just now settling down to work. It’s been an unproductive morning to say the least.
The power outage gave me pause to reflect on how poorly equipped I am to deal with such a minor ‘disaster’ as a power outage. I have no alternate form of energy. No gas-powered generator in garage, no solar panel or wind-turbine on the roof. Maybe a few AA batteries about somewhere, but nothing more significant.
I really do wonder how well I would cope in a real disaster. I am so clueless with a hammer or any tool for that matter, that I would have no ideal how even to build a lean-to shelter.
Furthermore, if you are unprepared for these “catastrophic” events, how do they compare in importance to the events for which you ARE prepared? I bet you’ve got a nice stock of toilet paper, for example…
@ Liam:
Necessity is a great teacher.
Indians* know of a phenomenon called load-shedding, which is basically hours and hours of power supply being off. The experience has given rise to interesting innovations and practices. e.g. Inverters store power when there is power supply on, and then when it is off, they run essential things like the fridge, and some lights and fans with it. Similarly you can run your PC off a UPS for hours. People in general know that this will happen and plan ahead and differently.
* Not including those people who live in modern high rises with 24 hour, (petrol) generator produced power. Never mind what these are going to run on when petrol runs out and how it encourages wastefulness and facilitates pollution…