Grid Down

[Bear44]

Like an inverter to run your coffeemaker off your car battery.

DUDE! I had not thought of that. You just won the thread.

 

[spencer60]

A little bit of knowledge can make a big difference in your ability to survive.

https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/acorn-nuts-superfood/

That was a really interesting article.


One thing I didn't see talked about at all was camping gear, heat and cold.

If we're talking 6 months that spans Winter, even here in GA it's going to get cold. Unless you are setup for wood burning, your heat source is gone and it doesn't take particularly low temps to start inducing hypothermia.

The solution is pretty easy here down South though. Any decent sleeping bag setup should work fine inside a house, since there's no wind or outside elements to contend with.


Probably worse for us here in GA though would be a 6 month outage during summer time. Unless you live in a pre-AC house that was designed to cool off with airflow, high ceilings, etc., your modern house will turn into an oven for at least part of the Summer. The 'traditional' ways to cool a house with broken AC all require power as well, so you don't have fans or anything to help either.

During the day this isn't as much of an issue because in this scenario I'm thinking people would be pretty busy outside anyway.

The main problem would be sleep, or lack of. Physiologists say we get the most rest if we sleep at 66 degrees (YMMV). From having broken AC a couple of times I know my bedroom (which is on the top floor of the house) gets about 30 degrees hotter than that without cooling. No way I could sleep in that, and if I did manage it, it would be more passing out than falling asleep.

In fact sleeping in such hot temps is downright dangerous. Every summer people cooped up in hot apartments die from heat exhaustion.

For me the answer would be simple. My ground floor stays cool in the summer due to shading and ground cover, so I'd shift my sleeping area down there. I wouldn't have my comfy upstairs bed, but again, camping equipment like air mattresses work just fine in a house.

If I lived in one of the more typical houses you see around, built on a clear-cut lot and on a slab (so no basement), it would be a lot worse. In fact the heat alone might mean you couldn't bug-in with a house like that.

I've gone through a dry run on this because of AC issues, but anyone who is concerned about this kind of thing should probably test it for themselves. See if you can go a 90 degree weekend with the AC shut down and come up with some workarounds.

 

[Inatree]

DUDE! I had not thought of that. You just won the thread.

Really ! Think about the lives that will be saved between 6 and 9 am

 

[Bear44]

Really ! Think about the lives that will be saved between 6 and 9 am

I own this for a reason and, yes, it saves lives almost daily.