Consumerism is built around enabling people’s addiction to convenience. But when things go sideways, the power blinks off, the internet goes down, and all the little cogs, wheels and belts stop spinning. It just happened to two whole countries. Spain, Portugal and Andorra lost power and, as I write this article, no one can tell us why it or how it happened.
It is not my intent to minimize this event in any way, it sounds like people likely died as a result, and millions of people were without power. But fortunately, electricity was restored in about a day. What if critical infrastructure was permanently damaged and the grid didn’t power back up? As awful as it was, it could have been far worse.
To prepare for such a situation we must first consider the scope of products and services that are affected by power failure.
Immediate Shortages
Some necessities instantly become unavailable the moment the power is lost.
- Fuel & EV Recharging Stations
Unable to operate electric pumps to access the fuel sitting in underground tanks, nearly all gas stations will be unable to sell gas. Electric charging stations will obviously also be without power. Without electricity and unable to access the fuel on hand, transportation will grind to a halt as soon as whatever gas is in the tanks of autos is used up.
One summer, my family was traveling from Arizona to Northern Utah. We got as far as Richfield and there was a power outage. No gas station in town had the ability to pump gas out of their underground tanks. We drove all over town looking for gas, which didn’t take very long as Richfield was very small at the time and ended up spending the night. Luckily, the power was restored the next day and we continued the journey.
The next vehicle we purchased was a Chevy Suburban that had a 40-gallon main fuel tank and two auxiliary 20-gallon saddle tanks. If necessary, it could make the 750-mile journey from Scottsdale to Cache Valley without refueling.
- Cellular Communications
Mobile networks are dependent on electricity. Backups are short-term. Data centers and fiber optics have limited backups. Even when mobiles systems are still powered by their backup systems, they are often overwhelmed by increased traffic.
Part of this is simply due to human nature. When disasters happen, people pick up the phone to check on loved ones. Any parent understands this. We feel a strong instinctual compulsion to ensure that our offspring survives. The word for this type of call, in emergency management parlance, is welfare check. They are assigned low priority in managed radio nets.
Like panic buying and hoarding, our tendencies work against society, crashing our mobile communications networks.
If voice calls will not go through, try text or data. Each uses a different system, and one may still work even if another does not. If your cellphone doesn’t work. Try a landline. Landlines are much more reliable in emergencies than mobile networks, which is a good reason to have one.
- Money and Portable Wealth
With few exceptions, bankcards and credit cards don’t work when the grid is down. In the blink of an eye, it doesn’t matter how many millions you have socked away in accounts. Any business that takes place suddenly must happen in cash or for barter.
This will be a shock for most people because the plastic card in their wallet or smartphone version of it in their phone is their go-to tool. When they have a problem, that’s what they reach for, and now it won’t work anymore.
Goods and services will be exchanged for cans of food, precious metals and cash, but cash will only work as long as people still have faith in it because blind faith is all that has been backing up the dollar for decades.
Short-term Shortages
Other necessities will become unavailable within hours.
- Potable Water
Any disaster that knocks out electricity also takes modern water treatment plants offline. Water treatment plants have been controlled by computers for decades. Unless your municipality has end-to-end gravity fed water, you will need a water source. Even if it does, you will need the means to treat it. Boiling is more effective but requires fuel.
- Alarm Systems
Most alarm systems are largely dependent on electricity, the internet, monitoring and police response. These will be useless. With the grid down, your alarm system must run on batteries and summon an armed response from nearby.
- Natural Gas
As people use natural gas to heat their home and cook, the lines lose pressure. Without electricity to run the SCADA controllers, compressors and electric motors that turn valves, the system will not be able to regulate the pressure of gas lines. The end result for the consumer is that the flow of natural gas will eventually stop.
LNG is stored at much higher pressures than LPG, making home storage impractical. If you want to store gas for heating, store propane.
- Propane and Propane Accessories
Desperate to cook raw foods from refrigerators and freezers before they spoil, many households foolishly fire up their propane grills. They get the job done, but are extremely inefficient and waste precious, and now irreplaceable fuel.
Cooking a freezer full of meat and boiling water will quickly deplete the 5-gallon tank and a half of propane that the average suburbanite has on hand. Homes that run on propane feature larger tanks, usually 500-1000-gallons or so. They will fare much better, but as most tanks are above ground eyesores, everyone will know they have them.
Using camping stoves, or better yet, efficient backpacking stoves is much more effective than firing up the propane grill to cook your food. Plan ahead to deal with your fridge and freezer full of food. If you cook that food, you’ll eat well for a few days until it spoils. If you preserve it by home canning it, drying it or freeze drying it, it will last much longer. But doing that without electricity takes planning and preparation. Think through the process and then do a small test run. Learn from your mistakes, rinse and repeat.
- Matches, Firewood and Tools and Supplies to Cut, Haul and Store It
In major emergencies, most people do not have fuel and end up burning wood to cook, boil water and heat their homes.
Mid-term Shortages
Some necessities may take days or weeks to run out.
- Firearms & Ammunition
When the power doesn’t come back on after a couple of days, people will get scared. Scared people do stupid things. Firearms and ammunition will dry up fast.
- Prescription Medications & Medical Supplies
Without potable water, hospitals are virtually paralyzed. Without health insurance, internet, banking or transportation, healthcare and pharmacies will largely shut down.
- Food
Not all communities are a few meals away from anarchy, but some surely are. Households that eat most of their meals out or have meals delivered typically have the least food on hand. The good news for them is that they are spending so much money eating out and ordering in that they will have plenty of money to buy food storage if they simply eat at home for a while to build up food storage.
If you are new to food storage, start storing shelf stable foods that you normally eat. Focus on foods that need little or no cooking or preparation. Build up a week’s worth, then a month and so on. Don’t worry about long-term food storage until you have three months of regular shelf-stable foods.
Storing dry pack foods that require a lot of cooking and preparation to make them edible is more involved because you need a way to cook it, fuel, a lot of water, a wheat grinder, cooking oils, cooking catalysts, and so on. I recommend doing that too, but that’s another article.
Gasoline (Again)
Eventually, gas stations will devise solutions to access the fuel in their underground tanks, but much of it will be commandeered by various levels of government. Without electricity to drive pumps and compressors, most oil refineries will sit idle. The government will bring in equipment to generate electricity to run a few refineries, but most of the fuel that they refine will go to the government and emergency services and fuel output will not be able to match demand.
- Batteries
Batteries of all sizes will be needed. Small batteries will be needed immediately for lighting and to run handheld radios. Later on, larger batteries will be needed to make battery banks that will power cordless power tools, fans, pumps compressors, refrigerators and all sorts of things.
- Two-way Radios
When the power goes out and other forms of communications go down, two-way radios are the first form of communication to come back online. All that is needed for simplex radio communication is two people with radios, batteries, and a communications plan. No infrastructure is needed.
While their capabilities may seem somewhat limited compared to smartphones and internet, radio may be your only way to get information. And without transportation, being about to talk to someone, even someone just a few miles away, is a really big deal because it means you don’t have to walk miles to talk to them or wait until the next time you see them.
Long Term Shortages
HEMP (High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse) happens when a nuclear weapon detonated high enough in the atmosphere to excite high energy electrons unleashing a potentially devastating effect called Compton Scattering and generating 1000x the EM field strength they would if they had exploded near the ground. According to Dr. Peter Pry, a scientist on the congressional EMP Commission and a subject matter expert on EMP, long term power outages, such as those caused by HEMP will kill “the old-fashioned way”, through famine and disease.
- Heirloom Seeds, Garden Soil, Mulch, Materials and Fasteners to Build and Expand Gardens
Producing it yourself is the only way to ensure that you have food in a long-term disaster.
- Chickens, Chicken Feed, Materials and Fasteners to Build and Operate Chicken Coops and Hatcheries
Chickens provide a steady supply of eggs, meat and fertilizer for the garden. As such, chickens and everything associated with raising them become scarce and commensurately expensive if you are lucky enough to strike a barter.
- Canning & Food Preservation Supplies
Here in North America, what we grow during our growing season has to feed us all year, so food must be preserved through winter and spring.
- Hygiene Supplies
Soap and dental floss are important to store. Soap in particular if takes a great deal of fuel and material to make and is cheap and easier to store ahead of time.
One thing you don’t need to stockpile is toilet paper. As happened during the Covid-19 pandemic, people will panic and buy it up, but in all of the thousands of survival ordeals that I have researched, not one death was attributed to lack of toilet paper. Poke some holes in the cap of the water bottle or use a bladder with a squirt cap or a hot water bottle as a travel bidet and wash with neutral soap (soap with a neutral or mildly basic pH so it won’t burn your Chuck Shumer).
- Footwear and Shoe Repair Gear
Shoe leather used to be our primary source of transportation and may well be again someday. Invest in several pair of high-quality leather boots that can be resoled.
- Clothing, Cloth, Thread and Sewing Supplies
You will need quality outdoor clothing, socks and outerwear.
- Rechargeable Small Batteries, 12v DC Battery Charger & Solar System with Battery Pack
These give you the ability to generate your own power. All you need is sunlight.
Ronald H Levine | May 5, 2025
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Barter, mentioned in this article, is a significant reason to stock up extra of what others will need. Common among Preppers on that are all the reasons not to barter, so that’s covered well and I’m presenting reasons that you should be prepared to barter and the advantages. Paramount and most influential reasons not to barter regard the dangers, so I present how barter also can mitagate dangers. Instead of theoretical for us in the future with each of us having our own ideas of future, yet we don’t really know, I refer us to our United States of America having commerce with adversarial nations like China and Russia. No predictions are necessary as it is happening today and the history of our relations. Now, bringing that to personal examples today and not theoretical, at my workplace, there are people who don’t like me, believe it or not! This is a great training ground to develop skills that will be valuable with dangerous potential adversaries in the harsh times to come. One particular individual has made it clear that he will use force to take what he needs. He also is opposite me on politics and has a government (meaning taxpayers) owe him mentality and he is not above lies and fraud. I already know what Preppers would say — stay away! He cooks excellent meals and often too much and wants to lose weight, so he often gives me a plate of extras. I have a reputation at work pf returning favors and being sure that it’s appreciated more than they might expect. The result being the ones who really don’t like me are happily good trading partners and self-discipline themselves and have fair relations with me even not liking me. It’s up to your imagination what barter will mean in the future and it’s advantages, but instead of theoretical, I presented actual and what has happened and what is now.
Barter is in my preparedness for multiple reasons. I intend to move to low population areas, but now my excellent job contributes highly to rapidly increasing my preparedness supplies and equipment and barter commodities. The downside is goats and chickens and graft stock don’t store well on my shelving in storage, so I intend to barter for what doesn’t store well, services and other. I imagine walking up to someone raising goats and chickens with a duffle bag and saying I want goats and chickens. He will say: What! … Why should I! … as I hand him the duffle bag to look at what he gets. Immediately, before digging to the bottom, there will be “these items are scarce and can’t be found anywhere anymore,” I’ll say I know! He’ll say deal! We might talk about future trades or barter of skills. Now he has incentive to not allow bandits to interfere with his trading partners and I have the same incentive. The lone wolf thinking would be at a great disadvantage!
[email protected]
Ronald H Levine | May 6, 2025
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Countering a popular preparedness myth:
“Goods and services will be exchanged for cans of food, precious metals”
Regarding that I often hear to have silver coins to buy that can of food because the seller won’t be able to make change for a gold coin.
Wrong!
What makes anyone think a can of food could even be bought with just one gold coin.
You are into preparedness, so buy that food now with your gold coin and get a truckload! I choose not to have any gold coins for preparedness. I have what people will want to buy with gold coins, yet won’t need any.
christine | May 9, 2025
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what an excellent article with points made I’ve never considered; I downloaded the pdf and will share. But I’ve gotta tell ya,the Chuck Schumer comment made me lol,the best laugh of the day!
Salem | May 9, 2025
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Many landlines are also now susceptible to outages, as well as cellular. towers.
When we put in an offer on our retreat property, the previous POTS line (plain old telephone service) was seven miles of copper pair (mostly buried) running back to the big battery plant in the town’s telephone central office building. DSL was not an option at that distance, and I don’t know if caller ID would have been supported.
When I ordered a line, the telephone company had just implemented “fiber to the neighborhood” technology.. There was now 8 miles of overhead fiber optic cable (getting snagged by logging trucks). going past me to a ‘DSLAM’ (digital subscriber line access multiplexer) box mounted on a phone pole, and then one mile of overhead copper pair back to my property. The DSLAM uses grid power, which goes out several times per year, to light up the fiber optic strands back to the central office and to provide “battery” voltage on my and my neighbors’ phone lines. The phone tech told me the DSLAM has two-hour backup batteries, which is similar to cell towers. The local techs had one portable generator to recharge all the DSLAMs in the area, but was told my neighborhood is not at the top of their response list.
If you have had your POTS phone line for years, it may still have a copper pair back to the central office. Otherwise, if you can’t afford satellite phones, the next best plan, included in this article, is to use SMS texting for as long as it works Cell towers can often process SMS texts when all the voice channels at a tower are tied up. And news crews will keep their phones “off hook” to their offices while en route to “smoking holes” in order to have a connection once they arrive. First responders sometimes couldn’t get “dial tone” as a result.
Ronald H Levine | May 11, 2025
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Propane – To make a limited supply of Propane last longest in scenarios where it won’t be replenished when gone, my oven is self-cleaning and I chose it specificallyfor this preparedness advantage. As such, because it is designed to get up to seven hundred degrees for the catalyst to turn splatter into a white ash. The oven interior is very noticeably much smaller than would be found on ovens without that feature, meaning it is much better insulated, so there is less waste heat and summertime use doesn’t heat up the kitchen much and uses propane very efficiently unlike the propane grills that, as noted in the article, wastes propane.
I combine that with another way to further conserve fuel by using one of my All-American brand pressure canners with their exclusive metal- to-metal seal which is a best preparedness choice since it doesn’t use a gasket that goes bad like all the rest or outdated and a discounted model particularly since most others are made in China. It’s high capacity allows cooking or pressure canning a large batch of food at once.
Cooking in a pressure canner reaches higher temperatures (matched by the oven), so the food cooks faster, again using less fuel.
Pressure canned meats and vegetables mean no energy is needed to keep the food from spoiling and it will last long. I have a mountain of canning jars for preparedness.
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Ronald H Levine