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Preppers

Widespread power outage across Spain and Portugal - are you doing a quick mental stock check?

39 replies

NotsosunnyShropshire · 28/04/2025 20:51

Or are you happy that you’re pretty much good to go if similar happened here tomorrow?

Some areas may take a week to get power back apparently.

I think I want to fill up my car (NHS frontline and I need it for work), and get some cash out, just in case. Everything else should be ok I think. For at least a week anyway.

OP posts:
nannynick · 29/04/2025 21:49

Would be fine for a couple of days maybe three. Then would need wood for fire. Then a few more days water would become an issue as my bottled supply would run out.

Not winter so not needing heat to keep warm. Lack of power for more than a few hours in winter would become a problem for me, as in an all electric flat. Can have a fire outdoors but you can’t bbq indoors!

BiddyPopthe2nd · 01/05/2025 12:58

Don’t forget there is a lot of food that doesn’t need to be cooked - cereal, salad, sandwiches etc. And while not as nice as hot, you can eat things like tinned spaghetti or tinned beans cold once you can get the tin open.

but I think what the Spain/Portugal outage proves was that still having some cash was important for those shops still able to stay open. And to be prepared to walk.

Zanzara · 02/05/2025 22:48

I was at my house in Spain on Monday. We were lucky the power was only off for twelve hours, it's very difficult to restart a whole grid once it's down. The internet still lasted for a while but then went off. We have a very big solar generator not connected to the grid (solar panels wired into the grid usually disconnect in an outage) so we could plug in our router till the internet went off.

I filled the bath with cold water, did a mental check of our supplies and then went with the flow. Having been there in Covid during 2020 and trapped there for four and a half months, it was quite reminiscent, and we knew we'd soon be confined to home if it went on for too long to maintain public order. it was a bit unsettling for everyone, not least not knowing why it had happened, but all was well. A useful reminder to have some emergency supplies and cash in to tide you over, and I was so glad for my off grid solar generators.

BlackeyedSusan · 05/05/2025 07:43

mackawhack · 28/04/2025 22:02

I was always told reacting to something in the news is panic buying, preppers apparently don't change their behaviour & just do their usual routine, preparing for all eventualities so they don't have to react to news. Very common narrative during lockdown. Granted I thought it was bullshit & there isn't much difference between the two!

If the blackout were happening here now, it would be panic buying. It's not happening here and we are thinking about a scenario that has now become real and thinking about prepping before hand so that if it does happen here we don't need to go and buy a radio or torches.

BlackeyedSusan · 05/05/2025 07:48

DyslexicPoster · 28/04/2025 22:09

Yes I think prepping is about changing your normal behaviour so you don't need to react to an emergency by rushing out to the shops. I'm sorted for most essentials but not if it's during my normal running on fumes day. I do need to change my habits with the car.

Mind you I'd just not use the car I guess. But I'm rural so would be buggered as it's my only method of getting anywhere including the nearest shop six miles away.

Do you not have a pushbike? Or is it unsuitable roads? (Some drivers are batshit lethal!) <nosy> I suppose it would be useful for shtf long term petrol shortage (unlikely) but not if the batshit drivers still had petrol!

BlackeyedSusan · 05/05/2025 07:57

LurkyLuke · 29/04/2025 10:46

Thanks for the thread: I came here wanting to ask the same.
I don't like that I would not have been prepared with alternative ways of cooking.
I also think that having a family communications plan in place is very useful: do any of you have one? I mean, for example, if you are separated and communications fail (public transport, blocked roads, no internet, no telephone...).

This time of year is a good time to pick up a disposable BBQ and stand or small portable BBQ, plus an extra bag of charcoal. Something to light it with. I have these on a shelf in my garage. I live in a town centre flat and would have to.use in the gardens/grounds.

Have you anything to cook in? I picked up some mess tins in the charity shop. Cheap camping gear from the supermarket would work.

BiddyPopthe2nd · 05/05/2025 09:36

BlackeyedSusan · 05/05/2025 07:57

This time of year is a good time to pick up a disposable BBQ and stand or small portable BBQ, plus an extra bag of charcoal. Something to light it with. I have these on a shelf in my garage. I live in a town centre flat and would have to.use in the gardens/grounds.

Have you anything to cook in? I picked up some mess tins in the charity shop. Cheap camping gear from the supermarket would work.

At a pinch , while not as effective, you could use your normal pots ( smear some wash up liquid on the outside to make it easier to scrub off any smoke later) - they’ll work fine just need more energy to heat up but will then keep hot longer, due to thicker bases.

But parcels make from tin foil are great for things like chicken in a sauce or veggies with some butter. Or as a flat surface ( turn the edges up to hold things in) to fry wet stuff like an egg.

or tin foil trays - the kind you buy to freeze food are handy, or keep and wash a couple from supermarket quiches or “oven ready” dishes ( garlic gratin potatoes, roasted veggies, meatballs in sauces…).

be careful not to overfill these due to being flimsy, and to handle them carefully using oven gloves. But as a way to cook things that need a container or to heat water (eg while the coals heat up and aren’t ready for cooking on yet, or in the heat left once your food is cooked), they would work if you don’t have any suitable small pots. You can use either parcels or trays for cooking, but only trays to heat water.

My Cub scouts were successful cooking meat wrapped in cabbage leaves, using a potato hollowed out to bake and cook chopped carrot and onion in the middle, and use an orange with the middle scraped out to cook cake mix, all on fires, so they’d work in a bbq.

Abd don’t forget plain “shove meat or large chunks of veg on the grill or on skewers” bbq cooking.

LurkyLuke · 05/05/2025 14:43

BlackeyedSusan · 05/05/2025 07:57

This time of year is a good time to pick up a disposable BBQ and stand or small portable BBQ, plus an extra bag of charcoal. Something to light it with. I have these on a shelf in my garage. I live in a town centre flat and would have to.use in the gardens/grounds.

Have you anything to cook in? I picked up some mess tins in the charity shop. Cheap camping gear from the supermarket would work.

Yes, as a matter of fact I went and picked up a portable camping gas stove. (I'm so unexperienced with camping that I don't know the correct terminology, but you know, one of those simple small gas stoves?).

DyslexicPoster · 05/05/2025 21:02

BlackeyedSusan · 05/05/2025 07:48

Do you not have a pushbike? Or is it unsuitable roads? (Some drivers are batshit lethal!) <nosy> I suppose it would be useful for shtf long term petrol shortage (unlikely) but not if the batshit drivers still had petrol!

I could use my sons bike but I'm also on a A road that's a good 20 miles long so plenty of batshit drivers. Plus come off the A road and it's country lanes, hills and I'm fat so I'd be the annoying cyclist blocking the road. To walk to the village shop is about 30 minutes there and lo get back as it's uphill. Next village is 2.5 miles away. Town is five.

GlomOfNit · 07/05/2025 22:33

I have to say, I did go slightly paranoid initially and told my DH and DS to plug their phones in quick, just in case it was actually some sort of mad crazy cyberattack! Grin

One thing I did do was go to my Amazon cart to buy that wind-up radio/torch/power bank I've had in my basket for months. And it was sold out. And so were all the others as far as I could see. I'm sure they'll come back into stock again.

My dad lives in Portugal and is very vulnerable. He had a fall during the blackout and had to call a neighbour to help him, over the garden wall. We couldn't get in touch with him, and because the mobile networks were out too after a while, couldn't get hold of any relatives. It was a scary day for us. So don't be too fast to downplay just a day's worth of no power.

mackawhack · 09/05/2025 12:00

If the blackout were happening here now, it would be panic buying. It's not happening here and we are thinking about a scenario that has now become real and thinking about prepping before hand so that if it does happen here we don't need to go and buy a radio or torches.

See this is what confuses me! So it’s not reacting to the news that’s an issue it’s only if it’s in your own country?

BiddyPopthe2nd · 09/05/2025 17:00

It’s the idea that you think through scenarios that could happen and how you would manage them, what you already have and what else you might need to get to set that plan in action.

sometimes you just randomly think of things. Other times, you see something happen close to you (a friend has to bring a DC to hospital unexpectedly and you realise you might have to do the same with an elderly parent) or something hits the news (the power outrage in Spain/Portugal, like New York had some years ago; a large fire in a factory similar to one near you; seeing how climate change is changing weather patterns and making localised flooding a bigger issue…or whatever). But something triggers you to think how you and your family would cope and you get yourself organised with the things you might need.

That’s not panic shopping - it’s identifying key items so when it happens to you locally, you are NOT one of those rushing to get the toilet rolls and bread - because you always keep at least 1 full packet of TR and some part-baked rolls or a bag of flour that you can make bread in the cupboard.

Your “panic buying” is that, when the emergency is over and you’ve used up what you already had, you buy only what you need during the emergency and when the situation gets better, you go shopping to replace the things that you used so you always have a buffer.

Diversion · 25/05/2025 22:01

For those in the UK a really good read is ‘Powerless- the year the lights went out’ by Suzanne Goldring. Fictional, but covers some of the challenges that people may face in a long term power outage.

BlackeyedSusan · 24/06/2025 10:55

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/23/eight-uk-substation-fires-is-it-russian-sabotage/

Interesting article on electricity substation fires. Probably due to old age of equipment.

Worth keeping in mind if you live near one. (Like me) We'd evacuate on foot as would not be able to get the car out past it.

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