What would you do in the first hours of a nationwide power cut? A handy tips thread.

[BorgQueen]

1. Before ANYTHING else : Fill 3 x 120l lidded storage boxes with water. Plus every bottle, pan and vase.
2. Go and collect my Grandson from school if he was there. I could walk it in 30 mins if need be, DD would likely have to abandon her car and walk home, taking 3 hours+ . Her partner works 30 miles away in Manchester so god knows what he’d do, steal a bike if he had any sense and cycle home using the many canal paths.
3. Walk into my village and buy cat litter, bin bags, a garden incinerator, steel buckets, batteries, lighters and whatever else looked useful plus calorie dense food and whatever medical supplies I could find while they would still take cash.
4. Go to the garden centre down the road and buy a gas bbq/ gas and lots of solar lights, along with one of those camping trollies with cash before everyone realised what was coming.
5. Go to the caravan/camping sales place by the garden centre and buy a camping shower, lots of gas bottles and look to see which caravan would be easiest to steal if it came to having to leave/hide, one that could be wheeled out by cutting the chain link fence and taken to a well hidden place. Thankfully DH has a tow bar on his van.
6. Make sure we could black out all the windows at night to stop light escaping.
7. Get DH to make large wooden barriers with decking joists to prevent the front and back doors being battered in. His power tool batteries are always fully charged.
8. Park his van across the big front window and my car so it blocked access to the garage.
9. Scope out a local vending supplies warehouse, unless you knew what and where it was, people wouldn’t even think about it, they’d be too busy robbing cash converters.

We had two extended power cuts a couple of years ago. The first on Xmas day and the second on New Years day, what we actually did was

1. Put the turkey back in the fridge and be thankful that we lost power before it went in the oven.
2. Realise that no power meant no landline/broadband and no mobile signal so we were pretty clueless as to what was going on.
3. Didn't waste the power we already had on our phones/laptops trying to figure it out.
4. Talked to the neighbours to see if they knew anything, turned the radio on in the car to find out what was afoot.
5. Made sandwiches and broke out the board games.
6. Got bored and read a book.

There was no panic but in a world where we are used to 24/7 rolling news and information it was definitely frustrating to not be able to immediately find out what, why and where.

I think you are thinking of a zombie apocalypse not a power cut!

In the event of power cut?!😂

I think you are confusing a power cut with the apocalypse OP. And I say that as someone who had a two day power cut this summer when the extreme heat buggered up the National Grid in my area.

It might be an idea to get some of the stuff in advance though because that’s a lot of shopping in an emergency and in all likelihood, stocks will vanish even quicker than you think!

I'm in Spain and we had the country wide 24 hours power cut last year. So you know what we did?

We all went down to the bar. The pumps stayed mainly cold. Food couldn't be served in the bar Although we did eat cheese boards, towards the end we had to have gin and tonic with out ice. We played cards and used the solor lights from the garden.

Lessons we learned

Keep Charcoal for the BBQ and matches
Keep some tinned food in
Battery packs should be charged always

Having lived through multiple actual nationwide powercuts (not UK), we all just literally carried on with our days.
Unless you're saying the power went out through acts of war or something?

Live in the country . Power cuts are a fact of life here.
Just carry on.
Neighbours were out for 8 days a decade ago !

Clear as many trip hazards as possible from hall, stairs, landing. Make sure everything we need for kids bedtime, pjs, toothbrushes, teddies, nappies are in the right places. Get torches and battery packs out. Rethink dinner plans to eat most expensive perishable food so it isn’t wasted. Check on meighbours.

Are you ok Hun?

I expect I would go to bed early once I had located the torches and candles .

Tell me you've never had a power cut!
We get them often.
I have a power cut box in the garage of batteries, wind ups, head torches, gas stove etc. Plus a UPS which will power the WiFi for a few hours.
Shops will shut straight away as they aren't geared up for it, till don't work. Cafes, restaurants, pubs all shut .
I would light the fire which heats my boiler.
Now if the water was cut off that might be different.

Even in an imaginary power cut, you're making plans of getting a much as possible for you and your immediate family and sod everyone else. What about the owner of the bike that your son in law has the 'sense' to steal?

Can't you just read a book and be nice to your neighbours rather than going on a crime spree?

Shouldn’t you have all this stuff already if you’re a prepper?

This feels more like a post about how to prepare for aliens invading earth than a simple power cut.

We had a 36 hour power cut during storm Arwen some years back. It was pretty calm really. We ended up in the local pub which had a log fire and hand pumps for the beer.....

We have power cuts all the time so I’d just assume it was just our village 🤷‍♀️.

Shops are really in trouble when they have power cuts because their tills don’t work and their shutters won’t go down. So they will tell you they’re closed and won’t let you in.
Also stealing from other people and from shops while barricading your own house from others stealing is shitty behaviour.
Also, if you’ve blocked in your own house and need emergency services to attend to you or your house and they can’t reach you due to your van and car in the way, that’s not going to help you survive, is it.

How would you know if it was a nationwide power cut? Would you not just assume for at least half a day that it was only your region? How would the shops open? How would, even if a shop is open, you get all those things you mention past all the hoardes of other people all trying to do the same thing?

We get power cuts all the time. Everyone shrugs and goes to bed early.

To be fair the water thing is sensible. If the power goes off, so does the water and it can take time pressure to return through the system.

Sod everyone else basically. Protect me and mine. Tell nobody what we’ve got.
I’m talking a nationwide powercut where transformers are damaged, the country would be utterly fucked within 72 hours. We don’t make our own transformers and we don’t keep spares.

The whole of Spain wasn’t affected last year and transformers weren’t taken out.

You don't think someone would intercept your son in law and nick his bike on that 30 mile journey?

Have you read The Road?

If it was the start of a power cut how could you buy stuff from shops as they wouldn't have power either

Blimey. It's a power cut, not a zombie apocalypse.

I grew up in the 1970s when they were several times a week. You lit the candles and played cards mostly. I'm surprised you have a grandson and are this concerned about no electricity.

Were you always this over the top?

And OP, why are you assuming you know what is happening before everyone else? How are you planning to make 4+ trips out before the pandemonium you are sure will ensue?