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.

Honestly? I would probably have one of my secret stash of emergency ciggies that I hide for stressful times, then I would proceed with my actual sensible plan. But if I’m being 100% honest I would absolutely need a fag beforehand.

Just remember OP that any crimes, regardless of whether there's an apocalypse or not, are still crimes and so it's best not to plan to nick stuff!

'Prepper' - the clue is in the name, we prepare for emergencies. In advance. Well in advance if possible!

That all seems a bit extreme. I'd drive home as normal. If I had time I'd pop to the shop to stock up on some food and water and to the library for some books. That's what I did when the first lockdown was announced.

Take a breath, OP. Have you been watching "Survivors" ? The 1970s version really made me think about total systems collapse for some time and that's more what you're describing in your post.

You could start with some sensible resilience planning right now to make your family (and cat) comfortable. Don't forget the chocolate.

The UK grid has hundreds of thousands of transformers. What exactly is going to knock them all out at the same time? And in the event some are damaged the UK has a supply of ‘strategic spares’ of the massive super transformers, and local power companies have supplies of replacement smaller ones in the depots, as well as parts to repair those in use. Not only that but there are companies that manufacture transformers in the UK - Winderpower, Boardman and others.

But, no power nationwide means that shops, garden centres and ATMs will all be out of order. Cars however will continue to work. You might need to rethink your plan, and if it actually bothers you then do some prepping in advance. Though of course, by its very nature prepping should be in advance. If you start prepping once the disaster has happened you’ve missed the point of prepping :)

72 packets of monster munch - breakfast of kings!

What flavour though?

I'd be buggered at the first hurdle with your list, OP, as we'd lose water pressure because the pumps wouldn't be working.

Upside of that is that we'll be fine when the ice caps melt.

Eh !!?!

Assuming winter, I'd bring in plenty of logs, light the log burner, Wrap a potato in foil and stick it among the flames. Grate some cheese, open some beans. Pour a glass of wine.

Then I'd light a hurricane lamp, curl up on the sofa and read a book.

If however, the OP is talking about an apocalypse, we have a well in the garden for water, and food in store to last two or three weeks. If it goes beyond that, a12 bore and two slabs of cartridges to provide us with rabbits and pigeons. It's not something I intend to worry about.🙄

I was thinking of that depressing Italian film The Bicycle Thief.

Holy shit, I needed this thread tonight 🤣
You had me going until you got to the plan about stopping your supply of daylight leaching out. Brilliant.

No offence OP, but you’re a shit prepper.

By the time you’ve taken three hours to fill every vessel in your house with 400l of water, walked an hours round trip to collect your bemused grandson, and carried so much cat litter and cans of Vimto that you look like Mr. Tickle, all the good caravans will already have been looted.

Roast beef to eat.
Pickled onion to destroy the zombies.

Obviously.

👏

Unfortunately the garden centre will also need power to trade - tills are all electric, no store is randomly accepting cash payments without being able to run the transaction through the till!

In answer to your question, an EMP could knock out power, electronics, and stop many cars working over a large area at one time.
I guess the op is maybe referencing an EMP scenario.

From the point of view of a power outage I would do the usual - check nothings tripped, get out my power cut supplies box if it's dark, and call the number to see if there's a power cut registered and who's affected.
Only if the phone wasn't working and there were heightened threats to the UK would I suspect something more serious.
I would then try my battery radio for more info.
If that didn't work then I'd start entering full apocalypse concerns and start water storage above my usual reserves.

One of my DC lives in Spain. When there was the nationwide power cut the local town had a bit of a party atmosphere, as everyone was outside enjoying their time off work and having barbecues. The local pizza restaurant uses wood fired ovens, so they did a huge amount of extra trade!

Indeed it could, but it’s pretty unlikely. And as the OP seems to have done absolutely no prepping at all, given that the first step of her plan when it happens is to go shopping and buy supplies (as if no one else will have thought of that), I don’t think she even knows what it means ;)

So, just a little update on my team building exercise today... The team had a ball. My lord, I have a team of pro preppers! I can now usefully identify all those among us who would be best to seek out in any kind of disaster. The one that will provide the booze, the one with the log burner, the one with the shed full of provisions. The one who worries her 18 gas cannisters will blow up before she has a chance to use them, the suspiciously quiet one who I'm convinced has read prepping rules around not advertising their stash but secretly has her own bunker... Absolute eye opener and some good ideas and I enjoyed myself enormously making up ever more dire announcements vis the hand cranked radio each time they neared a comfortable solution. Nobody suggested stealing a caravan though which means its either not a universally accepted idea or just possibly that outing yourself as a prepper isnt quite as bad as outing yourself on mumsnet.

Just what I needed after a crappy day at work - a thread that has made me laugh out loud!
😂😂

Crumbs op, they didn't even do your list during the blitz 🤣