7 Terrifying Realities Of Long-Term Blackouts (That You’ve Probably Never Considered)

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Before we get into our list, lets first describe exactly what is meant by a long-term blackout. Ready.gov does not characterize power outages by short and long term. They merely offer advice for dealing with power outages in general.

It’s important we discuss the term because a Long-Term Blackout can mean many things to many people. For those accustomed to losing power, a week without may not even phase them where as those who rarely loose power might consider a long-term blackout to be 3 days!

For the purposes of this article we are going to call a long-term blackout a period without power to major infrastructure, residential and business operations for a period of 3 months or more. In this time the base for civility will be shattered and the consequences of missing basic public services will be widespread.

Water​

While it may be common knowledge that a widespread blackout is going to present problems for the water supply I think many people do not considering the details of what that means.

• When will water treatment plants officially go offline?
• How will that correlate with water taps no longer running.
• Without local news, how will you know when to stop trusting the water that’s coming out of the tap?

The truth about water in a long-term blackout is that drinking from your tap will become Russian roulette. You won’t know when, but eventually the water coming through those pipes will likely be contaminated or there will be no water coming out. You just don’t know what will happen first.

Trash​

Fresh off the holiday season is a wonderful time to consider the importance of the garbage services. Remember what it was like after Christmas? Imagine what your yard or home will look like a month without trash service.

Even if you have a healthy bit of food storage, its all packaged. That packaging is going to need to go somewhere. Most people don’t consider just how quickly their trash will pile up. It will be a matter of weeks before things get out of hand. Trash will be all over the streets and before long, the pests and animals will come to take advantage.

Without a concrete, agreed upon method for dealing with the trash in a neighborhood you will quickly find your beautiful little community piled with trash and filth as well as being flea infested. Its not a pretty picture but post disaster trash collection and management are a topics I rarely see discussed, even in the prepper world.

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7 Terrifying Realities Of Long-Term Blackouts (That You’ve Probably Never Considered)

Before we get into our list, lets first describe exactly what is meant by a long-term blackout. Ready.gov does not characterize power outages by short and long term. They merely offer advice for de…

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If my power goes out, I still have sweet soy drinks lasting a year without refrigeration and half of my freezer filled with pre-pandemic water for sponge baths and doing dishes. Have a large supply of canned food and an alcohol powered camping kitchen.

I'm used to handle poo without a sewer system at our mountain cabin, so you just sprinkle a little cat sand on top of it and make compost of it with a shovel when there are more than 100 flies gathering. Feces are great fertilization, but urine is too concentrated, so it has to be dilluted with regular soil.

Clothes can be cleaned using buckets of rain water from the roof. Just have to get rid of dirt floating at the top before use. If it happens to rain, take off your clothes and take out the shampoo for a free shower. If soap runs out, one can use animal fat and ashes to create non-synthetic soap with multiple chemical steps and dangerous explosions from mixing acids with bases. (Protection needed)

Without electricity, one can build a fireplace and chop wood for cooking. Due to the extreme energy needed to cut down trees and time needed to dry firewood, it's good to have a stash of wood and old newspapers for making fires easily once food is scarce.

Fishing or hunting equipment will be needed if food runs low, but by then it might be better to flee the country with an emergency bag, because others will have the same idea.

Mushrooms in a nearby forest might last the first week of mass starvation, but there are often more berries than people can pick. High rubber boots are needed against snakes if going deep into a forest. Don't forget that snakes are food too.

If all the conventional food sources are depleted, some common tree types have edible parts used to make tea, which I usually just eat directly as a sweet snack. One can also dive for edible types of weaweed, which is commonly used in Asian food. One can use a straw of grass, roll it over ants while playing a wounded insect, then crush, wash and eat them. Be careful with their strong acids. Some frogs don't fear humans at all, making them easy prey for French cousine.