Ask Lemmy

Sleep.

First, I check the lower power company's website for an estimate of when the power will come back on. If no one reported the outage, I'll take a few minutes to do so. We usually have the battery powered lights out during a storm, if it's a surpise outage, I go fetch the lights.

If the outage is going to be longer than 6 hours, I go buy some gas for the generator. I pour what isn't used during the outage into the car's fuel tank.

I use an rss reader on my phone with a lot of saved articles. I try to get through some of those.

When it to stops raining or snowing I pull the genny out of the shed, fuel it, get it running. Next, I run a few extension cords for the fridge and freezer.

Sit in the dark and enjoy solitude for once.

Obsessively refresh the "There is a power outage in your area!" page.

Mostly nothing special in preparation. I have a grill in the back, a propane and a sterno camping stove, so I can still cook food. I have a one-gallon water-filtering thing that I can use if we need to go to boil-water status (our water treatment plant is probably a bit lower than it should be), and I have a camping solar panel (and several power banks) that I can use to recharge the electronics. We also have lanterns, flashlights, headlamps and a lot of candles.

If it's going to be a major storm, I'll fill up the gas tank and stop by the ATM - get small bills where possible, sometimes people can't make change. Oh, and if you're running low on a prescription, see if they can refill it early. If it floods: a long time ago, in a 3am fit of doomscrolling, I figured out what the nearest highest point I can get to without crossing any streams or storm drains. And after Katrina, when all those people survived the flood but died when they got trapped in their attics - well, I had nightmares about that for a long time, and I eventually mounted a hatchet to the attic wall.

How do we pass the time? We'll talk with each other or our neighbors - gotta check in on everyone, make sure everyone's doing as okay as we can be. Maybe go for a walk to check out the neighborhood as well. We all have books and magazines and been meaning to catch up on, so it's a good time for that; family jigsaw puzzles in the early evening before the light gets too bad. It's also really nice to just sit and listen to the world without the constant background noise of civilization.

Haven't delt with that in a long time. Closest I had was maybe an hour or less because I live close to an elderly home and they usually get power restored real quick. I just stayed on my phone, which thankfully was charged, as I went with my parents to get candles. Never got candles since power came back so quick.

Longest I was without it because of an outage was around 2014 maybe, in winter. Cold days/nights spent in the living room, probably using the fireplace for the first time ever since I lived there. Used my phone and probably had other means of keeping myself entertained. Don't recall much about it because it was a decade ago. Neighbor across the street was an amazing person because she let us take an extension cable cord thing from her house to ours when they got power back. I do remember watching a video when all of the sudden the power came back, though.

As for what I'd do now, probably cry and hope my Steam Deck/laptop/phone are charged. Also probably get batteries for a radio CD cassette mini boom box thing I got from a thrift store recently and play music, plugging in my headphones. I've got enough CDs to last a short while.

I really really enjoy complete and utter silence and lack of any electronics outside, depending on how wide spread it is and the weather. Sometimes I just get a chair outside and enjoy the silence of all the electronics that are everywhere. Especially at night it's even better without lights ok everywhere

Use the batteries.

Last time this happened to me we hastely turned our dinner in a romantic candle lighted dinner.

Sleep and hope that I dream and that my dreams take me to the dream noosphere.

Video games lol

I only seem to get power outages at night, after the sun has set. So besides burning some candles or using flashlights until I'm sure I have everything I need, I usually just call it a night early and go to sleep. The power is usually back on by the time I wake up in the morning.

Before that, I'll make sure to shut down my computers. I have several of them running on an UPS, so they don't lose power when it goes dark; however, they burn through my UPS battery within 30 minutes or less, so I need to make sure they're safely shut down first.

My power used to very unreliable and I'd get rolling brownouts (flicker of power) every now and then. Which would kill my PCs. So I got the UPS so they maintain power, regardless of a blackout or brownout. Ever since, my computers stay on 24/7 without problems.

Bitch that the power's out.
Connect phone to laptop to drain for juice.
Sleep.

I basically start collecting everything that has power and can provide power. Basically I just check on my laptops, power banks, phones, the bag of random batteries, estimate how long I can keep going, and try to reasonably save power regardless: Shutdown instead of sleep for laptops, mobile data off on phone if not needed, prefer dedicated flashlight over to phones, fetch other options like candles.

Kills enough time that the power gets restored during that time. Then I think of how unprepared I was, how I am going to improve it, and then never do it. There's a bag of old 18650s from power banks and laptop batteries under my bed for like 2 years. I don't know what state they are in now. I know I measured their capacities, disposed of dead ones, put good ones into the bag, planned to use it for a giant power bank, but did absolutely nothing with it in the end.
I should probably dispose of them at this point. They all had like 60% of capacity anyway and years of use.

And then I also think about the bag of batteries from dad's disposable vapes. They're rechargeable, but it's possible they were overdischarged and shouldn't be used anymore. On some the wires running along those batteries were partly melted too.
I should dispose of that too. So much damn waste.

In the end after each power outage I turn to the web, obsessively looking through power banks, get amazed by those with built-in mains inverter, but in the end don't get anything as it isn't necessary.

Watch TV via the agm batteries and eBay inverter that I got a couple years ago.

I think we just went to bed, because it was pretty late anyway. It was like 4-6 years ago. Outages are pretty rare here, where I live.

I sit on my phone until the power comes back on. Rarely lasts for more than an hour. I think I've had more outage time from them doing maintenance than from weather.

That's why I keep a pen and paper. For power outages.

Apart from that, if there's light:

• some exercise
• kirigami
• wash clothes (by hand)
• eat random (edible) stuff which I would otherwise use to cook
  • cooking needs electricity

No light:

• sleep

Read a book, usually Asimov.

The best light I have actually had to use during a power cut is this:

https://www.wexphotovideo.com/phottix-t200r-rgb-led-tube-light-3112051/

I was cleaning my walk in closet and the power went out, I was in the zone and needed to keep going to get it done, so I grabbed one of my two lights and kept going.