| If you're expecting a continent-wide, one-year power outage you should prepare for something much longer. Electricity: Solar panels, windmill, watermill, bicycle for charging batteries, and, of course, batteries. Mechanical power: Windmill, watermill, bicycle for handling things like grinding grain and pumping water. You can do these by hand, but that's inefficient and if the environment (wind, water) can do it for you you're much better off. Burning calories to grind the grain that you use to get calories means you have to consume more, minimize your caloric needs and focus your energy on activities that can't be mechanized. Heat: Propane is ok, but your scenario suggests no resupply. You also say you're near a forest, there are efficient woodburning stoves for heating and cooking. Water: Do you really want to spend a year hand pumping water for irrigation and consuming or dragging it from a stream in the winter? A well with a mechanical pump (windmill). Use barrels to catch rain water (this is trivial to setup) for irrigation and toilets. You can use a mesh filter for the barrel water to make it suited for the toilet since potability is not a concern for that case. Cisterns can hold more, use mechanical pumps to move the water as needed. Elevated water tanks remove the need to pressurize your water, requires some power to move it up to the tank but that's what the windmill is for. Communications: Solved over a century ago with radios, you need some batteries and some hardware. Get it now and start practicing. Mesh networks may be viable depending on proximity to other people and their willingness to contribute. A continent-wide, year-long power outage suggests a long-term sustained attack on infrastructure, I would not rely on any satcom system as something like that is unlikely to stay contained to only a single continent. Something you didn't address: Transportation: Cars will be useless in short order under your scenario. It doesn't sound like you have farmland already, or I'd suggest horses and oxen or other pack animals. Get bicycles and learn to maintain and repair them. They can double without much effort as a source of mechanical power and to charge batteries for some uses (lighting at night, radio). Food: If you're sincerely expecting this, don't even bother with refrigeration anymore. You should learn to cure meats, can vegetables, and process grains (sounds like you do that already). Get cats, food storage will result in rodents and other pests. |