We have the canned goods, the dry goods, the water filter, the ammo, an emergency trunk filled with everything you can think of—drugs, first aid, lanterns, etc.
But I’m sitting here in the dark for hours after a transformer blew in our small village. Totally failed our dry run. I can’t get the lanterns working. Our batteries seem corrupted and I don’t have the right kind of batteries in some instances. And I need a lantern that uses another kind of energy too.
Big fail! I’m off to Home Depot when the lights come on to truly get prepared. Glad this happened today. I thought we were in good shape. Didn’t make it an hour.
Almost had it, but if this was real you'd be screwed.
Can you elaborate? Are they Chinese lanterns? Batteries past shelf life? Improper cables or "rechargeable" lanterns during an outage. What "other energy" did you not have? Stating the obvious, but these are things you consider when you buy these things. I have a UHF radio that runs on AA batteries, buddy keeps saying I need the "new one" that has a rechargeable battery pack. That's no good to me in an emergency BUT it is good for me to casually play with it for now to larn UHF radio. When SHTF, it's a brick.
The lantern didn’t light with the last four Double D’s I had. I didn’t have triple A’s for the small tent lights. Couldn’t find my other lanterns. I thought we had a lot of batteries but husband has been dipping into our supplies. If I needed to fire up our new generator, I didn’t know how to start it alone as husband is off in the woods. I looked at our water supply. Not good! I’m going to correct all of this today. I’ll drop a bundle at Home Depot without a qualm after what happened this morning!
Couple of tips that may help prepare. I bought a couple of solar battery chargers - they take quite a bit of time to work without strong sun but they do work. The outside yard lights (type with stakes in the ground) along driveway work to bring inside at night in a pinch - not super bright. Might pick up a few headlamps too - they are cheap and bright and they dont seem to disappear like flashlights. In addition to bottled or water storage containers, fill your empty freezer spaces with clean 2 liter soda or juice bottles of water to have cooking water on hand and empty laundry or bleach bottles to fill with handwashing water, can be left outside or in garage. Good luck friend.
Got these on my list! Especially the head lamps!
Just be careful you dont burn each others eyes out with the headlamps 👀!!
By no means a prepper but I think its a good idea to store fresh batteries with the gear you may need to use in an emergency (ie I have a blackout box, a 10L plastic box filed with multiple lights, torches and radio + all required batteries), so they are at hand if/when you need to use. I prefer to not fit them into the torches/radio etc beforehand as I dont want to risk them going flat.
Battery shelf life is usually 5-10+ years, so you can always cycle out your batteries after 5 years and replace them with fresh batteries, and use the stored ones for your everyday needs.
I use the rechargeable Panasonic eneloops for AA/AAA, and the ternergy LSD (low self discharge) for D cells. These sit well on the shelf for months without losing much charge.
Don't leave alkaline batteries in your devices! They leak over time and ruin flashlights, radios, etc. Duracell and Energizer have sent me checks to replace maglites until I learned.
https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-K-KJ17MCA104-Rechargeable-Batteries-Individual/dp/B078375TK9/ref=sr_1_9?sr=8-9
https://www.amazon.com/Tenergy-Rechargeable-Discharge-Batteries-Pre-Charged/dp/B01ASF24WI/ref=sxin_16_pa_sp_search_thematic_sspa?cv_ct_cx=tenergy+lsd+D+cell&sbo=RZvfv%2F%2FHxDF%2BO5021pAnSA%3D%3D&sr=1-2-6024b2a3-78e4-4fed-8fed-e1613be3bcce-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9zZWFyY2hfdGhlbWF0aWM&psc=1
Charger: https://www.amazon.com/Powerex-MH-C800S-8-Cell-Smart-Charger/dp/B000LQMKDS/ref=sr_1_2?sr=8-2
Buy once, cry once. I have been happy with these for years.
Eneloops rock.
This is super great advice. Got these on my list now