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.
As someone that recently went seven days without power and four without water would recommend getting a 55 gallon food grade drum for water. You can probably source them locally for less than 50 bucks. I don't own a generator. I have a trolling motor for a small john boat so I have a battery for that so I bought an inverter and it worked well for charging batteries to recharge cell phones and to run my cpap. I could if needed rotate this battery with my vehicles.
What do you do to the water to keep it from going bad in those? Also, is there a legitimate concern about bottled water with some age on it? I try to cycle through my packs of bottled water every 3 months but who knows how long it has been sitting on pallets in some storage facility prior to me buying it. Some water tastes ok, some tastes really 'flat'. (reminds me of distilled water)
Dump it every couple of months and start over.
Ok - makes sense.
Pour water back and forth between two cups and you can reaerate it.