If there were a power outage tomorrow, would you be ready for it?
The aging U.S. power grid is extremely unreliable, leaving you and your family vulnerable to blackouts.
We never know when it might happen – or how long it might last – but there are things you can do today to prepare.
To help, we’ve put together a checklist to make sure you’ll be prepared.
Your Power Outage Checklist
The only way you’ll handle a blackout – especially one that might last a while – is to have a number of essential items ready.
Here are a few of them. You might want to add more to your list depending on individual family members’ needs.
- Have survival food with a long shelf life on hand – a minimum of 72 hours per person.
- Immediately following a blackout, eat and drink what you can from your refrigerator and freezer before eating your survival food.
- Have clean drinking water stockpiled, a water purifier on hand, and at least one portable water filter for each family member.
- Have a generator powered up and ready to go.
- Have flashlights, extra batteries, and matches stored where you can find them in the dark.
- Have a battery-operated or hand-crank radio.
- Have at least several hundred dollars pulled out and set aside for when ATMs or online banking are down.
Reduce Your Stress During a Blackout
A power outage can be stressful. But you can handle it better if you’ve prepared.
Here’s a list of to-do’s that will help you deal with a blackout without breaking a sweat.
- Always keep electronic devices fully powered up.
- Keep your vehicles’ gas tanks at least half full or as close to full as possible.
- After the power goes out, unplug sensitive electronic equipment to avoid power spikes when it returns.
Solar Generator Brings Peace of Mind
To 4Patriots Customer
We stress the importance of having a generator for when a blackout occurs.
But don’t take my word for it. Take a look at what 4Patriots customer Keith of southeastern Texas had to say on how he handled Hurricane Harvey last year.
He and his wife could have evacuated as many others did. But they decided to hunker down. They felt comfortable dealing with the hurricane because they owned the Patriot Power Generator 1500 and the Alexapure Pro water filtration system.
“We’ve seen evacuations before, and it’s not good on the highway,” Keith said. “Instead, we boarded up all the windows and had our water ready to go.
Harvey Survivor Shares —
You Are Ultimately on Your Own
“If you’re not prepared to sit at your house and take care of yourself, then there’s nobody who’s going to take care of you. You’re on your own.
“You want to go live in a football stadium with cots and sleeping bags on the floor for a month? Well, no thank you.”
Keith and his wife were glad they had a way to produce clean water when Harvey rolled in and stuck around. Having a solar generator also helped their peace of mind.
“I set my Patriot Power Generator out and we were ready for whatever hit and whatever happened,” he said. “It sounded like a train out there for 12 or 14 hours.
“The wind took everything out. All the glass was blown out of every building for hundreds of miles. Everybody lost power.
“Nobody was getting any of their groceries. Nothing was available for a week or more.”
Keith’s generator helped him live a ‘normal life’
“People were standing in line for hours for water,” Keith continued. “There was no fuel, there were no grocery stores open.
“The power was out, but I just plugged everything into my Patriot Power Generator. Plugged the TV in, and we had coffee. We were just living a normal life. Everything was normal.”
Keith is eager to share, “Be prepared to be self-reliant. And have water and have food. I could hunker down here and live here for six months and not ever have to leave. I feel self-reliant. I don’t have to rely on anybody.”
Be Prepared for Your Power to Go Out
For most of us, not having power for a few hours would be inconvenient. But if you’re looking at days, weeks or even longer, it’s considered a state of emergency.
It’s becoming more and more obvious that our power grid is failing and vulnerable. Not only from storms and natural disasters, but also from terrorist and cyber-attacks.
Former CIA official Dr. Peter Pry says that attacks on just 9 of the nation’s 55,000 electrical substations could result in nationwide blackouts for up to 18 months.
It’s time to take steps to protect your family if you have not yet.
A solar generator is the best option because it can power your home without any gas, fumes, or noise. And there’s no worry about carbon monoxide poisoning.
Our top recommendation in portable solar generators is the Patriot Power Generator 1500.
You can use it to run kitchen appliances. Charge your personal or medical devices. Or light up a room with an LED light string… for weeks at a time.
To your freedom,
Robert Boyd
Managing Editor, News4Patriots
In the first 2 weeks of September, we had 4 power failures in the immediate area here in southeast Idaho. The longest one was 5 hours, caused by a transformer shorting out at one of the substations. None of them was weather related. Rather, they were all the result of old equipment that has not been upgraded. Small utilities like the one in our city may not replace expensive equipment until it fails. That can mean several hours to days without power. Large scale outages caused by an EMP attack or cyber attack are more dramatic, but they are not the most likely event.