u/digitaldai

Just watched station eleven recently, what else should we be watching!

Hello everyone. I've only just realised this is a thing, and that I have been doing this for years!

We have already constructed basic household resilience for things like power cuts, water disruption, severe weather and short-term supply problems.

I'm not preparing for the end of the world — more interested in being able to manage reasonably comfortably for a couple of weeks if something goes wrong.

I've gradually accumulated quite a bit already before realising this was a thing, I got AI to list it all for us:

💧 Water

• 2 × 50L stored-water containers
• Around 10 × 2L bottles
• About 120L total
• Sawyer water filter

🍚 Food

• Good supply of long-life tins
• 10 tins of beans
• Kidney beans
• 10 tins chopped tomatoes
• 5 tins vegetables
• 5 ready-to-eat rice/bean pouches
• 5kg pasta
• 3kg oats
• 3kg flour
• Cereals and noodles
• Nuts and chia seeds
• 10 cartons long-life soya milk
• Various other long-life foods

I'm vegetarian, so most of the food stock is plant-based.

⚡ Power

• 5.5kW solar PV
• 12kWh battery storage
• Solis inverter
• 3kW emergency/EPS output
• Various extension leads and cable reels
• MG4 EV
• Lots of rechargeable 18650 batteries

I'm currently working out exactly what I can sensibly run from the 3kW backup output during a power cut.

🍳 Cooking / heating

• Portable 2kW induction hob
• ~2kW air fryer
• Small camping stove + gas canisters
• Gas combi boiler
• Open fire + wood store

The portable induction hob is specifically because my normal induction cooker is hard-wired and isn't practical to use from the emergency supply.

🔦 Lighting / communications

• Around 5 rechargeable torches
• 2 lanterns
• 6 spare 18650 cells
• A couple of FM radios
• Phones
• Fibre broadband/ONT/router, which I'm planning to put on the emergency supply

🐕 Dog

• 12kg dry food
• 12 tins wet food
• 200+ waste bags

🔧 General equipment
I already have quite a lot of DIY tools and gardening equipment, including a Hori Hori, so I'm not particularly worried about basic tools.

🩹 Medical

• 2 first-aid kits, which I still need to properly inventory and check expiry dates on.

I've also got a new fire extinguisher.

I'm deliberately trying not to buy loads of specialised "prepper" equipment. I'd rather make use of things I already have and gradually fill the genuine gaps.

So, for those of you in the UK:

What obvious gaps do you see?

And perhaps more importantly, what have you actually found useful during a real power cut, water outage, storm or other disruption?

we often used to have 24 hr power cuts in bad weather as we are small village end of the electricity line

I'm particularly interested in the boring, practical things that you only realise you need afterwards.