A Day-by-Day Guide to Getting Through a Weeklong Blackout

Alan Urban of Urban Survival Site lays out how to get through the first seven days of a total blackout, drawing on a beginner video from the YouTube channel Sketchocalypse. He says record heat, data centers and an aging grid make routine blackouts in the U.S. easy to picture.

Snapshot

Urban lays out a day-by-day plan for storing and boiling water, eating perishables first, building a latrine or bucket toilet, heating one room safely, securing the home, getting news by radio and keeping a routine. His main point is that a long outage harms people through dehydration, disease, cold and panic rather than darkness itself, which is why he suggests stocking water, a radio and extra food and rehearsing these steps in advance.

Key points

• Day 1, water and food: Fill the bathtub, pots and buckets before water pressure drops, boil tap water after the first day or two, and cook perishables first. Use flashlights rather than candles, and keep the house dim and quiet.
• Day 2, sanitation and heat: Dig a latrine 2 or more feet deep, roughly 200 feet away from any water, or use a 5-gallon bucket lined with heavy trash bags plus kitty litter or sawdust. Stay in one small room, and Urban warns to use only indoor-rated heaters with a battery-powered carbon monoxide detector.
• Days 3 to 5, security and news: Lock doors, cover windows, string cans as alarms and take turns sleeping. A battery or hand-crank AM/FM radio keeps emergency broadcasts coming after cell service fails.
• Days 6 and 7, routine: Wake, eat and sleep on a regular schedule, and keep rationing food and treating water.

Quick take

In Urban's view, darkness is not what hurts people in a long outage; dehydration, disease, cold and panic are. He suggests storing water, buying a crank radio, picking up extra rice and practicing a few of these skills before a crisis.

Read the full story at Urban Survival Site.