My thoughts.
1. HEAT: If you don't have a fireplace or wood stove you need some other form of heat. I opt for a kerosene heater. You can spend $11-$17 or so per gallon of K1 kerosene to run it for 10 hours on my unit. You can also buy K1 kerosene from the pump at a gas station for $5/gallon. Start looking for the little pumps with the short hose at the station. This is the way to go. The unit I got is a 10,000 BTU. It has a removable 1 gallon tank so you can take the tank outside and fill it while it is still running, which is something you can't do on the tower units. Kerosene is easy to spill a drop here and there and it stinks up the house, so I like filling it outside. Once burning, you can barely smell it and 1 10,000 BTU heater per 1000 sq/ft of home will keep it at 66 degrees in the 25 degree temps we had.
My brother had a diesel heater that he ran and said it worked well to heat his man cave while his gas logs heated his home.
I also had backup heat with 3 20lb propane tanks with a single burner heater on top. I was good on heat for at least 15 days comfortably.
I have a gas generator that I don't have a house hookup for. If the weather was hot, I would use it to run my fridge and freezer. This week I moved our fridge contents to coolers outside with no ice in them and moved some cans of beer and cooked meat in the garage which was very cold.
2. Food: I used propane and white gas Coleman stoves galore. I also used a Coleman white gas lantern outside at night when I was grilling. I recommend a kamado style grill since they are efficient and you can close the vents and put the fire out, thus conserving your lump charcoal. I had 3 big bags. I smoke a pork shoulder and cooked a huge pot of chili. We have the normal long term floods as well. We ate like kings.
3. Water. Fill up bathtubs when power goes out to have non potable water. You can get a water bob to line a bathtub for potable water. I have a Berkey filter for drinking water, but it's slow in the winter. I always store a few hundred gallons of water in the garage for emergencies. Bottles of water usually suffice though.
4. Light: Battery powered lanterns are awesome after dark inside.
5. Communication: I had some cheap baofeng radios for if cell coverage went out and I went somewhere. I tested it when I went to explore the roads in my jeep. I could pick up my family from 1.5 miles away through heavy woods and hills.
6. Battery banks to recharge electronics like cell phones and run breathing treatments (nebulizers) for the elderly, which I needed since I picked up some elderly family to stay with us.
View attachment 1166381
