I was communicating online with a newish prepper and was shocked to hear how much of his limited income on generators, solar power sources and various electrical devices that needed more and more money poured into them to keep them running in the event of a collapse.

I grew up poor in the 70s. We had a deep freezer usually filled with cheap cuts of meat from the butcher and fish we caught. When a blackout happened my grandfather would go get ice from the store while the rest of us emptied ice from the fridge into the freezer. This kept the food for long enough to use it. I understand that people are planning for the electricity to never come back on, but you do that by being less, not more dependent on electricity. Instead of a extra solar generator to run your electric fridge why not invest in an antique ice chest? That’s what people used prior to mass production of kitchen appliances and they got along just fine.

Instead of buying expensive and fragile solar panels why not build an ice house or a root cellar? Why seek power sources for your computer controlled security cameras when even a small dog works well as an alarm for intruders?

The point is that if you are planning for a complete collapse of civilization keep it simple. If you don’t know how to service a generator or make fuel to run it it is not a great long term TEOTWAWKI purchase. That’s not to say they aren’t useful for a bad storm, but if the storm you see coming is more like Patriots or One Second After than Hurricane Katrina you need to plan for not having electricity in the long term.

In this new category I’ll be featuring ways you can keep a moderately comfortable lifestyle without power. For people younger than me this may seem like true roughing it but for most of human history people survived, and thrived, without electricity and you can too.