I am always amazed that power outages are such a common experience in north America. In more than 55 years here in Europe I have experienced exactly two power outages, one that was planned when they were working in the substation for this street, and one incident that took out a whole part of the city for 20 minutes. The latter one was so extraordinary that it made the national evening news.

I’ve experienced exactly one power outage in Germany in the last 50 years, so i haven’t really developed a routine.

I live(d) in Asheville, NC for a decade. I’ve had the power go out pretty often, most recently for Hurricane Helene (4 days for us, and we were on the low end!). Seeing a 24-48 outage is frequent here.

We have our house wired for a generator, so it’s mostly about a cycle of rationing fuel to keep the fridge cold, charge things while it’s on, use water and fill things while it’s on (we are on a well not city water).

Beyond that, reading books, playing handheld games like the Steam Deck, lots of talking. Losing power is not the worst thing most of the time to me.

Living off solar and batteries, I’d get to work fixing it.

Use the batteries.

Read a book

I like taking a walk / being outside, because all of the power tools/ leaf blowers/ ac units are shut off and the world is finally quiet

Wait for the power to come back on.

Think about opening the fridge and pointlessly looking to boredom eat, then remember I shouldn’t open the fridge and let the cold escape because the power is off. Repeat.

Think about how much of our lives revolve around and are entirely dependent on electricity, and how bad loss of power would be even for just a couple days, and disastrous it would be for a week or more.

Wish I’d remembered to recharge my phone power banks.

Where are all the books? I used to have books to read. They’re all on my phone now. Shit. Need to save battery.

Guess I’ll see if I can find some candles. Maybe the fam will want to play a board game.

If during the day, I’ll call someone on my mobile, do work out in the garden/yard, or read. If during the night, I’ll browse the internet on my phone, play on my Nintendo Switch, or go to sleep if it’s already late. I have many sources of backup lighting in the house including a couple dynamo powered torches that you wind up.

Haven’t delt with that in a long time. Closest I had was maybe an hour or less because I live close to an elderly home and they usually get power restored real quick. I just stayed on my phone, which thankfully was charged, as I went with my parents to get candles. Never got candles since power came back so quick.

Longest I was without it because of an outage was around 2014 maybe, in winter. Cold days/nights spent in the living room, probably using the fireplace for the first time ever since I lived there. Used my phone and probably had other means of keeping myself entertained. Don’t recall much about it because it was a decade ago. Neighbor across the street was an amazing person because she let us take an extension cable cord thing from her house to ours when they got power back. I do remember watching a video when all of the sudden the power came back, though.

As for what I’d do now, probably cry and hope my Steam Deck/laptop/phone are charged. Also probably get batteries for a radio CD cassette mini boom box thing I got from a thrift store recently and play music, plugging in my headphones. I’ve got enough CDs to last a short while.

Hahaha you should see the outage map of Washington State.

What do I like to do? Nothing, I hate power outages.

What I typically do is I have a large stockpile of candles from an old MLM scheme. I light those and play on my phone if there’s Internet. We have multiple battery banks for these occasions.

If there’s no Internet I will read. Both ebooks and regular books because my attention will shift.

I also try to do something productive like study for something.

Most of all I pile like eleventy billion blankets on the bed because I’m so cold. The furry ones are poor space heaters.

When I was a kid we always played games. Like charades or something. My dad would light the camp stove and we’d entertain ourselves for the evening as a family. They were nice.

Make a blanket fort and read

Out by RCH here. Nary a blip. You good?

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Read, sleep, and I usually have a hand held charged if I’m super desperate.

It usually happens in the summer in my area, when everyone had the air on full blast.