🕯️ No power, no fire: what to do, step by step

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When there's no electricity, no gas and no safe way to light a fire. Everything in this guide works without cooking and without a flame.

Open the guide in the app (works offline)

Before

  1. Light: one LED headlamp per person keeps your hands free and uses very little power. Lithium batteries last longer in storage and handle the cold better than alkaline ones. A solar or dynamo lamp doesn't depend on batteries.
  2. Power: a charged power bank (a 10,000 mAh one gives 1.5–2 charges of a current phone, because some energy is lost when charging) and, if you can, a folding solar panel to charge it during the day.
  3. Food: tick "no stove or fire" in the calculator. Buy cooked legumes in jars or cans, canned food, rice cakes, breadsticks, nuts and oats; nothing that needs boiling.
  4. Water: have suitable bleach or purification tablets: they disinfect without boiling.

During

  1. Eat what's in the fridge first (it lasts about 4 hours without power), then what's in the freezer and, last, the canned food.
  2. Oats and couscous soften in cold water or milk in 30–60 minutes, or overnight. Don't eat dried legumes, rice or pasta raw: raw beans are toxic.
  3. Make water safe with bleach (2 drops per liter and 30 minutes) or with tablets, following the label.
  4. Heat without fire: dress in layers (with a non-cotton inner layer), with a hat and dry socks; sleep together in the smallest room with blankets and sleeping bags; cover the windows with blankets at night.
  5. Light: avoid candles whenever you can (they cause fires). If you use them, put them on a stable plate, away from curtains and never unattended.
  6. Phone battery: turn on battery saver and airplane mode when you're not using it, lower the brightness and use this site in "blackout mode". GPS still works in airplane mode.
  7. To charge your phone in the car, only run the engine outdoors, never in a garage, even with the door open.

After

  1. Replace the batteries and recharge the power banks as soon as the power is back: the next blackout won't give you warning.

What you need for this emergency

See the full kit: 1-week-plus kit →

Figures and sources

Other emergencies