Could you live off the grid?

Dankoozy

If the power went now, how long would it take before you start to run into serious trouble? I know some people start freaking out straight away when there's a blackout and other people only use their houses to sleep in and nothing else so those should last quite a while.

last time there was no power here for a few hours, i have an inverter and a lil generator but didn't even bother using them. i'd say after about 16 hours all the stuff in the freezer would start to thaw and that wouldn't be good. I could run the modem off a battery and charge my laptop in the car but that would only last a few days or a week if i didn't use it all the time.

could still cook fewd, take a shower and use the central heating until i run out of gas, and petrol for the generator. when that stuff runs out it will start to be more like an Amish paradise, like Robinson Curusue as primitive as could be. i have one of those solar powered chargers but its no good, i doubt it will even keep a phone on standby 24 hours a day

thomond2006

Wouldn't last long imo.

Spelling fail btw

aido179

I wouldn't be too bad...
i could cook food and boil a kettle as well as keep myself warm as we have a wood burning stove that we use quite often. We also have a large amount of burnable material around.

PirateShampoo

Could you cook me some fewd please, id like to see what it is.

aido179

i love phonetic spelling like that. fewd is my new favourite alt-spelling

Poor Uncle Tom

Jeez, the 3 o'clock slump really do hit some people.

Long Onion

All i'd need is a bank of photovoltaic cells - just enough to power my TV - then I could watch my Bear Grylls collection and out-survive all your asses

Jesus Wept

I loot, ask questions later tbh.

Riamfada

Well id bury all my fewd to keep it fresh. Id raid my neighbours for supplies. Id set up a fire under my attic tank to give me warm water and Id spend my day waiting for telegrams and posting responses for the powerless version of Boards.ie

Poor Uncle Tom

Long Onion wrote: »

All i'd need is a bank of photovoltaic cells - just enough to power my TV - than I could watch my Bear Grylls collection and out-survive all your asses

the bank would do me TBH.

Dartz

Nope.

Not possible these days, not in an urban setting anyway. If the power's out for more than a week, a lot of people will find it tough.

ttm

Heating - Wood - always at least a months supply for heating and cooking
Cooking - Wood and Gas - buy gas bottles 4 at a time
Lighting - Keep lots of Hurricane lights and a Tilley lamp at the ready plus lots of fuel.
Water - apart from the river and a decent local spring we live at the bottom of a hill and it takes a week after the water goes off before we notice it.
Toilet - flush with bucket filled from river
Hot Water - Wood - backboiler in cooker. Have hand pump that could pump collected rainwater or river water (yuck) into hotwater header tank.

Would you have guessed that the power goes off quite often (couple of times a year) and even the water has been off for over a week before.

So probably yes but htf do I get online

KTRIC

ttm wrote: »

So probably yes but htf do I get online

Eh, duuuuhh , wifi :rolleyes:

senordingdong

Where would we get our pron?

Heaven forbid we'd have to resort to those ancient scrolls and manuscripts like Playboy etc...

Poor Uncle Tom

senordingdong wrote: »

Where would we get our pron?

Heaven forbid we'd have to resort to those ancient scrolls and manuscripts like Playboy etc...

Yeah pron is really usefull....

Dankoozy

senordingdong wrote: »

Where would we get our pron?

Heaven forbid we'd have to resort to those ancient scrolls and manuscripts like Playboy etc...

if you still had a car battery and something to charge it with you could run a router off that. but after a day or so the telephone exchange would run out of power, many mobile phone masts have no backup at all.

but i'd say with the level of madness some city people would be driven to if they were forced to live without electricity, i'd say you wouldn't need any pr0n

Long Onion

It's all academic, we'd be dead within 6 weeks. According to legend, if electricity went out, the green party will instantly become like the kids in lord of the flies and will put us to work in their underground hemp mines whilst chanting "I told you so". Anyone suspected of owning a SUV will be instantly put to death. The worst part will be the fact that we will be fed on lentils and severely beaten for letting methane escape into the atmosphere.

I find green people scary:eek:

Cookie_Monster

Can do and have done while away camping for over a week.
Granted solar powered showers are annoying and useless but as long as there is wood/fuel you can survive long enough to get a proper solar panel / turbine up and running

Riamfada

senordingdong wrote: »

Where would we get our pron?

Heaven forbid we'd have to resort to those ancient scrolls and manuscripts like Playboy etc...

Make your own pron. Get a girlfriend. When you are the emperor of your nuclear wasteland those hot mutant chicks will be crawling over themselves to get to you. Literally

senordingdong

Dankoozy wrote: »

but i'd say with the level of madness some city people would be driven to if they were forced to live without electricity, i'd say you wouldn't need any pr0n

Oh yeah, we'd probably descend to door to door rapings pretty quick.

I saw a documentary about it.

Mad Max or something it was called.

the_syco

No. Luckily, I live in Leixlip, which has a hydroelectric power station on the River Liffey, which should keep pumping out electric.

=-=

As for living off the grid, maybe. But not in Ireland, as there's not that much game to catch to eat. Would not like to be living in Dublin when it happens, as all those muppets would go around terrorizing the place.

Riamfada

the_syco wrote: »

No. Luckily, I live in Leixlip

I think thats the only time anyone has ever said that

Turd Ferguson

I have a collection of porn magazines so I would be set for life

senordingdong

Turd Ferguson wrote: »

a collection

Lol.

senordingdong

How could your power go out for that long?

D.U.M.B

I'd survive for a while until I got bored

uprising

I think we could easily live off the grid, no problem, actually 100 years ago we could have. A man by the name Nikola Tesla was a pioneer in electricity, except his concepts didn't profit the powers that be, so his patents were supressed.
He came across Radiant Energy, a free form of electricity by simply putting a grounding rod into the earth, and an wire satellite disk like aerial which collected static electricity as the earth spun.

More here:
http://educate-yourself.org/fe/radiantenergystory.shtml

Actually I reckon I could make a free energy device, pollution free, self powering with widely available parts, no fuel needed, no noise, its actually so simple a concept its funny. Its not copied from any of tesla's idea's as far as I can tell.

Some parts needed would be an alternator from a car, a car battery, an inverter and the simple perpetual device in my mind. I've been thinking of this for a long time, tweaking it every so often, working out layout and motion, pro's and con's, studying how an alternator and inverter actually work, how to alter the voltage/wattage.
I'm no university physician, I left school barely gone 15.
But the end result would be a pollution free,fuel free, noise free, free electricity machine, that could power a mobile home in a 12 cubic inch box.
I plan to make this device and prove it to work, then explain to all who care to listen just how to make it themselves, I dont want money from it, just recognition, but my idea has probably tried to be patented 100's of times but suppressed its so simple, on a bigger scale it would do away with fossil fuels, nuclear energy, give people freedom from big business.

Seaneh

I'd be grand =, Bow, arrow and some sea gulls for target practice, pew pew, seagull stew!

Joey the lips

Once the women has batterys she is always smiling! :eek:

Me maybe a break from boards might get me some life back:D

jumpguy

I have a gas cooker so I'd still be able to cook for a good while. If the freezer defrosted I'd stock up on tinned food and cure whatever meat I have.
Failing that, I'd go down to river, get as much water as possible and then boil it as needed using the gas.

When the gas runs out, I'll call up Bear Grylls and Ross Kemp to find out what to do.

That_Guy

Ya don't need electricity to ****. Plus it's also another method to heat yourself up.

ttm

Seaneh wrote: »

I'd be grand =, Bow, arrow and some sea gulls for target practice, pew pew, seagull stew!

LOL don't ask how I know but there isn't much meat on an sea gull and the taste - hope you like fish :eek:

ejmaztec

Turd Ferguson wrote: »

I have a collection of porn magazines so I would be set for life

Wouldn't you need three hands when it got dark? Candle/knob/pages?

Poor Uncle Tom

ejmaztec wrote: »

Wouldn't you need three hands when it got dark? Candle/knob/pages?

pffft nOOb, candle in miners style ninja headgear and two hands knob/pages.

Joey the lips

I have just realised the OP is actually John Connors in disguise!

dimejinky99

I've often wondered what would happen here, and in Dublin particularly, in some sort of big emergency..I'd be straight round to superquinn looting being honest..loads and loads of tinned stuff, much as possible, as someone else said there is nothing here to hunt exactly. Fill up on as much water and petrol as possible. But I can totally see the whole roaming gangs and general chaos taking hold. No major city has the infrastructure for people to fend for themselves. Out to the schticks and steal a sheep or two? Get all hugh Fearnely Whittingstall on it. You'd hafta!

dr.bollocko

I'd have to start **** through the tradesmans entrance to pass the time.

ejmaztec

Poor Uncle Tom wrote: »

pffft nOOb, candle in miners style ninja headgear and two hands knob/pages.

Youy've obviously got more on your hands than too much time.:P