You'll need this post too, of course.
Most everything I've posted so far has assumed temperate weather conditions - either revolutionaries wait until June to attack, or a sleepy wet July storm knocks down a tree and powers down your block. This is not going always going to be the case. Anyone in Michigan knows that at least half our power outages come from heavy snow (the other half come from scavengers stealing copper), and anyone in my old home state of Nevada can blame insanely high temperatures and an overworked power grid for their mid-raid WoW logout.
In inclement weather, you need shelter, and you're in luck - you have a house! This is "Suburban Survival," after all, not "Hot Tips for the Homeless." That being the case, we're not going to spend any time talking about building lean-to's and dug-outs.
Sure, come inside, get warm - you like music?
Whether it's heat or cold that ails you, stay indoors. The roof will keep the sun off of your head, and the snow off your back. The only special consideration you need to consider in hot weather is if you should open a window, and I say go for it, especially at night or if a breeze is blowing. The only time you'd worry about the windows being open is if you're trying to keep out the early morning heat, if there's a risk of wild animals or C.H.U.D.s breaking in, or if there's a lot of dust kicking up. By all means - get some fresh air.
Winter preparations are a bit more tricky - you need to relocate everybody into as few rooms as possible, because YOU just became your own central heating unit. You hum along at about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and while that's not enough to run an army of super-powered death bots no matter what the Wakowski's say, it is slowly going to warm a room, especially with the way you run your big yapper.
While the room won't get warm warm, it will gradually become more comfortable than the surrounding rooms, especially if you've got multiple people in there having some sort of end-of-the-world orgy - but the goal isn't to do jumping jacks until you're living in a furnace: the goal is to not spread your waste heat around.
The greater the discrepancy between a heat source and its surroundings, the faster the heat leaves that source - that means you, in this case. By keeping everyone in one insulated room, under covers, you're slowing the dissipation of heat. Move the beds into the living room, bring all the blankets you can find, seal off every room that's not to be occupied (NOW we have a use for plastic and duct tape!), and just remember that every joule of heat you spend in the hallway is one less kept in the living room - see what I did there? Living room? Sometimes I am so clever.
I brought a blanket!
So one way to keep warm is to stay in one place, move your body as needed, eat a ton (to build up a protective layer of fat and to have ample calories to burn), but a better way is to bring a heater along. You have two considerable options.
A kerosene heater is going to keep you warm and toasty. They've got a very particular smell to them, which some people like and some people find repellant, but they work very well (that smell means fumes, by the way - you're going to want to crack a window every once in a while). You can pick one up for as little as 100 dollars, and fuel hovers right around gasoline prices. I personally recommend the boxy one-way heater over the omnidirectional kind because it's out of the way, but suit yourself. Kerosene will eventually go bad, although I personally haven't seen this happen. Still, it couldn't hurt to rotate your fuel store once a year or so.
You could also theoretically run an electric heater so long as you have a generator - I don't think this is a great option, but it is handy. First of all, a lot of people have them in their bedrooms as a little booster on cold winter nights, and if you're willing to buy a generator, who am I to tell you what to use your juice on? Second, there's almost no chance of burning your house down or choking on fumes with an electric heater. But even if you get the energy efficient kind, you're still converting a lot of electricity to heat, and that's not an exchange you want to make.
Do NOT build a fire indoors - if you have a fireplace, that's awesome, and an obvious exception to this caveat. We lose a lot of poor people in Detroit every year because they light a hibachi in their dining rooms, or burn charcoal on a garbage can lid. First they choke and pass out from the fumes and smoke, then the house burns down around them. That's probably warmer than you want to be.
A deep pit would keep you out of the wind...
Generators are not a fix-all. It's emergency power to run a few lights and a radio when the electricity goes out. You can buy one that's all fancy and hardwired to your house, or you can get the kind that starts like a lawnmower and basically feeds an extension cord that you run in the back door. Just remember that it is emergency power - it is not your new power company. Generators come in a wide range of capacities, out puts, and fuel capacities, but in a real emergency situation, it's not going to be enough because it could never be enough. Use that power sparingly!
To get to your generator and your heater, you'll need a light to guide you and maybe even something to make your hands work. To this end, you need to keep three things at the ready: Flashlights with batteries, glow-sticks, and hand warmers.
Nothing Outlasts the Energizer
Flashlights seem really obvious - but you need to be a little disciplined about battery storage. Keep one or two flashlights around with batteries in them - these are your day-to-day flashlights for walking the dog, finding a contact lens, and sexy Rosie O'Donnell-themed strip teases. Then, keep at least one more nearby with fresh batteries NEXT TO it. Don't put them in the flashlight or they'll slowly drain out just like your normal utility lights will.
All you old ravers can also get a lot of mileage from your glowsticks. Although you only get a few hours of trippy party light, they'll do in a pinch, and they won't run down sitting in your junk drawer. It's not good for reading fine print, but it will help keep you from stubbing your toes in the middle of the night.
Finally, keep a case of Hot Hands around. They cost next to nothing, and you never know when you'll need a little extra warmth. Anyone who has ever had a case of dead hands (not that kind, party boy) knows how valuable a few extra degrees in the right spot can be. The inverse of this for you desert dwellers is to keep some first aid ice packs around. These only cost a little bit more than heat packs, and they're indispensable for warding off heat stroke.
There's always more to be said about this sort of thing, but I think I've done my part to keep the readers of this blog alive. I've mentioned plenty of stuff, but you can actually bring in a survival kit for under 100 bucks - canned tuna, gallon jugs of water, a shovel, and a few good blankets will do the trick, but with a little more expenditure and a little more forethought, you can actually survive an emergency in comfort.
By thinking ahead just a little bit, you can turn these little once-a-decade emergencies into a real good time. Have some friends over, keep a couple bottles of vodka in your survival package, and play charades by candle light. Before you know it, you'll all be back at your day jobs joking about the wonderful emergency you had.
That or cannibalizing each other when you realize that no help is coming and the world as we've known it has ended, in which case I recommend replacing that vodka in your kit with a nice Chianti.
Obvious joke is obvious
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