NoGoolag

https://survivalblog.com/2025/11/01/a-top-10-prepping-list-multi-tool-not-included-part-4-by-st-funogas/

Please don’t take my word about the need of a feasible lighting system for a TEOTWAWKI lifestyle. Do a realistic weekend test using candles and kerosene lamps. Be sure to continue doing your everyday activities and provide enough light to comfortably see what you’re doing. While these lighting methods may have worked for our ancestors and groups like today’s Amish, they were able to replenish their candle and oil supplies on a regular basis so they didn’t have to worry so much about how much they used. If the grid goes down however, to provide just a year’s worth of light you’ll need many drums of kerosene and pallets of candles in your preps to get the job done. Lighting is probably the single most important area where we need to leave the Dark Ages behind and modernize our thinking.
Let me put things into proper perspective. By this time next week for $500 you could own a PPS, solar panel to charge it, and a selection of LED lights. With these, you can in all likelihood light your home for 5-10 years. You’d not only be good to go for TEOTWAWKI, but you can also use them for various things in the meantime. With oil lamps however, you’ll need to spend $1,800-$3,600 for two to four 55-gallon drums of lamp oil, find a safe place to store them, then start saving your money so you can afford to pay for Year Two lighting. Or, you could just skip the oil lamps, spend the $1,800-$3,600 instead on a really nice PPS, plus a backup PPS, plus a Faraday cage in the event of a EMP, and be in great shape on Day One.
A PPS can also charge laptops, without which we can’t access the SurvivalBlog Archive Stick which is the next item on this top-10 list. Cell phones take very little electricity to recharge and while we won’t be able to use them for communication after the SHTF, we can still use their many useful apps.
Along with a PPS, we’ll want to have many of the low-wattage devices that will make life in a grid-down world so much easier. Most of us already have a good start on this with phones, laptops, small appliances, freeze alarms for plumbing, fans, and a wide assortment of lamps and lights.
With a $300 PPS and a $50 plug-and-play solar panel, we can supply enough electricity for 5-10 years to power all of these low-wattage items. Some preppers will gladly spend that much on their 13th firearm, yet have no means to provide low amounts of power for such important things as lights and laptops.
And what about ham radios? I don’t know much about the topic but I’ve gained from reading SurvivalBlog that they can serve a great purpose after the SHTF. How will they operate without a source of electricity? A PPS can provide it.
Best of all, whether the Schumer ever hits the fan or not, PPS’s can be used around the homestead right now to run power tools when we’re working on that project on the north 40, or that camping trip for those who don’t like to go overboard on the roughing-it part, or for charging a cell phone during the week-long power outage due to a hurricane of ice storm.
For more money, we can go all out and buy one of the larger portable power stations which will allow us to do much more after the SHTF: wash (but not dry) a load of clothes, run an electric wheat grinder, a drill press, a blender, etc.

Part Three | Beginning

SurvivalBlog.com

A portable power station (PPS), often incorrectly called a “solar generator”

A portable power station (PPS), often incorrectly called a “solar generator,” is the most practical way to provide at least some electricity after the SHTF.

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