see the light

SEE THE LIGHT

As nice as room lighting is, sometimes it isn’t the best choice.  I talk a lot about solar panels, all agog at how insanely low the price is even compared to just three years ago.  But, really, are they any good for AFTER the collapse?  They are great for living off grid.  In fact, being so cheap, you’d be a damn fool to not enjoy them.  At a mere 4 watts, you can comfortably light up an entire room, going through a long ass storm of no solar output, during the winter when you need light eight hours a day, OVER two weeks before the battery is even drained half way.  No reason to resort to weak lanterns or weaker candles, holding flashlights or chaffing the skin on your forehead wearing a headlamp all the time. 

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But a 12v off-grid system is also resource intensive, with the short life batteries ( don’t you DARE say Edison Batteries!  Don’t Do It!  Rich Bitch Prepper Item Only ) and the outdoor electronics that eventually fail.  It is all well and good to have a replacement battery waiting for you down at Wal-Mart, it is quite another to have them in storage where you’ll also need a generator to give the dry battery with added acid its initial high power charge.  12v Marine batteries are a cheap solution for off grid living but don’t last long enough after the collapse.  And the much higher cost alternatives are a very high price to pay for electronic goodies.

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You can buy very inexpensive batteries for each e-device, and the cost effective ones aren’t going to last long enough to matter.  Okay, right now for, say, a laptop replacement battery, you spend $20.  Or, you just run it directly off a solar panel ( probably through an inverter, or another method, to prevent damaging surges ).  Then print off all your e-books and stop farting around with a laptop altogether.  So, as of this writing, batteries are cheap.  Oversupply due to reduced employment and worldwide economic contraction.  But WHY?

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Why do you need most of these devices?  Music player?  Why?  How do you stay alert for danger, listening to music?  Why do you need a computer after the collapse?  For your stupid ass spreadsheet?  Buy an armload of notebooks every back to school sale, brand name pencils ( NEVER generic, they are utter crap ) and an old school manual rotary sharpener and use the old method of writing out crap.  You want to spend hundreds of dollars to maintain an electronic infrastructure to keep a spreadsheet going?  If you have that much extra cash to waste, I trust you are sending some my way.

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After the collapse, you can run certain items directly off panels ( say, a pair of hair clippers, or a drill ) and the rest are not needed at night ( I assume you aren’t all high tech security devices and are manually on alert ) except for illumination.  And for that you just need AA rechargeable batteries.  They might not get the maximum charges a 12v battery would, but they are pretty close.  And they cost a mere two to three times what a disposable AA battery would.  Or, the same, if you are buying high cost retail brands.  As low as a buck each.  Or, spend three times that for twice the performance.

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I’d buy a few dozen of the $1 each and a dozen of the $3 ones.  The cheaper can be charged a thousand times.  Have two compact solar chargers and one or two that run off the big solar panel.  Electronics are simply not built to last all that long, even though they are cheap enough now so it doesn’t matter.  Until after the collapse.  So have more than one back-up.  If you have enough AA batteries, and enough middlin price LED lighting devices, your children or perhaps even grandchildren can postpone the need for beeswax or tallow candles for light.  So don’t go hog wild using up enough lights to duplicate on grid living-conserve.

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Always stockpile more $1 garden lights.  They are enough to see what you are doing.  Back in the ‘80’s I had a buddy who lived off grid.  To go to the bathroom at night you felt your way down the hall to the toilet tank, found the box of matches by touch and lit a candle to urinate ( I imagine the gals could do it without light ).  With a garden light, you have a steady light most of the night to replace that nonsense.  He also had propane lights for the kitchen and living room, but those are also problematic to say the least.  Now, just use a LED lantern.  Don’t get one so insanely bright it drains the batteries in two hours, or so weak you can’t do anything by the light.

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You want a group activity like a board or card game, I would wager you need several lanterns at a minimum 60 lumens each.  You could all wear headlamps, and they are useful for many things, but I hate wearing them too long.  If you are reading, duh, a clip on book light.  Those four lights, plus the odd flashlight, should cover most needs.  Don’t rush down to Wal-Mart, as they get to choose the brand and quality ( other than the garden lights ).  Go to Amazon, type in your item, then go to the left of the page and type in price, lumens, and top rated items.  You’ll get a better selection to choose from.

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You can’t store 12v batteries long term.  You can AA batteries.  Which are the standard for the bulk of LED personal lights.  $3 a battery might be a bit of a shock to your wallet.  But if you are using a LED light that gets thirty hours use per battery and the battery can be charged two thousand times, that is almost TWO generations-about forty years-of use.  These solar rechargeable AA batteries are one of the best deals of the oil age to take into the post-apocalypse future.  They will far outlast your industrial grown wheat or steel case ammunition stockpile.

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