This post is by Bernie Carr, apartmentprepper.com
A couple of weeks ago, we were discussing the cyber threat to the public infrastructure. If you were to have a power outage, would you know what to do with the food in your refrigerator and freezer? I created the infographic below to give you a few things to think about:
For more information, here are a few articles:
Fridge Items that May Last through a Power Outage
Beliefs About Fridge and Freezer Storage – Are They True or Not?
Can you Live Without a Refrigerator?
How to Make Eggs Last Longer without a Refrigerator
Have you gone through an extended power outage? What did you do with your fridge food? Please share in the comments.
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Here are a few links to items referred to in the article and a few others are helpful for moving: Mineral oil: This is pharmacy grade mineral oil that can be used to make eggs last longer. Gel packs for coolers I like having a lot of gel packs in case power goes out, they keep the freezer cold. Food dehydrator This one is reasonably priced and has a lot of happy users.
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as someone who did a lot of tent camping a would recommend having 2 coolers and using one of them for Fridge items and the other for freezer items. Use your frozen water bottles and frozen jell packs in the fridge cooler this keeps the melting water from messing up the food. Put the frozen food in to plastic bags to keep any melt water away from the food. Use a heavy blankets to cover the coolers and put several layers of cardboard or Styrofoam insulation under them to insulate them from the ground. Keep the coolers in the shade and out of the sun. And yes use the cooked food up 1st, than cook anything that has a short live in the cooler.
Hey Oldguy, 2 separate coolers for fridge and freezer and keeping them insulated among layers are great ideas. Thanks for the additional tips.
This is something some of our local California Bay Area Preppers have talk about and in fact we did a whole Saturday session on power consumption by a lady named Rachel about 2-3 years ago. You might want to note something about certain appliances such as refrigerators and microwaves that require a lot of wattage for brief periods of time when they start up, yes they are super tricky monsters when you don’t have power. People will purchase 2,000W inverters connected to their car batteries only wishing they would of gone higher (i.e. 3,000W). When it comes to inverters it’s best to get one that goes really high to run these types of appliances and another that goes really low for your smaller devices. You can lose about 40% of your battery’s power just from using an inverter (yikes !). In these situations it’s better to have a 12V refrigerator…yes they actually make them. Well anyways this is just another angle for your article that folks like me might want to know more about. Thank you for covering the other options.
Hi Milo, Good topic – one that I will add to my articles list. It is definitely good to know the wattage requirements of certain appliances, and how they would impact your backup power source needs. Thanks for bringing this up.